Ballot Secrecy Bill [Lords]

Alex Norris Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 24th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I add my congratulations to Lord Haywood on initiating this important Bill in the other place and on securing its progress so far. If it is successful—I think we can have complete confidence in that success—it will be the first private Member’s Bill in several years to start in the other place and make it on to the statute book. That will be no mean achievement and I know that we will get a decisive step closer to that goal today. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) on his leadership of this legislation in its proceedings in the Commons and on the case he has ably made for his Bill today and in previous sittings.

Significant contributions were also made by other Conservative Members. I want to cover the point made by the hon. Members for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) and for Darlington (Peter Gibson) about disability in a moment, because it is such an important point—let me associate myself with the comments they made about its importance.

First, however, I wish to deal with something that the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said in an intervention. He always has interesting points to make on our democracy and how it runs, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not, as he knows. The one he made about guidance is so important—guidance is always important. We are all saying today that voting is an individual act, a “private act”, as the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton) characterised it. If that is the case, we have to make it easy to do, so that, in general, a person would not need to solicit support because the guidance is so clear and things are obvious.

I am less of a fan of the more complicated and novel systems of election, but sometimes there may be multiple candidates and that does get tricky. When the single transferable vote is used, people wonder whether to vote in the first column or the second column—that can get tricky. It is up to the regulators and, obviously, the leadership in this place, to make sure that that guidance is so clear. That touches on the point made by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) about the staff working in the polling stations, as we need things to be easy for them too. We cannot now have a significant range of burdens, or even tensions or anxieties, for them in respect of having to become enablers and supporters of votes; they do not want to be going anywhere near those booths either. The guidance has to be really clear, both for the individuals and for the staff we ask to administer those elections.

I wish to make a point or two of my own, but I am pleased that there is such consensus on this issue. As the hon. Member for Peterborough said, this is fundamentally a point about clarity. No matter how well established the spirit of the Ballot Act may be, 151 years later there is a lack of clarity, and the Bill adds that clarity. Our democratic processes must be free from intimidation and—a point made by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan)—free from inducement as well. That was the spirit of the Act which put into law the secret ballot that we enjoy to this day. In one fell swoop, it put an end to the egregious practices of landowners and employers influencing their workers’ or tenants’ votes.

However, a clear and identifiable problem remains with the Act: it does not give presiding officers the right tools to fully tackle the problem of people being compelled to vote in one particular way, or indeed not at all, by others. Those practices are always unacceptable, but they do happen, and this is the moment for us to act to end them. Intimidation of this kind goes against all our democratic principles, but there is an ambiguity, which the Electoral Commission has highlighted, so the case for change is clear.

In the other place, the Government provided important reassurances about the continuation of any assistance that disabled voters may need in order to vote. That is right and proper, and I am glad that it will not be affected by the Bill. As we heard from my hon. Friend for Darlington (Peter Gibson), there was a “build-out” for this in the Elections Act 2022. Nevertheless, I think that, as far as humanly possible, we should collectively seek to render this moot by providing appropriate assistive technologies enabling disabled people to vote independently, which would remove the need for another person to be there.

In Committee I mentioned the My Vote My Voice campaign, which aims to improve participation in voting by adults with learning disabilities and/or autism, as well as campaign groups representing deaf people, blind people, people living with Usher syndrome, and deaf-blind people more generally. They want the right technologies and support to ensure that as many people as possible—indeed, virtually everyone—can vote, and vote independently. That should be our aspiration. As I have said, the Elections Act has moved us in the right direction, but I suspect that we will need to monitor the success of its provisions and those of the Bill, and I dare say we may need to go further still in the fullness of time.

Notwithstanding those points, the Opposition welcome the Bill and are glad to support it today. It is vital for us to have clear law in this area, with no ambiguity about what is and what is not acceptable practice at polling stations, and the Bill constitutes an important step towards ensuring that happens.

Ballot Secrecy Bill [ Lords ]

Alex Norris Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 7th March 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

I rise to ask a simple, straightforward question. The Bill applies to parliamentary elections across the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland. It applies to English local elections and Northern Ireland Assembly elections. As was said, it does not apply to Scotland or Wales. Rather than just informing the Administrations in Scotland and Wales of this modest change to legislation, have there been any approaches to see whether the Sewel convention could be used, so that the legislation will automatically apply to Wales and Scotland, with their consent?

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr McCabe.

I thank the noble Lord Hayward for sponsoring this important Bill in the other place and I congratulate him on securing its swift progress through to its Commons stages. I congratulate the hon. Member for Peterborough on his work in this area and on the case he made for the Bill this morning, which was very good and a handy way to start the discussion.

This is a short but important Bill for the integrity of our elections and our democracy more widely. As was covered during debates in the other place—they are very much worth a read, and it was helpful that the hon. Gentleman brought them into this debate, because some of those contributions were excellent—it is crucial that our democratic process is free from abuse and intimidation. That was the spirit of the 1872 Act, 151 years ago, which curtailed many of the terrible practices that occurred in elections before its passing. As was explained in the other place, however, a clear and identifiable problem remains with the Act as it stands: it does not give presiding officers the right tools to tackle the problem of people being compelled to vote one way, or not at all, by others.

It is unacceptable that such practices still occur. The intimidation of voters is contrary to all our democratic principles, but the law as it stands lacks clarity on the matter. That has been acknowledged by the Electoral Commission, which it is helpful to note. There is therefore clearly a case for changing the legislation and making such practices an offence. The Bill will do exactly that.

I associate myself with the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood about a bigger piece of work to consolidate our electoral law in one place. The Law Commission report is a good starter. Those points were well made, and I share them.

Important reassurances were given in the other place—I am sure the Minister will reiterate them—about disabled voters continuing to have any assistance they need to vote, where necessary. That practice, which is right and proper, will not be impacted by the Bill. Last week, I took part in an event—as did the Minister—organised by the My Vote My Voice campaign, which aims to improve participation in voting by adults with learning disabilities and/or autism.

I have had similar such conversations about voting with people with Usher syndrome, those who are deaf and blind more generally, and those who are blind. They all say the same thing: they want hurdles to voting lowered so that they can vote with greater confidence. Happily, the provisions in the Bill do not impair that, but there is something to be said for going above and beyond the Bill, building out from it to ensure that the right technologies are available or that there is staff training. The hon. Member for Peterborough also talked about staff training and how—including under the Elections Act 2022—there should be more training on how to ensure that people living with disabilities can vote independently. We would not then have to worry about another person being there, because the assistive technologies are there—those exist, and that is what such electors want. I hope we build out from this legislation in that way.

To conclude, it is important that we have good, strong law in this area, to provide a clear understanding of what is and what is not acceptable practice at a polling station. The Opposition support the Bill and look forward to its timely passing.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lee Rowley)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe.

I am pleased to say that the Government also support the Bill, which is being sponsored by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough. We are grateful for his efforts and work in this regard. I join him in paying tribute to Lord Hayward, who has been an absolute stalwart in pushing forward this important agenda and ensuring that the Bill is before us today. He is joined in the Public Gallery by a number of others with interests in this area, including Councillor Tanner and Councillor Peter Golds.

My hon. Friend’s Bill arises from concerns over so-called family voting, which we have discussed, which is when family members or others accompany voters into a polling booth in a polling station for the apparent purpose of influencing or guiding how they cast their vote. The Government share the concerns expressed about the issue and we are committed to safeguarding our democracy against those who would harm it. That is why we are supporting the Bill.

I will run through the clauses briefly, but I do not seek to detain the Committee for too long. Clause 1 makes a number of important changes. As my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough explained, it outlines that a person commits an offence if they are with a voter in a polling booth, or near it, but it also sets out the reasons why people would not be committing an offence in appropriate instances, which have already been outlined—with those who need assistance or are disabled.

As the hon. Member for Nottingham North said, both of us in the past few days have been to events—I am grateful to him for supporting and helping to organise an event last week—at which the importance of greater participation and greater involvement in the democratic process was clear. Those events aim to encourage and support those who need additional assistance, which is a vital part of the electoral system, although we must also ensure that we can do the things that my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough is requiring under the Bill.

I hope the hon. Gentleman can see some of the changes that are being introduced in May, particularly with regard to people with sight loss and trying to provide a greater range of options and technology to support them, as a step forward and part of that broad agenda.

Voter Identification

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

The implementation of a voter identification scheme has always been a solution in search of a problem. We are more likely to be struck by lightning 54 times than to be queueing behind a person committing vote fraud at a polling station. Nevertheless, for their own purposes, the Government chose to force through voter ID legislation this time last year.

For months, those who administer and monitor our elections—the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Local Government Association, the Electoral Commission—all warned the Government that there was not enough time to safely implement the scheme for May or for those without ID to get a voter authority certificate. The Minister disregarded this expert advice and pushed ahead anyway, and the complacency that we have heard today is breathtaking.

I am sorry if the 2 million figure is such a problem for the Minister, but the reality is that the applications that have been made represent just over 1% of those who will need this. At the current rate of sign-up, it will take a decade to get credentials to everyone who needs them, but there are only 72 days to polling day. We are risking widespread disenfranchisement. When is the Minister going to wake up and act to prevent these voter ID requirements from locking huge numbers of people out of our democracy at the next election?

[Lee Rowley]

The hon. Gentleman continues to perpetuate the myth that this is some form of suppression. He is absolutely incorrect. Putting aside party political views, we have a responsibility in this place to make sure that we are temperate with our language, particularly when it relates to something as important as the ballot box. [Interruption.] He chunters that I should listen to the experts, but if this urgent question had not been granted—although I am grateful for this opportunity to respond to it—I would have been in a meeting right now with the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Local Government Association and the Electoral Commission, to continue my regular interactions about making sure that this works.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It was not just councils that put time and money into these bids; local people put their heart and soul into developing their community’s submissions, only to find that their bid would never have been allowed to win, that their time had been wasted and that they had been taken for fools. The Minister does not seem troubled about wasting Members’ time, and certainly not local authorities’ time, but surely she will apologise to those volunteers.

[Dehenna Davison]

I have already expressed my admiration for the incredible work put in by local government officials, volunteers and Members across the House, and I have apologised—the hon. Gentleman can read the Select Committee transcript for himself.

I need to make the point that we had £8.8 billion-worth of bids for round 3 of the levelling-up fund and only £2.1 billion to allocate, which unfortunately means difficult decisions had to be made. We are not a Government who shy away from making difficult decisions, and my own county council unfortunately faced a detriment, too. Ultimately, in line with the decision-making framework outlined in the technical note, we were keen to ensure geographic spread so that the most areas possible benefited from the levelling-up fund across rounds 1 and 2.

Levelling-up Fund Round 2: Bidding Process

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Christopher, and to speak in this debate on behalf of the Opposition. I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) on securing the debate, and on the very powerful case she made. I will cover the point about wasted time that she and other colleagues made, as well as other important points that were raised.

As usual, my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) stole one of my important lines; the point made by the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, is the place to start:

“this episode is just another example as to why Whitehall’s bidding and begging bowl culture is broken”.

Perhaps Ministers do not want to take it from us Labour Members, but there is clearly the same feeling even within the Conservatives’ ranks. That view must be right, because over a year on from the White Paper, what have the Government got to show for this policy? There have been bodged bidding processes; millions were wasted in “Hunger Games” style bidding processes; bids have been eaten up by inflation; not a single levelling-up director has been appointed; and there have been broken promises on development funding. That is before we get to the fact that regional inequalities are widening, bus services are being lost up and down the country, train cancellations are at a record high, and people cannot get to see their GP or into hospital. Nothing works in this country.

Round 2 of the levelling-up fund would not have solved all those problems, but it would have been a great place to start steadying the ship; however, it has been a calamity. What possible system could exclude Hemsworth, for which my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) made the case, but include the Prime Minister’s constituency? As the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) said, how could that not set the Prime Minister’s words echoing around our heads—words that he meant, but that he said when he thought we were not listening? How can that not be what we take away from this process?

I agree with a lot of what the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) said about coastal communities, and hope that we get a better opportunity to discuss the issue at length. We are pleased for those communities that have been successful. Local government has lost £15 billion since 2010, so communities up and down the country are desperate for investment, but we have to be honest: set against that £15 billion loss, this round 2 gives back £2.1 billion. The Government have nicked a tenner from our wallets and expect us to be grateful for getting not even £2 back, but even those areas that have won individually are losers too. For example, it is brilliant that Norfolk County Council has secured £24 million to improve transport in King’s Lynn. We want that to happen. However, we need to take into account the money that Norfolk has lost from cuts to the local authority budget in the last four years alone—back to the time of the Prime Minister who promised levelling up, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson). Even if we include that £24 million, Norfolk is £146 million worse off in real terms. With levelling up, even those who win are actually losers.

The analysis of why levelling up has failed, is failing and sadly will fail has been around for a while. Subsequent revelations about how the bids were handled only add to the insult. We now know that many local authorities that submitted bids, including mine, never stood a chance of winning, because Ministers later excluded them from selection.

So much went into those bids. We have heard about the financial impact of the internal work in local authorities. There were huge efforts there. There were also huge efforts to engage with our local communities on what they needed, and hope was built up that they might get something back. They never had a chance. It was cruel to put them through that. Any answer from the Minister today ought to start with an apology, and a commitment —as the right hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) and the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) said— to real, meaningful feedback, so that we know how things might be different in the future.

It does not have to be this way. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) made that point very well. She and I spent a lot of time on the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Bill. What we put into that Bill will go into our future manifesto, which we will put to the country. We could scrap the beauty parades, the bidding processes, the deals, and the scoring out of sight. Instead, we could have a sustained generational transfer of power and resources out of Whitehall into our local communities, targeted at need and for impact. Without strings attached, we would get resources to those who know best: local people.

The Government have had their chance. We have seen multiple rounds of bidding. It has been over a year since the White Paper. We could ascribe any meaning, value or motivation to what they have done; I am not interested in that. What I know is that they cannot and will not do what they set out to do. It is time that they stepped aside for those who will.

Levelling-up Missions: East of England

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Davies, and to speak in this debate on behalf of the Opposition.

As has been mentioned, it is a little over a year since we had a similar iteration of this debate. I was relatively new in my role as shadow Minister and rather expected a blizzard of similar, regional-type levelling-up debates in this Chamber, but that has not been the case. That is testimony to the commitment of the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), but also to his ingenuity in the use of the Backbench Business Committee process and to the wisdom of the Committee’s members. I associate myself with comments that he and others have made about the 70th anniversary of the 1953 storms. We will all hold those communities in our thoughts as they mark the anniversary today and tomorrow.

I was struck by the way in which the hon. Gentleman’s all-party parliamentary group is monitoring levelling up on a thematic basis, which probably provides a good model for the rest of the country. There are likely to be some similarities, particularly the more input-type targets, such as on research and development, which are easier to do. Progress is good, but there are knottier, longer-term questions around skills, transport and housing. As he said, we could debate each of them at great length. They pose common challenges across the regions, and they show how much further we have to go.

The region was well represented in the debate, and I agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) said about long-term funding moving away from the “Hunger Games”-style stuff that we have seen with the levelling-up fund, and all the disappointment that it has clearly generated in Bedford and other parts of the country.

In response to a comment made by the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling), levelling up can be a funny fish. All our communities are different in some way, and we could create many different carve-outs for towns, cities, rural, coastal, north, south or whatever, to the point that the scheme would stop meaning anything. There has to be some degree of commonality so that there is a consistent and effective approach, but coastal might just be different in this case. There are many issues relating to housing and mental health services that mean that we have to have a bit of an enhanced approach to coastal communities if we are going to deal with some of the knotty, long-term challenges. I think the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) said that the hinterland may mask a lot of those social challenges, which is a very important point.

One of the things I will take away from the debate is the cross-departmental focus. We have many different and well-meant interventions from all over Government, but how do we get true value? For me, the answer is devolution—certainly of the leadership, if not of all the funding and the power—to those communities, because place is the best way to hold all those different streams together.

I knew the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) would not miss an opportunity to raise QEH, as he does with admirable consistency. He made an important point about the funding formula for rural schools, which can have a profound impact on resources for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Members do not see levelling up as either a “north versus south” thing or a “London versus the rest of the UK” thing. We recognise that there is deprivation in every local authority, and all right hon. and hon. Members made that case very well. For the east of England, that is certainly a real challenge.  If we look at the top lines—it is one of the net contributing regions and it has high home ownership—we could kid ourselves about some of the underlying challenges. That point has been well made in the debate.

Of course, the region has huge potential. The hon. Member for Waveney spoke about energy, which made me think of a visit I undertook with the Industry and Parliament Trust last week to the east midlands. We went to see Donaldson Timber in Ilkeston, which has 10 similar sites around the country, including one in Cambridge that serves the east of England. It specialises in off-site timber making and provides hundreds of jobs and tens of thousands of homes each year. If we get the right mix of increased house building and skills, sites like that in Cambridge have the potential to create many more skilled jobs in careers that will last. That is the sort of potential we need to tap into through levelling up-type interventions.

We have to deal with the problem that the brand of levelling up has become highly discredited. YouGov polling this year showed that in only four local authority areas residents feel that their community has improved in recent years, whereas in 215 areas they think it is the same, and in 142 they think it has got worse. Of course, that is understandable and right: people cannot see a GP, they cannot get a train, the available jobs are insecure and on low pay, and there is the sense that nothing in this country works any more.

The levelling-up model has not delivered by tackling that. Devolution deals are great, unless the Government have decided an area is not good enough to have one or that it deserves more limited powers than others. Similarly, the “Hunger Games”-style funding by bidding for pots has not delivered. Those who succeeded in round 1 are now trying to work out how to salvage bids that have been eaten up by the inflation crisis. Round 2 threw up some eccentric and disappointing outcomes for many, including confusion about whether some areas could ever have been successful. If not, why were they encouraged to bid?

Indeed, even the winners are losers. For example, it is great news that Norfolk County Council has secured £24 million to improve transport in King’s Lynn; it is less good news that, even taking that money into account, in the last four years alone, that local authority is £146 million worse off in real terms due to cuts to its budget. With levelling up, even the winners are losers.

It does not have to be this way. There is a better model that would deliver for the nations and regions of this country. We can end the deals and the beauty parades, provided we get the powers and resources to all our nations and regions—to the experts in place—to shape their economies and invest in the things they know their areas will be good at in the future and that their young people will work in. We want every community, as part of a combined authority—or on its own if it is big enough—to access top-level powers. We want to go further than what is on offer on skills, devolution, the Department for Work and Pensions and jobcentres, net zero and much more. We want to move funding away from having hundreds of different pots and instead, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford said, have proper funding based on need, with consolidated settlements, so that local communities can plan and spend in a way that reflects their priorities.

There are significant political conversations to have about levelling up in this country, as there are in the east of England, but we must be hopeful as we have those. The hon. Member for Waveney and many other colleagues have shown the clear potential in the east of England. We want the power and resources to be given to those communities to make that potential a reality.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Alex Norris Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is an honour to speak for the Opposition in this important debate. Tomorrow, we will mark Holocaust Memorial Day and the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, when the full magnitude of the crimes committed by the Nazi regime were revealed to the world.

Holocaust Memorial Day commemorates the 6 million Jews murdered during the holocaust, alongside the millions of other people killed under Nazi persecution and during more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. It is our intergenerational duty to tell future generations the truth about man’s inhumanity to man, so that we can fight to prevent it from being repeated.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) on securing the debate and on his excellent leadership of it. I was particularly struck by his call for us, as policy makers, not just to reflect—as we have done in this excellent debate—but to do, by acting in the space of misinformation, fake news and the rising hate that we see in our communities. I hope he has seen during the debate, as I certainly have, that we have met his call to shine a light on the hatred we see today. There has been an extraordinary number of tremendous contributions. I will try to cover them all, but I will call on two in particular that illuminated the debate: the speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and that of the right hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart).

As we have heard, the theme of Holocaust Memorial Day this year is “ordinary people”, and there could not have been a more powerful or poignant introduction to such a debate than that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking, who exhorted us to keep those stories alive so that we can fight hate today. That must be right, and that idea subsequently coursed through the debate.

The right hon. Member for Beckenham commanded the UN forces in Bosnia and, of course, played a leading role in Northern Ireland, so I stop and listen whenever he talks about human rights. I have bugged him personally to ask him different questions about his service. When he spoke today, it felt as if time stopped. It was a harrowing story—one that would be too much to ask anybody to retell or rethink, never mind speak about publicly—but it enriched the debate beyond imagination. We are so grateful that he was able and willing to do that.

On the theme of ordinary people, the other defining feature of the debate has been the extraordinary contributions that colleagues brought to life. I will name all the Members and their constituencies, because it is important to do so. The right hon. Members for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) and for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers); my hon. Friends the Members for West Ham (Ms Brown), for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) and for Stockport (Navendu Mishra); and the hon. Members for Meriden (Saqib Bhatti), for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) and for West Bromwich East (Nicola Richards) all mentioned stories connected to them, to their communities or to people who they have seen during their work as parliamentarians.

What I took from that is the extraordinary spread across all the nations and regions that make up our wonderful country. Those people came to our country from extraordinary suffering, enriched in their own ways, and kept those stories alive. As the hon. Member for West Bromwich East said, as they start to pass on, that is now our duty. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) talked in the same vein about the Kindertransport, and about Eve Leadbeater, who came to Nottingham as a two-year-old on the Kindertransport. She spent her life in Nottingham as an educationalist improving opportunities for all our children there. She was a loved part of our community. She passed away last March.

I associate myself with the remarks from my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), and the hon. Members for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and for Worcester (Mr Walker), about the work of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust. I hope that they have seen today’s debate as an appropriate tribute for the work that they will do not just tomorrow, but on all the other days of the year.

I make special reference to my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western) and congratulate him on an excellent maiden speech. I have known him for a long time, not just because of our shared football and cricket preferences, but because he has been a brilliant council leader and someone I have admired for a long time. I cannot wait to see the impact that he makes in this place.

I will make a few points of my own. The numbers can overwhelm you: 6 million Jewish people murdered, more than a quarter of a million disabled people murdered, up to half a million Romani murdered, more than 1.5 million people in Cambodia murdered, and 1 million people in Rwanda murdered. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, those are overwhelming numbers, but each number is a real person: a mother, a father, a son or a daughter. They were people who loved and were loved. They would have been people who would have become their nation’s Picasso or Byron; young people who did not yet know that they loved science but who would have made discoveries that would have transformed humanity; political leaders who would have fought for hope and inclusion; and people who would have started businesses that would have enriched the lives of thousands. All those lives and all that potential was taken away in the name of hate. The hon. Member for Meriden made that point well. It is our most profound responsibility that we remember them and that we honour their memory by each generation telling their story to the next.

That starts with our children. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) gave a beautiful exposition of Exodus on that theme. I had the privilege of joining the year 9s of the Nottingham University Samworth Academy in Bilborough as they met holocaust survivor Henri Obstfeld, who talked today’s children through his experiences as a child. It was so powerful to see them engage with this wonderful man, to contrast what they heard from him with their own lives and to think about the world as they see it today. It gave me pause to reflect on my visit with friends to Dachau as an 18-year-old and contrast our freedoms as we travelled around Europe with the names and pictures of boys of a similar age who never had the same chances. The educational work that we see at NUSA Bilborough and across schools is a practical demonstration of what we mean by passing knowledge down the generations. I commend Mr Townsend, the teacher, and the school for taking part in the programme and wish them well for the holocaust studies that they are undertaking over the next few days. We need that in every classroom in every school up and down the land. We also need it to be available to all of us.

I turn to the national holocaust memorial and learning centre, which is a crucial way in which we can appropriately memorialise the holocaust and cascade our knowledge down the generations. The project has been challenging to say the least, but I reiterate the commitment that I made in an urgent question on the matter in July on behalf of the Opposition and the commitment made yesterday and previously by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition. We support the project wholeheartedly. We were encouraged and cheered to hear what the Prime Minister said yesterday during Prime Minister’s questions about imminent legislation for the memorial. That is so welcome. We look forward to supporting that legislation when we see it. I hope that the Minister will say more about when we will see that.

I and hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of others have seen such work done well in this country already. Beth Shalom, the National Holocaust Centre and Museum in north Nottinghamshire, houses the country’s only dedicated holocaust museum. It was born of the Smith brothers—Stephen and my good friend James—who visited Yad Vashem some 30 years ago and identified the need to better understand, discuss and teach issues relating to the holocaust in this country. From that idea and understanding sprung a whole museum and centre with permanent exhibitions, a learning space and beautiful memorial gardens. It is with great joy that I and, I think, colleagues read that funding from the Heritage Fund alongside the Arts Council, the Pears Foundation and many other foundations and individuals will lead to a major redevelopment of that facility so that it can continue to meet the challenges of the current day in telling those stories of the past. I encourage all colleagues to visit and to urge their schools to either visit or engage with its online material. The remarkable Smith brothers also formed the Aegis Trust, which colleagues mentioned, in response to the crisis in Kosovo. They work all around the world to prevent genocide. It is with great pride that I can tell the House that their model in Nottinghamshire was used to develop the Kigali memorial centre, providing a place of remembrance and learning about that genocide. It has been visited by Presidents and Prime Ministers and is an important example of the work that we can do to tell the story as well as of Britain’s place in the world.

When the other place debated the matter last week, it was said that it would be nice to think of this as a debate that we are having in the past tense, with antisemitism consigned to the dustbin of history; with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities facing no prejudice; and disabled people living without hate. But that simply is not the world that we live in. As colleagues have said, the Community Security Trust’s findings were stark, with 786 antisemitic incidents across the UK in just the first half of 2022: the joint fifth highest it had ever recorded. In addition, there was a 22% increase in university-related incidents to a total of 150 in the last two years. I reflect with pain that we have seen that hate in the Labour party, and I restate our commitment to tearing it out by its roots.

We also see that hate crime against disabled people has increased by nearly 45% and that hate crime against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities remains under-tackled and rarely understood in this country. As the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) said, we see these risks of genocide around the world, and as she put so powerfully, we must play our role in tackling that in any way we can. When we memorialise the holocaust, we talk about the past, but we feel the echoes in the present day. Tomorrow will be a solemn moment of remembrance, but it should also act as a call to action.

I will finish with my reflection on the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day, “ordinary people”. It is a reminder that while those who author murderous regimes are history’s most evil people, their work is reliant on the mass participation of significant numbers of ordinary people—people who participate, people who turn a blind eye, people who share in the propaganda and people who stand by. That is, as Hannah Arendt said, the “banality of evil”, and that is how such evil acts are committed by such seemingly ordinary people. It is important that our children and we as adults learn about this. I think about bystander training, because there are increasing levels of hate in our community. Having that bystander training means that people know what to do for the best. I still believe, as I know colleagues across the House do, in the fundamental goodness of people, especially our British people. They want to do the right thing, so we must support them by giving them the tools and resources to do so.

To conclude, this has been an outstanding debate: one about humanity’s past, but that calls us to action in the future; one about sadness and grief, but also about the inspirational stories of defiance; and one that tells us about the worst in humanity but spurs in us the best.

Levelling-up Fund Round 2

Alex Norris Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Commons Chamber

10.37 am

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to make a statement on round 2 of the levelling-up fund.

[The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lucy Frazer)]

First, Mr Speaker, I apologise; we can always improve on our communications. I believe letters were sent both to MPs and to councils last night and the Secretary of State did make a written statement, but I accept that we can improve on this going forward.

Levelling up is one of the driving missions of this Government as we look to build a stronger, fairer economy. As the Prime Minister set out a fortnight ago in his five people’s priorities, levelling up is how we will grow our economy, spread opportunity across the country and build stronger communities with safer streets for people to live on.

The levelling-up fund is essential to how we will develop that opportunity, which is why we have today set our next wave of investment for projects up and down the UK. The second wave will see up to £2.1 billion-worth of funding, awarded to 111 bids that we know will stimulate growth and benefit communities.

The levelling-up fund is about directing funding where it is needed most. Local leaders and Members across this House have seen the impact of the first round of funding, with 105 bids receiving £1.7 billion to drive regeneration and growth in areas that have been overlooked and underappreciated for far too long. That is why we received a tremendous response to the second round, with more than 500 bids received totalling £8 billion, which is a significant increase on the 300-odd bids received last year.

Across the two rounds of the fund, we have allocated nearly £4 billion to more than 200 bids from communities across the UK. I am pleased that we have been able to work closely with parliamentarians, local authorities and the devolved Administrations in all parts of the United Kingdom.

The levelling-up fund has a clear and transparent process for determining how bids are selected. Each bid is assessed by officials against the published assessment criteria, with the highest scoring bids shortlisted. To ensure that there is a fair spread of bids across the UK, funding decisions are then based on the assessment score and by applying wider considerations such as geographic spread and past investments. A place’s relative need is also baked into the process. In this round, 66% of investment went to category 1 places. As we did for round 1 of the fund, an explanatory note setting out the details of our assessment and our decision-making process will be published on gov.uk. Ministers did not add or remove bids from the funded list, as set out in the note.

There will be a further round of the levelling-up fund, along with other investments. I look forward to working with hon. Members across the House as we protect community assets, grow our local economies and restore pride of place where people live and work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Norris]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question.

The Government are running scared of Parliament and their own Back Benchers—judging by the faces behind the Minister, I can understand why. However, there are serious questions to be answered. Levelling-up is a failure: the Government are going backwards on their flagship missions—they cannot even appoint levelling up directors—and today we see that reach its maximum. There is a rock-bottom allocation for Yorkshire and the Humber, nothing for the cities of Birmingham, Nottingham and Stoke, and nothing for Stonehouse in Plymouth, which is a community in the bottom 0.2% for economic activity, but there is money for the Prime Minister’s constituency and money for areas in the top quartile economically. What on earth were the objective criteria used to make those decisions? How on earth are only half the successful bidders from the poorest 100 communities?

Over the last decade or so, the cut to local government —in cash terms rather than real terms—is £15 billion. Today’s announcement gives back £2.1 billion. The Government have nicked a tenner from our wallets and expect us to be grateful for getting less than two quid back. We are pleased for the communities that have been successful because they have been starved of cash for years, but in reality even those communities will still get back less than the Government have taken from their budgets. The Minister must be honest that, in levelling up, even the winners are losers.

Is not the reality that this “Hunger Games” approach to regional growth creates a huge amount of waste in time and energy? Why will the Government not instead adopt our commitment to end these beauty parades in favour of proper, sustained investment that is targeted at need?

We are to believe that levelling up is to be rebranded as stepping up or gauging up. Let me save the Minister the trouble. It is not levelling up, it is not stepping up and it is not gauging up. It is time’s up.

[Lucy Frazer]

I would like to correct what the hon. Gentleman suggested about which areas got funding across the country. He mentioned Yorkshire and the Humber, and I would like to clarify that, across rounds 1 and 2 per capita, every region got more than London and the south-east. Of course, the figures can be cut in different ways, but this is funding of £4 billion across the two funds for areas across the country. Combined with what we are doing with our Metro Mayors, it is the biggest transfer of power away from Westminster since world war two. Sixty-five per cent of the north is now represented by a Metro Mayor and, together with significant amounts of funding through other pots of money, we are ensuring that areas such as the north grow and communities get the delivery that they need.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Prime Minister’s constituency. I am proud that we are regenerating a town where there is an infantry base. I am comfortable that we are supporting our country and the people who serve in it. He forgot to mention that the Leader of the Opposition had a successful bid in his constituency and that the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), got £20 million. He also forgot to mention that Nottingham North got £18 million in round 1 and therefore is benefiting from the Government’s levelling-up programme.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point and the basic principle is that we want to ensure that the ballot box is sacrosanct and that the process has integrity, so when people go to vote, it works.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Happy new year, Mr Speaker, to you and to all of our colleagues.

[Michael Fabricant]

To you too, and thank you.

[Alex Norris]

You are very welcome.

Those who set the standards for our elections, the Electoral Commission, thinks that May is too soon for voter ID reforms, and those who have to implement them, our electoral administrators, say the same. There are just 115 days until the local elections and the Minister seems to put a lot of stock in a campaign that is only starting today. The Minister did not address in his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) nor in the statutory instrument debate what it is in his judgment that he believes supersedes the views of those who actually have to make this happen.

[Lee Rowley]

We will continue to work with everybody in order to deliver this, because the Government have been absolutely clear for a number of years that it is important that the ballot box has integrity. We are bringing forward voter identification to ensure that that happens, and we will continue to work with all organisations to make sure it is successful in the 115 days to which the hon. Gentleman refers.

Draft Combined Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (Amendment) Order 2022 Draft Local Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 Draft Police and Crime Commissioner Elections and Welsh Forms (Amendment) Order 2022

Alex Norris Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2022 General Committees

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Murray.

As we have heard, the three draft measures before us relate to changing the voting system for combined authority Mayors, local authority Mayors, and police and crime commissioners to a first-past-the-post system—what a way to spend a Wednesday afternoon!

Not that long ago, the Government used to say that they were focused on the people’s priorities.

[Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)]

Hear, hear!

[Alex Norris]

The Government Whip perhaps gets ahead of himself. I wonder how long we would have to stand in Parliament Square before we met a person who thought that addressing the issue before us was even in their top 50 priorities—a long time indeed, I suspect.

As we heard from the Minister, the draft instruments flow from the Elections Act, which the Opposition strongly opposed at all stages before it became law a few months ago, and we do so again today—it was bad law then, and it is bad law now. Indeed, the Act is the latest in a long line that have exhibited the very worst tendencies of this Government in recent years, including the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022—remember that one?—the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014 and the Trade Union Act 2016.

Underlying all those Acts was a determination to strengthen the Executive at the expense of the legislature and by shrinking the civic space for those who oppose this Government, including through an often complete disregard for the views of those affected as the Government ran through their proposals. That was mirrored in the proceedings on the Elections Act, which had these measures shoved into it halfway through Committee stage and after Second Reading; indeed, Bill Committee members could not even ask witnesses for their opinions about them, because that moment had passed. That is not the way to make good legislation, and these provisions are not good ones. I hope the Minister will reiterate in closing that the Government will make good on the commitments made during the passage of the Act to provide proper post-legislative scrutiny, because the Act needs it.

The measures before us once again seek to solve a problem that we have not yet been able to identify. I cannot think of a point where strong concerns have been raised about the conduct of supplementary vote elections—that they were perhaps too confusing or that the outcome did not reflect the public will—and where there was therefore a compelling case for change. I cannot think of Mayors or mayoral candidates who have raised significant concerns, and we did not hear that from the Minister in his opening speech. For all the noise on the Government Benches, it was a Conservative Government that introduced police and crime commissioners and this system of voting for them. Metro Mayors were introduced under the Government using this system, so it was good enough for them previously. The system has worked; the case for change is weak, and it is a terrible idea.

Putting aside the partisan aspects of this, it is a terrible idea to set the precedent that we in this place can change electoral systems without talking to the general public. I ask colleagues on the Government Benches to think where that could lead. If they are resistant to electoral reform—and I think many of those facing me probably are—they should consider that the approach being taken today is completely out of line with how we would originally have done these things, and it opens a Pandora’s box. I am surprised the Minister is so keen to do so, and I hope he will reflect on that in his closing remarks.

I gently say to the Minister that there is an awful lot that his Department has not delivered: huge regional inequalities that its plans are too modest to address, a housing crisis that has been ignored while the Government have a roll-around with their Back Benchers, and local councils that have been withering away because of Government cuts. It is beyond belief that, with all that in the in-tray, the three nonsenses in front of us are the priorities. That prompts only one question: why are the Government doing this? Once again, it seems that they are doing nothing more than seeking political advantage and moving the goalposts to make life a little easier.

I understand why a preference-based system so discomfits the Government; they know that a huge portion of the British people, if given a second, third and fourth choice alongside their first choice of candidate, would not use any of them for the Conservative party of today. Perhaps it is better to remove that option, but this narrow pursuit of political interest is what political projects do when they are past their sell-by date, unable to tackle big problems and devoid of big ideas.

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

Can I just clarify whether it is now the Labour party’s position that first past the post is no longer the premier electoral system for UK elections?

[Alex Norris]

That is not the case that I have made. The case that we are making is that these systems have worked for these positions, and we do not believe that they ought to be changed. The irony is that, if we applied my Parliament Square test and asked people outside, “What are your priorities for your democracy?”, they would say that they would like a general election at the earliest opportunity—and we know why. I urge colleagues to vote against these instruments.