Cavity Wall Insulation: Wales

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered cavity wall insulation in Wales.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Nuttall—I think for the first time—and to lead a debate on this issue. Unfortunately, after many years of campaigning, lobbying and debates, it is still unresolved.

Many of my constituents had cavity wall insulation installed, having been persuaded—in fact, I would use the phrase “deceived by omission”—that it was suitable for their homes and for local weather conditions. How wrong they were. Many have found that out to their cost, as they have suffered damp and damage, stress, threats to health and ever-present black walls.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The whole of Wales and indeed much of the UK’s western seaboard is categorised as having very severe exposure to wind-driven rain. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Building Research Establishment maps that point that out should have been widely publicised by the Government so that people could assess whether cavity walling was appropriate in their area?

[Hywel Williams]

That is certainly the case. It is an elementary step. One just needs to look at the map of the UK. The west of Wales, the south-west of England, the north-west of England and Scotland are all coloured a deep blue, and areas such as East Anglia are coloured white. A five-year-old could look at that map and see where the rain was going to be and where there might be problems. Unfortunately, many people were not aware of those maps or of this issue.

The consumer redress process so far has been unsatisfactory. Vulnerable people have been left in damp and damaged homes. The industry guarantee scheme has failed many victims and has shortcomings, including sometimes—I am sorry to say this—a hostile attitude to victims. There is an opportunity for the Government to put things right, and my demand—I put it as strongly as that—today is for the Minister to take decisive action to protect consumers from further bad practice, identify all victims and fully compensate all those who have been affected by what is clearly a Government-backed scheme.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Gentleman’s comments. I, too, have constituents who have been terribly affected. In one case, an elderly couple had cavity wall insulation installed 10 years ago by Domestic and General, which subsequently went into liquidation, and they have had the shambolic experience of dealing with the Cavity Insulation Guarantee Agency—particularly its head of customer service—and all sorts of other agencies. It has just become one shambles after another, and they have not had redress.

[Hywel Williams]

I am afraid that the picture the hon. Gentleman paints is all too common, especially in Wales but also in parts of the north-west of England. For example, people from Blackpool have travelled all the way to Bangor and Caernarfon to see me to explain the difficulties that they have had in areas where cavity wall insulation has been installed without explanation and there is wind-driven rain, which is the danger.

I welcome the long-awaited report of the Bonfield review entitled “Each Home Counts”, which was released on 16 December last year; some hon. Members may have seen it. A review was first considered by the then Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, the right hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), on 3 February 2015, during the second debate we had on the issue. I spoke in that debate and expressed my concern about the attitude towards victims of cavity wall insulation of some in the insulation industry and the official bodies that allowed this to happen.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman speaks about this issue with great authority and passion for his constituents and people across the UK. My constituent Sarah Morgan recently discovered that she had two different CIGA guarantees for her property—one with a clause detailing the homeowner’s responsibility for property maintenance and one without. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that subtle change is being used by CIGA as nothing more than a get-out clause?

[Hywel Williams]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is blessed with clairvoyance, because I was going to raise that matter. It is extraordinary that the maintenance clause is in the small print, as I understand it, and then suddenly reappears in the rather fancy guarantee as a separate and prominent item of its own. I should imagine that had people—especially older and perhaps disabled people—been aware that they had to maintain the house to a high standard, a lot of them would not have gone in for cavity wall insulation in the first place. That has certainly been my experience with the many cases that I have come across.

This matter has been raised on numerous occasions by cross-party alliances, supported by the tireless work of the victims’ support group, the Cavity Insulation Victims Alliance. I am glad to have this opportunity to commend CIVALLI’s work, which it does with virtually no resources. It communicates the distress of consumers who reach out to it, dismayed at the effects of cavity wall insulation, the process through which it was sold and installed, and the attitudes of bodies that were set up to protect them. Its efforts have resulted in this matter being brought to the forefront of the political agenda, a “better late than never” review and some positive steps.

As CIVALLI and I rather expected having met Paul Bonfield, the review focuses on recommendations for future cavity wall insulation but does not place responsibility or blame for redress or provide compensation for those who have been disadvantaged. The review is forward looking, and quite reasonably so, but our concern is with the large number of historical cases.

The review underlines some positive progress. The British Board of Agrément and CIGA have launched a scheme whereby property assessments are independently reviewed for compliance with industry specifications to ensure that cavity wall insulation installations are carried out only on suitable properties. It strikes me, though, that the review’s publication and the progress made so far is much too little, much too late. I might say that the Titanic, alas, is already going down.

My concern is about the millions of homes already treated with cavity wall insulation, a proportion of which are problematic. I do not know what that proportion is, and it seems that no one else does either, for that matter. We do not know how many there are or where they are, but it is clear that cavity wall insulation has been installed in properties unsuitable due to their location, the size of the cavity, the state of external walls, rendering or pointing.

My constituency, Arfon, is in the category 4 area; in fact, much of west Wales is category 4, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) noted. When I raised this issue with the then Under-Secretary in the debate in February 2015 and asked her whether cavity wall insulation should have been installed in these areas, her response was:

“My recollection is that mostly it should not have been.”—[Official Report, 3 February 2015; Vol. 592, c. 20WH.]

That is as clear as can be: it should not have been put in, but it was. Installers, CIGA, manufacturers of cavity wall insulation, Governments and everyone seemed to claim that insulations were preceded by a full assessment of the suitability of the property. I am yet to see an assessment report, and seriously wonder whether such reports exist in any real sense.

In my experience, installers failed to take customer complaints seriously and to provide adequate redress. There seems to be a culture of avoiding customer queries, not responding at all, failing to provide full answers to straightforward questions and denying liability. I have heard people say so many times that they were told that it was just condensation—“Open a window and let all that expensive heat out; we’ll sell you some more”, presumably.

Extraction of failed cavity wall insulation is only one element, and most customers will not be offered even that. In my opinion, customers should also be able to recover costs for interior and exterior damage due to the poor installation and extraction, plus compensation for the distress caused. When I have talked to CIGA, it has said—quite reasonably, I think—that it is a guarantee scheme, not a compensation scheme. However, people have suffered, and they deserve compensation.

Many people complain that they signed up for cavity wall insulation only because they were explicitly told that it was a Government-backed scheme, and they feel that the Government should take responsibility for putting things right. In fact, I have seen a sales video that, after about eight minutes of hard sell, has a prominent TV personality saying clearly that it is a Government scheme. Now, he is a salesman and a television personality, but people took him at his word.

We know that CIGA proffered a 25-year guarantee but, again, that guarantee was worth little to most people after it became clear that there was not a suitable system of quality assurance for installers. Indeed, that was a matter I took up with the previous Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hywel Williams]

I was talking about the guarantee and the fact that a clause in the small print has now been amplified to the main document. My friends in CIVALLI have told me that, on one property, there are two guarantees, two versions of the same guarantee—one with and one without that clause. It seems to me that CIGA sometimes uses the maintenance condition as a get-out clause. If people had been properly aware of the stringent maintenance rule, many of them would not have risked having CWI. The guarantee is pointless if the maintenance is unaffordable. Many of the people who put this material in are older, disabled or on low incomes; in fact, in Wales 25% of people are living in fuel poverty. Those people will not be up a ladder making sure that the rendering under the roof is proofed against wind-driven rain. The fact is that people in deprived areas were targeted, because they were keen to take part in the scheme and save money on their heat.

Many of the companies that carried out the installations are now defunct. Through recent correspondence with the British Board of Agrément, I have been notified that provisions have been put in place to help consumers where cavity wall insulation has been abandoned, for either company liquidation or inadequacy reasons. I think that is to be respected, but I am worried about this matter more generally.

I am worried that CIGA is under-resourced, hence the resistance to addressing remedial damage and to funding extraction properly. It is adamant that installers should assume liability, but in my constituents’ experience, that often proves impossible, especially given that so many of the companies have gone into liquidation—they were something of a fly-by-night set of organisations. That is resulting in a pattern of CIGA offering to extract from one wall only, which is against expert guidelines and will lead to other problems.

My constituent Alwyn Williams has been battling for three years with this problem. The original installers went bust. CIGA refused to help and refused all liability for two years, on the basis of the poor maintenance clause. It has now offered to extract from one wall. I have spoken to several experts in the field of extraction, including Andrew Quayle of Titan Insulation and Damian Mercer of Cavity Extraction Ltd, who tell me that extracting from one wall creates a cold spot and is likely to severely worsen the problem in the long term.

CIGA does offer an alternative dispute resolution, which I am glad of, and CIVALLI offers support and advice. There is, however, a yawning power gap between the two sides here. Of course, victims require an independent private survey, which can cost around £300; otherwise, there is not a lot of chance of them winning their case. Due to the sheer number of failed CWI installations, the extraction industry is now booming, and I fear we are putting ourselves in line for a further scandal, as extractions are carried out but not properly inspected.

My speech today has been on many of the industry’s failings, but as I said earlier, this is a Government-inspired scheme. Successive Governments have advocated unpoliced and unregulated cavity wall insulation schemes in the race to secure carbon reduction targets—energy companies are being fined by Ofgem for not reaching those targets. That is all at the expense of the quality of life of the victims; their lives have been ruined.

At the very least, the UK Government should have the answer to the following questions. How many people have suffered at the hands of this particular scheme? I have heard estimates of 1% or 2%, but given that there are millions of installations, that is a large number of people. Who are the people who have been affected? Where do they live? I think they live on the west side of Britain. How will their problems be rectified? The big question is, who is going to pay for all this? To be fair to CIGA, it is under-resourced. It depends on its guarantee income, which surely will not be sufficient.

I will end by saying that, in the debate in 2015, the then Minister, who is now the Home Secretary, said that an election was due and she would leave the file open on her desk for her successor. We now have an election due again, and I hope the Minister is not going to sign off by saying that the file will be left open. We really do need some action as soon as possible on what I can only describe as an emerging scandal.

Green Investment Bank

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I recognise the importance of the GIB to Edinburgh and have agreed to meet with the Members of Parliament for that area to discuss this process. It was entirely the right decision to locate part of the organisation there, and jobs are a part of what we want to hear from bidders; we want to hear about commitment to staff and the ongoing organisation.

As the hon. Gentleman has mentioned staff, let me place on record—I hope this is shared by Members across the House—the Government’s admiration and respect for the senior management team and all staff at the GIB, led by Lord Smith and Shaun Kingsbury, not just for what they have achieved in a relatively short period, but for the professionalism with which they have conducted themselves during this process.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

The GIB has made substantial investments in Wales, most recently at Parc Adfer on Deeside in partnership with five local authorities. That model works pretty well. What guarantees can the Minister give that the new owners will continue to invest in that sort of way, and invest in the regions and nations of the UK rather than abroad, or possibly even in the golden south-east?

[Mr Hurd]

I return again to the main point about the questions we ask of bidders and the criteria we set. We want to achieve value for money; we are selling an ongoing concern, and we are determined to protect the integrity of the green purpose of the organisation, so we want to hear plans for the mobilisation of future investment and future capital. If models are working, I am sure that any bidders that are professional organisations that view the GIB as a business will have regard to them. That is what we want to hear from bidders, and we are at the point in the process where we are evaluating that. I am afraid I cannot say a great deal more beyond that.

Exiting the EU: Higher Education

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Demands!

[Dr Huq]

Yes. Many academics, and not just them but the ancillary staff and all those other people, such as the technicians, are part of the 48%. If we are going to jump off a cliff, it is a good idea to have some idea of where we are going to land, preferably with a parachute to soften the descent.

Here come the assurances I am seeking. First, I urge the Government to heed the warning of MillionPlus, which is the pressure group for the post-1992 sector, equivalent to the Russell Group. It says that any moves to create a more “hostile environment” for EU or international students in order to drive down immigration is “problematic”, so we should remove students from the immigration targets. All the polling shows that people see them not as immigrants but as temporary stayers, and they are welcome here and valued by the population at large.

Secondly, we all do surgeries and we all deal with the Home Office. Home Office procedures and the vexatious visa requirements should be speeded up. The tier 2 visa threshold is now at £35,000; it was £18,000. I have spoken about it previously in relation to curry chefs, but the principle also applies to people such as lab technicians, who are highly skilled but who in universities might not be earning £35,000, which is quite high on the spinal scale. The threshold should therefore be looked at again.

Thirdly, I mentioned my experience with the Erasmus programme; access to Erasmus+ should be guaranteed for UK students. Even if it requires funding, the money should be found from somewhere, because we want to be a forward-thinking trading nation that keeps engaging with the world. Fourthly, we have had short-term assurances on Horizon 2020 and fees until 2018, but longer-term stability is needed for forward planning as we voyage into uncharted waters. The business model cannot continue as “business as usual”.

Fifthly, we are substantial net beneficiaries of our universities’ European dealings, so we somehow need to retain as much as possible in a new way, which is why I would like to see higher education represented at the top table in Brexit negotiations. I hope that the Minister will be there, given all his expertise and all the multifaceted aspects. Will we be like Norway, with access but no influence? Will we be a sort of pay-as-you-go country? Or will there be some third way that I have not thought of?

Sixthly, since this debate was announced I have received loads of suggestions from institutions all over the country —far wider than Ealing Central and Acton. My old union, the University and College Union, has produced a charter that urges the Government to enshrine human rights, and has also said that there should be an urgent inquiry. If that inquiry, or any other, goes ahead, it should consider campus hate crime. Anecdotally, we have heard of a worrying upsurge now that people feel disinhibited in voicing what was previously not politically correct, or was politically incorrect. We had already heard about Islamophobia and anti-Semitism rearing their ugly heads on campuses. The climate at a university should be that of a safe space for all, so all intolerance should be stamped on.

Seventhly, of all the different quotes I have seen in preparing for this debate, my favourite is this one, which I think the Minister may recognise:

“European research funding offers a good example of how the EU can get things right…EU countries are among our most crucial partners…Free movement of people makes it easier for our universities to attract the best talent.”

Those words were of course said by the Minister, the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson). They are as true now as when he said them. I know that we have lost that argument, but we still need to do everything we can to ensure that the Prime Minister dispels all doubts that EU nationals in the UK, and their dependents, will ever be bargaining chips in some kind of negotiating game. The Minister must also set out robust reciprocal arrangements for our academics who go elsewhere.

I could go on. I have spent a lifetime in universities: from 1990, when I started my undergraduate degree, to May 2015. That is quite a long time, and I have never really got out—I am always in the Library upstairs. In my experience, Westminster Hall debates sometimes have meaningless responses from Ministers, but I am optimistic that this Minister, whom I like, trust and respect, will come up with something better for us today, and I am keen to hear the contributions from right hon. and hon. Members from both the Government and Opposition Benches.

We have had our fair share of bad news this year. I could go on and on listing so many international atrocities, the result the other week and the referendum result. Before all that there was our friend and colleague, Jo Cox, whom we lost in June; that is still very difficult for many of us to process. We have had so much bad news that I am hoping for some good news from the Minister when he responds.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) on securing this debate. She should be more forthright in her demands of the Government; I give her some encouragement in that direction.

The terms of Brexit are clearly still to be decided. My priority, and that of my party, is to campaign for the least bad option for the Welsh economy. That includes getting the best possible outcome for higher education and putting in place every possible safety net to mitigate the potentially catastrophic effects of leaving the European Union in a hard-line way.

[Mr Andrew Smith]

Has the hon. Gentleman had cause to reflect on why Wales voted so strongly to leave the European Union?

[Hywel Williams]

The right hon. Gentleman asks a very interesting question, but given the shortness of time I shall not go too far in discussing it. The research that I and other respected academics in Wales have conducted shows that deprivation was an important factor. The constituency that received the most money from Europe—that of the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith), who is not here today—voted most heavily to leave. It is something to do with deprivation and being left behind, but it is also, of course, much more complicated than that. I should say that my constituency voted 60:40 in favour of staying in.

Plaid Cymru has been united in its determination to maintain membership of the single market and the customs union, at least, because that would be by far the least damaging option for the Welsh economy—first, because of the wide-reaching benefits of being in the single market and customs union for Wales; and secondly, because it will enable Wales to qualify for the cross-border and transnational programmes and research and innovation funding from which our higher education sector derives such benefit.

Higher education is a major economic actor in Wales. It generates around £2.4 billion of Welsh gross value added and sustains almost 50,000 jobs. As for structural funding, I once worked at Bangor University, which alone has benefited from around £100 million of EU funding over the past 10 years. That investment supports jobs as well as capital projects. Swansea University’s campus on the bay was backed by £40 million of structural funds, plus a finance package worth £60 million from the European Investment Bank. These are huge sums of money. If we are to continue our success, the UK Government need to match the commitment of the EU to the principle of regional equalisation. That is why we call for a UK convergence strategy to replace EU funding, and on a needs basis.

I opposed, and still oppose, leaving the EU for many reasons: philosophical; historical; educational; the EU’s promotion of peace on our continent; and most importantly for me, at least, the EU’s cultural and linguistic diversity, and the normality of multilingualism, which is sadly not matched in this member state and certainly not in its Parliament.

Higher education has been a central feature of Welsh policy for many centuries. When we were last independent—a little matter of some six hundred years ago—there were three main planks of Government policy in Wales, one of which was the establishment of a university to join Padua and Oxford, which were already up and running. That ambition was not realised until the 19th century; it took us four or five hundred years to get our act together. Nevertheless, it is indicative of the importance that we place on higher education in Wales, and of the need to defend what we already have, that there are now seven higher education institutions in Wales.

I do not ignore the material benefit that we also derive from membership of the EU. It is no source of pride to me that we get convergence funding because our economy is on a par with some parts of the former communist states in eastern Europe. We get that money because we are a poor country with some extremely poor regions, one of which I represent. At least the EU has a policy of convergence funding for which Wales qualifies—alas—and our institutions derive great benefits from that funding.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that the UK is a net contributor to the EU, so that anything that comes back in regional funds is a loss. However, when we break the UK down into its regions and countries, only Northern Ireland and Cornwall are net beneficiaries. Will he accept that Wales loses out by the European funds in net terms, rather than gaining from them?

[Hywel Williams]

I would be much more prepared to accept that argument if the Government here in London had a similar regional policy, so that when we leave the EU one could be guaranteed that the money that comes from Europe will come from London instead. When David Cameron was Prime Minister, I repeatedly asked him to guarantee that this funding would continue post-Brexit, but he refused to give such a guarantee. I doubt that it is in the power of the Minister today to make up for that failure, but I look to him for at least some reassuring indication that this issue is actually on the agenda.

I will refer very quickly to cross-border programmes. In the first year of the Horizon 2020 scheme from 2015 to 2016, Welsh university staff have already succeeded in securing £25 million of funding. Those programmes help Welsh students and institutions to compete on the world stage, which surely must be our ambition. Identified research funding to Wales suggests that Welsh institutions received some €183 million between 2002 and 2013, and it is estimated that Wales received at least €29 million from lifelong learning funds, including Erasmus, from 2007 to 2013. Those funds are vital to encourage joint working and collaboration between academics and students in different EU member states and further afield.

I will briefly refer to my own university of Bangor. There are 2,000 international students in Bangor; the total student population doubles the city’s population, so the university is vital to the local economy. Can the Minister assure me that the UK Government are giving due consideration to the disproportionate effects of post-Brexit immigration controls on small university towns or cities, of which Bangor is one? That is a particular issue. Bangor University also has widespread international links, which I referred to in the debate on higher education the other day, including a site in China, so we are worried and concerned. Moreover, Trinity College Dublin has a site in Bangor for Japanese students to learn English. It is an excellent institution, but I think the staff there are also worried.

To cut a much longer speech short, the HE sector in Wales is one of the keys to unlock the doorway to our prosperity—

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

May I say that speakers have about nine minutes each, so you are okay?

[Hywel Williams]

I will conclude, as I have reached the last page of my speech. As I was saying, the HE sector in Wales is one of the keys to unlock the doorway to prosperity. Both the UK Government and the Welsh Government have a duty to protect and advance the HE sector in Wales, and we will scrutinise the way in which they do so very closely indeed.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Hywel Williams Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 21st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes the point that I was about to make. If we were looking at a teaching excellence framework in parallel with our competitors around the world, and if we were together saying that we think the world market in international education needs such a tool and that in that world market it would be helpful to have institutions ranked as gold, silver and bronze, that would be one thing; but for us unilaterally to declare to the world that we are differentiating our institutions and saying that a good two thirds of them, perhaps, are less good than others, that can do nothing other than damage our ability to recruit international students and to earn the money that we do from them, as well as the jobs and support for our economy that that brings.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there may be not just reputational damage at home, but consequences abroad? My own university, Bangor, takes a large number of Chinese students, but its good name in Bangor enables it to have a site in China and a very successful operation there. There would be reputational damage of that sort as well.

[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. It is not just the recruitment of students but the brand strength of UK universities, which is extraordinarily high, that is put at risk by the measure.

Last week in Westminster Hall I sought assurances from the Immigration Minister as to whether it is the Home Office’s intention to use the teaching excellence framework measurement of quality as a basis for its visa regime in an attempt to cut down the number of international students. I got no reassurance. I gave the Minister a couple of opportunities to say that the Government did not intend to use the TEF for that purpose and he failed to do so.

The amendment says that until we are clear about the Government’s intention in relation to differentiation by gold, silver and bronze grading, and following a proper economic impact assessment of what that might mean for our universities, we should not seek to differentiate the teaching excellence framework in this way and we should simply have meeting expectations or not meeting expectations ratings. I accept that it is not the Minister’s intention to damage our universities by the introduction of this differentiation, but it could be the unintended consequence of the actions of the Home Office, so we need reassurance on the issue.

As we have heard, these are challenging times for our country. Charting our post-Brexit place in the world will be a big job. We need to win friends, not alienate them. The prime ministerial trade mission to India recently demonstrated that many of those friends will put access to our universities at the heart of any discussion of our future relationship, even on the issue of trade. We will not be able to separate those. We cannot afford to put the sector and the export earnings that we get from international students at risk in this way. I therefore ask the Minister to think again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carol Monaghan]

I will speak to amendments 55 and 56. I will start with amendment 56, which is in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin).

The proposals in the Bill to reform the UK research councils have implications for higher education in Scotland, and we have concerns about the potential consequences for Scotland’s research base. The SNP tabled an amendment in Committee that sought to ensure representation on the UKRI board of people with relevant experience of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland higher education sectors, as well as an understanding of the research and innovation policy context and landscape across the whole of the UK. We withdrew the amendment but reserved the right to bring it back on Report. That is what we are doing now.

We are pleased that the Government listened to the Scottish National party’s concerns in Committee and have tabled their own measure on this issue, Government amendment 36. However, although we welcome their acknowledgement of the need for the board of UKRI to include experience of the devolved Administrations, it is disappointing to note that amendment 36 requires experience of only one of those Administrations. That does not allow for the proper consideration of all devolved Administrations and their policy priorities within UKRI.

UKRI must have an understanding of the whole UK research and innovation landscape and must act in the interests of all devolved Administrations. That is why we have tabled amendment 56. What we have in front of us in Government amendment 36 does not adequately address our concerns and those of stakeholders, including Universities Scotland, Universities Wales, Queen’s University Belfast, the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, NUS Scotland, the University and College Union Scotland and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Our amendment is not partisan, but draws on a whole sector of university opinion throughout Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and has the full support of the Scottish Government.

The UK Government said that they would introduce a Higher Education and Research Bill that included measures set out in Paul Nurse’s review of the research councils. Our amendment would ensure the Bill matched what Sir Paul Nurse noted in his review, that

“there is a need to solicit and respond to distinct research priorities and evidence requirements identified by the devolved administrations”.

The Bill as it stands does not meet the overarching principles of the Nurse review, as the governance of UK Research and Innovation is accountable only to the UK Government, with principally English interests. We believe that the governance of UKRI needs to reflect the priorities of each of the Governments within the UK; if it does not, there could be a lack of consideration of Government priorities and research needs in Scotland and other devolved nations among the decision-making bodies of the research councils and of Innovate UK.

[Hywel Williams]

I back the hon. Lady’s points, and note that Welsh universities have particular priorities when it comes to research, not least the very low level of funding that they get, which is probably around 2%—a figure that contrasts with the fact that we are 5% of the UK population. Irrespective of the Haldane principle, that is a specific concern in Wales.

[Carol Monaghan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. Scotland does very well out of the research councils, because there is a large research body in Scotland and the research environment is vibrant across our 19 higher education institutes.

We want the Secretary of State and the UK Government to consult Scottish Ministers and their equivalents in the other devolved Administrations before approving UKRI’s research and innovation strategy. How else can we be certain that the new body set up in the Bill will be used in the best interests of the whole of the UK and is not simply focused on English-only priorities?

The Scottish National party is proud of our HE sector and acknowledges that it is valuable to ensure Scotland’s cultural, social and economic sectors prosper. It is worth over £6 billion to our economy, and we must ensure that this continues. The Bill has the potential to harm Scotland’s world-renowned research. The Minister and this Government need to ensure that devolved Administrations have an equal say and that their voice is heard within UKRI to ensure that the Bill will be of no detriment to any part of the UK.

Amendment 55 deals with funding. The integrity of the dual support financial system must be protected, and the Bill does not go far enough to do that. We need to be sure that the balanced funding principle is clearly defined in the Bill to ensure that the integrity of the financial system set up within cross-border higher education sectors continues. Any flow of funds between reserved and devolved budgets needs to be clearly defined, and the Bill does not address how the balance of funding allocated through competitive funding streams will be supported. There is a serious worry that Research England funding could be taken from the UK-wide pot, of which Scotland’s and other devolved Administrations’ HE institutes rightly receive a share. If that pot were to diminish, it would be to the detriment of the Scottish HE sector and, indeed, those of Wales and Northern Ireland.

We are already seeing uncertainty about funding for our HE sector, thanks to the reckless gamble over Brexit. Is it right now that we should deprive our HE institutes by taking UK funding away from them, too? Many stakeholders in Scotland are concerned about the potential hazard that will be placed in their way because of the funding structure. Amendment 55 would ensure separate funding allocations for the research councils, Innovate UK and Research England.

Although Scotland performs well, as I have already mentioned, in attracting funding from Research Councils UK for grants, studentships and fellowships, Scotland does less well in infrastructure spending for research and currently only attracts 5% of UK spending. As with many things, a lot of this spending is concentrated on the south-east of England, and we want UKRI to have a full overview of research infrastructure across the UK.

We are very concerned that that clause 94 will allow the Secretary of State to alter the balance of funding between the research councils. Any grant to UKRI is ultimately research project funding, which should be competitively available throughout the UK. It is therefore necessary to have transparency about what goes to UKRI and what goes to Research England, given that that body will distribute funds for research infrastructure that is available only to English institutions.

We are extremely concerned that no provision in the Bill will ensure that the Secretary of State cannot give directions to UKRI to move funds in-year on its own initiative between constituent parts. If, for whatever reason, funds had to be moved by the Secretary of State between research councils and Research England or Innovate UK, this must happen only if the Scottish Government and other devolved Administrations give consent.

This SNP amendment would ensure that fairness and transparency are at the forefront of reserved funding allocation to UKRI and the allocation to Research England, while ensuring that the balanced funding principle is measured in relation to the proportion of funding allocated by the Secretary of State for reserved and for devolved England-only funding and providing clarity about when that might not be achieved.

--- Later in debate ---

On amendment 56, I would like to take this opportunity to be very clear that UK-wide research and innovation funding, as conducted through the research councils and Innovate UK, are reserved issues and will continue to be so after transition to UKRI. It is already the Secretary of State’s duty, as it is mine, to work for the interests of the whole of the UK. Similarly, it is the responsibility of the research councils and Innovate UK to operate on an equal basis across the UK. Primarily, this is achieved by funding projects selected through open competition on the basis of excellence. The fact that they do so effectively is widely recognised in the research and innovation communities, as recognised by the former vice-chancellor of the University of Dundee, Sir Alan Langlands, in the evidence he gave last month to the Public Bill Committee. The research community functions remarkably well across the UK political landscape, not least because the UK Government and the devolved Administrations work together to make it do so. We would not seek to bind UKRI into a restrictive process of consultation, as proposed in this amendment.

[Hywel Williams]

I am sure that the record will show whether the Minister said earlier, in respect of Government amendment 35, that membership would include at least one person or more with relevant experience in relation to at least one of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Is it “one person” with relevant experience or “one person or more”?

[Joseph Johnson]

It will be at least one person with experience of one or more of the devolved Administrations. To be absolutely explicit, the Government have tabled an amendment that places a duty on the Secretary of State to have regard to the desirability of having at least once such member. For the individual councils, we think it right that UKRI be free to appoint the very best people for these roles, and we expect it to appoint candidates with the highest levels of relevant skills and experience from a diverse range of backgrounds, both nationally and internationally.

On new clause 11, I absolutely agree with the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) that there must be proper monitoring of the international diversity of the research sector workforce. We already take this very seriously and collect and discuss such data, but let me reiterate the Government’s position on the importance of international researchers. As I have said, we remain fully open to scientists and researchers from across the EU, and we hugely value the contribution of EU and international staff. There has been no change to the rights and status of EU nationals in the UK or of UK citizens in the EU, as a result of the referendum. As the Prime Minister said in her letter copied to Venki Ramakrishnan, president of the Royal Society, only five days after she came into office:

“Our research base is enriched by the best minds from Europe and around the world – providing reassurance to these individuals and to UK researchers working in Europe will be a priority for the Government.”

Paris Agreement on Climate Change

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner]

I am delighted that the hon. Lady has referred to the Climate Change Act 2008 and to the fact that the commitments made under the Act are legally binding on us. Later in my speech, I shall examine exactly what the legislation stated and try to show precisely where the Government have deviated from it over the past couple of years. This is why we have been on a pathway of divergence rather than convergence in this House for the past two years. The bipartisan—indeed, cross-party—approach that used to obtain in the House on these matters has been severely tested by what has been seen as the Government’s backsliding on those legally binding commitments. I shall adumbrate that a little later.

Until this morning, it was not clear to me why the olive branch I had extended to the Government had been quite so haughtily ignored. Then I found out what the Minister had said to the Aldersgate Group and what the Secretary of State had quietly revealed to journalists at his departmental cocktail reception for the ladies and gentlemen of the press yesterday evening—[Interruption.] They laugh. They said candidly that they would not be publishing the carbon plan by the end of the year. Carbon plan? What is that?

This is not the kind of thing that any normal member of the public would think sounds terribly important. If I were to explain that it is really important because it is supposed to set out precisely how the Government are going to meet their carbon budget, that same hypothetical member of the public might look blank, because people do not talk in these terms. They do not talk in terms of carbon plans and carbon budgets; they talk in terms of effects, not budgets. They know that climate change is causing disruption across the world, with more flooding in some places and more drought in others, with stronger hurricanes and typhoons and with the loss of crops and arable land. They know that that is related to the emissions polluting our air and our children’s lungs, and these things are important to them.

That is precisely why we politicians agreed, back in 2008—under a Labour Government but very much on a cross-party basis—to limit the ways in which we were causing those problems. We agreed to reduce and limit those emissions that were changing the world with such devastating effect. That is why we created the Committee on Climate Change to set legally binding carbon budgets that would precisely limit the damage that we were doing, but we tasked it to ensure that we always adopted the most cost-efficient pathway, so that we could move towards the long-term target of at least an 80% reduction in admissions by 2050 at the lowest possible cost to the public, to industry and to business.

That is why this carbon plan is so important. How dare the Secretary of State let slip to a few journalists at a cocktail party that of course he will not be publishing the carbon plan by the end of this year? How dare the Minister reveal to the Aldersgate Group that he “may” find space in the timetable to publish it in 2017? May? May? I ask the Minister to read the primary legislation, which states that after the publication of a carbon budget, the Government must publish a plan to put it into effect

“as soon as is reasonably practicable”

thereafter. The fourth carbon budget was published in 2011. Five and a half years later, we still have no carbon plan. My grasp of the English language is not so weak that I would think that five and a half years, during which we have had a change of Government and a new Prime Minister, constitutes “as soon as is reasonably practicable”. And now the Minister says that he “may” get around to doing this in 2017.

Earlier this year, the Government promised that the reason for the delay was simply that they now wanted to include their measures for achieving the fifth carbon budget in the plan, which they set almost three weeks later than the legislation required. This is another area in which the Government have lost the people’s confidence. The primary legislation is very clear. It states that a carbon budget must be deposited on 30 June 12 years before it comes into effect. The Government published it before then, but they did not set it in legislation, as was required by law, until 19 July—almost three weeks late.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman is making the point that publishing the carbon plan would be very good and a useful next step. He spoke earlier about the pertinence of climate change to ordinary people on the street. The reality is that 222,000 homes in Wales are in danger of flooding. The current cost of remedying that danger would be about £200 million, and that cost is certain to grow. This demonstrates the need for urgency.

[Barry Gardiner]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. When we talk about such matters in terms of carbon plans and carbon budgets, it can seem as though we are talking about a world separate from that understood by the people who listen to us. They understand when their homes are being flooded. They know that such things are the effects of climate change. What they need to know is that we are following what was the best legislative model in the world when it was set out in 2008 with cross-party agreement under the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). We achieved that here and it has become a model across the world, but we must follow it and the tragedy is that this Government have been backsliding.

The reason Ministers could not accept the cross-party olive branch that I extended was that, the night before, they knew that they were about to admit to the world that they still had not a single clue about how they were going to meet the promises and targets that they had already made to keep the UK safe from climate change. They knew that they were not even going to commit to a new deadline by when they might put such a plan together and that to come to this Chamber today—all smiles—in a cross-party endeavour to ratify the Paris agreement would have exposed them to the accusation of being arrogant hypocrites. They have avoided that charge, but they have opened themselves up to an infinite number more: incompetence, dithering, anti-business, anti-investment. They are a party divided between those who circle on the Back Benches saying that all these budgets and plans are just costly “green crap” and that we should get on with a future industrial strategy based on fossil fuels and the few sane heads, some of whom are in the Chamber today—[Interruption.]