Vaccine Passports

Steve Baker Excerpts

Monday 15th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I refer Members to the declarations that I have made in relation to the covid recovery group.

“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own”—

I quote, of course, from the popular 1967 drama “The Prisoner”. It seems to me that nothing has changed in some people’s desire to treat us as commodities to be managed by the state, yet what has changed is the availability of technology to make it so.

I am very grateful to my constituents who have written to me about this matter. We have had a prior debate on this subject, or at least a debate in which I raised this subject, and I thought that the Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), had ruled out vaccine passports. I am very grateful, therefore, to have this opportunity to hear from the Minister at this stage in the review through this petition, and I am grateful to the petitioners.

I also thank Big Brother Watch, which has provided a very helpful brief, with nine reasons why covid passes must be stopped. I will briefly race through as many as I can squeeze in. First, they will be unnecessary due to the availability of effective vaccines. Indeed, the Government’s amazing success in rolling out vaccines means that those most vulnerable to covid-19, and soon anyone who wants and is medically eligible for a vaccine, will have a high level of protection from the virus. That means that hospitalisations and deaths associated with covid will fall drastically, and overbearing controls on society will not be justified.

I know that the Government are now looking at covid status certificates, which bring into play the issue of mass testing. Of course, the ground has been sown with salt on the issue of false positives, I am sorry to say, often by some apparently eminent people who lamentably neglected the practical evidence from hospitals of real people with real disease, so I hesitate to bring up the issue. But it has to be said that, as we reach an era of low prevalence of the disease, if we carry out mass testing on asymptomatic people, the issue of false positives will undoubtedly be relevant. We need to hear from the Minister what she is going to do to ensure that people who test falsely positive with lateral flow tests, and indeed PCR—polymerase chain reaction—tests, do not end up deprived of their liberty unnecessarily. We very much need to hear from the Government about that.

Of course, vaccine passports would be discriminatory. They would have the effect of socially and economically excluding people who have not had either a vaccine or a recent test result. It is of course unlawful under equality law to discriminate against people with protected characteristics, including age, disability, pregnancy, religion or belief—I underscore belief. I shall have my vaccine when I am offered it, but there will be various people for various reasons who will choose not to do so.

Effectively making vaccines mandatory by implication through covid status certification could be counter-productive. The evidence from across Europe shows that if people feel compelled to take vaccines, it puts them off. It would implement, of course, a checkpoint society. It would mean passes for the pub—if you want your pint, Sir David, you will have to show your papers. I did not think that is the society that we wished to live in. A surveillance state would be instituted. There would be mission creep. Passes would be irreversible and divisive, and of course they would infringe on the autonomy of the individual. I lament that I do not have time to go through each of those points in detail, but I will certainly provide the brief to the Minister afterwards.

I want to finish with another quote from “The Prisoner”—something that I ask people advocating for these certification regimes to bear in mind. No. 2 says:

“We can treat folly with kindness…knowing that soon his wild spirit will quieten, and the foolishness will fall away to reveal a model citizen.”

No. 6 replies:

“That day you’ll never see.”

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[The Paymaster General (Penny Mordaunt)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I congratulate all Members who spoke in the debate and who helped to secure it, particularly the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill). I also congratulate the petitioner and everyone who signed the petition that has led to the debate, which is timely for a number of reasons. First, it is a pre-emptive strike, because the covid status certification review has yet to commence—indeed, as was alluded to, its terms of reference and the detail of what it will consider were published today; that information can be looked at on the Government website. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will lead on this and will primarily look at the domestic-facing issues that many Members referred to. The review goes wider than vaccinations, taking in testing and an array of other issues. To be helpful to hon. Members, let me say that, in parallel, a cross-Government group chaired by the Secretary of State for Transport is working on the international-facing and travel issues that Members have spoken about. That feeds into the work of the covid team in the Cabinet Office, and CDL has ultimate responsibility for that.

The review will report in advance of step 4 on the road map, which, as hon. Members will know, will be reached no earlier than 21 June. The review has come about in part because in spring, the Government committed in their covid-19 response to reviewing the potential role of certification in our handling of covid-19 from summer onwards. The review will assess whether certification could play a role in opening up the economy and society, reducing restrictions on social contact and improving safety. I reassure hon. Members that we very much want to return to our normal way of life, which means not just lifting restrictions, but having all the other things that we previously enjoyed and have missed over the last 12 months.

The review will consider the extent to which certification would be effective in reducing risk and helping to open up parts of the economy. It will look at the ethical, privacy, legal and operational aspects of certification and their implications for those who are unwilling or unable to be vaccinated, the equalities implications, to which hon. Members have referred, and the impact of certification on groups who are disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

[Mr Steve Baker]

There are many questions that I would love to ask, but I will ask one in particular. Can the Minister confirm that, if people choose not to get vaccinated, they will bear their own responsibility and the rest of us will not be held back because some people have made a personal choice not to have the vaccine? If they do not want the vaccine, that is fine, but they should not hold the rest of us back.

[Penny Mordaunt]

I cannot give my hon. Friend many answers today, as the review has just started, but what I would say to him is that, in all of this, we have to remember that the reason why we are charting our way out of this situation is, yes, in part due to fantastic science and the success of the vaccine programme, but also that members of the public have taken care of and taken responsibility for themselves and other people. We have not legislated for that to happen; it has happened because people feel motivated to take responsibility. We have to remember in all of this that, even though we are very used to passing laws talking about enforcement and all those other things, ultimately this has been about the British public taking responsibility for themselves, their families and their communities.

I thank the hon. Member for Hartlepool for setting out at the start of the debate why this is not a call from anti-vaxxers or covid sceptics. It is not. Legitimate questions are being raised about our freedoms and the practicalities and the implications of this for people who are disproportionately affected by covid. The hon. Gentleman also raised the issue of the degree of control we have over decisions that may be taken in international forums. As I understand it, any international agreement would be years off; an initiative spearheaded, for example, by the World Health Organisation, would be many years down the line. We are in control of what we decide about our own borders and our own systems, but clearly my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport and others are talking to international counterparts to get something that makes sense and also to learn from good practice.

The hon. Gentleman also spoke about those who are not able to have the vaccine. People have spoken about physical health conditions, but there are also mental health conditions. I have been speaking to people who have a severe phobia of needles and could not in any way be injected. I know that vaccine companies are looking at alternatives, but at the moment we do not have those alternatives.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) spoke very powerfully, as he always does, about our freedoms. As an aside, I will say that I looked up the powerful Patrick McGoohan quote that he gave from “The Prisoner”. I have to say that my hon. Friend did not say the preceding two lines, which were:

“I will not make any deals with you”,

and,

“I’ve resigned”,

although he has used those in other debates. But he does make a very powerful case about the practicalities. Would this actually have a practical effect if we were to bring it in? He raised very important points about equality. I can confirm that those are in the terms of reference for the review. Also, I hope he will take some comfort from what Ministers have said in the past about papers for having a pint. I think that that is the approach that people want to take, but it is right that we look at these issues and look at them in a transparent way. Again, this debate will help to inform and steer the review.

Government Response to Covid-19

Steve Baker Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Sir Charles, I am absolutely delighted that you are in the Chair, and I am sure my right hon. Friend the Minister is glad too. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) on securing the debate, and I am glad that he did so.

Having had the privilege of being a Minister with cross-Government responsibilities, I want to begin by reflecting on just how magnificently effective the Government have been in many ways in responding to the covid-19 outbreak. I regret that I will not be able to enumerate in five minutes all the ways in which they have been high performing, but I will touch on a few.

Starting locally, Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust has been absolutely outstanding. It is under the leadership of Neil Macdonald, and I could not have asked for more from our local NHS, which has responded flexibly, kept services going and looked after the public. I do not mind putting on the record that even though I am fine and I got the all-clear, I had a genuine cancer scare in the course of the first lockdown. I was therefore delighted that cancer services were continuing and that I was able to have the necessary tests to discover I was fine. However, it was a frightening moment, and I was grateful to the healthcare trust for making its services available uninterrupted, as far as I experienced them, throughout the crisis.

Buckinghamshire Council is so effective and dynamic that I could almost become an advocate of the ephemeral term “the entrepreneurial state”. I have been delighted with how the council has risen to the challenge of looking after local people, whether that was those who needed food delivered, local children or the homeless. I am delighted by the council’s performance. Fire, ambulance and GPs have all also risen to the challenge. This is about Government effectiveness, so I will not touch on the private sector, but I am grateful to it too. I have been delighted, both personally and on behalf of my electors, by the performance of the full spectrum of local public services.

The Treasury’s performance in delivering economic support has been absolutely tremendous. The gaps in support have been well rehearsed and argued over, and I will not go over them again here. I suspect it is futile to ask my right hon. Friends to close the gaps in support, but I particularly plead for the self-employed earning just over £50,000 a year. They have been especially hard hit, and there are a number of other groups, which we do not need to go through now. However, I encourage the Government to close those gaps. The key point with the Treasury is how easy it is to forget just what a stellar performance it was to get the furlough scheme, the self-employed schemes and the various loan schemes in place as fast as it did. It was an absolutely incredible performance.

We could also talk about the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government getting the homeless off the streets, apart from those who did not want to be reached, as far as I can tell, and about the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Cabinet Office, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Department for Education.

However, I want to press one issue with my right hon. Friend the Minister, which is PPE supplies. It has been raised already, and it has rather dropped off the radar between waves. I hope that in the next wave we do not find we have any shortages of PPE. I do not think the public will take that kindly at all. In the Department of Health and Social Care, there has been tremendous success with testing, and we are now looking forward with energy and enthusiasm, I think, to a further expansion of testing, particularly in Liverpool.

In my remaining minute and a half, I want to touch on some suggestions in terms of areas for improvement. I have four, if I can rattle through them. The first, which is possibly the one that has been most alive in our minds this week, and which hon. Friends have touched on already, is the communication of complex data. In particular, the modelled death projections have quickly been shown to be out of date, never accurate and not the most relevant factor to the decision—yet they are repeatedly put to us. I use those three factors because those are what come out of the answers I have been given. Every time officials and Ministers have shown us those charts, it has been like sunshine on the morning mist—the importance of the charts has just evaporated when prodded. That is regrettable; I will try not to go any further than that. This Government are supposed to be very good at communicating complex data. There are some exceptional data scientists in the Government—it has been my privilege to have contact with them over the last week, and these are really impressive people—but something went wrong when those charts came out.

The second area is expert advice. I have made some proposals for competitive multidisciplinary expert advice with red teams. I thank the Government for letting me be a red team. Modelling also needs to be improved; I will make some suggestions. Finally, there is cost-benefit analysis. It might be practically impossible to give us a cost-benefit analysis, but in the context of these momentous decisions, we really should be looking at some figures to help inform our choices.

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[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) for securing the debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and I am sorry for his recent loss.

I do not want to be negative, but I am going to be quite negative, so I apologise up front. There is a lot that the Government—especially Treasury—have done that is extremely good, and I know that all Ministers are working as hard as they can, but I am concerned that people are losing faith in their use of data and science. Because the debate is such an important one, I want to focus on that and to park a lot of the good stuff, although I am not ignoring it.

First, scientists are becoming increasingly sceptical about the use of lockdowns. Edinburgh’s Professor Woolhouse says that lockdowns are a strategy that is “visibly failing”. Oxford’s Carl Heneghan—thank God for him—says that lockdowns push peaks into the future, just requiring more lockdowns. Anyone who thinks we are all coming out of lockdown on 2 December is living in a parallel universe. One can dream about it, but frankly the reality is slight. Sunetra Gupta has said:

“Lockdown is a blunt...policy that forces the poorest and most vulnerable people to bear the brunt of…coronavirus.”

Everyone making decisions about coronavirus is in a well-paid job with a cushy pension. There are many people who are suffering about whom one cannot say that. The WHO says that lockdowns are a last resort.

So disturbed are Heneghan and Tom Jefferson by the use of Government stats—the predictions, projections and illustrations—that they have said that the Government’s use of them is “abysmal”. I would love to know from the Minister why she thinks that senior independent scientists are being quite so caustic about the Government’s use of facts.

One reason, as far as I can see, is Professor Ferguson and Imperial College. I shall be careful what I say, because they are professionals and worthy of respect, but Professor Ferguson has for 20 years had a history of predicting mass death from almost every public health emergency. I am not a scientist, so I will not quote myself; instead, I will quote a bunch of other people, because it is strongly in the public interest that the Government, as a matter of urgency, conduct a peer review of the evidence that they have been receiving.

Johan Giesecke, Sweden’s former chief epidemiologist, said Ferguson’s model was “not very good”. In academia that is fighting talk. The Washington Post quoted him as saying that the forecasts were almost hysterical. Lund University applied Ferguson’s models and found a massive difference between his predictions and what happened. Professor Angus Dalgleish said that there had been “lurid predictions”. Viscount Ridley has criticised Ferguson’s modellings. Professor Michael Thrusfield of the University of Edinburgh said that Ferguson’s modelling on foot and mouth was “severely flawed”. John Ioannidis of Stanford University said that

“major assumptions and estimates that are built in the calculations…seem to be substantially inflated”,

although he did say that the Imperial team seemed to be professional.

Other experts whom I have spoken to say that Imperial’s work is almost always an extreme outlier to normal forecasts. Yet it seems that the Government, because of their risk-averse nature—which I understand—have taken outliers as the norm, which they categorically are not. Let us look at Ferguson’s predictions: 150,000 deaths from foot and mouth disease, when the figure was between 50 and 50,000; 150 million worldwide from bird flu, when 282 died; and 65,000 British deaths from swine flu, when 457 died. I know that mitigations take place afterwards, but the Government need to look into some of the advice they are getting, because I think it is highly dangerous. Members of SAGE yesterday were arguing for a total shutdown, including schools, and I really wonder whether the Government are losing the plot over this. We are obsessive about the risks of covid.

[Mr Steve Baker]

I had a meeting earlier, which my hon. Friend knows about, with Sir Jeremy Farrar. One thing that he explained to me is that if schools are left open, that adds 0.3 to 0.4 to R, so if we are going into lockdown for a month, it is a big compromise. The Government needs to explain why their strategy is consistent with leaving schools open, much as I applaud the fact they will be there.

[Bob Seely]

Where is there any sense of balance? I speak personally, and I know the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) lost somebody recently. Over the last decade, both my parents died of winter respiratory flu, and that was really upsetting for me. Three years ago, 22,000 people died of winter flu. According to the logic of some hon. Members of this House, we would effectively have to shut down our lives for six months of the year in case people die. A bizarrely dangerous precedent is being set, whereby the Government now believe they can effectively halt death.

Once upon a time, we would go to someone’s funeral when they hit 85 or over—my dad made it to his mid-80s—and talk about a life well led. Now, if someone dies of covid several years above the national average lifespan, politicians are saying it is the greatest disaster facing humanity and must never happen again.

I understand the virulent nature of covid, and I understand the impact on the NHS, although I thought the NHS was there to protect us, not the other way around. We need some semblance of balance; if the Government were using statistics honestly, openly and transparently and, on balance, came down on the side of lockdown, that would be fine. However, lockdown is a dubious tool and the way we are presenting the data is a hazardous way to approach the subject.

Covid-19: Disparate Impact

Steve Baker Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank the hon. Lady for that question. I co-hosted a roundtable on maternal mortality rates for ethnic minority women with the Minister for Patient Safety, Mental Health and Suicide Prevention on 2 September, to develop appropriate solutions to benefit pregnant women and their babies during this period. Given that covid-19 has fundamentally changed the way that women access maternity services, the national maternity safety champion and chief midwifery officer for England published a four-point plan for all maternity services in England to follow. That includes increasing support for at-risk pregnant women, reaching out to and reassuring pregnant ethnic minority women with tailored communications, ensuring that hospitals discuss vitamin supplements and nutrition in pregnancy with all women, and ensuring that all providers record on maternity information systems the ethnicity of every woman, as well as other risk factors. This topic has been of particular interest to me, because I returned from maternity leave after having my third child this year, so it is close to my heart. I am doing quite a lot of work on it and will continue to do so.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I welcome the appointment of independent experts on covid-19 and ethnicity, such as Wycombe resident Dr Raghib Ali. What main risk factors has my hon. Friend identified, working with them, to explain why BAME communities are so disproportionately affected? Will she take steps to make those risks more apparent to the individuals affected?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Ali and Professor Neal, specialist epidemiologists and health technology advisers who are experts on covid-19 and ethnicity. I am appointing them to provide medical expertise as critical friends, not just people to agree with everything that we say over the coming months.

On the risk factors, analysis from the ONS, PHE and academia reveal that differences in covid-19 mortality between ethnic groups were strongly associated with geographical and socioeconomic factors. The ONS found that the risk of death from covid substantially reduced when factors other than age were accounted for, but there was still a higher risk for black and Indian adults and Pakistani and Bangladeshi males. Similarly, an Oxford University study found that ethnic differences persisted even after accounting for key explanatory factors, such as the ones that I mentioned, and we are still looking at that as part of this work.

Black History Month

Steve Baker Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Next Tuesday is an important anniversary in black history. It is the 41st birthday of the independent nation of St Vincent and the Grenadines. I am proud that Wycombe is home to the largest population from the islands outside the islands.

One of the most tricky experiences of my 10 years as a politician was in a preceding Black History Month. I remember being with some Caribbean ladies from St Vincent and the Grenadines 2nd Generation, the organisation that celebrates their history. I was asking about why black history is so important and I was told a difficult story. It was one of those moments when the atmosphere cooled and suddenly felt very still—I can see it vividly in my mind’s eye, although I may forget the exact words that were spoken.

A Caribbean lady with a British name said to me, “Every time I write my name, every time I see my name, every time I hear my name, I am reminded that I am descended from slaves.” How can anyone gainsay such a thing? What a thing to say and believe; what an experience to have. I cannot possibly know what that is like. I dare say that other people do not feel the same, but that lady’s story stays with me still. I am very proud that my community has a really vibrant presence from St Vincent and the Grenadines.

One of the people who the community will be celebrating this Black History Month is George Alexander Gratton. I will let the National Portrait Gallery tell his story:

“Born on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, the son of African slaves. Like other slaves, he was likely to have been named after the sugar plantation's owner or overseer, a common practice at the time that identified slaves as the property of their owners. He suffered with a condition characterised by pigment loss in the skin, resulting in white patches, now known as Vitiligo. His owner, perhaps aware that culturally held superstitions could put the child at risk, saw an opportunity to profit”—

of all things—

“from his condition. He was sold for 1000 guineas, shipped to Britain and consigned to the care of John Richardson who exhibited him in a circus for the paying public”.

I will not read how he was marketed. The description continues:

“Contradictory to this callous exploitation, childless Richardson had the boy baptised and treated him like a son. When Gratton died at a young age, Richardson held onto his body whilst a customised brick vault was constructed to bury him at All Saints Cemetery, Marlow. He requested on his deathbed in 1837 that he be buried in the same vault as Gratton.”

That story illustrates some of the extraordinary complexity of black history in the United Kingdom, both shameful and quite moving.

But let us not pretend that all black history lies in the past. After I made some remarks recently on the BBC’s “Politics Live”, I found myself in conversation with a black woman a little younger than me who had grown up and gone to school in my constituency. She told me a story from when she was growing up—they did not spot this at the time—of a teacher putting her and the Asian children in the class in a separate room and not teaching them: flat-out, frank racism, visited upon a British woman a little younger than me in a school in my constituency some years ago. That is a shocking and shameful thing.

When, then, we turn to the recent BLM protests, I have been listening very carefully to my constituents. Notwithstanding the reasonable remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) about the ideology that drives some, I think that it is incumbent on all of us really to listen and get alongside our constituents and friends—our fellow citizens—and to try to understand their life and where they are coming from. I can stand here today and say that I believe that we are all morally equal, that we are all equal before the law, that we are all politically equal, and that we must all have equal opportunity. I can say that and I can believe it, but I am sure that there are some people in my constituency who do not believe it and who roll their eyes when they hear it, because it is not their lived experience.

I am very proud to have been asked by Albie Amankona and Siobhan Aarons to be the chair of the advisory board for Conservatives Against Racism for Equality. I am going to work with them to develop a conservative and a liberal language of equality and inclusion, and of justice—a language that supports life in a free society, and does not adopt the ideas of intersectionalism and critical race theory that set us against one another. I want to work with them and with everybody in this House to make real this idea of equality.

Since he said it at a celebration in my constituency—a celebration of our wonderful Vincentian community— I am going to quote His Excellency Cenio Lewis, and I shall send him a record of it in Hansard afterwards. He said something with great humility, passion and force, which encapsulates enormous wisdom and which I hope will stay with us all: “Let’s remember we are no better than anyone else, but no one is any better than us.”

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I will now have to reduce the time limit to five minutes. I have been able to warn the hon. Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt).

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[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) on securing this debate. I have had a number of messages from my SNP colleagues asking me to pass on their congratulations. The hon. Member said that she came to this place to speak for those who barely get a mention; I want her to know that it has not gone unnoticed, and I know that it will mean so much to the people she was referring to. Sometimes, even if we are not able to change things immediately for people, just knowing that we are fighting their corner makes a difference—although we want to change things, obviously.



I want to say something about the what, the why and the who of Black History Month. What does Black History Month mean to me? To me, much as I love it, I wish that it did not have to happen, and if we incorporated black history into the teaching of our past, not just in schools but generally, and decolonised that teaching, perhaps Black History Month would be redundant, but we have not and until we do, Black History Month is essential. There have been really good speeches from Members on both sides of the House today. I think that Government Members have sometimes been a bit sensitive, but they should not be, because the fault lies with all of us. It is just about being honest in our teaching. Our stories are told from one perspective—the perspective of the colonisers—but how did it look from the perspective of the colonised? The missing perspectives are what decolonising the teaching of history is all about.

In addition to that, what about the black historical figures who get nothing like the attention that the equivalent white figures get? We should not pick and choose like that. One of the best examples I can provide is Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole, who has been mentioned multiple times today, to my delight. Both should have been taught about and I would argue that Scots-Jamaican Mary Seacole has more reason for us to learn about her, because everything that she did, she had to make happen. She had to fundraise, as we heard earlier, to get to the Crimea and to set up her hospital. It cannot have been easy in those days. I am pretty sure that our teachers are expected to teach about leadership, resilience and entrepreneurship, and Mary Seacole did an equivalent thing to Florence Nightingale in a different way and exemplified all the things that I just mentioned. But for hundreds of years, we did not learn about her, did we? It is about choosing not to be selective in whose incredible achievements we recognise, and it is about choosing not to tell our stories from the perspective of the coloniser only.

Why is this so important? Because until we change, the idea that seeps into a child’s subconscious is that the world was built and developed by white people. It seeps in because they are sitting in class, or reading a book, or watching TV, and learning about the wonderful women who nursed those soldiers, and the great inventors, artists, poets, scholars, writers, and philosophers. They see these incredible people and they are all white, but they were not all white. Those children may not be sitting consciously thinking, “Hmm, all the great people are white”, but as I said, it seeps in. For the black child, they are in danger of growing up believing on some level that the white people of the world must be cleverer, more talented and more relevant. For the white child, how can they possibly avoid growing up believing on some level that it must be true, and that white people, having built the world all by themselves, must be somehow superior?

And here is the why: racism is rooted in untruthful or selective teaching about our past. People are not born racist. They learn it. Like the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), I often hear people saying, “I don’t see skin colour.” I know what they are trying to say, but yes, they do. Young children, however, do not seem to notice skin colour any more than they see eye colour or hair colour. They learn to be racist. We as a society collectively teach them to be racist, but if black children and white children learn about the world from the perspective of all ethnicities, and they see and hear about the people of all ethnicities who have made their contribution to developing our world, and if what seeps into their psyche is more truthful, we will not stop racism, but I am convinced we will reduce it.

So on to the who—who am I talking about? I do not have time to list everyone I want to, so instead I will table a series of early-day motions till the end of October featuring a different figure in black history each time. I have started already and I invite friends across the House to join me in doing that. However, I do want to talk about one person in particular: Andrew Watson, a Scots-Guyanan, who was the first black professional footballer on these islands. He was also an engineer, so he was a high achiever.

[Mr Steve Baker]

Hear, hear.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Spoken like a true engineer. His highest achievement, however, was that he played for the Scotland football team on three occasions, captaining the side in his first match. Most importantly, Scotland won each game. [Interruption.] The consensus and smiles may disappear in a moment, when I tell the House that the first of those matches was played at the Oval in Kennington, where he led his team to a 6-1 victory over England. In the next match, we beat Wales 5-1, and in his final international, we beat England again, but sadly, that time it was only 5-1. That is really why he is my hero.

However, I knew nothing about this man until about 10 years ago. There were efforts to get him recognised, and indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) once made a documentary about Andrew Watson, in conjunction with celebrated broadcaster and journalist—and my friend and constituent—Stuart Cosgrove, who is also an author. As an aside, his latest book is about Cassius Clay. Andrew Watson is now memorialised in the hall of fame at Scotland’s national stadium in Hampden, but why do special efforts and campaigns have to happen for people to be recognised? As the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) explained, it took 12 years to get the statue of Mary Seacole. Do you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that 80,000 people lined the banks of the Thames to celebrate Mary Seacole when she returned from the Crimean war? How on earth did we manage to whitewash her out of history until recently? Why did it take a campaign to recognise her?

Most people do not wish to be racist, I believe—most of it is simply down to not knowing or not understanding. Part of our job here is to help them, and I invite Members to join the all-party group on unconscious bias, which I co-chair with my friend the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), who gave a brilliant speech and tolerated the nonsense from Government Members extremely well. Our first investigation is on unconscious racial bias, which we will launch shortly—I will send an email about it.

Yes, progress has been made, but it is not enough. I will share a story with Members. My 17-year-old goddaughter Toniann texted me yesterday, saying, “I’m in class and I’m watching Uncle Graham on TV.” Toniann’s mum is white Scottish and her dad is black Jamaican. Uncle Graham is my partner, who was featured in a BBC documentary made by Stewart Kyasimire called “Black and Scottish”. It is on iPlayer, and I urge Members to watch it—it is absolutely brilliant. Here is a child of Scottish Jamaican descent seeing black role models featured in her education, and she was absolutely delighted. The icing on the cake was that she was related to one of them.

The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) noted the decision by Glasgow University to make reparation for the way in which it benefited from the Caribbean slave trade.

Economic Update

Steve Baker Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

The hon. Gentleman talks about seasonal businesses and whether they have or have not had support; he may have missed the fact that we have just cut VAT for those sectors from 20% to 5% for the next six months, and we have just provided an “eat out to help out” discount for the country to enjoy discounted meals to protect those businesses and protect the employment in them. That is probably the best thing we can do for seasonal businesses.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

With his plan for jobs, my right hon. Friend has, like Roosevelt, given a masterclass in economic interventionism, but it is quite expensive. Can he reassure me that he has a contingency in case the independent Bank of England needs to change its stance on monetary policy because inflation begins to rise?

[Rishi Sunak]

As ever, my hon. Friend is right to remind us about the importance of monetary economics, and he is also right to focus on the long-term sustainability of our public finances. Although in the short term it is right to act in this way to prevent long-term damage and scarring to our economy that would create an ongoing, larger structural deficit, once we get through this crisis we must retain and sustain public finances. We will return them to a position of sustainability over the medium term, I assure my hon. Friend of that, but in the short term I am confident that this is the right thing to do to protect the long-term health of our economy.

Coronavirus: Job-Support Schemes

Steve Baker Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I begin by referring Members to my declared shareholding in Glint Pay. I thank HMRC for what it has done to put these schemes in place. It is the most extraordinary achievement that it has managed to put in place the coronavirus job retention scheme and the self-employment income support scheme. Normally, such things would take months and years and often be marred by IT failures and delays, and yet HMRC staff have successfully delivered this. I would far rather that they had successfully delivered than failed and left everyone without support. It is the most tremendous achievement, and the staff involved deserve our praise for what they have done, but I think we can see why it normally takes months and possibly years to deliver such schemes, because that time is required to deal with what have become hard edges.

Before I go any further, I would like to put into context the scale of the spending that we are talking about. If we look at page 355 of the estimates, there is £52 billion listed for covid-19. When I look up and down the detailed entries for the Department for Work and Pensions, I can see only one sum that is higher than the covid provisions for HMRC. Rounding to the nearest billion, the figures listed are £33 billion for universal credit inside the welfare cap, £13 billion for personal independence payments, £17 billion for housing benefit inside the welfare cap, just £5 billion for universal credit outside the welfare cap and £102 billion for the state pension outside the welfare cap. To see £52 billion appear in the estimates for HMRC is quite extraordinary, and I will return to that figure in my concluding remarks.

[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend is making an extremely important point. These are just the main estimates, not the supplementary estimates, and the schemes have been extended and modified since those figures were put together. Does he agree that it would be useful to hear from the Minister what additional funds might be sought through the supplementary estimates?

[Mr Baker]

Yes. I hope that the Minister will give us a detailed explanation of how these figures break down, because the figure to which I just referred is different from the one on the Order Paper. I refer Members to page 357 for the resource to cash reconciliation, which I am sure my right hon. Friend will be fully able to break down in detail if he wishes to.

I want to come on to some of the things that the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee said. In my constituency, there are plenty of people who, in one way or another, work in the arts and are in quite desperate straits. To reinforce her point about tronc, it has been a real disappointment to me that we have not dealt with the issue of people in the hospitality sector receiving perhaps half their income through tips, for which HMRC has PAYE information. I will never forget one particular email from a new father who was shocked to discover that he would be not on 80% of his normal pay but 40%. That is a dramatic difference, and it is because HMRC and the Government have not taken into account tronc payments, which they should. The freelancers issue is important and profound. On dividends and directors, we should recognise that sometimes we are talking about make-up artists, for example, who are paid through dividends.

[Meg Hillier]

Yes.

[Mr Baker]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for agreeing. There are real issues of justice and equity at stake here. I remember reading my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary’s 2008 book “Compassionate Economics” and it is a wonderful book that I recommend to anyone. I know that he is a compassionate man and that these issues will weigh upon him, so it is no way a criticism that I raise such things, but I observe that the edges here are awfully hard.

In the estimates document, HMRC refers to its policy partnership with the Treasury, so I encourage HMRC and Ministers to work together to see across the spectrum of issues—I do not have the time to go through them all—in the Treasury Committee’s report to see whether more can be done, even at this late stage, to help those who have been without help altogether. I place particular emphasis on furlough in relation to airlines and workers at airports. Such groups are very much represented in my constituency—west of Heathrow as we are—and people need help there.

My final point, and the reason for declaring my interest, is that the obvious and most dangerous harm from coronavirus is, of course, that it has killed tens of thousands of people, but well down the hierarchy of problems is that it has taught us all to be socialists. All of us have learned to live at one another’s expense, often ultimately at the generosity of the Bank of England and the creation of easy money. I say to Ministers that, yes, it was necessary to do this, but please do get us out of this mess.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Eagle]

I absolutely agree. This crisis has forced us to look at how our labour market works, and we need to come back to that very strongly indeed.



Tomorrow, I want to hear that the Chancellor is doing something to help the freelancers who power much of our cultural industry but who have thus far been excluded from the help available. I want to see him announce a strategic sectoral approach to job retention to ensure that the economy thrives. The OECD estimates that the UK could suffer the worst covid-19 related damage among the advanced economies, with a decline of 11% in national income and UK unemployment rising to 9% this year. Despite the labour market having been sheltered from a complete meltdown by the furlough scheme, there are ominous signs of a huge strain like a dam waiting to burst. The recent announcement of many thousands of job losses in retail, aviation and leisure could be just the tip of the iceberg if the Chancellor does not take decisive action.

The Government must now switch quickly to a more strategic and tailored response that will enable stabilisation and economic recovery. Certain sectors will continue to be affected because of social distancing rules, and they must be helped. Local authorities and schools, for whom the Chancellor promised he would do “whatever it takes” to fight the virus, should have their costs fully reimbursed. To date, they have received back only a third of what they have spent.

The Chancellor exhorting people to spend, spend, spend, as he did at the weekend, risks entrenching the old debt-fuelled consumer economy in place and squandering the chance to lay the foundations of greener, fairer, more sustainable future prosperity. The Prime Minister blaming everyone but himself, exhorting us to “build, build, build” and trumpeting a Roosevelt-like new deal while promising to spend 0.2% of UK GDP, whereas President Roosevelt spent 40% of US GDP, would be a farcical response to our predicament if we were not in such a perilous situation.

[Mr Baker]

I remind the hon. Lady that she stood at the Dispatch Box 10 years ago accusing us of being Hooverite in our liberalism. Although that was historically questionable, it is where she was 10 years ago. Surely she must feel that the references to Roosevelt are an improvement.

[Ms Eagle]

Clearly somebody in the Conservative party has moved on, but when we look at the difference between 0.2% of national GDP and 40% of national GDP, we can see that a few lessons are yet to be learned.

Coming back to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), the labour market is key. Many vulnerable people in the labour market have been left with nothing as a result of the effects of coronavirus. Many in the labour market have also been put at great risk of contracting the virus, and perhaps have to think about a choice between earning and being ill, which is why we need to look more closely at how our labour market is regulated—and crucially, at the 46% cut to the Health and Safety Executive, which enforces labour market rules. The Prime Minister exhorting us to “build, build, build” is all very well, but it would be a farcical response to our predicament if the country were not in such a perilous position; the comparison is ridiculous. The Chancellor and the Prime Minister need to drop the hype and begin to deliver. Our future economic prosperity depends on it.

Finance Bill

Steve Baker Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution
Monday 27th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

“Unprecedented measures for unprecedented times”—that is how my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary introduced the Bill at the Dispatch Box, and of course he was absolutely right. I believe that, across this House and the country, there is overwhelming support for the necessity of these measures.

I wish to make a speech that will touch on some subjects that I think would otherwise not be touched on in the debate. I apologise in advance to my constituents. This is in no way to neglect the cracks through which many people have fallen, but we will simply pick those up through the Treasury Committee in future, as we have been doing over the past few weeks.

I will make three points in the short time available. First, I will say a little more about the context of the Bill. The threat of disease and death on a mass scale has dramatically rolled forward the state in a way that I never thought I would see in this country, let alone under a Conservative Government. It has been necessary for all the reasons that are common territory, but it fills me with a little horror. It is not the consummation of all my worst fears because, of course, my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench do not wish to nationalise the means of production. They are not dramatically hiking taxes, so things could have been worse had we lost in December. [Interruption.] I hope that Opposition Members will forgive me, but we cannot take interventions.

Taxes are not being dramatically driven up by the Finance Bill, and thank goodness for that, because I believe that the economy is already at or near its taxable capacity. I am working with economists to set that out shortly. I am not surprised that the Bill has to fiddle around at the edges with such things as IR35, because we are at or beyond the taxable capacity of the British economy. The Government are having to go where in other times they might not; they might simply raise other rates. Who, though, could imagine going up from 20% VAT? The very idea is an absurdity, as that tax hits the poorest hardest.

I wish, of course, to turn to borrowing and monetary policy, because the Debt Management Office has announced that it will borrow—that the Government will borrow—an extra £180 billion, which is an absolutely extraordinary sum. Still more extraordinary is the reality that the Bank of England is going to buy bonds faster than the Debt Management Office is selling them. We are in the most extraordinary situation. Quantitative easing will go up to a total of £645 billion. I should say, in passing, that I am going to guard my remarks, because I wish to have regard to the need for monetary stability.

QE is going up by an extra £200 billion. If that were not enough, the countercyclical capital buffer is being released, which releases £190 billion of extra lending capacity for the banks. Many Members may not know this, but I recommend that they Google “Money creation in the modern economy” by the Bank of England. They will see that that £190 billion will be loaned into existence. That is where most of our money is created.

We have the borrowing of the DMO, bought through QE, and the countercyclical capital buffer. Though it is a technical point, the Treasury Committee has just had it put on the record that an accounting change in relation to loan loss provisioning is as important as the countercyclical capital buffer, because it would undo the benefits—the additional lending—that one gets by releasing that capital buffer.

These are enormous times. We are talking about loan loss provisioning being changed in order to massively add to the stock of money through new lending. In the past, I have talked about the covid corporate financing facility, which I think I heard the Minister say is adding £13 billion—it is in the order of teens of billions of pounds—to the money stock. Then, of course, there is the ways and means facility of the Bank of England: a kind of overdraft facility.

I put those things on the record in this place not because I want things to go wrong, but because I want to highlight the sheer scale of the extraordinary measures and the extraordinary times through which we are living. Were all that to go wrong, and I pray to God that it does not, we need to have understood what was being done at the time. When the spending, interventions, borrowing and monetary policy is all unwound, it will be really important to have some ideological keel to get us through difficult times.

No one could say that this is an ideological Government, but times will be difficult and we will need to aim very firmly at a free market economy. As we do so, we will need to understand monetary policy as well as other factors. That is why I have put it on the table today. Far too often—I hope that the Minister will forgive me for saying so—Ministers say, “That’s a matter for the Bank of England.” The Bank of England is not above the law. It operates within a framework of law that this House sets, and I believe that we shall need to revisit that.

The Economy

Steve Baker Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

The hon. Member is absolutely right. I am striving to make the process as seamless and as quick as possible. We made some improvements a couple of weeks ago—removing guarantees and changing some things on the back end—which have already made a difference. More than 20,000 CBILS loans have now been issued and there are 40,000 applications that the banks are working through. The acceptance rate remains high at over 80%, but there are further tweaks that we have been putting in place over the past week. Information on that will be outlined later. It is largely technical, administrative and regulatory, but I believe those changes will continue to accelerate the pace of CBILS loans and, like the hon. Member, I think we all share that aspiration.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the wisdom and skill with which he is adopting policies that I am confident are not naturally his territory. Well done to the Government. Will he reassure me that he is conscious that we need to take early, safe opportunities to open up the economy if we are to get back to a path to sustainable prosperity? Can he reassure me that he knows how to unwind this major set of interventions, so that we can get back to sound economic principles?

[Rishi Sunak]

As ever, my hon. Friend makes excellent and informed points on economic policy. I thank him for his support as well. He is absolutely right. I share with him, as does the Prime Minister, a sense of urgency about wanting to reopen our economy so that we can start driving growth, providing people with employment and paying for our public services. He is right to acknowledge that that must be done safely. Although we have made progress, we are not there yet, but I can reassure him that extensive work is under way to plan for phase 2 of the crisis so that we can get back to the economy that he and I both want to see.

Coronavirus Bill

Steve Baker Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 23rd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

Good, excellent. I am glad Opposition Members are learning. Having an amendable approval at six months makes things completely different, because it means the House can say, “We need to prune this. We need to reduce the size of this legislation.”

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend join me in calling on the Opposition also to adopt his amendment putting a sunset on this Bill of one year, not two?

[Mr Davis]

I will come to that in a moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Yes, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work that she has been doing on this matter in recent days; it has been most welcome. I am pleased that the Minister has listened to that campaigning work, and I hope that we will be able to get reassurance on that point.

On restricting freedoms—and there are, quite frankly, draconian restrictions of freedom in this Bill including in relation to mass gatherings, the closure of ports and borders, and detention powers over potentially infectious people, which I read as applying to children and adults—the Government must do only what is necessary and proportionate. We must also be wary of restricting the right to protest.

[Mr Steve Baker]

I was trying to avoid doing this, but while the hon. Gentleman has been on his feet, it seems that the Prime Minister has heard the call of the Opposition Front Bench earlier. It is widely reported online that the Prime Minister has announced that people can now only go out to shop for basic necessities; to exercise once a day; for any medical need; to provide care; and to travel to and from, and do, essential work. I think that we are now substantially constrained, and that may help the hon. Gentleman as he makes his speech.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am always grateful for updates on the rolling news, so I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. This must be a rare example of a shadow Minister having called for something at the start of a debate and its having appeared before we have finished the debate. The Prime Minister is responsive on that if nothing else.

Even in this situation, proportionality and necessity still apply. It is clear that powers to detain potentially infectious people, including children in isolation facilities, will have to be implemented in a sensitive way. It is necessary to postpone elections, as set out in clause 57, but we still have to do all we can to maintain our democracy. I welcomed the Speaker’s statement setting out any moves we can make to vote in a different way and to operate in a far more digital and remote way than has been the case in the past.

Let me turn to new clause 4 and the issues it raises. Quite simply, if we are to ask people to sacrifice their freedom by staying at home and subjecting themselves to the measures set out by the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), their basic means of living must be catered for as well. There are some specific measures in the Bill, but I commend to the Minister amendments 74 to 78, on lowering the threshold for eligibility for statutory sick pay, and new clauses 32 to 34, on the extension of statutory sick pay to the self-employed and its uprating.

Before I move on to some of the other economic measures, particularly in the Government’s new amendment, let me refer to new clause 35. A number of right hon. and hon. Members from all parties have raised the issue of access to personal protective equipment. New clause 35 sets out the importance of that to the Opposition by defining it as part of the Minister’s role to make sure that that equipment is provided to everybody who needs it. That is the imperative that the Opposition put on that, and I hope the Government will do all they can to ensure that not one person in this country does not have the personal protective equipment that they need to keep us all safe.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I say to my hon. Friend that he is right. One of the issues about making announcements is that people actually have to be able to access what they are being offered.

I have already set out that statutory sick pay is too low at £94.25 a week. Amendments regarding that have been tabled, as well as on people who do not qualify for it, and I urge the Government to look at that again. We must also speak of the businesses laying off workers and not applying for the 80% coverage of wages, which is what they should be doing. There are people who have lost their jobs, and who need help fast. It is a concern that the 80% wages support applies in the April payroll, not the March payroll, and what that will mean is that money will not be available until the end of next month. I appreciate the scale of this and I appreciate that Treasury officials have done a lot of work on it, but as the days pass more and more people are losing their jobs. Every day matters in bringing that help forward.

I have already spoken about renters and mentioned help for homeowners. On businesses, I say to the Government that grants are better than loans. We do not want to build up a stack of debt, and where the Government are relying upon the universal credit system, they must look at the fundamental structural problems in the system and at the five-week waits. Surely we cannot continue with face-to-face assessments in the next few months, with the scale of this crisis.

[Mr Steve Baker]

It’s been changed.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I hear what the hon. Member for Wycombe says, but this has to operate on the ground, and we are all hearing various stories of what is happening in the universal credit system. It may well be what the Government intend, but that has to be implemented right across the country.

The Government must stand beside each and every person to get through this. We of course support the principle of doing whatever it takes, but that has to mean whatever it takes for each and every person. Let me say a word about the food supply—this is in clauses 23 to 27—and the power to require information. The Government require a strategic approach to the profiteering and unnecessary stockpiling—all of it. We have to ask people to think of others in what they are doing, but I also say to the Minister that the Government may well need a more strategic approach on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

Thank you Dame Eleanor. I will be brief.

I want to speak to new clause 5, in my name. As we have heard, there have been calls from across the UK to look out for the members of our society who are elderly and vulnerable. I wish to add my voice and to say that the victims of modern slavery must be addressed urgently. I spoke to the Minister’s colleague earlier today, and I have received assurances from the Minister. I welcome the fact that the Department is working closely with the Salvation Army, which is the contractor dealing with these issues. I have faith that it will do the right thing and look after these people, but it is important to issue guidance on this issue when possible.

I recognise that the Department is pressed and that officials are working hard on this issue, but I really hope the Government will be able to address my concerns, particularly to ensure that the victims of modern slavery continue to receive special payments; that where their key worker is off ill due to the virus, someone else will liaise with them and keep in contact; that there are arrangements to address the need to protect them when they are in shared or cramped accommodation, as is often the case; and that the Government will look into these matters and ensure that these vulnerable people, who are already victims, are not further victimised or isolated as a result of a lack of capacity to deal with these issues and concerns at the moment. I am looking for that assurance, and I hope the Government will be able to issue guidance along the lines I have suggested in new clause 5.

[Mr Steve Baker]

I stand first with my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely). We cannot neglect his constituents on the Island. I fear that this issue has gone on for far too long, and I want to say sorry to him that we did not weigh in behind him sooner. This issue has just got to be dealt with, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister knows that.

Secondly, I would like to pay tribute to hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah). She has done an absolutely fantastic job in the last 24 hours. It has been a real privilege to work with her to secure what I think is a fantastic result. At a time like this, matters of the hereafter are close to everybody’s thoughts. They sometimes say that there are no atheists in a foxhole. I certainly would not want to stand by and see my constituents cremated against their wishes, and nor, indeed, would I want to see people buried against their wishes. I really want to congratulate her; she has done a fantastic job, and she has done it in a wonderful cross-party spirit, which has done a lot to reinvigorate my faith in this place and in what we can achieve together when we put our constituents first. Well done to her.

I will pay particular attention to amendments 1 and 6 and Government new clause 19, which relate to the expiry of these powers. When I got into politics, it was with the purpose of enlarging liberty under parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. When I look at this Pandora’s box of enlargement, discretion and extensions of power, I can only say what a dreadful, dreadful thing it is to have had to sit here in silence and nod it through because it is the right thing to do.

My goodness, between this and the Prime Minister’s announcement tonight, what have we ushered in? I am not a good enough historian to put into context the scale of the infringement of our liberties that has been implemented today through the Prime Minister’s announcement and this enormously complicated Bill, which we are enacting with only two hours to think about amendments.

I could speak for the time I have available several times over just on the provisions relating to the retention of DNA, which we addressed in the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. [Interruption.] I see from the expression on the face of the Paymaster General, my right hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), that she understands the anguish—she probably knows it better than any of us—that we are all going through in passing this Bill.

Let me be the first to say that tonight, through this Bill, we are implementing at least a dystopian society. Some will call it totalitarian, which is not quite fair, but it is at least dystopian. The Bill implements a command society under the imperative of saving hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of jobs, and it is worth doing.

By God, I hope the Prime Minister has a clear conscience tonight and sleeps with a good heart, because he deserves to do so. Libertarian though I may be, this is the right thing to do but, my goodness, we ought not to allow this situation to endure one moment longer than is absolutely necessary to save lives and preserve jobs.

Although I welcome new clause 19 to give us a six-month review, I urge upon my hon. and right hon. Friends and the Prime Minister the sunsetting of this Act, as it will no doubt become, at one year, because there is time to bring forward further primary legislation. If, come the late autumn, it is clear that this epidemic, this pandemic, continues—God help us if that is true, because I fear for the economy and the currency—there certainly will be time to bring forward further primary legislation and to properly scrutinise provisions to carry forward this enormous range of powers.

Every time I dip into the Bill, I find some objectionable power. There is not enough time to scrutinise the Bill, but I can glance at it—I am doing it now—and see objectionable powers. There would be time to have several days of scrutiny on a proper piece of legislation easily in time for March or April 2021.

I implore my right hon. Friend, for goodness’ sake, let us not allow this dystopia to endure one moment longer than is strictly necessary.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I concur with the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker): although supporting this legislation is absolutely the right thing to do, we must make sure that scrutiny remains and that his and the Opposition’s warnings are heeded by the Government.

I express my deepest sympathies for those who have already lost their lives in my constituency and around the country, and I pay tribute to the emergency workers around the country who, right now, need our support and direct, immediate action from the Government to give them the PPE they lack.

Here in London, we are at the frontline. There are densely populated areas in my constituency and around the city with huge amounts of overcrowding, intergenerational living and high health risks, which means that, ahead of the challenges spreading around the country, we face challenges now.

We have had several reports of major problems in my constituency in the last week. Doctors and clinicians at the Royal London Hospital have described the situation as being like a warzone, and others have said that they are already having to make devastating decisions—choosing between who to save and who dies. They speak of collateral damage and of doctors having to order equipment online. I echo the importance of making sure that PPE is sent to people immediately.

Beer and Pub Taxation

Steve Baker Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mike Wood]

The system of non-domestic rates—business rates—is fundamentally a system of local taxation that was designed in the 19th century, building on the previous poor law. It really does not suit the needs and features of a 21st-century economy, particularly one where so much retail is increasingly moving out of town or on to the internet—as yet, nobody has designed an effective virtual pub that can serve a virtual beer that is quite a satisfying as the real thing. We are in a position where our community pubs are at an unfair disadvantage, as the hon. Lady says, compared with businesses that can reduce their liabilities.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend allow me to intervene before he moves on?

[Mike Wood]

I promised my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) that I would give way to him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Wood]

Again, my hon. Friend pre-empts a later part of my speech. In terms of attracting tourists and investment into the United Kingdom, beer and pubs are one of the top three things tourists say they want to do while they are visiting. Of course they want to have fish and chips. Normally, they also want to visit some of the heritage, whether it is Buckingham Palace or Stratford-upon-Avon. The third thing that always comes up is that they want a pint of proper British beer in a proper British pub.

[Mr Steve Baker]

My hon. Friend is being incredibly generous in giving way, and I know he wants to make progress, but will he help me put on record the sheer scale of the attendance at this debate? Clearly the Minister would be incredibly popular if only he cut tax on beer and pubs. With that, I will let my hon. Friend resume his magnificent speech.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman prompts me to comment that this debate is hugely popular. A lot of Members would like to speak—I have some 17 on my list. It is of course up to the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) whether he takes interventions, but constant interventions will mean that his speech is very long and that there may be time for only five to 10 speeches from Back Benchers. If we keep interventions a little bit under control, we can get more speakers in later on.