Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 20th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am talking about the banking system generally, and I am saying that it is important that people should have banking facilities regardless of their political views. It is important that Russian oligarchs may be sanctioned—that is a legitimate thing for Governments to do—but that requires the rule of law.

I want to touch briefly on some of the other amendments to which I have attached my name. I once again agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) on new clauses 24 and—particularly—25. Putting the consumer first must be the essence of what we are trying to do. To my absolute horror, I have discovered that I agree with him on turning some of these measures into secondary legislation.

Skeleton Bills are a dreadful thing. We get awful legislation coming into the House on which there is no detail at all because it will all be decided by Ministers later. Such Bills should be deprecated. The House of Lords is good at pushing back on them; this House less so. Skeleton Bills are bad idea—except, there is a place for secondary legislation, and that is it. For some utterly random reason, a Government who have brought forward extraordinary skeleton Bills, some of which I could mention and have mentioned in the Chamber on occasions, have brought forward every last detail on something that, in its essence, will need revision and updating and to meet different standards as time goes by. It is a modest eccentricity to have put that in the Bill. I suggest that, in the other place, the Government look at whether that detail could be easily turned into secondary instruments, with such instruments ready to come into force at the same time as the Bill, so there would be no delay. That structurally would make for a better Bill. I am embarrassed to be speaking in favour of secondary legislation, because normally I want to see things in the Bill. If we could have a promise of fewer skeleton Bills in future, I would be delighted.

Against that, I could not disagree more with new clauses 29 and 30. Those make a real mistake—dare I say it, they are typical socialist amendments—because they do not trust people. It seems to me that people are sensible: they know what they are doing, they volunteer to do it, and they are free to undo it. Yes, of course, it is important that they should be free to undo it, but there is a cost to over-regulation. If we make companies write all the time to say, “Are you sure you want to do this?” that puts up the price. The profit margin for the business will not change, but the price that they charge consumers will. If they are constantly saying, “Do you want to leave us?” that will put the price up, because there will be an administrative and bureaucratic cost to that, and a loss of business that will put up the overall cost for everybody. It is legislating for inefficiency based on the idea that consumers are stupid. Well, in North East Somerset, consumers are very clever, highly intelligent, and know what they have agreed to and what they have not agreed to.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare. His new clause 31 is genius because it gets to the heart of an incredibly complicated and difficult matter that no other piece of legislation that we have tried has really worked with. Even the one in, one out that we had from 2010 to 2015 did not really work. I seem to remember reading that the Crown’s ownership of sturgeon was cancelled during this period because it counted as a “one out”, allowing some regulation to come in, no doubt costing millions, as we got rid of something trivial. One in, one out was not really there, but this new clause does it on a proper cost audit and looks ultimately to cover everything. That is absolutely the right way to go. My hon. Friend made the superb point that whenever any type of Government expenditure is involved, it is looked at, reviewed and referred to a Committee, yet when regulations worth billions are involved, they pass through without so much as by your leave. This is a really important new clause and I encourage the Government to do whatever they can to implement it.

A final thought before I conclude is on petrol stations. This is very good news. Why is it that the Tesco’s in Paulton is more expensive than the local service station in Ubley? I use the local service station in Ubley because it is better value for money, but Tesco’s in Paulton is more expensive than the Tesco’s on the outskirts of Bristol. That is very unfair on my constituents and I want it to bring its price down.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Every little helps.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. We all have that image in our head now, of which particular supermarket you are talking about.

As other hon. Members have said, this Bill is much needed and will help in so many ways. Hon. Members have sought to address a number of vexed issues in this legislation. This includes an attempt, through our Opposition amendment 225, to address drip pricing, which I know as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse is especially prevalent in the primary and secondary ticketing markets. In these markets, customers often have to wait until the payment screen to see a complete price breakdown. In the secondary market, customers are often drawn in by Google-paid ads to professional looking sites such as Viagogo, which are selling tickets for many times their face value and engaging in illicit business practices. Initial prices, while eye-watering, are present, but there is no breakdown of the exact amounts for service charges or VAT.

The consumer is left in the dark about what they are actually paying for until it is time to pay, usually after having navigated many more time-wasting pages on the website and almost losing the will to live and the power of rational thought. Even then, the prices are often still estimates when the customer eventually hits “Buy now”, after feeling that they will lose the tickets if they do not make the decision quickly. Lots of customers still get a nasty surprise when the payment confirmation email comes in and they see the actual amount that has been taken from their bank account or credit card.

Moving on more broadly to the Competition and Markets Authority, I am aware that the CMA made its recommendations on tackling abuses in the ticketing market to the Government in August 2021, which the Department for Culture, Media and Sport then sat on for over 18 months before making an outright rejection of them. Principally, these recommendations called for stronger laws to tackle illegal ticket resale, and this Bill could and should have been—and could still be—the perfect place to introduce those powers. I am therefore very disappointed that the Government are still resisting these modest calls from the body set up to regulate our markets.

I support efforts in the Bill to ensure healthy competition online, but why not extend it to tackle online ticket touts? Sites such as Viagogo have been allowed to grow and gain a monopoly over ticket resales while being accused of benefiting from the illegal bulk buying of tickets and the wholesale speculative selling of tickets that they simply do not have. This includes Viagogo sellers attempting to sell thousands of festival tickets that they had not purchased and did not have the title to, as well as something known as the golden circle, an online rent-a-bot group illegally buying masses of tickets for the upcoming tours of Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, even when artists such as Swift actively speak out against touting and take measures to protect their tickets from ending up in the hands of touts instead of fans.

Artificial Intelligence

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I remind everybody that following the end of the debate that is about to begin, we will have a statement on the migration and economic development partnership. Anybody wishing to ask a question in that debate should start to make their way to the Chamber as soon as the wind-ups in the artificial intelligence debate begin.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I am delighted that the Chancellor has set aside £4 billion to help families with young children. I am less delighted with how he is choosing to spend it. I am referring to the massive expansion of the 30-hour childcare scheme to include babies from the age of nine months. The stated aim of this policy is to get parents back into work and to grow the economy, but unfortunately it will probably fail on both counts. It will not get parents back into work, and the evidence of that comes from the current 30-hour offer for three and four-year-olds, which has had limited success, with only 40% of eligible families using their full entitlement. That is not surprising, because it is not free and it is inflexible, being restricted to only 38 weeks a year and between 9 am and 3 pm—not many jobs fit those requirements.

Polling shows that a great many parents would understandably prefer to look after their children themselves. A recent IFS study showed that free childcare does not have a significant impact on parents’ childcare and work decisions. If these are the problems with the three to four-year-old offer, they will be even more acute with the nine months to two years offer. We are also forgetting that families in this country keep so little of what they earn that it is often not worth going back to work even if the childcare is cheaper.

The Treasury and others keep repeating the mantra that British parents face the highest childcare costs in the western world. That is not actually true. The absolute costs of childcare in the UK are similar to those in other countries. The problem is that British families’ childcare costs are a higher proportion of families’ net income than in comparable countries. So the problem is not the childcare costs; it is the low net income. That is the result of taking so much money off parents in tax, in comparison with other countries, combined with meagre child benefits, also in comparison with other countries.

The root of this problem is our unique individual taxation system, which does not recognise households with children and results in British families paying three, four, five, or even 10 times the amount of tax as families in other countries. It particularly penalises single-earner households or households with a large difference in earnings between the two partners. Under this policy, for example, a mother might return to work because the childcare costs are now reduced. She might earn a £20,000 gross salary, out of which she has to pay taxation, national insurance, pension contributions, student loan repayments and travel costs, while her universal credit and childcare top-ups could be withdrawn. Out of her gross salary of a little under £1,700 a month, she will be lucky to keep £290. That is an effective tax rate of nearly 80%. Some people will return to work for that, but many will not because of what they are losing in time with their children, so I do not expect take-up to be high.

Will this policy grow the economy? It might increase GDP if more people return to the employment market, but what does it mean in real terms for real people’s lives? Will GDP per capita grow? I think that is highly unlikely, because when mothers return to work it creates more low-paying jobs in childcare and elderly care—important but low-paying jobs—which increases the gender pay gap. This has happened in Denmark, for example, which has three times the gender pay gap that we have here in the UK.

I do not believe the policy will see mums flooding back to work and I do not think it will grow the economy in meaningful terms, but even if I am wrong, I still believe it is the wrong policy because it is the wrong policy for children. What is best for baby in the early years? The bond between mother and child is probably the strongest human relationship there is. This is not just a soppy feeling; it is a highly evolved survival mechanism, and strong attachment in the early years pays dividends in later life. There are many great people in the childcare sector, but no one replaces mummy.

It is heartbreaking when mothers feel they have no choice but to leave their babies in childcare from a very young age because of the financial imperative. Yes, there is a cost of living problem, and many women want to work for all sorts of reasons and should absolutely be supported to do so, but the issue for many families is not the cost of childcare per se, any more than it is the cost of food or energy; it is the inability to live on one income when children are young. This is what separates many women from their children: not choice, but tragic necessity.

The Treasury thinks the answer to our financial challenges is to send more mothers to work. I think the answer is to support all families in the early years to give parents a choice. We have £4 billion for this new policy and £4 billion for existing policies, so why not use this to fund a move to household taxation and to increase child benefits? Why not spend that £6,500 a year per child in a different way, to give parents the choice of how they spend it, perhaps on formal childcare, on informal childcare or on spending fewer hours in the workplace?

Elite feminism might say that motherhood is drudgery and inferior to paid work outside the home, but that is only true if we believe that status and meaning derive principally from our salary and status in the workplace. “I wish I’d spent more time in the office instead of with my small children”, said no one on their deathbed ever. Those making these policies think of women with high-flying, highly paid careers, and of course those women should be supported to stay in work and maintain their careers, but that is not most women. Most women have jobs, not careers. As Dan Hitchens wrote in UnHerd last week, those advocating for these policies

“assume that taking your little one to Wriggle and Rhyme at the public library is an unutterable burden, whereas stacking shelves or updating spreadsheets is a liberation of the human spirit.”

It is fundamentally un-Conservative to spend £4 billion separating parents from their babies in the pursuit of marginal gains to GDP. We offer tax breaks and incentives to reduce costs for companies investing in the economy. Why not offer the same to families nurturing the source of our future economic success? I commend the amount of money being spent on the early years, but please can it be used to offer parents a choice and babies the best start in life?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I remind the House that the wind-ups will start no later than 9.40 pm, and that everybody who has taken part in the debate will be expected to be present for them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is a terrible Budget from a busted-flush Government. We have heard from the other side, “Give them another chance—the new Tory dynamic duo of Rishi and Jezza.” They certainly talk the talk on growth, debt, inflation and the NHS, but do they walk the walk? The answer is no.

We have seen stagnant growth for 13 years, with no real prospect of it being any better than the worst in the G7 in the year to come. Let us compare that with what happened under a Labour Government. In 10 years we saw the economy grow by 40%, and we used the money to double investment in health and education and lift a million children and a million pensioners out of poverty. With that level of growth—that trend growth—we would have been £11,000 better off in terms of average wages. The Prime Minister says “That’s not my fault”, but during much of the time during which we have seen this decay and mismanagement, he was the Chancellor.

What about debt? Since the last Labour Government, debt as a share of the economy has doubled from 45% of the economy to 90%. That is an appalling record, and an indictment of this Government’s failed austerity platform. As for inflation, the Government’s ambition is to halve it from 10% to 5%. According to the forecasts it will be 3%, so it should not be that difficult. People seem to think this will reduce prices. Obviously, if inflation is 10% and then becomes 5%, prices will have gone up by 15%; and if the Government are offering workers at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Swansea 2%—in fact, a 13% pay cut—it is no wonder that they are on strike. This Government are busy causing strikes left, right and centre. If the RMT’s original bid of 7%, from before it went on strike, had been accepted, we would not be in the position where now the workers are—deservedly, in fact—getting 14%. We have had this disruption and chaos because of Tory mismanagement, because the Government will not negotiate. They just create strikes.

We are told that we have to live within our means. That is all very well for the Chancellor, who is a millionaire, or indeed for the Prime Minister, who is a billionaire. He has his hedge fund Theleme, which appreciated from £7 billion to £39 billion after the Government decided to buy the Moderna vaccine as recommended by the then Health Secretary, who has since made his money in the jungle.

What about waiting lists? We have waiting lists of 7 million people—are we going to get those down under this Government? We know that the cost of treating someone with low nourishment is something like £7,000 compared with £2,000 for someone who is properly fed, yet in Britain today one in four people are in food poverty. The inequality created by this Government is making the health service worse, not better, and the billion pound that they have put into pension fund tax relief will not make it better. The workers are being blamed, of course, for inciting pay demands, but wage growth is in fact down now, year on year, from 6% to 5.7%, at a time when inflation is well over that.

Who else is going to pay? Of course, homeowners have to pay. They have to help bring down inflation. How? By bringing down the price of houses by 8%. So new homeowners will see mortgage rates double or triple from 2% to 6% at a time when the value of their houses is going down—and they are supposed to be the growth creators of the future. The Bank of England’s base rate has gone from 0.1% in November 2021 to 4% now. The economy has gone out of control under Tory mismanagement.

And what about businesses? The Government talk about businesses, but we now have record insolvencies. They are up 30% since 2020. Material prices and energy prices are going up, borrowing costs are going up and demand is weak, so businesses are struggling.

We have heard about R&D in this debate, and as I have mentioned, in Wales 1,000 university staff at the cutting edge of developing green growth initiatives are being sacked because the promise of us getting “not a penny less” after the withdrawal of the EU structural funding has been broken by this Government. We are talking about losing innovative projects to turn waste plastic into nanocarbon tubes for electric vehicles. We are talking about converting steel slag heaps back into raw materials such as iron ore. We are talking about work with Tata Steel on cladding for homes that stores solar energy as well as absorbing it. On infrastructure, Wales has had just a 1.5% share of rail enhancement for decades for 5% of the population—we are not even getting our 5% for HS2.

There has been profiteering—we have seen the oil companies and the retail companies making profits out of the Ukraine war and the pandemic respectively, and we have seen natural monopolies such as the water companies profiteering. It is not good enough. The Tories are saying, “Trust us again”, even after the inflation, after the debt, after the lack of growth, after one in four have been living in poverty and after a 15% cut in trade. No, no, no! We want a stronger, fairer, greener future, and that will only come with a Labour Government. Let us have an election, put the country out of its misery and build a better future with the Labour party.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Could Members who have taken part in today’s debate please make their way to the Chamber, as this will be the 43rd and final contribution from the Back Benches?

Science and Technology Framework

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

I thank the hon. Member for her comments, but in reality it is this Government who are here today delivering jobs and a better future for the British public. As I said in my statement, we are focusing not only on actions today, but on a strategic long-term approach to ensure that we are a science and technology superpower by 2030.

The hon. Member said that there are more technologies than the five that we have identified. Of course there are. The ones we have identified are the key strategic ones, but there is a great deal of work that my ministerial team and I are doing. On funding, we are investing £20 billion by 2024-25, as we have said on the record. The £370 million that we announced yesterday is a new spending commitment that we had not previously outlined. On geographical spread across the nation, we have made a strategic commitment to ensure that 55% of the spend is outside the south-east.

The framework that we have set out is just one part of the work that my Department is doing. Let us not forget that it was established just four weeks ago. In one month, we have not only published a comprehensive framework plan, but got on with key actions to drive the agenda forward. This Government mean business. We have worked very hard in the past few weeks to talk collaboratively with industry and with researchers.

I am not going to take the Opposition’s word about what is wrong. Let us have a look at what experts and people on the ground have to say. Professor Sir Ian Boyd, president of the Royal Society of Biology, says:

“Science and technology is already a central plank of modern life. Putting this centre-stage in government strategy is essential and welcome.”

Professor Julia Black, president of the British Academy, says:

“The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s announcements reaffirm the Government’s ambition to put the UK at the forefront of global research, development and innovation”.

I could go on all day long, because our announcement has been wholeheartedly welcomed.

The hon. Member asked about Horizon. This is an announcement about our framework—that is what is on the annunciator screen—and not about Horizon, but I will answer her question anyway. We have not changed our position on Horizon. For the past two years, we have tried to associate. It was in the original deal, and we welcome the comments from the EU. Of course, terms would have to be favourable for the UK—we have lost two years—and we would have to ensure value for money for the taxpayer. We cannot wait around for another two years, because we want to put our researchers first. That is why we have done the responsible and right thing and worked up a plan B, which stands ready should we need it, but our position on Horizon has not changed. We look forward to continuing our conversations with the EU.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee on Science and Technology.

[Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to welcome my right hon. Friend and her ministerial team to their positions. It has been some years since a Science Minister stood at the Dispatch Box as a Secretary of State; I hope that she and her team will have a very successful tenure. I warmly welcome the priority that the Government are giving to science and technology at one of the most exciting times for it since the first industrial revolution. My Committee looks forward to welcoming her to discuss her work and the framework.

I have a few specific questions. First, can my right hon. Friend commit that the £1.65 billion from the science budget that was returned to the Treasury last week as part of the supplementary estimates will go back to the science budget and has not been lost? Secondly, I am interested in what she says about Horizon. Will she say when the negotiations will begin? She rightly says that they cannot go on forever, but how long will she allow them to continue before plan B is enacted? Finally, what mechanisms are in place to ensure that in areas such as battery technology, which is a responsibility of her Department, of the Department for Business and Trade and of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, there is a united and coherent approach across Government so that investors know what the policy is and who to deal with?

--- Later in debate ---

[Michelle Donelan]

The framework that we set up yesterday is the strategic overarching plan for how we get to be a science and technology superpower. Of course, we are working on many other strands to ensure that we can drive forward those policies to achieve those goals, including the life science vision.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

You have had some good exercise, Mr Fell.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—last but not least.

I warmly welcome this statement, and I welcome the Secretary of State and her fantastic team to the Front Bench. This statement is great news for science, and the £370 million deposit towards turning the UK into a science superpower is welcome. My constituents will be glad to hear it, as we are trying to get the Ulverston life sciences cluster off the ground. Will the Secretary of State agree to meet me and the GSK taskforce to see how it can best engage with the strategy and take it forward?

[Michelle Donelan]

I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to discuss what is happening in his constituency. I think it will improve his constituents’ lives with more jobs and better paid jobs, but it will also improve the lives of all our constituents. This is how we drive forward our economy, how we grow our economy, how we create better paid jobs, how we improve our healthcare and how we tackle climate change. My constituents are asking me for all those things, and it is this Government who are delivering this proactive, outcomes-based approach.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the Secretary of State for her statement, and for responding to questions for more than three quarters of an hour.

Bills Presented

Illegal Migration Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Secretary Suella Braverman, supported by the Prime Minister, Secretary Dominic Raab, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary James Cleverly, Secretary Gillian Keegan and Robert Jenrick, presented a Bill to make provision for and in connection with the removal from the United Kingdom of persons who have entered or arrived in breach of immigration control; to make provision about detention for immigration purposes; to make provision about unaccompanied children; to make provision about victims of slavery or human trafficking; to make provision about leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom; to make provision about citizenship; to make provision about the inadmissibility of certain protection and certain human rights claims relating to immigration; to make provision about the maximum number of persons entering the United Kingdom annually using safe and legal routes; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 262) with explanatory notes (Bill 262-EN).

Online Abuse (Reporting) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Christine Jardine, supported by Wera Hobhouse, Munira Wilson, Helen Morgan, Sarah Olney and Richard Foord, presented a Bill to require social media companies to publish reports setting out the action they have taken to address online abuse against women and girls, and other groups of people who share a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 24 March, and to be printed (Bill 263).