COP26
Eleanor Laing Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I inform the House that Mr Speaker has not selected the amendment in the name of Bell Ribeiro-Addy.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That, for the year ending with 31 March 2021, for expenditure by the Cabinet Office:
(1) further resources, not exceeding £975,392,000, be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 1227,
(2) further resources, not exceeding £76,060,000, be authorised for use for capital purposes as so set out, and
(3) a further sum, not exceeding £798,643,000, be granted to Her Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.—(David T. C. Davies.)
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)
May I begin by congratulating you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on your increasingly iconic videos on Twitter, which, with a lower budget, provide more charm than the Chancellor’s glitzy versions on Instagram?
Five years ago, the Paris agreement committed the world to limiting global warming to at least 2° C above pre-industrial levels but called on all of us to get as close to 1.5° C as possible. The recent announcements on net zero from the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union, China and others mean that we are within striking distance of reaching that Paris target. According to the Climate Action Tracker, the net zero targets that have been pledged so far could limit global warming to 2.1° C above pre-industrial levels by the year 2100. That builds in the announcements from China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, South Korea and others. But those welcome announcements need to be translated into updated nationally determined contributions—NDCs—that need to be submitted to the UN before COP26 and, crucially, into deliverable climate action plans.
Unfortunately, the UN’s NDC synthesis report last month raised concerns instead of hopes. As at 31 December, only 75 parties to the Paris agreement had submitted their NDCs, representing 30% of global emissions. Whereas the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends that we cut global emissions by 45% by 2030 compared with 2010 levels in order to limit temperature growth to 1.5° C, the NDCs submitted so far only get us to 1% of that 45% recommendation. Only two of the 18 largest emitters had submitted updated NDCs at the end of 2020, including the United Kingdom and the European Union. Of the NDCs that have been submitted, the UN notes a significant gap between longer-term carbon neutrality target announcements and commitments set out in the NDCs.
The crucial and urgent task for COP26 is therefore to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality and to bring every nation with us on the route to achieving our Paris targets. This highlights the urgent need for a full Government response, especially a diplomatic response. China, for example, has committed to achieving net zero by 2060—an important and welcome commitment—but its recent five-year plan pushed the difficult and expensive decisions into the long grass. We should not get to COP26 and just tell big emitters such as China, India or others that they are not moving away from coal quickly enough, for example, not least when we are planning our own new coalmine here in the UK. Instead, we should have British diplomats in Beijing, Delhi and other capitals asking, “What can the world do to help you move away from coal more quickly?”
Here in the United Kingdom, we have legislated for net zero by 2050. The trouble is that, increasingly, we seem to be going off track at home. Yes, we were world leaders in legislating for net zero by 2050, and we have submitted a bold and welcome NDC, but the Public Accounts Committee last week concluded that there is no credible Government plan for how we deliver on those pledges. Yes, we have the energy White Paper, but where is the net zero spending review or the net zero strategy? In the new plan for growth, which replaced the scrapped industrial strategy last week via a footnote in the Budget, the horizon scan of Government announcements on our net zero transition did not even include the net zero spending review. The Government, we understand, are planning to reduce air passenger duty on short flights within the United Kingdom. They have U-turned on the vital green homes grant initiative, withdrawing a billion pounds of funding. The Budget last week made little mention of the so-called green industrial revolution.
On heating, which we are considering on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, we have enormous challenges ahead of us. It is the second largest emitter of carbon in the UK after surface transport, yet we have not made sufficient progress in understanding how we insulate people’s homes and also heat them without burning gas in the future. As the citizens’ assembly on climate change concluded, as led by my Select Committee and five others in the House, the public expect us to be making sufficient progress and taking the difficult decisions to reach our net zero target.
The fact is—I believe we all know this—the longer we leave this, the more difficult and expensive it becomes. I do not know how long I will be in this House, but as a Member who is, dare I say, on the younger side of the bell curve, I will be quite frankly furious if Ministers around the world, let alone in my own country, delegate the difficult work to the next generation, not least because it will be too late. It is therefore vital that we make progress at home and abroad and that we get on with that important work now. That means we need more than just a letter from the Foreign Secretary and the permanent secretary asking diplomatic missions to prioritise this work. It needs dedicated climate diplomats working within each country—diplomats who can listen and report back on the concerns or obstacles faced by leaders in reaching their required contributions to limiting global temperature growth.
Only by doing that work well in advance of COP26 in November can we anticipate and respond adequately to the needs of each nation. If we fail to do so, and countries come to Glasgow in November with real concerns—whether on climate aid, the balance between wealthy and less wealthy nations or the commitments from big emitters—we risk repeating the mistakes of the Copenhagen summit, with unresolved tensions being managed during COP itself and ultimately ending in failure.
In our recent interim report on COP26 and net zero, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee expressed concerns about the lack of focus on the necessity of submitting these updated nationally determined contributions and climate action plans, and also on the potential lack of support from the machinery of government in delivering on COP26.
The CEO of the COP26 unit, Peter Hill, confirmed that there are around 160 staff within the COP26 unit, which sits in the Cabinet Office. This unit is funded to the tune of £216 million through departmental transfers from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for Transport and others, and that is in addition to the £180 million allocated for security, representing the fact that the COP26 conference in Glasgow will be one of the largest police operations in British history. I am sure there must be more dedicated resources, especially in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, for this important work, and I hope that the COP26 President will set that out for the House today.
Lastly, we need urgent clarity on how COP26 itself will work in practice. I support the COP26 President’s aim of having an in-person summit and agree that that is the best way of illustrating equality between all nations around the decision-making table, but COP26 is not just for Heads of State and Ministers and officials. Some countries bring very large delegations; others bring smaller delegations. Can the COP26 President update the House on what the UK delegation will be and who will be included in it? There is also a great deal of wider engagement at COP, from business leaders and parliamentarians to civil society and non-governmental organisations. That usually means a large conference-style event. Indeed, the Government have said that COP26 will be the largest summit the UK has ever hosted, with 30,000 delegates, but that statement was, I think, made before covid.
I have raised the issue in COP26 questions, but it is now urgent to get clarity for delegations and the wider group of COP26 attendees about how online engagement will work if they are unable to attend in person, and how it will be determined whether delegates or other visitors are able to attend in person. The COP26 President may wish to update the House today on how the Government intend to provide, if necessary, covid vaccinations, testing and quarantine services for those physically participating in Glasgow. Indeed, concerns have been expressed by many, including me, that many nations, especially developing nations, are further behind in the roll-out of their own covid vaccinations. What steps can either the UK or UNFCCC take to ensure that the delegates are vaccinated and able to take part physically during COP in Glasgow in November?
There is cross-party support for Britain’s leadership of COP26, because it is a crucial milestone. The world needs to step up. It needs to set up credible, costed and deliverable climate action plans that get us to the targets we all agreed in Paris five years ago. Those often difficult decisions cannot be pushed into the long grass and left for future generations of leaders to deal with. If that happens, it will be not just a failure of politics, but a failure of humanity, because our planet will be unrecognisable compared with today if we fail in this task.
Climate migration following huge swathes of land around the equator turning into desert will pose a challenge to countries in the northern hemisphere and other parts of the world like never before. Difficult issues, such as the future management of Antarctica, will become live issues as potentially habitable land becomes available, while other habitable land is lost. Shortages of food, water and energy in the face of dramatic geopolitical changes and new national security threats will make covid look like a minor problem. In that context, and with that sense of urgency, while I welcome the commitment to net zero that will get us near the Paris target, we have to see deliverable climate action plans lodged at COP26, with countries’ leaders taking the difficult decisions and bringing forward investment—including climate aid from wealthy nations—to show the world that we take this issue seriously not just in rhetoric but in reality.
We want the COP26 President and his team to be successful in delivering the required outcomes. All of us in this House, I am sure, support him in those endeavours, but we also want to be assured that the Prime Minister and his Government are fully getting behind the COP team so that, come November, we will be celebrating the success of COP26, not mourning its failure in the face of climate disaster.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for opening the debate and for his extremely unexpected but very kind remarks.
It will come as a great surprise to everyone that I am about to announce a time limit that has not been heard of for some time. The time limit in this debate will not be three minutes. It will initially be eight minutes. I should explain this unusual situation: the reason is that so many colleagues, at the last minute, withdrew not from this debate but from the previous debate, thereby leaving more time for this debate. We will therefore start with eight minutes, which is likely to reduce to about seven minutes, but I do not envisage its reducing to three minutes. I call Tom Tugendhat.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab) [V]
I echo the words of the last speaker, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), about how monumental the decisions will be that need to be taken this November, because November’s COP26 in Glasgow is a historic opportunity for Britain to provide leadership to the world on climate change.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) and his colleagues on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, who have produced detailed reports that should be influencing the Cabinet Office and shaping the agenda in the run-up to COP26. Scientists and climate experts are urging the Government to lead the way in adopting ambitious deadlines for achieving net zero along with shorter-term interim targets, and it is those targets that are vital. The former Prime Minister committed the UK Government to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The BEIS Committee said last week that
“no details have yet been provided on how success will be measured”
for COP 26. We cannot achieve significant carbon reductions by empty words, good PR or grandiose declarations. It takes action.
I have to say, last week’s Budget does not give us much hope of demonstrating world leadership. In fact, for some of us, it is a cause of despair and shame. The decisions by the Government to freeze fuel duty and to dig a new coalmine, and the pathetic scale of the Government’s environmental policies are a dereliction of duty to the planet and to future generations. It is a failure of Government, who could have acted to create hundreds of thousands of climate jobs in areas from wind turbines to tidal lagoons, from electric car charge points to tree planting, but there was no evidence of the scale of investment and scale of ambition that the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West called for. Instead of tying corporate tax breaks and investment write-offs to clear climate criteria, the giveaways announced in the Budget could hinder, rather than help our carbon reduction strategy.
The verdict of Richard Black from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit was that this was
“a Budget that didn’t even try to get the Conservatives on track to their net zero target”.
Today, there are reports that the Government will cut air passenger duty on domestic flights. Frankly, I would struggle to find a more regressive policy, and I speak as somebody who represents a constituency with Heathrow in it. I would struggle to find something that is more regressive than encouraging domestic aviation before we have had that debate and discussion and the development of the environmental aviation strategy.
It is crystal clear to me that this Government have no co-ordinated plan and no cross-departmental agenda to drive the decarbonisation that we seek. This is not just my view, but that of the Public Accounts Committee, which has been quoted. The PAC published a report on achieving net zero with the brutal conclusion, “Government lacks a plan”. Never have four words better summed up an Administration than that.
In terms of the modest 2050 target, the Committee said, damningly:
“there is little sign that it”—
the Government—
“understands how to get there”.
I will raise just one other point from the report, which said:
“Local authorities will also play a major role in the move to net zero, and Government will need to engage more with local authorities about how they can contribute”.
The irony is that today we learned that across the country more than two dozen councils are on the brink of bankruptcy, stripped of the funding to provide the statutory services their communities need, let alone the funding they need to take on the challenge of climate change.
The autumn statement is expected to be delivered on the eve of COP26. I just say to the Government that we hope for something better then. Otherwise, unless a serious plan is brought forward and unless there are significant resources attached to that plan, what leadership can the UK Government hope to offer the rest of the world? What authority can it possibly have in those vital discussions, when we are trying to bring together others, some more recalcitrant than others, who will be brought to the table to have a serious discussion only when they see others leading by example?
I believe that without drastic action COP26 risks exposing the UK Government as a laughing stock on climate change if we are not careful. I urge Ministers to change course and show some leadership. I urge them now to look at the reports our Select Committees have produced. They provide not just an agenda of issues to be addressed, but a direction that the Government could take. Otherwise, it is a betrayal of future generations. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West claimed the future for himself. Well, some of us older ones have an interest in the future as well, with our children and grandchildren. This November will ensure, hopefully, that they will have a planet that they can survive on and flourish on.
From the evidence I have seen so far—it is not just me; I think it is independent experts as well—the leadership the Government are showing is nowhere near the scale or commitment we need to demonstrate to the rest of the world what can be done, what needs to be done and what our country can contribute.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
The time limit is now reduced, but it is only reduced to seven minutes.
Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con) [V]
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your generosity in this debate.
Although it may have been a little hard to determine from the remarks by my immediate predecessor in this debate, the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), he welcomed this debate and I join him in doing so. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) on his opening remarks. He is right that there is a consensus across the House. We all want to see COP26 as a hugely successful conference, not just for the UK but for the whole world, to set us on a path to zero emissions by 2050, an ambition that was set out some time ago.
The objectives for the COP26 series of discussions, which of course were due to have taken place last year had it not been for covid, were actually set at Paris five years ago. It is worth reminding ourselves, at the outset of my remarks, of the four particular commitments that were set for the forthcoming conference. The first was to enhance Governments’ nationally determined contributions. This will be the first time since Paris that they will have been ratcheted up. The second was to invite each country to provide a long-term strategy, to give a pathway to decarbonisation by 2050. Where I agree with the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington is that it is beholden on the Government to set out clarity over the path to 2050, not just the target.
The third commitment was to do with finance. There was $100 billion per annum mobilised for the poorest countries to help them green their economies and adapt to the impact of climate change. We need to see how that is going to be delivered when we get to Glasgow.
Finally, there was the issue of the rulebook for a global carbon market to avoid double counting and to set the standards. Here, I think the UK has a great opportunity to show its famed global leadership. This conference will be the largest ever held in this country in terms of the number of countries participating, and I hope that most of them will be able to be here, in one form or another, in person. It is a real opportunity for the nation to lead the world and for the Prime Minister to put his stamp on the future.
As the UK is acting as host country—with Italy, as has been said—we will act as a neutral arbiter in these negotiations. We need to ensure that every country—every Paris signatory, at least—is supported in bringing forward its updated nationally determined contribution. At the beginning of the Paris conference, 186 of the 196 parties attending had presented their nationally determined contributions. I know that progress has been made, but we have a long way to go to match France’s performance when it hosted the last of this series of conferences.
The UK announced its contribution, a 68% reduction in emissions against the 1990 benchmark, last December. Several other countries have set out high-profile ambitions since, including China, Japan and South Korea looking to get to net zero by the mid-21st century, and some presenting nearer-term targets ahead of COP26. However, we still have to see progress from some major economies, including Russia, Brazil and Australia—and I know that the US will now be joining; we need to see where it gets to, too. Perhaps the COP26 President will update us on his discussions with President Biden’s special envoy, John Kerry, who was in the UK very recently.
I want to touch on two other aspects—first, how does Parliament engage in scrutinising progress? The Environmental Audit Committee—in common with other Committees, as we have heard—has undertaken various sessions in relation to COP26. The first was a year ago, when we engaged with stakeholders who were involved with previous COPs to establish what the Government’s preparations needed to focus on. We then had a session with Nigel Topping and Fiona Reynolds in May last year on the role of finance in leading the way for the upcoming COP, and we also questioned Christiana Figueres, the former executive secretary of the UN convention, last year. We questioned my right hon. Friend the COP26 President, who was then President-designate, in September last year.
Nine Select Committees have locus in relation to this issue, and we have all agreed to work together in scrutinising the UK Government preparations. We, as the Environmental Audit Committee, will lead the first of those scrutiny sessions, on cross-Government arrangements and the machinery of government, tomorrow morning. I am very pleased that my right hon. Friend the COP26 President will be attending, with two of his senior officials.
The eyes of the world will be on us to make a credible success of COP. The challenge is across many areas. We need to use the national events that we have to demonstrate UK leadership. The UK has met the first and second carbon budgets and has already reduced emissions below the level expected in the third carbon budget, up to 2022. However, as is widely acknowledged, we are not on track to meet either the fourth or fifth carbon budgets, which were legislated for on the basis of an 80% cut in emissions using the 1990 baseline by 2050, rather than the more ambitious net zero target that we now have in legislation.
A major ramp-up is needed, as is acknowledged by the Committee on Climate Change, to achieve that, and the UK will have to make more progress. Although it has been succeeding in the power sector, emissions are either not falling or not falling fast enough across transport, agriculture, housing and industry. Bringing forward the petrol and diesel car ban is welcome, but it is not the only measure that the Government have to take—[Inaudible.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. The right hon. Gentleman has exceeded the time limit. I was trying to give him a little leeway, but the system will not allow me to let him finish his sentence. We therefore go to Kilmarnock, and to Alan Brown.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Eleanor Laing Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Keir Starmer
The Prime Minister says, “Rubbish.” That is no doubt because the kickstart scheme is helping only one in 100 eligible young people—rubbish is the right word, Prime Minister. In six months, it has supported just 2,000 young people, yet youth unemployment is set to reach 1 million. Like so much of this Budget, the Chancellor’s offer is nowhere near the scale of the task.
Of course, the biggest challenge for this country is the climate emergency. The Chancellor just talked up his green credentials, but his Budget stops way short of what was needed or what is happening in other countries. This Budget should have included a major green stimulus, bringing forward billions of pounds of investment to create new jobs and new green infrastructure. Instead, the Government are trying to build a new coalmine, which we now learn might not even work for British Steel. If anything sums up this Government’s commitment to a green recovery and jobs for the future, it is building a coalmine that we cannot even use.
If the Government were serious about tackling insecurity and helping those most at risk from covid, this Budget would have fixed the broken system of statutory sick pay and, at the very least, filled the glaring holes in isolation payments. This is not difficult to fix. The Government should just make the £500 isolation payment available to everyone who needs it. That would be money well spent, and, a year into the pandemic, it is a disgrace that it is not made available.
If the Government were serious about fixing the broken housing market, they would have announced plans for a new generation of genuinely affordable council houses. Instead, 230,000 council homes have been lost since 2010, yet the Chancellor focused today on returning to subsidising 95% of mortgages. I know what Members are thinking: “I’ve heard that somewhere before.” Perhaps it was because the Prime Minister announced it five months ago in his conference speech? No, I do not think anybody heard that. I remember now: it is what Osborne and Cameron came up with in 2013. What did that do? It fuelled a housing bubble, pushed up prices, and made owning a home more difficult—so much for generation buy! I have been saying for weeks that this Budget will go backwards, but I did not expect the Chancellor to lift a failed policy from eight years ago.
This Budget fell far short of the transformative change that we need to turbo-charge our recovery for the decades to come. There was no credible plan to ease the burden of debt hanging over so many businesses, which is estimated at £70 billion. This Budget asks businesses to start paying that money back whether they are profitable or not. That affects millions of businesses. It will hold back growth, because businesses will have to pay back money they never wanted to borrow, instead of being able to invest in their futures and create jobs in their local areas. It is both unfair and economically illiterate.
This Budget also falls far short of what was needed to support the self-employed and freelancers, unless, of course, they are one of the Chancellor’s photographers. After a year of inaction, we will look at the details of what the Chancellor announced, but, from the figure of 600,000 that he mentioned, it certainly looks like millions will still be left out in the cold.
The Chancellor’s one nominally long-term policy was in his references to levelling up, but what does that actually look like? It is not the transformative shift in power, wealth and resources that we need to rebalance our economy. It is not the bold long-term plan that we need to upskill our economy, to tackle educational attainment or to raise life expectancy. It certainly is not a plan to focus Government resources on preventive services and early years. For the Chancellor, levelling up seems to mean moving some parts of the Treasury to Darlington, creating a few free ports, and re-announcing funding. That is not levelling up; it is giving up.
Instead of putting blind faith in free ports, the Chancellor would be better served by making sure that the Government’s Brexit deal actually works: for Britain’s manufacturers, now facing more red tape when they were promised less; for our financial services, still waiting for the Chancellor to make good on his promises; for the small businesses and fishing communities, whose goods and produce are now left unsold in warehouses; and for our artists and performers, who just want to be able to tour.
Turning to other parts of the statement, we will wait for the detail about the so-called super deduction, but it is unlikely to make up for the 10 years when the levels of investment growth have trailed so many other countries. Of course we welcome the creation of the national infrastructure bank, which is something for which we have called for years, although it would have been better if the Government had not sold off the Green Investment Bank in the first place. We also welcome the introduction of green saving bonds. I have to say what a good idea it is to introduce a new set of recovery bonds.
The trouble is that the scale of what the Chancellor announced today is nowhere near ambitious enough. The long-overdue commitments to extend furlough, business rate relief and the VAT cut on hospitality are welcome, but there is no excuse for holding the announcement of that support back until today, and of course we will look at the detail.
There are very few silver linings in this Budget. The IMF and the OECD have said that now is not the time for tax rises. We are in the middle of a once-in-300-years crisis. Our economy is still shut and our businesses are on life support, so it is right that corporation tax is not rising this year or next. In the long run, corporation tax should go up. The decade-long corporation tax experiment by this Government has failed, but no taxes should be raised in the teeth of this economic crisis, so it is extraordinary that the Chancellor is ploughing ahead with a £2 billion council tax rise affecting households across the country. Why is he doing that when every economist would tell him not to? Perhaps we find the answer in this week’s Sunday Times, which quoted a source saying that the Chancellor’s argument was:
“Let’s do it all now as far away from the election as possible.”
The Telegraph on 27 January reported:
“Raising taxes now means they can be reduced ahead of the next election, Rishi Sunak tells Tory MPs”.
The Mail in September reported that the Chancellor was to hike taxes and then lower them before the next election. Let me be crystal clear: the proper basis for making tax decisions is the economic cycle, not the electoral cycle.
Behind the spin, the videos and the photo ops, we all know that the Chancellor does not believe in an active and enterprising Government. We know he is itching to get back to his free market principles and to pull away support as quickly as he can. One day, these restrictions will end. One day we will all be able to take our masks off, and so will the Chancellor, and then we will see who he really is. This Budget sets it up perfectly, because this is a Budget that did not even attempt to rebuild the foundations of our economy or to secure the country’s long-term prosperity. Instead, it did the job the Chancellor always intended: a quick fix, papering over the cracks.
The Conservatives spent a decade weakening the foundations of our economy. Now they pretend they can rebuild it, but the truth is that they will not confront what went wrong in the past and they have no plan for the future.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
We now go by video link to the Chairman of the Treasury Committee.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con) [V]
I broadly welcome this Budget, although I say that being aware that the devil is always in the detail of Budgets. We very much look forward to welcoming my right hon. Friend the Chancellor to the Treasury Committee on Thursday next week to look at that detail in more detail.
I totally applaud the measures that the Chancellor has taken in extending the bridge of support—the bridge between the crisis and the recovery. I think the measures he has taken around furlough, support for the self-employed and the extension of the VAT reduction, business rate relief and so on are all most welcome. I also very much welcome, as I and the Treasury Select Committee have been pressing for them for some time, the targeted elements that he has introduced.
As we come through this recovery, there is no doubt that certain parts of the economy will pick up quicker than others. Some businesses will do better than others, so I welcome the 30% turnover threshold that my right hon. Friend has introduced, so that he can more accurately target the relief where it is needed. That goes also for what I understand of his announcements on grants, and of course the VAT reduction extension that will help particularly hard-pressed sectors. I also welcome the investment that he has announced in areas of the country, many of which will have suffered particularly during the crisis. I think that is also welcome targeting.
If I could turn briefly to the so-called excluded—those who have fallen through the gaps of support hitherto—I am a little disappointed not to have heard something by way of support for those directors working through their own limited companies, paying themselves by way of dividend, yet not having those dividends counted towards their entitlement for furlough. There have been new ideas explored by the Committee, and I would hope, even at this late stage, that the Chancellor will consider some of those ideas with the Committee next week. I was, however, extremely pleased to see that the new self-assessment tax information that has been taken on board—right up until, I think the Chancellor said, last night—will be taken into account in helping many of those who would otherwise have fallen through the gaps in support, some 600,000 in total.
I want to focus on three important areas for business and jobs, and comment on what the Chancellor had to say in that respect. The first is corporate debt. The situation is that the data shows that larger businesses have a great deal of cash in the bank, and it is perhaps not surprising that they have been cautious, that they have received quite a lot of support from Government and, of course, that a lot of them have not been investing. However, among small and medium-sized enterprises the picture is less clear. I have a concern that many of those businesses will struggle with the level of the debt that they have, that they will not be growing when we want them to be creating the jobs of the future and that they will be focusing on de-leveraging their balance sheets. I would like to see something from the Chancellor as to how that particular problem might be addressed. If it is not, the risk is that many of these SMEs will go out of business and markets will become more concentrated and less competitive as a consequence.
Secondly, on investment, I was hugely encouraged by what my right hon. Friend said about the super deduction. My own view was that there should be an increase in the annual investment allowance. It seems to me that this goes significantly beyond that. The devil will be in the detail, but certainly, if the kind of projections for investment that he has just outlined by way of the OBR’s figures are correct, as I understood them, this will be a huge shot in the arm for corporate UK and very welcome. I welcome the three-year loss carry-back arrangements—also something the Committee has pressed for.
My third point is around skills. I have been very impressed with all the announcements that have been made around encouraging apprenticeships, and there was more in the Budget statement just now. On the kickstart scheme, it is imperative that we get this right and that we maximise the efficiency of the transfer of parts of the labour force from those parts of the economy and businesses that are contracting to those that are expanding. I think the Treasury needs to play a very proactive role in making sure that those schemes are successful.
One of the big tests I set in my mind for my right hon. Friend’s Budget was to what degree he navigated successfully the requirement not to put up taxes too early and choke off growth, but at the same time making it very clear to the markets that he and the Government are serious about dealing with the deficit and debt in the more medium term. I have to say that, once again, I have been pretty impressed with what I have heard. I want to see the detail. However, it seems to me that the tax increases and the threshold freezes that my right hon. Friend has announced do not kick in straightaway but he has charted a clear road map for how those taxes and thresholds will be dealt with between now and the end of this Parliament.
If I could just say, on the issue of corporation tax, that it is quite a hike from 19% to 25%. However, we still will remain internationally competitive, and I believe that President Biden, during his campaign for the presidency, suggested US rates might rise from 21% to 28%. So I think, on balance, this is a reasonable move, given that none of the possibilities is particularly palatable, and I welcome the carve-out for small businesses through the small profit rate.
It was pleasing to hear from my right hon. Friend that the OBR’s current projections have improved, and that we are hopefully going to get back to pre-pandemic levels of economic output six months earlier than was thought in November. But of course we still, as he has identified, face a huge challenge going forward, not just around covid, but with the issue that we will have a smaller economy and less taxes that will be able to be raised. Of course, we have demographic pressures going way into the future, with an increasingly elderly population and the pressures that will put on our finances. My right hon. Friend knows that it is critical that we deal with these pressures in a timely manner, or interest rates will rise—and, as he has stated, a 1% rise would mean an eye-watering £25 billion increase in the cost of servicing our debt.
That brings me to the principles that my right hon. Friend has set out today: not borrowing to fund day-to-day expenditure at some point in the future; and having an eye to seeing the level of debt as a percentage of GDP decreasing over time. Those are welcome signals from my right hon. Friend.
I want to turn briefly to an issue that I think is an underestimated threat that has not been discussed enough in an economic context: a return of inflation. Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist, has pointed to this risk recently. We know that if inflation increases and spikes, the Bank of England would need to tighten monetary policy to try to keep inflation under control. We would have bond markets in which the Government and the Bank of England were potentially both sellers, with increased upward pressure on interest rates and all that would follow.
Inflation might come through increased friction in global trade, and we have seen increased friction in trade with the EU27 as a consequence of Brexit. It could come through the exchange rate, although recent movements have been in a positive direction, as the virus is being clamped down on and our prospects have improved relative to other economies. Inflation could also come through increases in energy costs and the price of oil, or indeed the unwinding of some of the tax cuts, for example those relating to VAT.
But inflation could also come through the interplay between the supply and demand sides of the economy as we recover. On the supply side, it remains uncertain how quickly companies will bounce back. We know that many of them have been severely damaged. On the demand side, it is also the case that we will not know at this stage the extent to which consumers will re-engage with the economy in the way they did before the pandemic, even though the virus is diminishing. We also do not know what will happen to the huge amount of effectively enforced savings as people have been unable to engage in the economy in the usual fashion—perhaps up to £200 billion or £300 billion by the summer, the Bank of England has suggested. If a lot of that goes back into the economy quickly, it will have a huge stimulus effect. If very little does, clearly the opposite will be the case.
It is therefore absolutely right that my right hon. Friend is ready and prepared to use the fiscal levers as appropriate over the coming months. If he comes back to the House of Commons many times to do so, I think that should be seen as a position of strength, rather than weakness. I wish him well. The Treasury Committee will continue to be critical of him where appropriate, but also supportive in our common endeavour of putting the economy back on track.
In conclusion, I broadly welcome this Budget. It comes against the backdrop of one of the worst economic crises outside of wartime. Yet there is hope that springs from the past, and the strength that we held going into this crisis, of strong and stable financial institutions, record levels of employment, and hard-won improvements in our public finances. But now hope springs also, it seems to me, from the future: from the thousands of men and women—our scientists, health workers and volunteers—who appear to be on the brink of little short of a miracle, the wholesale turnaround in our country’s fortunes due to vaccination. Therefore, in broad terms I welcome my right hon. Friend’s Budget today, but I conclude by supporting each and every one of them.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Before I call the leader of the Scottish National party, I should give a slight warning that there will be an initial time limit on Back-Bench speeches of seven minutes, but that will quite soon be reduced to five minutes, and quite soon after that to three minutes, if we are to have a chance of allowing everyone to speak. For the moment, it will be seven minutes.
Ian Blackford
Well, the hon. Lady should listen to those who have not had financial support.
On the BBC on Sunday, the Chancellor said that his Government had reacted “generously and comprehensively”. Chancellor, tell that to the 3 million freelancers and self-employed who have been left behind without a penny. Not a penny, Prime Minister, of support. A quick search of Hansard shows that the 3 million excluded have been raised in the House around a thousand times since last March. Their plight has been ignored by Ministers on 1,000 occasions in the House and it is a disgrace that the Chancellor has chosen to ignore them today.
I acknowledge and welcome the fact that the newly self-employed have now finally been covered by the scheme, but a whole community of people remains ignored and forgotten by the Chancellor. Yes, 600,000 will now be included, but what about the other 2.4 million who have been discarded, written off and ignored by the Chancellor and the Prime Minister?
The Budget’s failure to stand by and support those who have suffered most during the crisis goes to the very heart of the economic choices made. It should have been the Budget that kickstarted a strong, fair and green recovery. That is precisely why the SNP has been calling for a substantial stimulus package—5% of GDP; at least a £98 billion package of investment, which would give us the opportunity to emerge from the pandemic with investment-led growth. That would follow President Biden’s lead and provide a fiscal stimulus that boosted business, protected jobs and stimulated sustained economic growth. Instead, the Budget falls painfully short of that level of ambition. Instead, the Chancellor wants to drag us back to business as usual, back to the same old failed economics of a decade ago.
There is plenty of evidence that Tory austerity cuts are already making a comeback. In November, the UK spending review set out plans to reduce non-covid-related spending by up to £13 billion a year. There is already a public sector pay freeze, including for those key workers who have protected us through the crisis. That is the thanks from this Government.
There has already been a reduction by Westminster in Scotland’s capital budget. The Tory choice to impose austerity is also holding back opportunities to truly build back better beyond the pandemic. A huge number of those opportunities are in the green economy, whether in energy, housing, transport or waste. I acknowledge the £27 million announced for the energy transition zone in Aberdeen, which matches financial commitments that the Scottish Government made in June 2020, but it still falls well short of the wider £62 million energy transition package from Holyrood. Let us not forget that the North sea oil industry has contributed a massive £350 billion to the Exchequer in the last few decades.
The Tories have reneged on promises to support carbon capture schemes in the past, so the Chancellor will forgive oil and gas sector workers in the north-east of Scotland who have developed a healthy scepticism about Tory promises. Chancellor, to really stimulate the green economy, you need finally to reform contract for difference to deliver support for wave and tidal generation and guarantee that Scottish suppliers will be used.
The Chancellor and the Government need to give Ofgem a strategy objective to support the delivery of net zero. Transitioning to net zero is an economic imperative, but it is also a moral imperative. Last week, the United Nations Secretary-General warned that
“2021 is a make or break year to confront the global climate emergency.”
I genuinely say to all hon. Members that COP26 in Glasgow this November offers the chance to unite around an ambitious agenda to tackle the climate crisis.
It is possible for us to look forward to those opportunities only because of the actions of those who have protected us through the last 12 months. Our NHS has been on the frontline in the fight against covid-19. Our workers have been nothing short of heroes with their efforts to save people’s lives and provide care. If we are truly grateful for those efforts, we must secure the financial future of the NHS by introducing long-term investment and rewarding those who work for it. A good start would be matching the Scottish Government’s £500 thank-you payments and making them free from tax and benefit deductions. That also means matching Scotland’s current per head funding for the NHS, which would deliver an extra £35 billion for the NHS in England and £4 billion for NHS Scotland in Barnett consequentials. That, Chancellor, would be a fitting tribute to the institutions and the people who have bravely led us through the worst days of this pandemic.
This is the second Budget delivered by the Chancellor, and it is also very noticeable how little reference he made to Brexit compared with the first. Brexit is now the mess that the Tories and the Labour party dare not speak of, and it is little wonder why. The bad Brexit deal that the Prime Minister forced through the House in the final days of December is already proving more disastrous than predicted, and Scottish businesses, from fishing to farming, are losing millions of pounds every day as a direct result of red tape. This threatens to get worse, with grace periods and some food exports ending in April. Instead of taking responsibility for the Brexit mess they have made, the Tories have washed their hands and walked away.
The same is true for this Budget, which fails even to recognise that the very survival of thousands of food and drink exporters is now at stake. In December, the EU put in place a compensation package for those countries most affected by Brexit. Ireland alone got €1 billion. Chancellor, where in this Budget is a similar compensation package for Scottish businesses that are losing out every single day? Where in this Budget is a guarantee that the so-called shared prosperity fund will match the loss of EU structural funds? Today’s Budget gives no commitment, no clarity and no compensation. It only adds to the ever-growing list of broken Brexit promises.
Of course, the real agenda behind the Brexit betrayal is now emerging. For a year now the Tories have been in panic, privately planning for an independence referendum that they publicly say will not happen. The purpose of the internal market Bill, the Union unit and, now, the so-called levelling-up fund is crystal clear: they are all an attack on devolution.
The Chancellor is undermining our Parliament and centralising resources and decision making at Westminster. It is a naked power grab to bypass the devolved Parliaments and take control of funding in devolved areas. Oh, the irony: take back control. They are taking back control from our Scottish Parliament. That is not only the opinion of the SNP; it is the verdict of the former First Minister of Wales—[Interruption.] We hear Tory MPs representing Scotland chuntering away. They are supporting this power grab against the people of Scotland and, frankly, they should be ashamed of themselves. They are showing themselves up for what they have always been: the anti-Scottish Tory party.
Carwyn Jones said that the failure to apply Barnett to the new levelling-up fund would
“divert money away from Wales, Scotland and NI and give a greater proportion to England.”
Of course, the Prime Minister has form, because he talked about doing that in days gone by.
These attacks on devolution show what is now fundamentally at stake. As I said at the beginning of this speech, post Brexit and post pandemic, Scotland has a choice of two futures. At the heart of that choice is a simple question: who is best placed to lead Scotland’s recovery and build a better future? Is it Westminster Governments we did not vote for or independent Scottish Governments, of whatever party, chosen by us and with Scotland’s best interests at heart?
As we look ahead, we have every confidence in what is possible if we take our future into our own hands. We have the resources. We have the wealth. We have the talent. As an independent country, we can decide how best to use all those resources, all that wealth and all that talent. We will be the decision makers. We will be able to chart our own course and build our own future. The Tories can try to deny democracy all they like, but the inalienable right to self-determination cannot and will not be subject to a Westminster veto. There is no Boris veto on Scottish independence. We keep faith in the right and the power of the people to bring about democratic change. That choice is in the hands of Scotland’s people. It is they, and they alone, who will now decide that future.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
We proceed with a maximum time limit of seven minutes. That does not mean that Members have to take seven minutes; they can take fewer, but no more than seven minutes. I call the Father of the House, Sir Peter Bottomley.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. It is essential that he should have drawn the House’s attention to that, and he has done so in an almost timely fashion. I thank him for it.
Armed Forces Bill
Eleanor Laing ExcerptsMonday 8th February 2021
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Armed Forces Act 2021 View all Armed Forces Act 2021 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Johnny Mercer
Not at this time.
By cementing the covenant in the minds of the public, we are not lowering the ceiling but are raising the floor of our collective expectations. For example, my own constituency of Plymouth, Moor View has undertaken many good initiatives to support the local service community. I want others to view their efforts not as exceptional, but rather as a new normal, just as I want my constituents to see their successes merely as a springboard to better and bigger things.
In conclusion, I began by saying that an Armed Forces Bill is always an historic moment, but, by augmenting service justice, by improving our service police and by finally enshrining the covenant into law a decade on, we are cementing its standing further still. Our armed forces people are our nation’s first and last line of defence. We depend on them, but they also depend on us, and that is why it is incumbent not just on those of us in Government but on everyone in this House to work in partnership with our counterparts in the devolved Administrations to ensure that this nation does right by those who serve, so that decades from now our future personnel will look back on this period and say, “This was the moment”—the moment when our nation finally awoke and delivered on its promise to the incredible men and women who serve our country without question or quibble and defend this proud nation and act on the will of this House; the moment when incremental strategic and irreversible change was delivered in law for our service personnel and veterans and their families. I commend this Bill to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Before I call the shadow Secretary of State, it will be obvious to anyone who has examined the call list that a very large number of Members wish to participate this afternoon, so there will be an immediate time limit on Back-Bench speeches of four minutes.
Covid-19 Update
Eleanor Laing Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Do we have the sound working for Mr Clark? [Interruption.] I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman. We appear to be hearing the sound engineers. Perhaps we will leave that for a moment and come back to the right hon. Gentleman. Meanwhile, we will go to York, hopefully, to Rachael Maskell.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op) [V]
The evidence shows that the Government’s approach to easing the lockdown before Christmas meant that crowds of people came to York despite my warnings, spreading infection in the retail, hospitality and transport sectors because they could travel to a lower tier and were off guard in my community. The result has been devastating. It was completely unsafe and completely avoidable. Will the Prime Minister commit not to return to a tiered system where people can freely move the infection from one place to another? What steps will he take to avoid this catastrophe from happening again? Can I meet one of his Ministers to discuss York’s tragic experience over Christmas?
The Prime Minister
As soon as we were informed of the extra transmissibility—50% to 70% faster—of the new variant, we took all the action we could. I would just remind the hon. Lady that the best thing we can do for the people of York now is to ensure we keep the virus under control with the tough measures we have and ensure we all come forward for the vaccine. I urge her to get her constituents to come forward and take that vaccine. They are going great guns in Yorkshire. My memory is that in Yorkshire I think they have taken more vaccine than virtually anywhere else in the country. I congratulate the people of Yorkshire on what they are doing. We are now coming into the last furlong of the JCVI one to four and it would be great to get 100% of the people of Yorkshire in the course of the next few days.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Now we go to my esteemed constituency neighbour, Robert Halfon.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con) [V]
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. In all the gloom of the tragedy of covid, will my right hon. Friend pay tribute to the staff and volunteers who are working so hard to scale up the programme of vaccinations in Harlow and delivering the life-saving vaccines to thousands of residents in our new mass vaccination centre? I know he wants schools and colleges to open sooner rather than later. I really welcome what he has said today about catch-up, the extra funding, free school meals and, above all, the education plan for a covid recovery. Will he ensure the catch-up fund also helps children with mental health problems? Will he work with a coalition of the willing, such as the Children’s Commissioner and other educationalists, to get all our children back in the classroom?
The Prime Minister
What I will say is that we certainly were able to use speed and agility to deliver on the programme that we needed. It would have been a great pity if we had followed the advice of the Leader of the Opposition and the Labour party, who said, “Stay in the EU vaccines programme”, who wanted to get rid of big pharmaceutical companies in the crazed Corbynite agenda on which the Leader of the Opposition stood at the last election, and who attacked the vaccines taskforce that secured 367 million doses of vaccine.
So I do think that we have been able to do things differently and better, in some ways, but it is early days and it is very important to remember that these vaccines are an international venture. We depend on our friends and partners and we will continue to work with those friends and partners, in the EU and beyond.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I did not want to interrupt the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) while he was in full virtual, rhetorical flow, but he knows that he must not address the Prime Minister as “you”—he must not say, “What are you doing Prime Minister?” He must address the Chair. He is setting a bad example as a senior Member of this House, as are many senior Members, to new Members who have yet to learn the proper mode of address. We must be careful during this time of virtual proceedings not to let standards fall.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab) [V]
I support the vaccination programme. My clinical commissioning groups have been among the best in England at rolling out the covid vaccine—a real success story for the communities that I represent, who have been placed under restrictions since 29 July. But today the NHS has said that it will cut by one third the future vaccine supplies to the north-west, so that the rest can catch up. That is worrying, if true.
Can I ask the Prime Minister about logistics? What impact does he think withholding vaccines to the north-west will have? Will second jabs be delayed still further or will the next cohort of first jabs need to be rescheduled, leaving those people unprotected for longer?
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab) [V]
Healthy life expectancy for men at birth in the Hirst ward of my Wansbeck constituency is 52 years, whereas in Ickenham in the Prime Minister’s constituency it is 71 years, and that trend looks only to be getting wider. Can the Prime Minister explain to the people of my constituency why his Government are so eager to avoid a vaccine postcode lottery by diverting our supply from the north-east southwards to more prosperous regions of the country, simply because the NHS in our area has done an absolutely fantastic job, while at the same time the Government have done nothing to tackle the postcode lottery of healthy life expectancy, which varies so widely across this country? Can I urge him to consider whether the same actions would have been taken if the shoe had been on the other foot?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Before I ask the Prime Minister to answer the question, I must beg for shorter questions from hon. Members. I know they are sitting at home and that the opportunity makes them want to speak for longer once they have the attention of the House, but we will never get on to the next statement or let the Prime Minister complete all the promises he has made today if we do not get this statement finished.
The Prime Minister
The hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) and I share an ambition. We want to unite and level up across the whole UK, and that is the mission of this Government. I am afraid he is totally wrong in what he says about the roll-out of the vaccines. We are making sure that everywhere gets what they need for JCVI groups 1 to 4 by 15 February. That is what we are doing and will continue to do. I am delighted by his conversion to the vaccine. I seem to have read somewhere that he seemed a bit sceptical. There he goes smirking away. It is not a smirking matter. It is absolutely crucial. He should tell his constituents to get a vaccination.
The Prime Minister
I hear my hon. Friend loud and clear. I know his views will be shared by many in this House. I just want to go back to the key thing that we need to establish: it will not, alas, be until the middle of February that we have real, material evidence that the vaccines are working in terms of driving down the mortality rate among those crucial groups. So if we were to give schools decent notice to come back, we are driven more towards 8 March by that logic rather than coming back earlier. Believe me, we have been round and round this many times, and it is about as fast as we think we can prudently go. I think that is what the country would want; people would want schools open but they would want them open in a cautious and sensible way.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I will now suspend the House in order that arrangements for the next item of business can be made.
Elections: May 2021
Eleanor Laing Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Cat Smith
It is a pleasure to see the Minister respond to the urgent question. I wish her well with her continued recovery.
As the Minister set out, elections have been suspended for more than a year, and a record number of polls are now set to take place on the same day, with every elector able to cast a ballot in one election or another. It is deeply disappointing that the Government have failed to provide clarity on how these polls will be covid-secure.
Clarity is urgently needed by local councils, electoral staff, candidates, campaigners and, of course, the public. This is yet another example of the Conservative Government being too slow to act. Ministers have had many months to make the necessary changes to protect our democratic process. Instead, they are treating these elections like business as usual. Across the world, countries have demonstrated that elections can take place safely with the right safety measures in place. National elections were held in the US, New Zealand, Singapore, Iceland and Lithuania last year. Labour has consistently called for safer voting methods to be introduced, including voting over multiple days and an all-postal ballot. Will the Minister explain why the Government have taken no action so far? Will she also confirm whether the Conservative party chair took advice from Conservative party candidates about the timeframe for a possible delay? The scheduling of elections should come above party political advantage.
Will the Minister confirm, in no uncertain terms, that these elections will not be postponed in an irresponsible, last-minute U-turn? Unless councils are informed of changes in good time, unnecessary expenditure will be wasted on the printing of poll cards and other preparatory work. Given the crippling Government cuts, councils simply cannot afford to be caught on the hoof here. Electoral staff have expressed deep anxiety about running these elections safely without additional funding, so will the Minister produce clear guidance and training for local authorities about how to make polling stations and the count covid-secure?
High numbers of electoral staff are volunteers, with many in the high-risk category under covid-19 guidance. Does the Minister expect at-risk people to risk their health to support the safe running of these elections? The Welsh Labour Government have been working to ensure that elections can still go ahead safely. What steps have the Government taken to co-operate with the devolved nations? Finally, does the Minister share my concern that the Government’s lack of preparation will force many people to choose between their health and their right to vote?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Before I call the Minister to answer, let me say that the hon. Lady took rather longer than the time allocated to her. I simply warn everyone taking part in the statement today that I will not allow long questions or speeches from people who are meant to be asking questions. I know that the Minister will give short answers. I am determined that in one hour, we will get all 25 people on the Order Paper in to ask their questions. If we do not, those who do not get to ask their question can blame those who took too long in asking theirs.
Chloe Smith
I will do my best to help you to get this moving as quickly as we would all like, Madam Deputy Speaker. First, on a personal note, may I thank the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) for her support? It is nice of her to say. I have been grateful for lots of support from across the House as I have treatment for breast cancer.
On the hon. Lady’s questions, however, I am afraid that she is wrong to take a party political position on this issue. The Labour party has perhaps been so busy telling itself a story that it has been spinning that it has not looked at how we can actually get it right. It is simply not the case that there has been no action. If she had listened to my opening statement, she would have heard that loud and clear. I absolutely agree that it needs to be done in good time, and it has been. As I have set out in the House, in parliamentary questions and in working with, for example, the election administration sector, there is a record of all the preparation that has been done and that is being taken careful account of ready for May.
The hon. Lady asked specifically whether there will be clear guidance. As I said, there will be. She rightly asked about staff, who are of course a concern. Naturally, we want to make sure that staff in any employment sector are protected in their workplace, as has been the case during the pandemic across the breadth of business sectors, public and private, up and down the land. That is being accounted for in the careful planning.
The hon. Lady also understandably asked about co-operation with the devolved Administrations, because elections are taking place in England, Scotland and Wales. Although it is naturally not my responsibility to answer for the polls in Wales and Scotland, I hope that a sensible position can be achieved that allows voters the clearest opportunity to go to the polls and, as I said, to hold those who have the privilege of governing them to account. That is important in these elections. It is my intention to carry on working in the collaborative way that I do with my counterparts in those Administrations to assist that happening across the Administrations wherever it is needed.
Finally—I will not dignify it with more of a response than this—the very idea that somebody would be forced to choose between their health and their vote is simply not an issue in this case. It degrades the debate we ought to be having about how to have sensible elections, and it undermines the sensible work that has gone on by those who are responsible for running elections across the country, to whom I pay tribute.
Chloe Smith
This is an excellent point on which to end the session. This is exactly the measure that I was referring to earlier that will complete the set of preparations to enable that to happen for anybody who might be affected by covid-19 in the few days before an election, when, traditionally, it would have been too late to apply for an absent vote. The details of this scheme will be coming to the House shortly. This also allows me to recap on the point that I have been making throughout this session, which is that to change the date of these elections at this stage would require primary legislation, which is a high bar and it is not something to be taken either lightly or quickly, and I know that the House will understand that. That is why we are keeping this point under review. Clearly, given the Prime Minister’s announcements of further national restrictions, circumstances have changed, but we are taking a careful review of the situation, being conscious of the timescales that would be required to make any changes were they strictly necessary. I also hope the House will have understood from my tone that we are all extremely keen to ensure that democracy goes ahead and does not suffer further delays. I look forward to bringing those other details to the House, as such scrutiny is important and hon. and right hon Members have a close interest, as we all should, in helping our residents be best informed about the choices in front of them.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I am delighted to note that we took exactly the right amount of allocated time for that statement. I am extremely grateful to all colleagues for their brief questions and, in particular, to the Minister for her brief and timely answers. I am sure that all colleagues join me in wishing her well and saying how good it is to see her looking so healthy and full of energy. We look forward to seeing her back here with us as soon as possible. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]
In order to allow the safe entry and exit of Members, Ministers and spokesmen, I will suspend the House for three minutes.
European Union (Future Relationship) Bill
Eleanor Laing ExcerptsWednesday 30th December 2020
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate European Union (Future Relationship) Act 2020 View all European Union (Future Relationship) Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 30 December 2020 - (30 Dec 2020)
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
No, I cannot give way—I beg the right hon. Gentleman’s pardon.
I wish to conclude by simply saying that Brexit was never about being anti-European. Brexit is about restoring power to the UK. I love Europe—half my family have worked in Europe all their working lives, and I studied out there and love its idiosyncrasies, language differences, arts, culture and people—but I am British and I am a member of the United Kingdom. I want to respect them and be their friend, but for too long we moved into the same house with them and we did not get on. We are now just going to move next door and be good neighbours, friends and allies. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on bringing this to a conclusion—he deserves the plaudits he is going to get.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
In order to assist Members further down the list in preparing their speeches, I ought to give notice that after the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), who is No. 19 on the list, the time limit will be reduced to three minutes—I see the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) already tearing up part of his speech. I call Hilary Benn.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC) [V]
Diolch yn fawr, Madam Ddirprwy Lefarydd. This deal is a bad deal for Wales. The Government dragged out negotiations until Christmas, and it is now being rammed through Parliament just to avoid proper scrutiny. Who would have thought that “taking back control” would prove so false, so soon? With the Tories and Labour now committed to working hand in hand to enable the deal, it is a done deal, a stitch up—it will pass. The dominant Westminster parties have worked together to make all other options impossible. Our vote today is therefore reduced to a symbolic rubber-stamping exercise that makes a mockery of sovereignty.
Let us get one thing on record: we are brought here to implement this legislation, not to ratify it, and to rubber-stamp a virtually unseen document that is the Government’s creation. In law, the Tory Executive hold the power to wave this through, but they need the cover and the pretence of democracy. Let us be clear-eyed. The Tories have choreographed this delusion by dither and delay at every stage of negotiation, and they own every spin and twist of this danse macabre. Labour is their willing partner.
There is no question but that this is a bad deal for Wales. In fewer than 48 hours, people and businesses will face significant new barriers to trade, when our economy is already in crisis due to covid-19. Welsh farmers who sell their lamb to the EU will now face complex paperwork and new produce checks. One hundred and forty thousand jobs in Wales’s manufacturing sectors, including automotive and aviation, will be hampered by disruption to complex cross-border just-in-time supply chains.
This deal will also lock out our young people from opportunities granted as a right to other parts of the UK. The Erasmus programme opened doors to education, training and work for many young people in Wales, but those doors are now shut in their faces. Although many people in Wales did indeed vote for Brexit, nobody voted for the immense damage that this Tory deal will cause, or for Wales to lose its voice in shaping our future. As has been the case throughout the negotiations, Wales will likely be excluded from the mechanisms included in this deal that will govern our future relationship with the EU.
This is a Government who scorn checks and balances, disrespect devolution, and centralise power where their political interests lie. This is a betrayal of working people, who were promised greater prosperity and control over their own lives by this Government. What Wales now needs is a new deal—a relationship with Westminster that would enable us to be a good neighbour, rather than a tenant tied into a bad contract. That means control over our economy, our justice system, our welfare arrangements and our natural resources, and a political system where decisions are made with true and direct accountability in the best interests of everyone who lives here—a truly independent Wales. Plaid Cymru will stand up for the interests of the people in Wales, and vote against this bad deal.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I remind hon. Members that after the next speaker, the time limit will be reduced to three minutes. With four minutes, I call Sir Robert Neill.
EU Withdrawal Agreement
Eleanor Laing Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes an important point. He has been a consistently strong and coherent voice for manufacturing, not just in his native west midlands, but across the United Kingdom. One of the things that we want to secure is a free trade agreement that ensures that our manufacturing and advanced manufacturing sector can continue to sell into a market on our doorstep.
Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)
I, too, welcome this package and what it means for business, peace and our Union. Dare I say that news of tariff-free lamb comes close to being glad tidings for the shepherds on the hillsides above Aberconwy this Christmas time. Lest we get lost in that kind of detail, will my right hon. Friend confirm that there is nothing in this agreement that compromises the integrity of either our sovereignty or the Union?
Michael Gove
The automobile sector is important not just in Luton, where there are so many skilled people producing fantastic products, but across the UK. Of course, if we secure a free trade agreement, it will be a zero-tariffs, zero-quota agreement. If we do not secure that agreement, there will be tariffs, but there will also be tariffs on automobiles coming into the UK, and that will have an impact on industry in the EU.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
We are only halfway through the call list. It would be best if I can manage to get everybody who wants to ask a question on this very important subject in to ask such a question.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I see that I have some agreement from the right hon. Gentleman, who is quite far down the list. I must therefore insist on having questions—just short questions—and not great big statements. We all know what has already happened. Let us just have questions for the Minister, so that we can then just have answers from the Minister.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
I welcome the agreement and thank my right hon. Friend and his civil service team for getting us to this stage, but may I urge him to spend some time with the Protestant Unionist loyalist community, who have retained concerns about the detail? I suggest that Mikala’s Kitchen on the Shankill Road is the best place for that engagement. Could he also now spend some time with the nationalist community, unaligned voters and passionate supporters of the European Union in Northern Ireland to demonstrate to them that the practical approach that he and the EU have taken on the protocol can now be replicated on issues such as climate change, health, jobs and the future of all people across the island of Ireland?
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for suggesting the lucrative opportunity of exporting conflict diamonds, but just how burdensome will the additional paperwork of which he spoke be?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes an absolutely critical point. I thank him and the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, which he chairs, for the rigorous scrutiny that they have applied throughout this process, which has ensured that the Government have been kept up to the mark. He is right that concluding the agreement is just one step. We need to continue to support businesses in Northern Ireland, large and small, as they face the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities ahead.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I will now suspend the House for three minutes to allow Members to leave safely and compliantly, and to allow other Members to come in.
Public Health
Eleanor Laing Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Many of my constituents are very angry that west Berkshire and Wokingham have been placed in tier 2 when we were in tier 1 before the national lockdown and we still have very low figures. On all the evidence that the Government say they look at—case numbers, trends in cases and available hospital capacity—there seems a very clear case that we should not be worse off as we come out of national lockdown than we were when we went in, and my constituents will expect me to reflect their anger in the way that I vote tonight.
I would far rather work with the Government, and I think that on the whole they are doing a very good job in a very difficult circumstance, but they could make life easier for themselves if they identified more policies that both bear down on the virus problem and allow the much-needed economic recovery so that we rescue and encourage more livelihoods.
The first policy is this: why can we not have expanded isolation capacity in the NHS to deal with covid-19, with volunteers properly backed up with all the equipment and safety protocols they need so that we free up many more of the district generals to do the general work that they need to do and free up their staff from the possibility of cross-infection and cross-contamination? One of the problems in the NHS at the moment is that there are too many staff who have had to self-isolate. Can we not do better on infection control, isolation, and specialisation? Money is no longer a problem, I am pleased to see. I am very happy for more money to go into the health service, but it must buy the staff and make sure that the staff are properly looked after, so that we have that extra capacity.
The second issue is the capacity of our hospitality industry. I encouraged the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Department of Health and Social Care to do work some time ago on safer methods of extracting air quickly from hospitality venues, so that more people can use a hospitality venue safely. I believe that some of that work has shown some fruit, and that experts agree that we can create much safer environments if we reverse overflows and extract air quickly. We are now told by the experts that the main transmission threat is aerial transmission by being in an enclosed space with people with the disease. Can we not have more public prominence for that work? Perhaps we could have some grant systems for small businesses and proper technical assistance from the Government and from those the Government retain so that more venues can trade sensibly and profitably without being threatening in any way.
Can we please also have a proper package for all the self-employed and the small business people? Why do some groups of the self-employed get omitted from the packages every time? These are the people who go the extra distance, provide the flexible service, work all the hours God made, and do not often get much reward for it. These are also the people who have suffered the most from these compulsory closures. If a person works for a large company, they are, in many cases, paid their salary, even if that company cannot operate properly, but if they work for their own business, there is no income coming in. They cannot put food on the table unless they get public support or can trade profitably. I urge the Government to look again at their totally inadequate packages for the self-employed and small businesses and understand just how much we are going to need them when we get into recovery mode proper.
My final point in the brief time allotted is that we desperately need to give people hope about livelihoods and economic growth again. We desperately need to have a full recovery programme sector by sector, including for small businesses and the self-employed, and understand that some people will need to retrain and some will need to go from the employment they have lost into self-employment. Can we not hear a lot more about this and be positive? We need to cheer up the country up as well as control the virus.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Hon. Members have been very brief and well-behaved this afternoon, but we are trying to get in as many people as possible. Therefore, after the next hon. Gentleman, the time limit will be reduced to three minutes, but with four minutes to speak, I call Alex Sobel.
Covid-19: Winter Plan
Eleanor Laing Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
We will recommence the statement. I believe that we have the Prime Minister virtually, so first we will go to Alex Davies-Jones.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab) [V]
Diolch, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am grateful that both the Prime Minister and I are now back virtually. I am pleased to hear from the Prime Minister that the devolved nations are finally being included in talks on planning for the Christmas break. However, like so many of his other promises, it comes too late for people in Wales, and they have had enough.
The Prime Minister may remember that earlier this year, he told the House that he would passport money for Welsh councils, such as mine in Rhondda Cynon Taf, that were particularly badly hit by Storm Dennis. He told us that the money would be there for the landslip in the Rhondda. We need in excess of £100 million, but we have had just £2.5 million. The Prime Minister says he is committed to the Union, but we all know that actions speak louder than words, and his negligence in supporting the Welsh Government through flooding and in co-operating with them over coronavirus speaks volumes. Will he therefore please confirm his exact plans to make good on his financial commitments—
The Prime Minister [V]
For the record, Madam Deputy Speaker, the problem does not appear to be at our end. I hope that viewers will not think I am in any way trying to avoid scrutiny by hon. Members. I can tell the hon. Lady that we are investing massively in Wales, as we are across the whole UK. If she contains her impatience until Wednesday, she will hear about perhaps the biggest package of investment in infrastructure across the whole UK for generations. I remind the House that it was the Welsh Labour Government who managed to spend £144 million on a study into the M4 bypass, and then decided not to proceed with the bypass. That is not the approach that this Government take. We will be investing hugely in Welsh infrastructure and taking Wales forward. I am delighted that Mark Drakeford and other leaders of the devolved Administrations are working with us on a plan for Christmas.
Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister agree about the importance of sport and exercise to both mental and physical wellbeing? Will he confirm that going forward into the winter, facilities for outdoor sport and indoor swimming should remain open in all tiers?
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is completely right in his basic instincts, which I share, and his fundamental libertarian yearnings, which I also share. I love Christmas; I love a big get-together. The trouble is that the people of this country can see that there is a real risk that if we blow it with a big, blowout at Christmas, we will pay for it in the new year. They want a cautious and balanced approach, and that is what we will deliver for the whole UK.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
May I make a plea to all Members to be as brief as the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne)? After two hours, we are not even halfway through the number of people who are hoping to ask a question. I remind people that they are not making speeches; they are asking questions—brief questions—and they should not read them. I am quite sure that I can rely on the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant).
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
You always say that before you call me, Madam Deputy Speaker. [Laughter.] I see you have united the House in that plea.
May I make a plea to the Prime Minister? I have asked him about this before this year. We had terrible flooding in the Rhondda. It led to a landslide from a coal tip, which could all too easily have landed on top of people’s houses, God forbid, as it has elsewhere in Wales in the past. We need £100 million. So far, the Prime Minister has promised one Member of this House to passport the money, in February. He promised me in June that this was going to be sorted. We still have seen only £2 million of the £100 million we need. Please, please, please, just say now we are going to get that money on Wednesday.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Many will be relieved that collective worship, outdoor sports, gyms, shops and personal care will resume business as usual, but can the Prime Minister tell us when the limits for spectators at spectator sports and business events will be set, as this will affect many self-employed contractors? Most importantly, what does my right hon. Friend think the chances are of getting the over-80s and the most vulnerable vaccinated before Christmas so that that great festival can be a lot more stressful for everyone—a lot less stressful for everyone? [Laughter.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
While the Prime Minister computes what that question actually was, I should point out that the hon. Gentleman—I am being kind to him, because he is an hon. Gentleman—had two questions. I am not allowing any more two questions; it is one question, not a speech, or we will be here all day. Of course, some people want to be.
The Prime Minister
I am interested in my hon. Friend’s Freudian slip about Christmas, but the answer is, I am afraid, that it is just too early to say whether we will get any vaccine before Christmas that we can deploy at scale. We are optimistic but we cannot be confident at this stage.
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the importance of testing in schools—testing the teachers and making sure that we do not send whole bubbles home. That is why schools and universities, along with NHS hospitals and care homes, are the primary settings where we want to roll-out not just PCR testing, but lateral flow testing as well.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
The whole House is very grateful to the Prime Minister for giving such full and thorough answers and really listening to what people are saying, but I shall forgive him if, in spite of colleagues giving ridiculously long questions, the Prime Minister feels like giving shorter answers.
The Prime Minister
I am very happy to do so, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I just do not want to short-change colleagues. As I was banished by telecommunications from your presence, I do not want people to think that I am trying to nickel and dime them here.
Madam Deputy Speaker
It is much more difficult for the Prime Minister as he cannot feel the atmosphere here in the Chamber, so it is better that I explain to him that both his Secretary of State and the Leader of the Opposition look as if they agree with the point that I have just made.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
The hope that we have been given by our brilliant scientists will be dashed for millions if the Prime Minister pushes ahead with the public sector pay freeze, which, of course, is not levelling up, but levelling down. He does not want to be stand accused of saying one thing and doing another, so will he give a very short answer now and rule out the possibility of a public sector pay freeze?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady is entirely right about the vaccine—it is wonderful news, but it is premature to say that it constitutes, on its own, an exit strategy. That is why I have insisted throughout this afternoon that it must be accompanied not only by NHS test, trace and isolate, but by new types of testing, plus the tough tiering that we have had and that we will have when we come out of this lockdown. The way forward is to make those things work together—to make the tiering work in tandem with testing—so that people get a test with a view to reducing the restrictions under which they, we and she are living. Get a test and help to kick covid out—that is the way forward.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Finally, with the prize for patience and perseverance, I call Jason McCartney to ask question No. 100.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. With a case rate of 552 per 100,000 and the sixth highest case rate in England, many people expect Kirklees to be in the highest tier when the announcement is made on Thursday. That will mean the closure of hospitality, apart from takeaways, at a time of year when many cafés, bars, pubs and restaurants try to make profits to see them through the rest of the year. Can I end this session by asking the Prime Minister one more time: please will he speak to the Chancellor again about support for the hospitality supply chain and for breweries and cider producers; will they look again at grant funding; and will they please consider once again cancelling business rates for another year to support our hospitality businesses?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a passionate plea for breweries, cider producers and others. I know that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will be listening keenly to all of that, particularly the points about business rates and other measures. We want to support the hospitality industry in Kirklees and across the country.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I thank the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care for answering 100 questions and for bringing the House up to date with their plans.
Virtual participation in proceedings concluded (Order, 4 June).
Public Health
Eleanor Laing Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
We have to constantly improve on that. First, the number of people being contacted and who are isolating has risen sharply. Secondly, while of course there is always a need for more, the proportion has started to rise recently, and the amount of resources and support that we are giving to the Test and Trace service continues to grow. I absolutely support my hon. Friend’s point that we must use this month to ensure that that service is there and ready. Those who have said that it does not have any impact are wrong. It is having a significant impact on bringing the R down from its natural elevated rate of around 2.5 to where it is today, but with the R above 1, the virus continues to grow, and we must bring it down.
A number of colleagues in all parts of the House raised the issue of communal worship, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham). I can tell the House that Ministers are talking to faith leaders to do everything we can to reach an accommodation as soon as possible. I understand the impact of this infringement on liberties, which many colleagues mentioned.
We saw support for the measures from across the House. The hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) talked about how furlough must be fair for all, and we have extended the furlough system. My hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) talked about the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence. While science of course consists of men and women with different views, I truly believe that the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence is in favour of suppressing the virus. We heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Wealden (Ms Ghani) and for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) about how, with heavy hearts, they are supporting these measures. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright) talked about taking damaging decisions to prevent a disastrous outcome later, and I think that was about right.
The hon. Members for Reading East (Matt Rodda) and for Blackburn (Kate Hollern) expressed their support, even though they also wished that this had come in earlier. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and my hon. Friends the Members for Bosworth (Dr Evans) and for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) spoke so eloquently of what the promise that the NHS is always there for you means. It is something that binds us together as a country and something that we must protect and cherish. The issue of care homes was raised, including by the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth). The updated visitor guidance was published this morning. I agree with him about seeking further expansion of testing in care homes, including for visitors.
There was a widespread debate about the need for more data publication. All I can say is that we are constantly expanding the data that is being published. There is more and more data from the NHS on hospitalisations, more and more data on cases and where they are, and more and more contact tracing data. I am absolutely enthusiastic about publishing more and more data. Indeed, we have been commended, as a country, for the open approach that we are taking to the amount of data that is published.
Ultimately, this comes down to a very significant judgment about how we best lead a nation through an incredibly difficult period with a virus that exists only to multiply, and lives and breathes off the essence of what it is to be human. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) spoke of a passion for freedom and I, too, am a lover of freedom, but I also care about protection, and it is the combination of the two that we must balance and address.
In ordinary times, these measures would be unimaginable, but these are not ordinary times. The virus in circulation feeds off the human contact that makes life worth living, and we must act to thwart its deadly march to protect our NHS and to save countless lives while supporting every person with everything that we have, and supporting the science that, with increasing confidence each day, I know will help us to find a better way through. I commend these regulations to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. Hon. Members, apart from those on the Front Bench, should leave the Chamber by the doors behind me. We must try to keep social distancing going.
Question put.