What steps he is taking to increase the opportunities for generating electricity locally.
We are providing support for the delivery of renewable energy projects within rural communities in England through the £10 million rural community energy fund programme.
I thank the Minister for that response. Does he agree that the production of electricity locally could help a great deal towards our net zero target? Will he also look at the situation in my constituency of Tewkesbury, where two rivers, the Avon and the Severn, join? The Severn would, I think, be particularly useful in producing electricity if we could get the schemes in place. Will he look at that and perhaps explore the possibilities?
My hon. Friend correctly observes that there are two major rivers in Tewkesbury, the Avon and the Severn—very beautiful rivers, I might add. As far as hydroelectric power on rivers is concerned, we would have to look at the hydraulics and the power that can be generated, but we clearly appreciate that there is potential there, and we want to explore any ideas that can bring those projects to fruition. Having said that, there is a limit to the capacity that such rivers can generate, unfortunately.
Just last week, the Secretary of State accepted that the inexcusable costs facing Scottish renewables projects trying to access the electricity grid had been an issue for a long time, notwithstanding the 11 years that his party has been in government. The Government continue to blame Ofgem while at the same time refusing to accept that they are the ones who set Ofgem’s strategy and policy statement. On that point, can the Secretary of State outline when the consultation detailed in his energy White Paper will begin, when it will end and when we will see real change—or are UK Energy Ministers simply among the worst idlers in the world?
The hon. Gentleman makes a pointed and unfair observation at the end of his remarks, which I think is beneath his dignity. I know that he is referring to “Britannia Unchained”, a classic work published 10 years ago, but 10 years is a very long time and I do not want to revisit those battles. I will say what I have said to him before: this is an issue for Ofgem and we are discussing how to seek to make progress on that important subject.
What steps his Department is taking to support the Government’s levelling-up agenda.
What steps his Department is taking to support the Government’s levelling-up agenda.
We have made a commitment to level up all areas of the country. The plan for growth is a critical part of that, and we will go further with the publication of a levelling-up White Paper, led ably by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), later this year.
I fully welcome the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution as we build back greener. Green eco-businesses in my Colne Valley constituency are ready to play their part, so can I please suggest to the Secretary of State that if the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy or any other Government Department is looking to relocate to the north, towns such as Slaithwaite and Marsden, with their mills and their direct rail links to the likes of Manchester and Leeds on the trans-Pennine line, would be ideal locations?
As my hon. Friend will appreciate, we are looking at many ideal locations at the moment. I was pleased to make an announcement last week about Darlington; that is a really good move for the Department. We are always looking at ways to create more employment and recruit really great talent for our Department across the country, and I am sure that his constituency will also—perhaps—be among those considered for such expansion.
My constituents are very proud of the north of England and the midlands, even though we are in East Anglia, but they want a firm commitment from the Government—it cannot be stressed enough—that the levelling-up agenda also covers Ipswich. Of course, we have the £25 million from the town deal, which goes some way to assuaging these concerns. However, does my right hon. Friend agree that the skills improvement plan pilot bid from Norfolk and Suffolk could be a fantastic example to prove to the people of Ipswich that we are in fact at the heart of the levelling-up agenda? Will he engage in discussions with the Department for Education about the possibility of that pilot scheme, which would also feed the new freeport east in Felixstowe, which already employs 6,000 of my constituents but could employ many more?
My hon. Friend is quite right. He was good enough to mention the fact that Ipswich has indeed been selected for a £25 million town deal, and he suggested that that was as a matter of course, but I think it is due to his keen advocacy and his eloquent and persuasive powers that the Government can provide help in that way. Clearly, skills are at the core of any levelling-up agenda, and I know that there are great ideas in Ipswich and great things being promoted in East Anglia. I look forward to engaging with him on that.
When his Department plans to publish the ACAS report on fire and rehire and the Government’s response to that report.
When his Department plans to publish the ACAS report on fire and rehire and the Government’s response to that report.
When his Department plans to publish the ACAS report on fire and rehire and the Government’s response to that report.
When his Department plans to publish the ACAS report on fire and rehire and the Government’s response to that report.
What plans he has to bring forward legislative proposals to outlaw fire and rehire practices.
The Department engaged with ACAS to hold discussions in order to generate evidence about the use of fire and rehire. ACAS officials have shared their findings with BEIS officials. It is right and proper that we give this evidence full consideration, and we will communicate our next steps in due course.
Mr Speaker, I am sure you will join me in welcoming the return of the Bradford Bulls to their iconic home of Odsal Stadium in Bradford A recent Survation poll found that 76% of those asked said that they think fire and rehire should be against the law. The Prime Minister has said that fire and rehire is “unacceptable”. The time to act is now. With no mention of it in the Queen’s Speech, when will the Minister legislate to make this practice illegal?
I congratulate the Bradford Bulls on their return We have always been clear that using the threats of fire and rehire as a tactic to put undue pressure on workers during negotiations is completely unacceptable, but we need to tread carefully when considering Government intervention in commercial contractual matters between employers and employees. That is why we are now carefully considering, with the evidence, our next steps.
May I first congratulate members of my union, Unite, at Go North West buses in Manchester who, after an incredible 85 days of continuous strike action, have now won a landmark victory against appalling fire and rehire abuses? My question to the Minister is straightforward: does he condemn rogue bosses such as Go North West or coffee producers Jacobs Douwe Egberts, which, despite record profits during lockdown, has provoked strike action by firing and rehiring more than 300 loyal staff on worse pay and conditions? Will the Minister wake up, smell the coffee and agree that this disgraceful behaviour leaves a bitter taste in the mouth?
I see what the hon. Gentleman has done there. His coffee-based puns belie the fact that this is an incredibly serious situation. As I was saying, if those companies or any others are using such a practice for bully-boy tactics, that is completely unacceptable. We need to look at the evidence before we intervene on the flexibility of the workforce, but clearly we do not want bully-boy tactics to be used for negotiations.
Thousands of workers at British Airways and Heathrow, including many of my constituents, have been at the sharp end of fire and rehire tactics during the covid outbreak. Across the country, one in 10 workers have been subject to such tactics since last March—that is almost 3 million people who have been forced to accept lower wages and longer hours or be sacked. How many more millions of workers will the Minister allow to be fired and rehired before the Government decide to outlaw the practice?
There is a distinct difference if the practice is used as a negotiation tactic: as I have said, if it is being used as a bully-boy tactic, that is completely unacceptable. However, there is an element of flexibility in our labour market, which we need to base on evidence. That is what the ACAS report is there to do. We are considering the evidence, and I am looking forward to coming back to this place to outline our actions in due course.
Fire and rehire is illegal in countries such as Germany and Spain. In 2019, the Government promised an employment Bill to make Britain the best place in the world to work, which could have outlawed the practice, but the Bill has been ditched. Given that the Government have looked the other way as fire and rehire has become endemic, can the Minister seriously claim to be committed to making Britain the best place in the world to work?
There is a huge difference between our employment law and that of Germany and Spain, in so much as theirs is very much more rigid—it lacks flexibility and that is reflected in the job figures and the job growth we have had in this country. The Government remain committed to bringing forward the employment Bill, where parliamentary time allows. We want to protect and enhance workers’ rights as we build back better from the pandemic.
Fire and rehire has been used against supermarket staff who worked through lockdown to keep our country running, and the practice has now spread into schools, with teachers being threatened with the sack unless they agree to worse terms and conditions. Does the Minister agree that it is completely unacceptable that our key workers, who have sacrificed the most in our national effort against covid, are the very people now being threatened by these bully-boy fire and rehire tactics?
I have said repeatedly that bully-boy tactics are absolutely unacceptable, but if it is a matter of a choice over protecting jobs in the first place, that is the flexibility that we need to check, based on the evidence, and ACAS has gone a long way to providing that evidence.
Why is it that fire and rehire has spread like wildfire across our country? Trade unions are shackled to prevent them from defending their members; employers have free rein to terminate workers’ contracts; and protections for workers are woefully weak. Opposition Members know how to outlaw fire and rehire, and I am more than happy to meet the Minister and show him how, but is not the truth that this Government are content with millions of workers being bullied into accepting low wages and worse terms and conditions or facing the sack, because it is in the Tories’ DNA to side with bad employers rather than to protect working people?
It is in the Tories’ DNA to create jobs and opportunities. After the previous recession, we were creating more jobs than the whole of Europe put together, and we will continue to do so as we build back better after this pandemic. ACAS has provided the evidence for us to consider; we are doing that in due course, and I look forward to coming back to this place. The TUC reported back in January on a survey of its members, but it has not shared its methodology; we cannot use that as substantial evidence unless the TUC shares that with us.
What steps he is taking to support the UK’s hydrogen economy.
The second point of the 10-point plan was all about hydrogen. The forthcoming hydrogen strategy will set out clearly what we hope to see and are committed to seeing for the hydrogen economy in 2030.
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. Will he go a little further and explain how, and commit that the strategy will actually deliver specific jobs in Northern Ireland, as well as in the rest of the United Kingdom? Will he continue to agree to meet me and other parliamentary colleagues to ensure that Northern Ireland gets a fair share of the hydrogen strategy as it is rolled out? As he knows, this is so important to the future economy of Northern Ireland.
I will certainly continue to agree to meet the hon. Gentleman at any time. There are very important hydrogen projects in Northern Ireland. I speak to Mr Bamford and others, particularly in relation to Wrightbus, which I understand is in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. There is a huge opportunity, and I would be happy to meet him and others to discuss the prospects at any time.
What recent discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on increasing support to businesses affected by the covid-19 outbreak.
What steps his Department is taking to support businesses through the covid-19 pandemic.
What discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on increasing support to businesses affected by the covid-19 outbreak.
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer presented to Parliament the Budget, which sets out an additional £65 billion to support people and businesses. We have hit every road map commitment at every stage so far, and no one can doubt that we are leading in our support to businesses. We have even taken the total cumulative cost of support to £352 billion.
ExcludedUK is set to reach its first birthday soon, which must be a bittersweet moment for many of my constituents. It is frankly a disgrace that the campaign has had to continue in the face of the Government rejecting the calls to support the 3 million who have been ignored and denied covid support. Does the Minister not agree that the self-employed and others denied support now deserve to have funds backdated so that they can rescue their livelihoods and contribute to the economic recovery, rather than simply adding to online dole queues?
Throughout the covid-19 pandemic the Government have supported people and businesses across the whole of the United Kingdom. The Budget extends the UK job retention and self-employment income support schemes and the VAT cut to support the tourism, leisure and hospitality sectors. To date, businesses in Midlothian have benefited from more than 1,500 loans and £56 million, with more than 16,000 jobs supported through furlough.
I recently introduced a ten-minute rule Bill on making mental health, or psychological, first aid a legislative requirement for workplace first aid, going beyond its recent positive inclusion in Health and Safety Executive guidelines. Will my hon. Friend please meet me to explore my proposals, which make a very small change to make a very big difference?
I know how passionate my hon. Friend is about mental health and this campaign. I myself am dedicated to supporting campaigning and advocating for mental health, and I care passionately about mental health in the workplace. Indeed, we are working on a people and culture strategy for research and development. We will ensure that my hon. Friend has the opportunity to discuss the matter further with relevant Ministers.
The Chancellor has announced that the job retention scheme must end in September, yet thousands of workers in Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill remain on furlough, with their industries required still to close. While the vaccine roll-out gives us real optimism, the world remains firmly in the grip of this pandemic. It is unacceptable to leave workers and businesses with only four months before they face this cliff edge and are cut off from this vital lifeline. Other European nations, such as Germany, have already committed to continue with their equivalent scheme until 2022. With that in mind, will the Minister join me in imploring the Chancellor to do the right thing for workers and businesses in my constituency and across the UK by extending the retention scheme for as long as it is required?
The Government have provided unprecedented support to business sectors throughout the pandemic, including the hospitality and retail sectors. In addition to the job retention scheme and cuts to business rates and VAT, we have provided one-off restart grants of up to £18,000, which are available to businesses in the non-essential retail, hospitality, leisure and personal sectors to support them to reopen as restrictions are relaxed. To date, businesses in Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill have benefited from more than 1,500 loans and £59 million, with 70,800 jobs supported through furlough.
This week marks English Tourism Week, but the UK’s tourist destinations have been hit hard, with a much higher than average increase in people who are now out of work, including in places such as Scarborough and Whitby. Many tourism businesses, such as hotels and cafés, have taken on debt to stay afloat, and one in five hospitality businesses now says that it is at moderate risk of insolvency. Yet the Government’s pay as you grow scheme does nothing to solve the underlying long-term issue of business debt, which means that businesses will have to repay whether or not they are making a profit. Does the Minister agree that, if we want to give businesses the time to build up their trade and resilience, and also protect jobs and not let debt stifle the recovery, we need a genuinely flexible repayment scheme such as the one Labour has called for.
We care passionately about businesses in this Government, and our support package includes the job retention scheme, generous grants and cuts to business rates. Pay as you grow measures will allow 1.5 million bounce back loan borrowers to extend payment terms and to benefit from a further repayment holiday. Our plans to support economic recovery and pursue growth through significant investment in infrastructure skills and innovation will help us to build back better and level up across the United Kingdom.
What steps he has taken to improve employment rights and protections for gig economy workers.
The Government are committed to protecting and enhancing workers’ rights. The Uber Supreme Court judgment was clear that those who qualify as workers under employment law are entitled to rights such as the national minimum wage, and all gig economy businesses should ensure that they are fulfilling their legal responsibilities.
Does the Secretary of State recognise that, by ditching the employment Bill and, with it, the opportunity to strengthen the rights of gig economy workers, he has abandoned millions of precarious and low-paid workers to fight through the courts for fair pay and job security?
The Secretary of State and I believe that workers’ rights should be enhanced and protected, so we are absolutely committed to bringing forward an employment Bill that will help us to build back better and to protect vulnerable workers, delivering on our ambition to make the UK the best place in the world in which to work and grow a business. While we are waiting for the employment Bill to come forward in parliamentary time, we will continue in that way.
What steps he is taking to accelerate the production of clean energy.
What steps his Department is taking to increase renewable energy production.
In December, the Government aim to deliver their biggest auction for renewables yet through the contracts for difference scheme. Our £240 million net zero hydrogen fund and forthcoming hydrogen business model will enable us to deliver our 5 GW low-carbon hydrogen production ambition to use across the economy. We have also announced the clean heat grant and the green heat network fund, and will launch the green gas support scheme later this year.
How good are we actually going to be at the production of green hydrogen?
There is a short answer, or I could give my right hon. Friend a longer one. Brilliant. [Laughter.]
Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the many natural advantages we are blessed with is the tide around the shores of the United Kingdom, and will she bring forward at the earliest opportunity the Government’s proposals to unleash tidal power?
Let me first pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work as a net zero business champion for COP26; he is doing an extraordinary amount of work, and has been tireless in his efforts to support the country’s business community to showcase its extraordinary leadership in tackling climate change and heading to net zero Tidal generation does indeed have a potentially important role in the long-term decarbonisation of the UK. Projects will need to demonstrate value for money to compete with other renewables over the long term. The Secretary of State and I are very keen to hear from those who want to progress such projects.
In terms of increasing the production of renewable energy, does the Minister feel rather embarrassed about the deep neglect that there has been of the development of deep geothermal energy in the UK over recent years? Is she aware of a report published on 19 May suggesting a new future for deep geothermal energy, and particularly a mechanism for supporting deep geothermal through a successor to the renewable heat incentive? Does she intend to respond positively to that report and its proposals, and will she acknowledge that deep geothermal is indeed one of the cleanest and most efficient renewable energy sources that we can have in the UK?
I have not had a chance to look at the report, but I absolutely commit to doing so. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has been doing a lot of work with local communities where there are geothermal projects, and we will continue to look at them and see how we can help to support them. It will be, as ever, one of those ongoing areas of policy; in the long term, we want to use all the renewable resources available to us as a country to ensure that we maximise their use, while, as I said earlier, ensuring that they also provide value for money for the taxpayer.
What assessment he has made of the extent of the renewable energy development required by 2030 to help deliver the Government’s sixth carbon budget.
Renewable electricity will be key for the decarbonisation required for carbon budget 6. Therefore, we have set an ambitious target to deliver 40 GW of offshore wind by 2030 and announced our aim to up to double the capacity of this year’s contracts for difference auction, as well as extending eligibility to a wider range of technologies.
The Minister will be aware of my long-standing interest in environmental, social and governance, as I chair the all-party parliamentary group on the matter. How will her Department ensure that the Government’s sixth carbon budget is delivered with ESG at its heart, and what are the plans for engagement with Government Departments and corporations to ensure that all targets set out in the carbon budget are viewed through an ESG lens?
My hon. Friend’s passion for, and commitment to, this subject since he arrived in the House have been unstinting. I have been more than impressed by his determination to ensure that we do not, at any turn, miss the opportunity to raise it; he has been particularly determined to ensure that we look at the role of critical materials in renewables. They will continue to be an important part of how we are able to develop our renewables capacity. I hope that he is reassured that we continue to work across Departments to maximise those outcomes.
What steps he is taking to support the steel industry.
What steps he is taking to support the UK steel sector.
The Government are committed to a UK steel industry. I mentioned this repeatedly in my session with the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee this morning.
Sanjeev Gupta promised that none of our steel plants would close on his watch, but after the Serious Fraud Office descended on his empire, the workforce became afraid for their future. The Liberty Steel plant in Tredegar puts food on the table and pays the mortgages of my constituents, and across the country 5,000 families rely on the company. We now need the Government to ensure that these plants remain open, and, crucially, to provide the finance to bridge any transition period should a new buyer or stake purchase be necessary—and, of course, to work with the trade unions to test the commitment of any new buyers. If promises are broken, will the Secretary of State step in with the finance to support our steel communities?
The hon. Gentleman will remember that Mr Gupta asked me and the Department for £170 million. Many Labour Members—dare I say it?—were hollering and screaming and saying we should nationalise. In fact, I would say that my actions and those of officials have been vindicated. There were serious concerns about corporate governance with this company, and Labour Members would do well to understand how to manage public finances with care. Having said all that, I am monitoring the situation closely and I remain strategically committed to the steel industry and this sector.
On behalf of workers at Liberty Steel in Newport, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith): the Government must do all they can to protect these strategic businesses that are very important to our communities. Because of that, and because of global overcapacity in steel, it is also critical and very urgent that Ministers work with Cabinet colleagues to prevent the Trade Remedies Investigations Directorate from slashing our steel safeguards in half, so please will the Government act on that?
With regard to TRID, the hon. Lady will know that the consultation on that closes tomorrow. I would urge all interested parties to feed into that consultation so that we can reach a good decision. She knows that I am on record as having committed to a strategic presence of steel in the UK . I think that is vital and as Secretary of State I will always promote it within Government.
The crisis at Liberty Steel is yet further evidence of the need to break the cycle of crisis management that has defined the approach of successive Governments to this critical sector. The Secretary of State knows full well that there is a global race under way to green the steel industry and that our country is currently at the back of the pack, with no concrete plans for trialling hydrogen-based primary production and only vague plans for a single carbon capture-based project. With its long-term survival at stake, can he explain why the Government believe that the UK steel industry can afford to wait a further two years for the limited clean steel fund to even begin distributing investment?
I completely reject the basis of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. The idea that we are at the back of the pack in decarbonisation is complete nonsense. We are the first country in the G7 to have come up with an industrial decarbonisation strategy. He and his Labour colleagues were saying, “Secretary of State, why don’t you nationalise Liberty? Why don’t you give Mr Gupta £170 million?”, and we made absolutely the right call. We showed judgment and restraint. Going forward, he will appreciate that I was the Secretary of State who resuscitated the Steel Council. We have had constructive conversations across unions and employers to work out a decarbonised future for the industry.
What new plans he has to incentivise businesses to become more environmentally sustainable in the transportation of their products.
The Government are striving to decarbonise transport by phasing out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030, and from 2035 all new cars and vans must be zero emissions at the tailpipe. The plug-in van grant will support businesses to reach net zero by reducing the purchase price of new zero emission vans up to £3,000 for small vans and up to £6,000 for large vans. The plug-in truck grant also provides up to £25,000 of funding for the largest HGVs.
I thank the Minister, and I have a lot of time for her, but she must realise that these heavy goods vehicles—these trucks—are poisoning our atmosphere and poisoning children, pregnant women and elderly people. All of us are being poisoned by these emissions. Can we not move much more quickly to encourage things? There are some really good British manufacturers such as Electra Commercial Vehicles in the north of England, which is doing wonderful work, guided by Sid Sadique, one of our new entrepreneurs. There is a capacity to switch to electric vehicles to deliver all the stuff that we get in this country, and we could do it much faster. Can I beg her to move faster for the environment, for children, for the air that we breathe, and for our commercial industries?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. We are working to ensure that the transport decarbonisation plan is as ambitious as possible, and we plan to publish in the very near future. It will set out how we incentivise operators and industry to transition to zero emission HGVs and manage emissions from the existing fleet. We are also investing £20 million this year in planning for zero emission road freight trials, which will support UK industry to develop cost-effective, zero emission HGVs and their refuelling infrastructure in the UK.
What steps his Department is taking to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
What steps his Department is taking to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
What steps his Department is taking to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
The Government have laid legislation for the UK’s sixth carbon budget, proposing a target that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 78% by 2035 compared with 1990 levels, marking another ambitious and decisive step towards net zero by 2050. Our 10-point plan will bring together £12 billion of Government investment, unlocking three times as much private sector investment by 2030 and supporting up to 250,000 green jobs.
I thank the Energy Minister for her answer. I know she will have been as disappointed as I was that we were not able to visit the Ibstock Brick factory in Chesterton yesterday, and I look forward to welcoming her up to Newcastle-under-Lyme soon. In the meantime, will she say what the Government are doing to support our vital manufacturers, such as Ibstock Brick, to decarbonise and at the same time support jobs?
Yes, I was very sad not to get there. Sadly a cow on the line caused a level of disruption to LNER services yesterday, which delayed my always relatively long journey from the north further south. However, I hope to be able to visit before too long. In March, the Government published the UK’s first ever net zero strategy for industry. It is the first strategy published by a major economy that sets out how industry can decarbonise while remaining competitive and without pushing emissions abroad. Our £350 million industrial energy transformation fund will support businesses with high energy use to cut their bills and reduce carbon emissions.
Consumer awareness of the environmental impact of the actions they take, the things they buy and the food they eat will be key to helping us achieve net zero. Can the Minister set out what steps the Department is taking to help consumers make more informed environmental choices?
Last November, we unveiled the brand Together for Our Planet to raise awareness of climate issues and support the public in making those important green choices. In parallel, we have funded several digital tools that can help people reduce their carbon footprint, including the Simple Energy Advice service on how to reduce energy use in the home and the Go Ultra Low website, which provides information on electric cars and vans. Our upcoming net zero strategy will set out our approach to supporting the general public to make green choices, which will be a critically important part of our journey.
[Inaudible.]
You are on mute.
Hopefully you can hear me now.
Get on with the question.
A key part of achieving net zero will be exploring alternative energy sources. One of those that was mentioned by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) was deep geothermal. I am working with stakeholders across Bishop Auckland to explore making Bishop Auckland a centre of excellence for geothermal energy. Will my right hon. Friend visit me in Bishop Auckland to discuss that in much more detail?
I hope to be able to reach Bishop Auckland with speed, as it is just round the corner, and I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss new energy projects. Compared with many countries, high geothermal temperatures are found at a much deeper depth in the UK, but we recognise, as I said earlier, that geothermal could indeed form part of our solution to decarbonise our heating. I welcome the opportunity to discuss energy opportunities in this area and look forward to meeting her and her constituents.
What steps he is taking to support high street businesses.
Our comprehensive economic response to business is worth £385 billion, including grants, the furlough scheme, tax deferrals and business rates relief. We are providing a £56 million welcome back fund, helping councils to prepare for the safe reopening of our high streets and seaside resorts.
High street businesses on Lord Street in Fleetwood tell me that one of their biggest concerns is empty shop units that have fallen into disrepair. They are dangerous for people who are out shopping and make the high street very unattractive. What support can the Government give councils such as Wyre Council to ensure that these shops are made safe and, ideally, tenanted?
The Government are committed to unleashing enterprise and growth across all parts of the United Kingdom, and we will go even further with the publication of our levelling-up White Paper this autumn. The hon. Member will welcome the news that Lancaster and Fleetwood have been awarded funding under the high streets heritage action zones cultural programme. Our £4.8 billion levelling-up fund will invest in infrastructure that improves everyday life across the United Kingdom. We have protected 14 million jobs through the comprehensive package we have put in place. Our plan for jobs is creating, supporting and protecting jobs, and our £2 billion kickstart scheme has helped 16,500 young people to start paid jobs.
What new support he plans to provide to energy transition projects in Scotland.
This Government are committed to supporting the transition to net zero for all the United Kingdom. Our landmark North sea transition deal will support Scotland’s offshore oil and gas workers, businesses and the supply chain to exploit technologies such as low-carbon hydrogen production and carbon capture usage and storage. In March, we announced £9 million to help Scotland’s world-famous whisky distilleries get into the spirit of going green, cutting emissions and supporting green jobs.
I am sure that if we could capture energy and store it, Scotland’s entire energy needs would have been met on Saturday by clean blue energy from St Johnstone fans celebrating their historic cup double. Now that I have shoehorned that in, here is my question. Despite meeting after meeting in which Minister after Minister, including the current Secretary of State, have said that HELMS—Home Energy and Lifestyle Management Systems—customers under the green deal have been, at best, mis-sold products and that it would be fixed, hundreds of my constituents and others right across Scotland and the UK remain swindled by Robert Skillen and his company. I am happy to have another meeting, but I would be even happier with swift and appropriate action.
I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and his constituents and to work with officials to make progress.
What recent steps he has taken with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to improve the enforcement of workplace health and safety laws.
Workplace health and safety is of critical importance, and I am in regular discussion with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on this and other issues.
If the Government are so committed to keeping workers safe throughout the pandemic, can the Secretary of State explain why they have not been able to protect workers at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Swansea by putting in measures to keep them safe from covid-19?
The hon. Member will appreciate that public health and guidance for safer working in Wales is a devolved matter, so she should certainly bring this up with her colleagues in the Welsh Government. Public Health Wales and the local authority, supported by the Health and Safety Executive, are working with the DVLA to ensure that there is appropriate protection.
What steps his Department is taking to support UK manufacturing.
Having worked in manufacturing for over 20 years, I know the challenges, and I thank those in the manufacturing sector for the brilliant work they have done to support the economy, including the way they came together for the ventilator challenge, and for manufacturing all our vaccines. We are committed to supporting UK manufacturers to build back better by taking advantage of innovative technology and through measures such as the super deduction capital allowance rate of 130%, to turbocharge business investment.
Following Brexit, it is more important than ever that we incentivise the best possible commercial, manufacturing and industrial base in the UK. What is BEIS doing to support the Department for International Trade and other Departments in bringing foreign businesses to our shores?
BEIS is working with Departments across Government to implement the plan for growth, with its focus on infrastructure, innovation and skills. That will have the effect of making the UK more attractive in terms of inward investment, cementing our place as a global science superpower and potentially increasing investment in areas such as Thames valley, which already boasts a number of world-class manufacturing companies.
What steps he is taking to support entrepreneurship.
Our start-up loans programme has a phenomenal track record of backing budding entrepreneurs. We have supported more than 83,000 people across the UK with £733.5 million in loans. The British Business Bank’s new “UK Unlocked” campaign supports all entrepreneurs to access the right finance to start and grow.
I am really pleased to hear the Minister’s response, and I am grateful for the financial backing the Government give, but for someone sat in Bosworth with a great idea, one of the hardest things they struggle to come up with is where to start, so what are the Government doing to signpost people who want to start a business who are asking exactly that question?
The answer to this question is to go to the Coventry and Warwickshire local enterprise partnership growth hub. There are 38 growth hubs around the country that are one-stop shops to get access to that. We are helping SMEs navigate the business finance landscape through those growth hub networks as well. Our detailed business support webpages provide advice for businesses of all sizes across the UK.
  If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
I would like to say that over the last few weeks I think we have gone through a trying time, but two things have really stood out as remarkable successes. The vaccine roll-out continues to go from strength to strength. Something like 60 million jabs have been administered across this country, which I am pleased to say is a world-beating target to have reached for a country of our size. On the back of that, we have managed to hit the dates in the road map. On 12 April, we opened up in the way we said we would, and then we looked at the data and we were able to do so again on 17 May. This has provided business with a huge degree of support and a measure of certainty ahead of a summer reopening.
Carshalton and Wallington residents, particularly those living in New Mill Quarter in Hackbridge, have been suffering at the hands of the Lib Dem-run council-owned district energy network called SDEN—Sutton Decentralised Energy Network—leaving residents without heating and hot water, some more than a dozen times in just six months. I know BEIS is keen to ensure that residents such as these are not victims of shoddy operations, so following the closure of its consultation last year, what steps is my right hon. Friend taking to ensure that district energy networks are regulated?
It is an excellent question. My hon. Friend and I corresponded about this and spoke directly about this when I was the Minister of State for Energy. I am very pleased to tell him that we are committed to regulating the heat networks market within this Parliament, and we will bring legislation forward at the earliest possible opportunity. It is clearly a really important thing to be doing, and he and his constituents can rest assured that we are acting with due speed.
I want to return to fire and rehire. Chris is a British Gas engineer who lives in Spelthorne, the Secretary of State’s constituency. Chris says: “Working under fire and rehire has been horrific. It has caused stress and anxiety not just for me, but my family. I can’t overstate the effect that it has on mental wellbeing. And the Government and the Business Secretary, who is supposed to represent me…in parliament is doing absolutely nothing about it. I voted for Kwasi Kwarteng in 2019, but he’s failed us on this. A total let down.” Chris met the Business Secretary recently and asked him why he had not acted on fire and rehire. What did he tell him?
I remember the meeting well. I met Chris, I think on the Avenue in Sunbury, and I said very clearly to him that we had an ACAS report that we hoped to publish in due course, and that once we published that we would set out further action, as the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), very ably mentioned earlier.
The problem is that the right hon. Member is the Business Secretary. He is in charge. He promised an employment Bill two years ago. He has had the ACAS report for three months. He is not even telling us what is in the ACAS report. Maybe he can satisfy Chris and millions of people around this country by saying from the Dispatch Box today that he agrees with the principle that we should legislate to outlaw fire and rehire, and he will bring forward an employment Bill to do it. If he does not do that, people will suspect that the truth is not that he is not acting because he cannot act, but that he is not acting because he does not want to act, because he thinks this kind of one-sided power for employers is necessary for our economy to succeed.
We all know the Marxist trope of the employers versus the workers, and we have moved on from that—most of us. There are two issues there. One was related to the employment Bill, which we are committed to introducing to this House when we can, and that has always been our position. The second is that the whole point of having an ACAS independent report was to allow it to happen and then we would consider, after publication, the steps forward. I know the right hon. Member is impatient, and I know he is probably wishing that there was a leadership change in his party, but we have to stay focused on delivery.
    With an enormous amount of work going to take place in the next few years in building energy and transport infrastructure, there are significant opportunities to enhance skills and create jobs in steel fabrication. What plans does my hon. Friend have for promoting fabrication hubs, including one in Lowestoft where skills and expertise has been developed over many years in the oil and gas industry, and exciting opportunities are coming forward in the offshore wind and nuclear sectors?
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about seizing the broader benefits of the green economy, which are integral to our industrial decarbonisation strategy. We will continue to work closely with all those helping us to meet our net zero commitments, from 40 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030, to the Government’s commitments to deliver at least one more gigawatt nuclear power station, and substantial commitments to the next generation of nuclear. For all that, infrastructure investment and growing the skills base will be vital across the country, including in Lowestoft. We have set up the green jobs taskforce, which will report to the Government this summer and inform the next stages of our green skills plans going forward.
Stats released by the Office for National Statistics this morning show that trade with the European Union has fallen by 23% in the first quarter. In the meantime, Scottish farmers are facing up to the reality of a trade deal with the Australians that threatens their very future. The Scottish Parliament—it has no say; the Scottish Government—ignored. What exactly will the UK Business Secretary do about that, and how much damage are his Government willing to cause?
The hon. Gentleman is right to mention the ONS data, but he will appreciate that that is comparing quarter 1 this year with quarter 1 last year. [Interruption.] Of course it does. January was exceptionally bad—I fully admit that—because there was uncertainty about how the new deal would operate. Subsequent data from Q2 and from March was much better, The next quarter will have better results, and I am sure that quarters after that will show proportionate improvement. The Australian trade deal is a fundamental issue for us. If we cannot make a trade deal with a country that has shared legislation, shared history, and shared traditions, we will not get anywhere with any of these trade deals. I think this is an excellent opportunity for the UK.
The Government are to be congratulated on their plans to phase out diesel and petrol cars, but that raises the question of how we will charge electric cars, especially for those who do not have driveways and have to park on the roads. What can we do to speed up the development of the infrastructure?
Just yesterday, the energy regulator, Ofgem, announced that it has approved a £300 million investment to help triple the number of ultrarapid electric car charging points across the country. That will give a green light for energy network companies to invest in more than 200 low-carbon projects across the country over the next two years, including the installation of 1,800 new ultrarapid car charge points for motorway service stations, and a further 1,750 charge points in towns and cities.
  The green homes grant was scrapped at the end of March, due to severe mismanagement. Nevertheless, we urgently need a long-term strategy to help homeowners cut emissions and bills, if we are to tackle the climate emergency properly. Now that local authorities have been awarded £300 million to deliver the green homes upgrades, what steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that councils have all the support they need to jump over bureaucratic hurdles and handle the unrealistic deadlines created for them, so that we can significantly cut carbon emissions across UK homes?
The hon. Lady will appreciate that the green homes grant initially had three elements: the first dealt with owner-occupier houses, the second was distributed by local authorities in the way she describes, and the third was about public sector building decarbonisation. Two of those elements were successful. The third was a short-term stimulus, which we have closed and are looking to replace.
  Many of my constituents work in the aviation sector and at Southampton Airport. Advances in green technology to cut emissions are vital for the future of air travel, and that may even include electric airplanes, powered by greener fuels. Will my right hon. Friend outline what encouragement the Government will provide in that area?
We have done a number of things that I am sure my hon. Friend will appreciate. I was very pleased, with my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary, to appoint Emma Gilthorpe as chief executive officer of the Jet Zero Council, which brings together considerable industry expertise to drive sustainable aviation fuel. Electric aeroplanes may be a thing of the future, but clearly, we have the technology today to innovate and to use things such as hydrogen and sustainable fuels to power a net zero aviation sector.
  The Secretary of State will be aware of pladis’s proposal to close the McVitie’s factory in Glasgow’s east end, putting at risk up to 500 jobs in a very fragile part of the local economy. On Saturday, I, politicians from across parties and, indeed, the GMB union came together to send a loud message to Salman Amin in Turkey that doing so would put the local economy at risk. Will the Secretary of State join us in calling on pladis to rethink these devastating plans, which would deliver a hammer blow to the local economy in Glasgow and Scotland?
In my business engagement, I have been lucky enough, I suppose, to meet the CEO of pladis, the McVitie’s operator. I am not particularly aware of the specifics of what the hon. Gentleman has just informed the House, but I would be very happy to speak to him and others to see what we can do to ensure that the situation is improved. The business seems open; I had a good conversation with the CEO, but I would like to hear more about the specific details of that plant.
Levelling up has never been more important than in the historic town of Lye in my constituency, an area that I am determined to help regenerate—made easier, I hope, by the funding put in place by this Government. One business in Stourbridge, I’m Lucky, was unlucky enough to open just before the second lockdown, but with Government support, and helped by its own fantastic entrepreneurism, it has survived. It now has an online shop front, and it has begun recruiting staff. Does my hon. Friend agree that businesses such as I’m Lucky have a vital role to play in levelling up this country?
I thank my hon. Friend, and I wish I’m Lucky all the best for the future. Over the past year, I have met a number of businesses that have opened either at an unfortunate time—just going into a lockdown—or possibly at a fortunate time, as they steal a march and pivot into new business areas. Growing those small and medium-sized enterprises is really important to levelling up. We have already provided over 1,000 start-up loans worth £11.8 million this year. We are reducing employment costs by up to £4,000 through the employment allowance and supporting skills through apprenticeships. The strengthened prompt payment code ensures that those small businesses will get paid within 30 days.
Following the Budget, the Leader of the Opposition said that establishing “Treasury North” in Darlington was “not levelling up” but “giving up”. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the opposite is true, and that by shifting decision making outside London, including in his own Department, we will truly level up our country?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; it is a huge opportunity. I was delighted to see him in his constituency only a couple of weeks ago. I was very pleased to see the photograph that was taken of us looking like an advert for “Reservoir Dogs”. BEIS is absolutely committed to recruiting excellent staff in Darlington, among other places around the UK.
  Following the announcement that the Government plan to cut £120 million from official development assistance research, what assessment has the Secretary of State made of the long-term impact that that will have on UK research and development?
The hon. Lady will know that that was a very difficult decision. The Treasury and the Government made a decision to reduce ODA spending from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5%. In the integrated review, we said that we would get it back to 0.7% when we could. We are fully appreciative that it was a difficult decision, and we want to get back to 0.7% as soon as the fiscal situation allows.
  The Government are already embarking on their unprecedented levelling-up agenda. What measures is my hon. Friend planning to facilitate levelling up by small businesses, looking specifically at start-ups and growing SMEs, as well as at issues arising from late payments, reducing employment costs, improving skills such as digital skills, and levelling up apprenticeships? Those are the specific questions asked by the Federation of Small Businesses in Hastings and Rye.
The Federation of Small Businesses does a great job across the country, including in Hastings and Rye, and, as I said, it is very important that SMEs play a massive role in levelling up around the country. I have talked about the fact that strengthening the prompt payment code will ensure that small businesses get paid within 30 days. We will always do more to make sure that we can support small businesses, because we know that cash flow is king, and they will be a major part of building back better.
  I have sat through a number of Select Committee reports that have exposed the deficiencies of not-so-smart meters and the extra costs involved, but I was shocked when we found for a recent report that smart meters will not work if we transfer from North sea gas to hydrogen. What do Ministers think the implications are for the future of smart meters of the possibility of using hydrogen as a replacement fuel?
We are continuing to work with the regulators and to look at how smart meters are rolling out. We continue to encourage people to do so, if they have not done so yet, but as the technology changes, we will obviously make sure that regulations afford those adaptations.
  UK industry, particularly the furniture sector, has seen great benefits in recent years from the British Standards Institution’s leading role in the CEN—the European Committee for Standardisation. As membership of the CEN is not related to being a member of the EU, will the Minister consider renewing our membership at year end so we continue to play a leading role in the development of sensible standards?
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. It is really important that he stands up for the furniture industry, as he does. The BSI has informed the Department of its intention to retain its membership to continue to influence the development of standards for the benefit of UK businesses. The Government support that position.
May I ask the Minister for an unequivocal statement, consistent with the Government’s zero-carbon promises, that there will be no new coal mines and no new licences for fracking in this country?
There are two issues there. On fracking, I was very pleased, as Minister of State, to impose a moratorium on it. The language that we used at the time was that it was going to be evidence-focused and scientifically based. There is no new evidence to suggest that we should end the moratorium, so it stays—no more fracking. On coal mines, I have said specifically that this is a judicial issue, in terms of the west Cumbrian coal mine, and that has to go through the planning process.
As the Minister knows, I am passionate about inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers. Will she tell the House what plans her Department has to build on the previous good work in this field, such as the Year of Engineering?
We have committed to investing £14.9 billion in R&D in 2021-22, meaning that Government R&D spending is now at its highest level for decades. We have our ambitious road map. We have our innovation strategy that we will be launching. We have our R&D place strategy, and we are working to ensure that the benefits are felt nationwide.
I suspend the House to enable the necessary arrangements to be made for the next business.
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care if he will make a statement on covid-19.
Our race between the vaccine and the virus continues. As a nation, we have taken some huge strides forward: there are now 908 people in hospital with coronavirus, a fall of 9% in the past week, and the average number of daily deaths is now six, the lowest number since the middle of March. On top of this positive news, our vaccination programme is accelerating at pace. Over 72% of all adults have now been given their first dose, and 43% of all adults have the protection of two doses This weekend, we reached the milestone of 60 million vaccines administered across the United Kingdom, and Public Health England also published new research showing that the effectiveness of vaccination against symptomatic disease from the variant first discovered in India is similar after two doses when compared to the B117 variant dominant in our country. As with other variants, even higher levels of effectiveness are expected against hospitalisation and death. This is encouraging data, and it reinforces once again the importance of our vaccination programme in giving us a path out of this pandemic, as well as showing just how important it is that everyone comes forward for both jabs when the call comes through. It is the progress made by the British people in following the rules, and in taking up the protection offered through our vaccination programme, that means we were able to take step 3 in our road map last week However, we take these steps with vigilance and caution, staying alert to new variants that can jeopardise the advances we have made. We have come down really hard on the variant first identified in India wherever we have found it, surging in testing capacity and vaccines for those who are eligible. Over the past few days, we have extended this rapid approach to even more areas: as well as Bolton and Blackburn with Darwen, which the Prime Minister spoke about at his press conference on the 14th of this month, we are taking rapid action in Bedford, Hounslow, Burnley, Leicester, Kirklees and North Tyneside. As the Prime Minister set out two weeks ago, we are urging people in these areas to take extra caution when meeting anyone outside their household or support bubble, including meeting outside rather than inside where possible; keeping 2 metres apart from people they do not live with; and trying to avoid travelling in and out of the affected areas unless it is essential, for example for work—if a person cannot work from home—or for education As the Prime Minister said, we want the whole country to move out of these restrictions together. We are trusting people to be responsible and to act with caution and common sense, as they have done throughout this pandemic, and to make decisions about how best to protect themselves and their loved ones that are informed by the risks. That is exactly what we should be doing. We are always looking to see how we can communicate more effectively with local authorities, and we will of course take on board the views expressed by the House over the course of this debate. By acting quickly whenever the virus flares up and protecting people through our vaccination programme, we can guard the incredible gains we have all made, and get ourselves on the road to recovery.
Does the Minister appreciate that cities such as mine, Leicester, or towns and boroughs such as Burnley, Bolton, Batley and Blackburn, have borne the brunt of this crisis over these past 15 months? We have often been in lockdown for longer than elsewhere. At times, we have felt abandoned. We did not have adequate financial support: families did their best, but they struggled. Can the Minister understand how upsetting, how insulting, it is to have new restrictions imposed on us—local lockdowns by stealth, by the back door—without the Secretary of State even having the courtesy to come and tell us Why was the guidance plonked on a website on Friday night and not communicated to everyone? Why were local directors of public health and local authority leaders not consulted? Why were MPs not informed? What does it now mean for our constituents? What does it mean for the family in Leicester who have booked a few days next week by the coast for the school half-term? Do they have to cancel that break? What does it mean for university students in Leicester when they have finished their exams? Do they have to go home—or can they go home? Can prospective students come and look at the campuses What does the guidance mean for the parents in Bolton who are planning to take their children to see grandparents on the other side of Greater Manchester this bank holiday Monday? Should they rearrange their plans? What does it mean for the young couple in Burnley, Blackburn or Batley, who have postponed their wedding for over a year and invited friends and family from across the country to come and celebrate their special day with them? Is the message to them that they have to delay their wedding again Can the Minister answer these questions today? Can he take a message from me, as the Member of Parliament for Leicester South, back to the Secretary of State—“Withdraw this guidance now and convene a meeting this afternoon of the relevant directors of public health to produce a plan involving isolation support and enhanced contact tracing”? As the hon. Gentleman knows from his work as vaccines Minister, a single dose of the vaccine is less effective against this particular variant. Will he produce a plan with local directors of public health to roll out vaccinations to everybody and consider including bringing forward a second dose for a larger cohort of people A year ago, Ministers such as the hon. Gentleman were defending Dominic Cummings on Twitter. Now, Mr Cummings tweets about the lack of competent people in charge. Many of our constituents, looking at this latest lockdown fiasco, will think that Mr Cummings has a point.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for, I hope, his equally supportive comments when it comes to supporting his constituents and others around the country—in Bedford, Blackburn, Bolton, Burnley, Kirklees and Leicester, his own patch, as well as Hounslow and north Tyneside. I spoke to the M10 metro Mayors this morning, and the one thing I would urge is that we all work together and take the politics out of this. Our constituents deserve that. Essentially, as I said in my opening statement, we are asking people in the affected areas to be cautious and careful. The right hon. Gentleman asked about visiting family: people should meet outside rather than inside, where possible. Meeting indoors is still allowed, in a group of six or as two households, but meeting outdoors is safer. People should meet 2 metres apart from those they do not live with unless they have formed a support bubble; that obviously includes friends and family they do not live with. So yes, people can visit family in half-term if they follow social distancing guidelines. The guidelines include specific sections on meeting friends and family. Avoid travelling in and out of the affected areas, as the Prime Minister said on 14 May, unless it is essential—for work purposes, for example The whole principle is that we need to work together. The right hon. Gentleman has a responsibility, as do I and the metro Mayors, to communicate to our residents and constituents that this is a time to be vigilant and careful. We are putting more surge testing and turbocharging vaccinations in those areas, to make sure that we do the work with local directors of public health. I hope he will agree that we have had that plan in place and seen it operate in Bolton and Blackburn; we will see it operate in his constituency and other parts of the country as well.
I congratulate the Minister on the outstanding roll-out of the vaccine programme, which is a source of enormous pride to all of us, on all sides of the House. As we emerge from lockdown, we all want it to be a permanent change. For most families, the biggest priority is to make sure that schools remain open, even if we find that new variants arrive in the UK in the course of the autumn. We know that children do not tend to get bad symptoms, but they can spread the virus, so is it time to look at vaccinating the over-12s, as they are doing in the United States? Is it time to look at whether we can use some of the US Food and Drug Administration analysis to speed up that decision-making process, so that by the time children come back in the autumn, schools are protected and we can be confident that they will be able to stay open?
I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s question. He is absolutely right to focus on the protection of children but also of families and their community. That clinical decision has not been taken in the United Kingdom. He will be aware that, as well as the US regulator, the Canadian regulator has approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for 12 to 15-year-olds. Operationally, we will be ready, but ultimately the decision has to be a clinical one and our regulator will have to be satisfied that the vaccines are extremely safe. When you are vaccinating children, essentially, you are offering some protection to them—children can be infected with covid and there is some evidence of long covid among children—but on the whole it is to protect their families and to protect against transmission in communities. Vaccines have to be incredibly safe before we administer them to children, but we have the infrastructure in place to be able to do that, as and when the regulatory and clinical decision is made.
Can the Minister explain if the new restrictions for areas such as Bolton are only advisory? Will hospitality companies affected still be eligible for financial support? Why was the Public Health England report on variants snuck out at 11 pm on Saturday, during the Eurovision final and minus the promised data on school outbreaks? The B.1.617.2 or April 02 variant appears to be 50% more infectious and is affecting even younger children, so can the Minister explain why on earth the Government have ended the wearing of face coverings in schools? It is good that two doses of the vaccines still provide good protection from the variant, but testing shows that one dose is only 33% effective. The gap between doses has been shortened from 12 to eight weeks, but with less than half of those between 50 and 65 years of age having had their second dose, are there plans to close the gap further?
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s question and just remind her that Public Health England makes those decisions for itself: it is not up to the Minister when it releases its data On pubs and hospitality, indoor areas of venues—cafés, restaurants, bars and so on—can reopen. In any premises serving alcohol, customers will still be required to order, to be served and to eat and drink while seated. Venues are obviously prohibited from providing smoking equipment such as shisha pipes. It is just to make sure that we do everything we can to limit the ability of the virus to infect others. Within that, reducing social contact is incredibly important. Some businesses, such as nightclubs, must remain closed and follow the restrictions. It is very much about making sure that we work together to control the B.1.617.2 variant, exercising the common sense that the Prime Minister spoke about. The guidance is there to do that. People on the whole have been following the guidance On transmission and the effectiveness of the two doses—the hon. Lady’s question on accelerating the vaccination programme—the whole idea of us following the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation guidelines and advice on vaccination is to be able to vaccinate at scale. We have two big weeks ahead of us and we will continue to focus on the second dose. When people get that text message or the call to bring forward their second dose, they should please take that up, because it is incredibly important in controlling the variant.
It is tremendous news that the vaccines that are being so successfully rolled out across our United Kingdom are highly effective against the variant first identified in India, but many businesses continue to be delicately balanced on a cliff edge of either a successful summer or bankruptcy. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need a positive message of hope and certainty that all the evidence continues to back up the complete end of all restrictions and social distancing by 21 June?
It is good news from Public Health England on the B.1.617 variant that two doses of either Pfizer or AstraZeneca-Oxford are as effective on infection and are very likely to be even more effective on serious illness and hospitalisation in real-world circumstances. Ultimately, we are effectively pursuing an evidence-led strategy. The four weeks plus one—the five-week interval—are for us to be able to assess the data and share it with Parliament and the nation. At the moment, I am cautiously optimistic that we are in a good place. We have to remain vigilant and we have to work together. As I said earlier, let us take the politics out of this and make sure that all our constituents are careful, and we will get there together.
I am sure that the Minister will agree that throughout the pandemic our community pharmacies have performed magnificently on the frontline of the health service, but unfortunately there still seems to be institutionalised bias against them in the Department of Health and Social Care, even now. Only a couple of pharmacies in Sandwell have been authorised for the covid vaccine. I urge the Minister to get a grip on his bureaucrats and get vaccines rolling in our Sandwell pharmacies before the bank holiday.
I know that the right hon. Gentleman is a passionate advocate for community pharmacies; he and I have discussed them in the past. I do not recognise his characterisation of the NHS team, who I absolutely know work every day with community pharmacies. I think that just over 500 community pharmacies and independent pharmacies are now part of the vaccine deployment. In phase 1, they have proved themselves to be excellent at reaching out and giving confidence to their communities and at getting people vaccinated; where primary care has decided not to carry on with phase 2, they have also stepped up to fill the gaps so that we keep going. I will absolutely look at the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency to see whether we can do more.
The record vaccine roll-out has absolutely vindicated the decision of my constituents in Wednesbury, Oldbury and Tipton to believe that this country can succeed in standing on its own two feet. Vaccination is going to form a really big part of our lives. What work is my hon. Friend doing to ensure that, as we continue our vaccination roll-out, we have the localised infrastructure to ensure that our great progress is not hindered?
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. If the virus were designed to test liberal democracies, because the only way we could combat it was to withdraw people’s freedoms with the dreaded non-pharmaceutical interventions, the vaccine has played to the real strengths of the four nations that make up the peoples of these isles. We have had that Dunkirk spirit of coming together as 1,000 flotillas: the 80,000 volunteer vaccinators, the doctors, the nurses, the pharmacists and, of course, our armed forces and local government colleagues, who have stepped up not only to identify communities that we need to protect, but to find sites We are already making plans for the booster jab to be ready by September. I remind the House that the clinical decision has not yet been made, but when it is—whether that is in September, in October, in November or early in the new year—we will be ready to go. We are also planning how it will dovetail with our flu vaccination programme and seeing how we can increase the uptake in flu vaccination, because the worst of all worlds would be to do well against covid and then be hit by a heavy flu season in the autumn.
Last evening, I learned that the Government had sneaked Bedford borough into local lockdown without even bothering to warn the public health team. The Minister knows that for almost two weeks I have been calling for surge vaccines in Bedford for all over-16s, yet until last Friday many of my constituents were forced to travel miles to access the Pfizer vaccine. The variant first identified in India has been imported here because of the Government’s lax approach to border control. Why are the people of Bedford paying for the Government’s gross negligence and incompetence once again?
The hon. Gentleman and I discussed the turbocharging of the vaccination programme in Bedford, which I know he appreciates. The real difficulty is that, if we now begin to vaccinate people who are 18, outside the JCVI’s advice, we are taking vaccine away from others who are eligible and need that protection. So the strategy we are pursuing is to turbocharge. I need to explain that a little. We are effectively putting in more resource, later opening and mobile vaccination centres and we are expanding vaccination centres, so that those who are already eligible and, for whatever reason, have been unable to access the vaccine or have been waiting to see, can get the protection of the first dose. Of course then we get the second dose into all those over the age of 50, because we know that the two doses in those areas, against the B.1.617.2 variant, make a huge difference.
I congratulate the Minister on the success of the vaccine roll-out and the rate at which the age limit is dropping. At the age of 28, I am regularly checking the NHS website to see when it is my turn. However, those who are a little older than me are trying to get their first jab at the Riverside Stadium in Middlesbrough but struggling to do so, reportedly because only the AstraZeneca jab is being stocked at the vaccine centre there. Will he use his office to try to find out what the problem is and resolve it, so that people are not having to travel unnecessarily to get their first jab?
I will absolutely look at what the issue is. The good news we have had recently from our regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, is that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine can now be stored for up to a month—it used to be only five days from once it was thawed from minus 70° C—which means it is much more versatile and less challenging than it used to be. So I will absolutely look at that and contact my hon. Friend.
One area of concern for which new restrictions have been published but no advice has been communicated is the London Borough of Hounslow, which shares a boundary with Whitton, Hampton and St Margarets in my constituency. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people go back and forth every day, for school, for work, to get food and other essential supplies and for medical appointments. So, first, could the Minister advise my constituents whether they should be getting on buses and trains that cross the borough boundary and whether they should be going to supermarkets and accessing medical services over the borough boundary? Secondly, will he consider vaccinating, as a priority, people, such as teachers, key workers and airport staff, who have to go to work in Hounslow but live outside the borough?
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s question and I discussed this with the Mayor of London this morning. Of course Hounslow is on the list of affected areas and we are turbocharging the vaccination programme, as well as doing the surge testing and the sequencing and isolation. But as I have outlined in response to others, people need to exercise caution and common sense, and travel outside of the area only if it is essential. That is important. The right thing to do is for us to work together to make sure we deliver that message, as I did this morning with the Mayor of London.
In The Telegraph story this morning about what the rules for self-isolation might be post 21 June, a Government source was quoted as saying, in response to the suggestion that they will not change: “There is still a risk of getting the virus and spreading it on,” That is of course true—there is a risk—but of course once people have been vaccinated the risk is much lower and, importantly, the vaccines are very effective at stopping serious disease, hospitalisation and death. So may I say to the Minister that post 21 June it is important not only that legal restrictions and social distancing go, but that all the remaining rules are adjusted to reflect the much lower risk that exists once we have vaccinated the population? Otherwise, we are going to have those rules in place forever.
It is worth waiting for 14 June, when we will be saying more on this, but suffice it to say two things: first, even if someone has had two doses of either vaccine —I have had this experience in my own family—they can still contract covid and should therefore be isolating and quarantining; secondly, we are also looking at ways in which contacts of people who may have contracted covid can be regularly tested instead of isolating.
I thank the Minister for his responses so far and for the magnificent effort. I had my second vaccine yesterday, and just to show how national that was, the person who gave me the injection was a doctor from Lincolnshire. I believe that this very much shows that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland works better together, and that this is a supreme example of that We understand that things will change depending on the circumstances and that localised lockdowns may be the way to ensure that areas with low numbers are able to allow people to live safely. Can the Minister outline what parameters will establish localised lockdowns and tell us whether the same approach will be taken UK-wide by the devolved regions?
I am very pleased to hear that my hon. Friend has had his second dose; when people get that text message, they should please come forward and have their second dose. We are looking to ensure that the whole country comes out of this together, hence the advice being very much about exercising caution and self-responsibility. People actually get this; we see in much of the research data that they know the things that can add to the risk and that they should therefore abstain from doing those things while we vaccinate at scale to get to the place where we can all hopefully get our lives back.
Some of us will be viscerally opposed to the use of covid passports in the domestic economy. When will the Government set out their proposals in some detail?
We are considering a range of evidence around covid status certification and whether it may have a role in opening up higher-risk settings, so it would be remiss of a Government Minister or a Government not to look at technologies around the world that would allow us to open up not 20% of Wembley stadium but the whole of Wembley stadium for the FA cup final. No final decisions have been made, and we are of course committed to setting out our conclusions on the review ahead of step 4.
Some people have been making a lot of money from Government-approved quarantine hotels, but many of my Slough constituents are continuing to suffer during their stays. Their long list of angry complaints includes a lack of water, with people being told to drink from the bathroom tap; poor food standards often not meeting dietary or religious requirements, with people having to fork out for takeaways; poor ventilation with no chance of opening a window; and I have not even started yet on the shambolic state of mixing in hours-long airport queues so that even if somebody does not have coronavirus, they soon will have. Why are the Government failing to get a grip of the situation, despite repeated requests from right hon. and hon. Members of this House?
I do not recognise the hon. Gentleman’s description of the way the system is working. There were some distressing videos posted online of people in airports, but we work with the airports and require them to ensure that social distancing protocols are followed. Indeed, at Heathrow, we recently looked at people from red list countries arriving at a particular terminal. I will take away his point about particular hotels, and if he lets me have the exact details I can look at what is happening, because it is wrong and distressing if people cannot have fresh drinking water.
In Suffolk and north-east Essex, 97% of the over-80s have now had two jabs, which I think puts it at the top of the league table. I predict that, as a 32-year-old, I am on the cusp of being offered my jab, but I will wait for my contact to confirm that. Huge thanks should also go to BSC Multicultural Services, which has worked incredibly hard with hard-to-reach groups to get the vaccine out, and I also want to give a special mention to community pharmacies, which the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) mentioned. It seems like a long time since the Aqua Pharmacy on Duke Street approached me, but it has gone on to deliver 15,000 doses. I sometimes feel that community pharmacies do not always get the attention they deserve. Can the Minister assure me that in the NHS White Paper community pharmacies will be at the heart of what we are doing to recover from this pandemic?
I can certainly give my hon. Friend that reassurance. Community pharmacies are an incredibly important part of our deployment infrastructure.
Like everybody else, I pay tribute to those who are delivering the vaccine and those who have developed it. I am not quite at the age to have been offered my first dose yet, but I am hoping that it will be soon. When I get that blue envelope through the door, I will go to get my jab. The Minister will be aware that there are a number of people who have a phobia of needles. Is he in a position to update the House on the development of a nasal vaccine?
I am glad the hon. Member will get his jab when the call comes. We are obviously working with a number of manufacturers, who are looking at different delivery technologies for vaccines in the future. It is still some way off, I am afraid. At the moment, the needle dominates the vaccination deployment technologies, but I know that a number of manufacturers are working on other ways of delivering vaccines, including through pills.
Seventy per cent of my constituents have now had one vaccine. I am sure the Minister will join me in congratulating and thanking all those people in Warrington who have played such an important part in this incredible vaccination programme. As he will know, vaccines are one part of the solution. Can he give us an update on drugs and research into treatment for those who find themselves in hospital suffering from covid?
I join my hon. Friend in thanking the local team for going above and beyond, and, as I said earlier, it is all about that spirit of Dunkirk and the coming together of the nation to deliver the vaccination programme. A couple of weeks ago, the Prime Minister announced the therapeutics taskforce, which is moving at pace to identify therapeutics and antivirals to help people who, for whatever reason, cannot be vaccinated and to give us a greater arsenal in our armoury against this pandemic.
I get my second vaccine tomorrow, so I would also like to thank all of the NHS staff and other staff who have made this possible in such a quick turnaround. However, all of that cannot conceal the opacity of the UK Government’s position on accusations of cronyism and corruption, but, thanks to the Good Law Project, that is finally being challenged in the High Court this week. I have been attempting to get to the heart of the procurement of unlicensed lateral flow tests and been met with glib obfuscation from the Department. Can the Minister therefore tell me: when was the contract for these devices signed; was it known at the time that these tests were not licensed by the MHRA for asymptomatic testing; which Minister approved this contract; and if the Government really have nothing to hide, why do they just not come clean?
I just remind the hon. Member that, at this Dispatch Box, the Prime Minister announced a full inquiry that will take place in the spring of 2022, where we can learn all the lessons of the covid pandemic and the Government’s response to it. Suffice to say that all contracting is published in the appropriate way, and civil servants follow the exact rules around contracting.
Fifty-seven thousand people in North West Durham have had their first jab and 34,000 the second, so we are doing really well and progressing excellently. I have my first jab this Saturday. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) that he is 32, so he can also get his jab now. Anybody else in my constituency or across the country can book now through the app. There are concerns, though, about the vaccine. Can the Minister ensure that all the possible issues and side effects are constantly monitored and published so that people can make informed positive choices to get the vaccine, especially in the younger age groups, to ensure that everyone is protected as much as possible, especially from the new variants?
I can certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance. We have an independent regulator here in the MHRA and, of course, Public Health England, and we have a yellow card system where adverse incidents are recorded—they can be reported directly by a GP, a clinician or the person themselves. All that data is published and people can access it on their MHRA website, or google it and see it. An incredible part of the success story of the vaccination programme is that sharing of data, which has led to the highest level of vaccine acceptance among adults in the world. The figures suggest that about 90% of all adults say that they will take the vaccine, or are very likely to take the vaccine.
What steps are the Government taking to ensure that the UK is a leader in the global response to tackling covid-19, especially given the fact that we are not safe until everyone is safe?
When the Prime Minister set up the vaccines taskforce he gave it two priorities: first, to discover the vaccines that would work, in order to contract for them or to manufacture them in the UK; and secondly, to work out how to help the rest of the world, which is why we were the first country to put £548 million into COVAX and very much establish COVAX, which now has more than 450 million doses, the bulk of which are Oxford-AstraZeneca, which is our gift to the world. Some 98% of the COVAX jabs that have been delivered and have protected people have come from Oxford-AstraZeneca. Pfizer has also been doing the same thing: from day one its chief executive, Albert Bourla, spoke about vaccine equality, and Pfizer is offering vaccines at cost to low and middle-income countries.
It is simply unacceptable that my constituents in Luton South found out about the changed advice on travel to Bedford through the back door, via the media last night. They need thorough clarity and formal information to be provided through our local authorities On local authorities, what steps are the Government taking for the prioritisation of turbocharged vaccinations, not just for areas with the new variant but for areas with enduring transmission?
I think I have dealt with the first part of the hon. Lady’s question, in the sense that the guidance and information was shared with the country on 14 May. We continue to endeavour to improve our communications, in partnership with local government and by addressing local health systems On vaccine turbocharging, the hon. Lady will know that we are looking at mobile vaccination sites, increasing sites’ opening hours and putting in more resource so that we can vaccinate the people who are eligible to be vaccinated—it is important to make that distinction. We will continue to do all that in Bedford to make sure that the people of Bedford are protected and we get the variant under control.
Over the weekend I was contacted about two instances of people having difficulties getting the access that they wanted to their frail relatives in Barnet Hospital. It was particularly distressing because in both instances the patients had difficulties communicating with and understanding hospital staff. I appreciate that hospitals have a paramount duty to ensure proper infection control, but will the Minister encourage hospitals throughout the country to facilitate visits so that relatives can support the frail elderly while they are in hospital?
I will certainly take my right hon. Friend’s constituents’ details and look into that. We urge all hospitals to make sure that when the frail elderly need social contact, they are able to get it.
No one is safe from covid-19 until we all are, but the UK continues to stubbornly resist calls for a waiver of covid-19 vaccine patents. Given that people in many of the world’s poorest countries cannot expect to be vaccinated until 2023, and given the failure of the COVAX initiative to distribute vaccines at the volume and speed that is needed, will the Government now follow the lead of the Biden Administration and reverse their position on a patent waiver?
That is a really important question. Let me share with the hon. Member a little about the operational challenges around vaccine manufacture. We will of course look at any text that our US colleagues put forward on the intellectual property issue, but in reality if the exam question is to get more jabs in the arms of those who live in low and middle-income countries, the bottleneck is not the IP but the transfer of technology to manufacturers around the world. What Oxford-AstraZeneca has done incredibly well is to transfer that technology to 20 sites that can manufacture at scale. We have already delivered 450 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. The hon. Gentleman might recall that Pfizer did the same thing; it actually paused its manufacturing in Europe and expanded it, to go from 1.2 billion doses a year for 2021 to almost 3 billion doses. If the exam question is to get more jabs in arms, we need that technology transfer. It is not easy, as we saw in Halix in Europe, which had great difficulty operationalising the manufacturing, as did Catalent in the US. That is the real effort that needs to go in—as well, of course, as helping other countries with deployment. It is only one part of the jigsaw to get the vaccine into warehouses in those countries; those countries have to be able to get it out and into people’s arms.
The experience over the last year has shown that local lockdowns are not effective, because cases simply rocket in the areas immediately outside the local restrictions. With that in mind and to get ahead of the curve, this morning I have been in discussions with Derbyshire County Council and my local director of public health to establish a pop-up vaccination site at Gamesley, where there has been a high number of new cases, so that we can deliver surge vaccination. Will the Minister work with me, my local director of public health and the NHS to ensure that we get the doses we need to get everyone in the High Peak vaccinated as soon as possible?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The important thing is to get those who are eligible vaccinated and for those who need their second dose to get that second dose within the eight-week period. That is the way we control this variant. I will happily work with him on any local initiative that he is working on.
The evidence is clear: women who are pregnant who get covid are twice as likely to have a premature birth and twice as likely to experience stillbirth. Other countries have recognised this and have ensured that pregnant women of any age are a priority for vaccination, but in this country the conversation about the data has not even happened yet, despite months of asking. There will be thousands of pregnant women in the areas where the variant is on the rise, and across the country, terrified about what might happen if they get covid. What can we do to help them get hold of the vaccine, regardless of age, so that we are protecting the youngest members of our community?
The hon. Lady will know, because she is on the weekly MPs’ call that I host, that the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation is looking at this data. In the meantime, because of data provided by the United States of America, we have made the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines available to all pregnant women who are in the eligible cohort. That is happening as we speak. I know that Professor Anthony Harnden, who is the deputy chair of the JCVI, has promised the hon. Lady that the JCVI is looking at the data; when it delivers the advice to us, the system will follow that advice.
The scale and pace with which we are delivering our vaccine programme is a marvellous achievement and a testament to everybody involved. It is how we are able gradually and safely to come out of the restrictions. Will my hon. Friend confirm that we will always be following the science and the data, so that activities can resume as safely and as soon as possible? I am particularly thinking about indoor gatherings for groups such as community choirs, and other events that bring people together. Such activities are so needed to combat the isolation that has hit so many people during the lockdown.
My hon. Friend will know that the reason for restrictions on activities such as choirs and singing is the added transmission through aerosols or droplets. The faster that we can move the vaccination programme, the sooner we can end those restrictions. Therefore, my absolute focus—and my commitment to him—is that we continue at pace. We have a big week this week and a big week next week.
I thank the Minister for his weekly updates, which I have found really helpful, and for his work on vaccine hesitancy across the black, Asian and minority ethnic community. I had my vaccine on 14 May at St Thomas’ Hospital—the same hospital that cared really well for our Prime Minister. The Prime Minister thanked those nurses, including Luis, who gave me my vaccine. But we saw that Jenny resigned from the NHS last week, so will the Minister use his will and his power to speak to the Treasury to get our hard-working nurses the pay they deserve?
I am grateful for the hon. Member’s commitment in ensuring that we get the vaccine message out to harder-to-reach communities and for her work with me on the weekly meetings. We have delivered an increase to nurses. We await the outcome of the deliberations of the panel that will look at nurses’ pay, and then the Treasury will make an announcement in the usual way
I thank my hon. Friend for his assistance in ensuring continuity of supply to the Baths Hall in Scunthorpe and our other vaccination hubs. Over 71% of our adult population in North Lincolnshire have received their first vaccine and almost 50% have had their second vaccine. Will he join me in thanking the fantastic volunteers who I see outside in all weathers at the Baths Hall, welcoming patients to receive their vaccination? We quite simply could not have done it without them.
I absolutely join my hon. Friend in that, because I see it up and down the country all the time. I spoke earlier about the Dunkirk spirit, with people coming up and saying, “I want to be counted. I want to be part of this.” We demonstrated it to the world a little bit in the 2012 Olympics. This is a whole other scale of operation. Nevertheless, we have delivered on it and will continue to deliver on it, and I stand on the shoulders of the real heroes and heroines of the NHS family, our armed forces and local government.
The vaccine works—it prevents serious illness and helps to prevent transmission—but I read in the papers this morning that even if someone has had two jabs, if they come into contact with someone who is positive after 21 June, they will still have to isolate for 10 days. Could my hon. Friend confirm whether or not that is correct?
I answered a question on this issue earlier. Obviously if someone contracts covid, they have to isolate and quarantine, but in terms of their contacts, we are looking at regular testing to see whether there is an alternative. I am afraid that my hon. Friend will have to wait a little longer before step four, and we will say more on this on 14 June.
It is a pleasure to be back in the Chamber, but for many like me who are immunocompromised, returning in person to the workplace is concerning, as we do not yet know how effective the vaccines are for us. Will the Minister consider allowing immunocompromised people to have access to antibody testing, thereby giving us some idea of the vaccines’ efficacy and some knowledge of our level of protection from the virus?
The hon. Lady asked a similar question last week, and Professor Harnden of the JCVI said that the problem with antibody testing is what it really tells us. I will happily ask the question again on her behalf of the JCVI. Suffice it to say that on 17 May we put out guidance to employers saying that those who are shielding and immunocompromised should be allowed to work from home if they need to.
Will my hon. Friend confirm that the Government’s position on the coronavirus pandemic is that it is still a question of life and death, that communications are vital in this effort and that compliance follows confidence, which in turn follows competence? Will he confirm when these local lockdown measures were agreed with the leadership at Bolton Council and when the Prime Minister formally agreed to this updated guidance being imposed?
My hon. Friend will recall that the Prime Minister addressed this issue on 14 May.
indicated dissent.
Yes, he did address this issue in his press conference. I can read the right hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) the words from that press conference, because he says from a sedentary position, “He did not.” The Prime Minister said, speaking about Bolton: “given the caution that I think we have to exercise with this new variant, the risk of extra transmissibility, I would urge people just to think twice about that. That’s what we’re saying. I think that we want people in those areas to recognise that there is extra risk, an extra disruption, a threat of disruption to progress caused by this new variant and just to exercise their discretion and judgment, in a way I’m sure that they have been throughout this pandemic and will continue to do so, I hope very much.” Those were his words, and the guidance was in place.
The Minister has done a good job on the vaccines, but this statement is utterly chaotic and completely confused. What advice is he actually giving to people in the north-west or in West Yorkshire about going to the pub, about weddings and about travel—even about whether, if they are allowed to travel out of Bolton, they are allowed to travel to Portugal, on the green list, for holidays? Is not the reality that he is so uncomfortable about giving any advice because he knows the reason he is putting these people in Bolton, in West Yorkshire and in other places in this position is that the Government failed to put India on the red list earlier? Over 400 people from India came into the country with the Indian variant, and putting India on the red list would have prevented it from spreading to thousands of other people in the community. Will he apologise to people in the areas that are affected with the additional restrictions he is advising because of the Government’s failure?
I do not agree with the right hon. Lady, as she will not be surprised to hear. I have already talked about how visiting families are impacted and pubs and hospitality are affected, and about the exercise of caution and being careful. She will recall that when India was put on the red list on 23 April, it was a full six days later that this particular variant was identified by the experts—the virologists—as a variant of interest, and a full two weeks later before it became a variant of concern. So her point, actually, is made unfairly.
When does my hon. Friend anticipate that the NHS smartphone app will be enabled to allow those in Wales to demonstrate their covid vaccination status? Further to that, does he expect that other features of the app, such as the ability to book GP appointments, to order prescriptions and to view notes will also be enabled in Wales?
We are working closely with the Welsh Government to enable the integration of Welsh citizens’ data with the NHS app, NHS.uk, for the purpose of covid status certification, including undertaking the required scoping and impact assessment that will enable us to set out a detailed timeline for the delivery of that integration.
The people of Bosworth are a pragmatic bunch, as are the people of Leicestershire. Leicestershire surrounds Leicester. What advice does the Minister give to those people who are in Leicestershire who send their kids to school in Leicester, who work in Leicester, and who are thinking of having bank holiday time with family in Leicester?
I thank my hon. Friend—[Interruption.] I hear the right hon. Member for Leicester South saying “Good question.” He is absolutely right. We have to exercise caution and common sense, as I described earlier, around visiting. People absolutely can visit family and friends at half-term if they follow social distancing guidelines. I think people absolutely will exercise that personal responsibility and common sense when they go about their family time or school time.
Last year the Prime Minister gave in to pressure from trade unions and cross-party opposition and announced refunds for health and care workers from overseas for the £624 charge they are paying to use the NHS. Yesterday the Minister for Health, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) could not tell me how many healthcare workers had been refunded, and in Committee earlier, the Care Minister did not know either. Does this Minister know how many, if any, healthcare heroes have had their NHS charges refunded, or was it just another empty promise from this Government?
I am happy to write to the hon. Lady with the answer to her question. Suffice it to say that this is an important amount of money to those people and I do not think we should be playing politics with it in a sort of “gotcha” moment.
The Minister will recall that we were told that the first lockdown was required to give time to build capacity in the NHS. Can he therefore tell us how many more hospital beds are available now than in March last year?
I will write to my right hon. Friend with that detail. Suffice it to say that we now have 908 people with covid, as I said in my statement—the lowest number since lockdown.
South Shields and North Tyneside are interconnected. Today, my community and businesses are incredibly anxious. We know that local lockdowns do not work and inevitably lead to national ones. We know that it is likely that there will be other variants of this virus, which may well be with us for ever. Lockdowns break our economy and society, cause mental distress, delay vital cancer treatments, lead to further unemployment and exacerbate inequalities. Can the Minister explain why the Government’s response—instead of fixing test, trace and isolate, for example—is always more restrictions and endless cycles of lockdown?
I hope the hon. Lady agrees that the vaccination programme has given us a way out of non-pharmaceutical interventions, which were the only thing we had at our disposal to try to slow down the pandemic and the virus. As we transition from pandemic to endemic, we are planning for a booster shot in the autumn to protect the most vulnerable or all people in phase 1—that clinical decision has yet to be made. We are already making plans for next year to deal with covid, as we deal with seasonal flu, through annual vaccination programmes. By next year, this country will be able to manufacture 700 million doses of vaccine, not just for the UK but to help the rest of the world.
My constituency is in Kirklees. I could ask about how the new travel advice for Kirklees was communicated to my constituents, but instead I want to clarify three things with the Minister. The first is travel advice. It is half-term next week, and families will be visiting and going on short breaks. Should they now cancel those trips? Secondly, hotels, bed and breakfasts, and restaurants are getting cancellations. What support will hospitality get? Finally, my constituents can see the data on where the hotspots are. When will we start using granular data to tackle the outbreaks, rather than lumping whole council areas into these advised restrictions?
Let me take those questions in reverse. On granular data, we already have the capability in the vaccination programme to see by postcode area where the uptake is at. That is how we can focus our resources to turbocharge the programme, as we have done and will continue to do, including in Kirklees On pubs and hospitality, indoor areas and hospitality venues can continue to serve seated clientele, diners and drinkers, as I described earlier. If people have booked visits to their families, they are absolutely able to have them as long as they follow social distancing guidelines and common sense We need to make sure that we are vigilant, because the B1617.2 variant is concerning, and we have to bring it under control by turbocharging vaccinations, surge testing, isolating and genome sequencing.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney): what we need now more than ever before is clear communication from the Government, so that residents of Burnley, Blackburn and Bolton know exactly what is expected of them. Will the Minister confirm that this guidance is guidance and that my constituents can still exercise the freedoms that they reclaimed last Monday? Will he meet me and other colleagues to talk through what more we can do to make sure that communication is clear in the areas where we need it most?
I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend. On the guidance, as I have made clear on a number of occasions at the Dispatch Box, people have to be careful and vigilant, as they have been already A number of colleagues have asked about the Batley and Spen by-election. We have just demonstrated in the local elections that we can conduct elections safely; we will be able to conduct that by-election safely, too. People just need to be sensible. Let us work together, bring this together and take the politics out of it.
I now suspend the House for three minutes to enable the necessary arrangements to be made for the next business.
(Urgent Question): To ask the Attorney General if he will make a statement on when the Government’s end-to-end review of the criminal justice system response to rape will be published.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) for her continued interest in the Government’s work in this area. Rape and sexual violence are devastating crimes that impact on victims for the rest of their life. When victims take the brave step of reporting the crime, they expose their deep personal trauma in the interests of justice. The criminal justice system needs to support those victims, believe them and ensure that their needs are met at the heart of the criminal investigation The Government have long recognised that the decline in the number of effective trials for rape and serious sexual offences in England and Wales is a cause of significant concern. As a result, we commissioned the end-to-end rape review in March 2019 to look at evidence across the system, from reporting to the police to outcomes in court, in order to understand what is happening in cases of adult rape and serious sexual offences being charged, prosecuted and convicted in England and Wales Our review represents a serious commitment to change by the Government and our partners. At its heart will be a set of actions that will drive system and culture change to ensure that the victims feel supported and able to stay engaged with their case. That, combined with updated and stronger case preparation methods, as well as increased communication between all those involved in the prosecution and new charge mechanisms, should lead to more cases reaching court and, we hope, defendants pleading guilty To ensure that that happens, I have been tasked by the Prime Minister to take personal leadership of the actions from the review, working with colleagues across Government to ensure accountability of operational partners for delivery. I will of course regularly update the House on our progress On the substantive question, I was keen to publish the rape review last year. However, following extensive feedback from the Victims’ Commissioner and the victim sector that we needed to take account of the End Violence Against Women Coalition’s “The Decriminalisation of Rape” report and the pending judicial review judgment, we took the decision to delay publication. We have used the time since that delay to carry out further research and engage with stakeholders in order to formulate an ambitious and wide-reaching action plan, which we will be publishing shortly after recess. When we publish the report, I will present it to Parliament and write to colleagues across the House to outline our approach. I look forward to working with the hon. Member and, indeed, all Members across the House to ensure that this action plan drives the substantial change we need to see.
The failings of the criminal justice system, particularly in cases involving violence against women and girls, have been well documented in this place, yet victims of rape continue to be a last priority for this Government. Yesterday, The Guardian’s analysis of Home Office figures for rape prosecutions was published, and it makes for truly appalling reading. Fewer than one in 60 rape cases reported to the police last year resulted in a suspect being charged. In 2020, more than 52,000 rapes were reported in England and Wales, yet only 843 resulted in a charge or summons. That figure translates to a shocking rate of just 1.6% Like many others, I initially welcomed the Government’s commitment to an end-to-end rape review of the criminal justice system, yet we are now more than two years down the line and, after a number of delays, that vital review is still nowhere to be seen. The Justice Secretary recently announced that it would be published before the end of the spring, yet the stakeholder reference group that the Minister alluded to has not been consulted on what is in the rape review action plan. Enough is enough The Government have repeatedly acknowledged that they have not been robust enough in their efforts to tackle gender-based violence, but it does not have to be this way. The Labour Government in Wales passed the Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act 2015, which set out 10 national indicators of progress in tackling violence against women and girls by which the Government can be held to account. By contrast, the UK Government cannot even commit to publishing their own review in good time So I ask the Minister: will he now take this opportunity to apologise for this delay to thousands of rape victims, and particularly the 40% who are rapidly losing faith in the justice system and withdrawing from prosecutions? Will he support Labour’s call to introduce a similar indicator to that seen in Wales, to facilitate a transparent approach to tackling violence against women and girls? Lastly, will he once and for all confirm an exact date for when this review will be published?
I completely appreciate the hon. Lady’s righteous anger about this situation. As I said in my statement, this is not a matter about which any of us are particularly pleased or proud, and it is a source of regret that the investigation and conviction of rape has been declining for some years. It is a difficult offence to deal with at the best of times, but the significant declines that we have seen in the past few years are absolutely what we wish to address However, against that background, I am sorry that the hon. Lady seeks to politicise what should be a cross-party issue, not a Labour/Conservative issue. There are many Members on the Government Benches for whom this has been a significant issue for some time. As Mayor of London, the Prime Minister himself published the first ever violence against women and girls strategy in this country and, indeed, in any major city around the world. This is an issue that has been close to his heart, and indeed mine, for some time I should also point out to the hon. Lady that, notwithstanding the fact that there is a document that requires publishing—as I say, that will be published shortly after recess—she should not mistake that for the beginning of the work. Much work has been done thus far, and we are engaged closely with the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and other partners to make sure that the action plan and the work we need to do to get more cases from report into court has begun already. As the hon. Lady will know, the Crown Prosecution Service and the National Police Chiefs’ Council launched their joint action plan in January this year, and I am pleased that that progress is being made as well That is against a background of significant action by the Government over the past decade in various areas of violence against women and girls, which I hope the hon. Lady will appreciate and applaud, ranging from creating the offence of coercive control to outlawing upskirting, stalking, and revenge porn and the threat thereof. We have just passed the landmark Domestic Abuse Act 2021 with great support across both Houses. Alongside that, we have the information and support campaigns the Government have been running, along with the very significant financial support that has gone into support for victims and witnesses of rape and sexual violence The document is important, and it was important to get it right—as I say, we delayed it at the request of the Victims’ Commissioner and the victims sector. Please be under no illusion: we are working extremely hard to try to correct what, as the hon. Lady points out, is an injustice.
As somebody who both prosecuted and defended probably dozens of rape cases in the course of my career at the Bar, I can say that the Minister is certainly right to recognise that these are always complex and demanding cases. The difficulty of securing the same level of convictions as there is for other types of serious offence has been around for many years—it is not a recent one It is also right, of course, to have delayed publication until the decision of the Court of Appeal in the judicial review; otherwise, it might have materially altered the review’s conclusions. However, now that all the challenges have been dismissed on all grounds and the judgment has been handed down, on 14 May, will my hon. Friend undertake to ensure that not only is the document published but that there is proper resourcing to support the joint national plan of action between the Crown Prosecution Service and the police? Doing the same is starting to make a difference in relation to the problems experienced in the past with disclosure. Getting the thing working on the ground, surely, is what we must now tackle very urgently.
I am grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee. He is quite right that to get this complicated and difficult piece of work correct, it was appropriate for us to delay. I have to confess that I was pretty gung-ho —anxious to get it out before Christmas. But as I say, the intervention of the sector and the judicial review meant that we had to hold off because of the implications My hon. Friend is quite right that the key issue is not so much the document, which is an important statement and political moment, but the operationalisation of what is within it. While we are dealing with a police service of tens of thousands of individuals, a prosecution service with many people involved, and lots of other parties that take a case from report to court, getting them all to both act and think differently—the culture change as well as the operational change—will be an enormous challenge. That is what we are focused on. He will be pleased to know that I have convened a Criminal Justice Board taskforce of key individuals in the organisations involved to try to drive that operational challenge of embedding change.
Thank you for granting this urgent question, Madam Deputy Speaker The Government are letting down victims of rape and serious sexual violence on every front. Victims are being left waiting years for their day in court, with no support, no communication and no action from the Government. When I have spoken to victims, they tell me that they often feel as though they are on trial and how being left to wait years for their day in court leaves them in a form of purgatory, unable to move on from what has happened to them. Many feel that the justice system is working against them, not for them. That is a complete and utter failing of this Government We have been waiting for over two years for the rape review. The Minister refers to the court judgment, but that was handed down weeks ago—again, the date of publication has been kicked into the long grass, with no action from the Government. In that time, another 100,000 rapes are reported to have taken place Victims cannot wait any longer for action. The Government must urgently publish their review, which must include hard-hitting recommendations and root-and-branch reform to the CPS, Ministry of Justice and Home Office. We need to see how the Government intend to reverse the shocking deterioration of rape prosecutions they have allowed to happen under their watch and how they intend to improve the criminal justice system for victims of rape and sexual violence. What we do not need are slapdash briefings to the press about what is potentially in the review. No more pilots, no more consultations—what we need is action. We need a plan, and Labour has one. We have set out what we would do in our survivors’ support plan and in our Green Paper, “Ending violence against women and girls”. So today, I ask the Minister: will he commit to backing Labour’s survivors’ support plan? Will he introduce indicators across the Crown Prosecution Service, the Ministry of Justice and police to improve victims’ experience of the criminal justice system, as set out in our Green Paper? Will he finally commit to a date for the publication of the review, or will he continue to watch the effective decriminalisation of rape?
As I said earlier, we have committed that the review will be published shortly after the recess, but as I said in answer to an earlier question, please do not believe that we are waiting for the production of the plan to start the work. Indeed, much of the work has been done already. The hon. Lady will know, for example, that Project Bluestone in Avon and Somerset police is doing fantastic work at the moment on a new model of operation for this kind of investigation and on joint close working between the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. They have a joint operational improvement board. They have launched their action plan. There was significant support for that and a massive mobilisation across policing to deal with, in particular, the new disclosure guidelines that the Attorney General’s Office has issued in response to the growth in the use of mobile phones in the investigation of crime, particularly in this area I would be more than happy to look at the Labour Green Paper, because I do not think there is any monopoly on good ideas in this area, as I hope that my opposite number will look with an open mind at the plan that we publish and the work we intend to do. We all have a shared desire here to see better outcomes and more justice for victims in court, and we will have to stand shoulder to shoulder if we are going to make that happen.
The devastating impact on victims from rape, sexual exploitation, sexual violence and grooming is shattering and long-lasting, and every victim must feel able to come forward with confidence that their complaint will be fully investigated and, where evidence supports, that charges and prosecutions will follow. However, not all victims have confidence in the criminal justice system, so can my hon. Friend outline what steps the Government are taking to support those victims and provide reassurance that any complaint will be taken seriously?
My hon. Friend is right that we have to make sure in all we do that victims are at the heart of the criminal justice system, and he will have seen in the recent Queen’s Speech that we have made a commitment to bring in a new victims law. It will put the victims code, which has 12 strong rights for victims in the criminal justice system, into law and ensure that all the operational partners—the police, the CPS and the courts, which are all rightly independent of Government—see the need to take up the challenge of putting victims at the heart of the system.
The statistics are frankly lamentable, and behind each one is a victim. There were 52,210 rapes recorded by police in England and Wales in 2020. Only 843 resulted in a charge or a summons—a rate of 1.6%. For every 10 cases the CPS prosecuted in 2016-17, it now pursues only three. We know what failure looks like: it is this. What should the figures look like to be acceptable to the Minister? How long does he think we should have to wait to get to that point?
The hon. Member is quite right. As I have said, the numbers are deeply, deeply regrettable, and he is correct that not enough victims are getting justice in court. There have obviously been significant changes in technology, not least the advent of the mobile phone and the critical part it plays in so many of these investigations. We need to get ourselves in shape, both in terms of capacity and capability, and we need the right framework around inquiry and disclosure for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. That work is ongoing. We have ambitions, obviously, to raise the number very significantly, but I would not underestimate the operational challenge in embedding this across 43 police forces. The hon. Gentleman will know that creating the structural change alongside the cultural change in two operationally independent organisations, as well as in the court system, will take time and a foundational approach to change, which we are committed to and on which the work has started already.
What is being done to improve the collaboration between the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure that more cases are actually charged?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who, as usual, puts her finger on the key issue—the relationship between the police and the CPS, in their collaboration to get a case to court, is absolutely critical. I hope she saw that, in January, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Crown Prosecution Service launched their joint national action plan, with five themed areas of work that are designed to do exactly that. Those are on support for victims; casework quality and progression; digital capability and disclosure, including looking at mobile phones, as I mentioned earlier; people and expertise—critically, building knowledge and expertise—and engaging properly with stakeholders. I know that Deputy Chief Constable Sarah Crew, with whom I have met many times, and Baljit Ubhey and Sue Hemming from the CPS are leading the charge on this. They form part of the criminal justice support taskforce, which I lead, to try to drive the kind of results that we want to see.
Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lefarydd. The shocking drop in rape convictions demonstrates the need for urgent, radical, systemic change. Welsh Women’s Aid has stressed to me the importance of accurate, disaggregated data for Wales in its monitoring of the current duty to prevent crime and protect victims under the Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act 2015. Will the Minister commit to a regular publication of Wales-specific data relating to cases of rape, and will he acknowledge that prosecution support services will work effectively for rape survivors only when justice powers are devolved to Wales, as they are to Scotland and Northern Ireland?
Data and transparency is one of the key themes that we have been looking at as part of the rape review. There will be an announcement, when the plan comes, about what we intend to do in terms of reporting. I am afraid that I do not support her call for more devolution. I think that England and Wales are stronger together on this issue, as on so many others.
The vast majority of rape victims know the perpetrator in the first place, and the vast majority are in relationships with them, or historically have been. The key here is ensuring that once a victim of rape reports it to the police, they are dealt with not only sympathetically, but supported all the way along the line to court. This is a structural and cultural change that needs to take place. What effort is my hon. Friend making to ensure that cultural change, as well as structural change, is actually implemented?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that one of the key issues that we have to address is what they call “victim attrition”, which is a slightly depersonalised, desensitised phrase for victims not feeling that they are going to get justice and giving up along the way. I was very pleased that the Government announced a massive increase in the amount of money being given to create the posts of independent sexual violence advisers and domestic abuse advisers, who will help to support victims through the criminal justice system to make sure that they get to court in good shape and able to give the evidence that they wish to give. There will be more about this issue in the review and I hope that, when it comes, he will welcome it.
Despite the reasoning, the long delay in publishing the Government’s review of rape cases is emblematic of the chronic delays throughout the criminal justice system that are denying survivors justice and allowing rapists to walk free. The results of the analysis initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) are shocking. As a former sexual offences trained police officer, I think that what these statistics make clear is that police and prosecutors need more resources and training to bring perpetrators to justice, whether that means supporting survivors, handling investigations sensitively, analysing digital evidence or countering damaging stereotypes. The Minister talked in his response about this being part of ongoing work, so what are the Government doing now to deliver?
I agree with the hon. Lady about resources and training. The development of expertise, which she obviously had in her career, is a key part of the Crown Prosecution Service and National Police Chiefs’ Council joint national action plan. We see better results from specialist teams, and often those structural issues that allow police officers to stay in post for longer, and develop an expertise in what my hon. Friend will know is a difficult and sensitive area of investigation, are critical. We must also ensure that the CPS is able to develop that specialism, and that will be a critical part of the joint national action plan.
In South Yorkshire just 24 people were charged, despite nearly 1,600 reports of rape being made in 2019. The Minister says that the Government have taken action, but their recent Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill does not mention women once. Will he admit that through their lack of action, this Government have effectively decriminalised rape?
I am sorry to hear the numbers from South Yorkshire, and I know the hon. Lady will address them with the police and crime commissioner there, who is responsible for the performance of the police. He also chairs the local criminal justice board, which is designed to bring partners together in that area to work on exactly these issues. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill includes provisions that will focus on offences that largely impact women, not least the end of the halfway release for serious sexual offenders, including rapists who, when the Bill goes through, will have to serve two-thirds of their sentence, providing greater protection and justice for their victims.
Because the majority of rapes take place behind closed doors, where the victim knows the perpetrator, and in circumstances that are incredibly difficult to prove afterwards, it has always been a difficult crime for which to get a conviction. The most striking features of the current rate are the high rate of attrition, and the fact that the CPS has seen fit to update the rape and serious sexual offences guidance all the way through the year on victim behaviour. Does my hon. Friend think there is a case for specialised prosecutors, and a specialist sexual offences court to deal with such crimes?
I had the pleasure of watching a talk that my hon. Friend gave last night to a think-tank about these issues, and she was very thoughtful and interesting on this subject. Across all crime types we see that specialism pays, both in apprehending the perpetrator, but also in getting a conviction. We must ensure that the police and CPS can develop those specialisms. All prosecutions are currently charged by specialist RASSO prosecutors, but a collective expertise must be a key mission for us. Alongside that, we must ensure that victims have specialist support, and expertise is key to that My hon. Friend is right to say that this is a particularly difficult, evidential situation, where often it is one word against another, and other circumstantial evidence may or may not lead to a conviction. I want to concentrate on the key area of recent reporting, and on encouraging people to report as soon as possible. As she will know, there is a short forensic window in such situations—normally 7 to 10 days—and there are sensitive forensic facilities where evidence can be gathered. We know that in such circumstances, the likelihood of conviction is much greater. For historical offenders it is even more difficult, which is why expertise is even more important.
The Government know that rape prosecution and conviction rates have always been too low, but they have plummeted over the last four years, dropping by 60% to 70%. Ministers were warned several years ago about the impact of cuts to specialist rape prosecutors and to specialist sexual violence teams in the police. Has the Minister done an assessment of what the reduction in some of those specialist policing teams has been, what the impact has been, and what additional capacity is now needed in those specialist teams, in both the CPS and the police, to turn this awful situation around?
I thank the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee for her question, but it would be a mistake to point to one particular issue driving the drop. We know, for example, that the significant fall from 2016-17 was down to difficulties with disclosure that arose from particular cases, and the impact that that has had on both the police and the Crown Prosecution Service I think it is sometimes a mistake to give the impression that somehow a decision was made that this should happen. It was not. There has been a pattern of decline over a number of years. Part of the reason that we instituted the rape review, admittedly 24 months ago, was to try to diagnose exactly what has gone wrong—exactly why these cases are failing to get to court, why so many witnesses are falling out before they get to court, why we are seeing difficulties with disclosure, and what we can do to improve, for example, our operation of digital forensics, in terms of both capacity and capability. All that will be contained in the review. I understand people’s impatience; there is not much longer to wait now.
I commend the Government for the work that has already been put in hand to improve support for rape complainants. Will my hon. Friend give an update on when the new 2017 guidance on achieving best evidence—ABE—will be published and set out how the use of recorded pre-trial evidence and the specialist input of the Criminal Bar Association are informing the Government’s next steps?
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s constructive question. He is right; we do think that the use of section 28, as it is called—giving recorded evidence—will have a role to play. As he will know, we have rolled it out for vulnerable victims across all Crown courts, and we now have a number of pathfinder courts—in Liverpool and, I think, Leeds—where we are using it in cases of intimidated witnesses, not least in cases of rape and sexual violence. As for the guidance that he points towards, that is a police-owned document, and I know that they are collaborating closely with the CPS and the Criminal Bar Association to get it right. We stand ready to help them with publication once their work is finished.
I have heard harrowing testimony from a number of my constituents about their experience of seeking justice after rape and sexual violence. The majority felt that they had been further traumatised by the process and felt like they were the ones on trial, whether because they were required to hand over their digital devices, because they were not able to access pre-trial therapy, or because of the myths and stereotypes that abound Listening to that testimony, I felt vindicated in my own decision not to go to the police—a decision that thousands of women sadly take because they understandably feel like their trauma will only be compounded by the process, with a minuscule likelihood of securing a conviction. Will the Minister therefore please commit to supporting Labour’s call for the establishment of a pre and post-trial survivor support package, including a full legal advocacy scheme for victims and better training for professionals around myths and stereotypes, so that survivors can finally have some confidence in this process?
It is obviously a matter of deep regret that anybody feels prevented from coming forward to report a rape, or indeed a sexual assault, to the police. That is one of the issues that we need to address—building confidence among victims that they should and could step forward, recognising at all times that it takes enormous courage to do so. Like the hon. Lady, I have sat with victims of this particularly appalling and intimate crime over the years, so I recognise the devastating impact that it can have. As to the measures that she calls for, I obviously cannot make an announcement today, but I recommend that, when the review is published, she reads it from cover to cover.
Being believed is one of the most important things for a rape victim’s confidence. Being able to come forward and report the rape in the first instance is not easy, especially when sexual abuse survivors really fear that if they were to report the crime no one would believe them, when victims know that society can blame them for the aggression or, as is often the case, when the rape victim was known by the perpetrator. I therefore thank my hon. Friend for his assurance today that the voices of victims are at the heart of the review, but will he assure me that rape victims going forward will have confidence in the criminal justice system’s handling of rape complaints?
While my primary objective will be to get more cases into court—that, fundamentally, is the problem we are trying to address—my hon. Friend is quite right that, alongside that, it is completely critical that we build confidence among victims in the criminal justice system. We have seen an increase in reported rape over the last few years, and it is quite a significant increase, so more people are confident to come forward. However, given the performance figures so far, that could easily slip away, so making sure they are at the heart of decision making—that they know when they come forward that they can access the support they need, and can get the guidance and indeed the advocacy they need; that they will be received by police officers and prosecutors who are invested properly in and are looking dispassionately at the investigation; and that the natural inquiries required as part of this sort of offence investigation are proportionate and do not invade privacy in a disproportionate way—will be critical to the mission, and I hope that that is what she will find in the report.
The Minister has rightly highlighted the importance of data and transparency in the rape review. With some police forces reporting a rapid rise in sexual offending by women, what steps is he taking to ensure that all police forces accurately record and collect data on the sex of both the victims and the perpetrators in all cases of rape and sexual violence? Does he agree with me that, when it comes to recording crime, sex does matter?
I agree with the hon. Lady that demographics of all types matter. Indeed, I forget who it was, but someone said, “If you can’t measure something, you don’t know how to change it”. One of the first questions I have asked in my initial meetings in this job, when officials come in with a particular area of policy to deal with, is: do we actually know what is happening—do we have a clear picture of what is happening out there on the streets and communities we serve? I am more than happy to go back and have a look at the particular issue she has raised to make sure that we are getting the recording right.
I welcome the Government’s support for independent sexual violence advisers, who we know have a profound effect in helping victims to get through the court process. However, we know that there is an issue in convictions versus acquittals in the court process as well. Could my hon. Friend please assure me that this will be thoroughly investigated in the rape review, but also that we will be looking at how we communicate the changes on a national level, so that people who might not otherwise be engaged in the political stories of the day will learn about these changes and have confidence in the system going forward?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to create a self-reinforcing story of success, where the support we give to victims and the changes in our methodology and indeed practices between the police and the CPS lead to a greater number of cases going into court, and that in turn leads to a greater number of convictions, which should build confidence among victims. I hope that is exactly the kind of spiral of success that the report will produce.
Seven in 10 women say the Government’s efforts to make the UK safer for women are lacking. Does the Minister back Labour’s Bill to end violence against women and girls, and if not, does he believe seven in 10 women are wrong?
Obviously, one of the key themes that we wanted to address as a Government is a general sense of safety in the public realm. That is why we are recruiting 20,000 more police officers and working day and night to drive performance on all crime types to create a greater sense of safety and security on our streets for men and women I do not accept necessarily, however, that we need a Bill as the hon. Lady has outlined, not least because we have managed to do a fair amount—a huge amount, actually—on violence against women and girls over the past few years through other means, as I set out earlier. We have new offences of coercive control, upskirting and stalking, and on revenge porn. The rough sex defence has been dealt with, and we have introduced modern slavery offences, when women are often trafficked for sex. We have even campaigned on rape being used as a weapon of war around the world. Alongside that are the report we have made on refuges, the domestic abuse helplines and work that we are doing now on the rape review That huge package points towards the safety of women and girls. While there is much to be proud of in that, there is still a lot more to do, which is why later this year we will publish a violence against women and girls strategy alongside a complementary domestic abuse strategy.
The justice system is in meltdown and the victims of all crime are having their justice delayed and subsequently denied, but survivors of rape and sexual violence are also being denied vital psychological therapy and counselling, since to seek such lifesaving support can be deemed to interfere with the validity of their evidence. Will the Minister adopt Labour’s survivors’ support package as a first and immediate step to ensure that survivors may have their evidence pre-recorded and their cross-examination pre-trial, so that they may access the very help that they need?
The pandemic has been extremely challenging for the court system over the past year or so, but we all have a duty not to be hyperbolic in our language—it is not in meltdown. Justice is still being dispensed in the courts, and while delay built up naturally during the pandemic, an enormous amount of work has been done to deal with it, with the opening of Nightingale courts and a massive expansion of capacity. We are seeing progress, so I hope that the hon. Lady will focus on the work that needs to be done to recover from the pandemic. We will see more positive outcomes in the months to come.
The military conviction rate is far lower than that in the civil system. Service personnel and veterans’ representatives are all calling for military rape to be heard in civilian courts. Will my right hon. Friend agree to discuss with his Ministry of Defence counterpart that all victims, regardless of where the assault took place, should receive the justice that they deserve?
I share my hon. Friend’s concern about the low figures in military courts as well, and I will of course discuss that with the Secretary of State for Defence or my ministerial counterpart. I know that my hon. Friend is authoring, or leading on, a report on women in the armed forces at the moment. I shall look forward to reading that as well and drawing some conclusions from it for my work.
Violence against women and girls starts really young. I do not know whether the Minister saw the news today about the research done by Radio 4 and the NASUWT into sexual violence and harassment in schools, but a third of teachers had witnessed peer-on-peer sexual harassment or abuse and one in 10 see this happening on a weekly basis The problem we have with violence against women and girls in this country starts young and it never ends. We have a real problem, so as well as no more delays to the publication of the end-to-end rape review, will the Minister commit to talking seriously to his colleagues in the Department for Education about addressing the need for education on consent for boys and girls in schools and through youth work?
The hon. Lady makes an important point which, as I am sure she appreciates, is not within my ministerial ambit to comment on. However, through the work of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on the online harms Bill and of the Department for Education, we are all very much aware that young people take their signals and learn their behaviour from the adults around them. We all have a duty to ensure that they grow up as right-thinking members of society.
It is a fact that victims of rape and sexual assault are deterred from reporting these crimes. The combination of very low conviction rates, reporting requirements and a societal view of victim blaming combine to contribute against these feelings of deterrence. What can the Government do to ensure that the voices of victims are right at the heart of the review?
I hope that, given his obvious conviction and commitment to this issue, my hon. Friend will volunteer to be on the Committee that considers the victims’ Bill when it enters the House. It will be a critical part of the architecture of ensuring that we build confidence in the system among victims, and I look forward to its passage through the House.
The Minister says that justice is being dispensed in our courts. Well, in April this year a convicted rapist who named and blamed his victim on Facebook got a paltry £120 fine. We rightly give victims of rape anonymity for life. What message does he think it sends to victims when this important protection is being abused and the penalty for it is less than someone would get for fly-tipping? And if he agrees that it is not acceptable, what is he doing about it?
As you will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, victims of these kinds of offences do have a right to lifetime anonymity. Although I have to admit that that penalty standing alone does seem derisory, the hon. Lady will know that the particular individual—I think we are talking about the same case—received a very significant sentence for the substantive offence. This is an issue that we will be keeping under review, but for the purposes of the rape review my job is to get more cases into court, and that is what I will be focusing on.
One of the issues in securing convictions is proving lack of consent. As my hon. Friend has said, it is often one person’s word against the other person’s. Would he consider working with the Crown Prosecution Service and the police to establish guidelines as to how to prove consent or lack thereof?
My hon. Friend raises a critical issue, which, as she says, is at the heart of so many of these investigations. I know that, as part of their joint action plan, the police and the CPS will be looking at exactly such issues to ensure that there is consistency and, frankly, that they can get the right kind of result in court.
Can the Minister tell the House whether the rape review looks at the shockingly low figures for convictions of men who rape women and girls who have been trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation; and will this be addressed in any action plan, including the need for new legislation to protect women and girls, and to hold men accountable for their actions?
As the right hon. Lady will know, thanks to this Government there are now significant penalties under the modern slavery legislation for those who traffic individuals. However, I hope she will forgive me if I do not necessarily reveal what is in the review. I hope that she will see that, whatever the circumstances of that particular offence, once the work starts—the work has started, but once we get going on the work that sits behind the rape review—we will see perpetrators of all kinds of these offences in court, where justice can be dispensed.
Last month, a constituent of mine sent me a very powerful account of how her case has taken nearly three years to reach court. During that time, she has been told not to have therapy; that she could have therapy as long as the notes were shared with the defence; that she should not claim compensation; that she should not speak about it; and, at one point, that she would not be able to watch the trial. Will my hon. Friend assure me that the review will look both at how we can get cases to court more quickly, but at how victims can feel more supported, rather than feeling as my constituent has felt—inadvertently silenced?
I am very distressed to hear the experience of my hon. Friend’s constituent; it sounds like a dreadful case. On the therapy issue, the guidelines in place say that pre-trial therapy is absolutely allowed and appropriate, and nobody should be steered away from it. I would be more than happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that particular case, because it sounds like one from which we can learn some lessons.
Dame Vera Baird, the Victims’ Commissioner, has stated that the Government’s rape review team “took the surprising decision not to seek the views of those who really matter—rape survivors.” Will the Minister confirm today that the upcoming end-to-end review did consult survivors of rape and sexual violence? If it did not, how can he assure the House that the review is in fact end-to-end without its speaking to those directly impacted?
Of course we consulted survivors, and a number of organisations that represent survivors were represented on the engagement panel as part of the development of the review. Indeed, more than that, the Government appointed Emily Hunt, a high-profile campaigner on this issue and herself a survivor, as an expert adviser.
There is a benefit to being last to ask a question: one gets to see the whole debate. Throughout these exchanges there has been one common theme, which is trust. Only this month I have written to the Minister about harassment cases, but at its worst it is rape cases. People need to believe that when they come forward they will be trusted, that the police can be trusted to do their jobs, that they can trust sentences to be punishment and, finally, that we in this House are implementing the right laws. I am not asking the Minister to comment specifically on whether this review will deliver that, but overall does he think that it will bring trust into the system so that more convictions will go forward?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that trust in the police, the prosecution service and the courts is critical to building the confidence and legitimacy on which our law-enforcement system rests. Having been involved in the development of the plan, I hope and believe that it will do two things: first, address that particular issue in what is a complex environment; and secondly, bring justice for individual victims, absent the general confidence that we should all try to instil in the system.
I thank the Minister for answering the urgent question.
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Last week, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care announced, without making a separate statement, that Hounslow and other local authority areas would be added to the new surge areas, rolling that announcement into his response to the Queen’s Speech debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) and I appreciated a call from the Secretary of State’s Minister while the Secretary of State was in the Chamber, but we were subsequently shocked to find out that Hounslow Council had not been directly contacted about the statement at all. The council found out about it when it was phoned by the Evening Standard at lunchtime, ahead of the Secretary of State’s statement. The tone of the conversation sounded not like a journalist fishing but that a journalist knew what was coming Today, Hounslow residents have woken up to see the news that the guidance on the Department of Health and Social Care’s website was updated without announcement, causing confusion, and again without communication to the council. One playgroup found out when the staff went to a hall and set everything up and then had to shut it down after 10 minutes. The council leader has said that the “current communication from Government on our national covid response is woefully lacking” and impacting on the council’s work to inform and protect local residents. That is despite the Minister saying today, at least twice, that communication between health leaders and councils is essential in keeping people safe and tackling the spread of the virus This is no way to treat our constituents. Could you advise me, Madam Deputy Speaker, on how MPs can have a proper chance to ask questions on behalf of their constituencies if the Secretary of State is not making statements on significant changes in policy to this House?
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving me notice of her point of order. While the Chair is not responsible for the content of statements, Mr Speaker has made it clear that important announcements should be made to the Chamber first. Clearly, what constitutes an important announcement is a matter of judgment, but the hon. Lady has placed her views on the record, and I am sure that Ministers and Whips on the Treasury Bench will have heard her concerns. As she said, Mr Speaker did grant an urgent question earlier today in which similar points were made, but her points will have been added to those, and I am sure she will find other ways to make her concerns known.
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Last week, I asked the Health Secretary a very simple and honest question about a matter that is of national importance but also of local concern to my constituents, and that is the opening of the Leamington Spa mega-laboratory, a testing facility. The Secretary of State did not give me any answer to that question. I have written many times to his Department asking what is going on. Could you advise how on earth my constituents and all of us are supposed to know what is going on with that project?
I thank the hon. Member for giving me notice that he wanted to raise that point. Of course, I am not responsible for Ministers’ answers in the Chamber, but again, I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench will have noted his point. I suggest that he pursues the factual answers he seeks through other methods, such as written questions. I am sure that those in the Table Office and other Clerks would be happy to give him advice on the other ways in which he might get the information he seeks I am now suspending the House for three minutes, to enable arrangements to be made for the next item of business.
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: New clause 2—Provision of information to the Intelligence and Security Committee— “The Secretary of State must provide the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament as soon as is reasonably practicable with a copy of— (a) any direction or notice (or part thereof) that is withheld from publication by the Secretary of State in the interests of national security in accordance with section 105Z11(2) or (3) of the Communications Act 2003; (b) any notification of contravention given by the Secretary of State in accordance with section 105Z18(1) of the Communications Act 2003; (c) any confirmation decision given by the Secretary of State in accordance with section 105Z20(2)(a) of the Communications Act 2003; (d) any reasons for making an urgent enforcement direction that are withheld by the Secretary of State in the interests of national security in the accordance with section 105Z22(5) of the Communications Act 2003; and (e) any reasons for confirming or modifying an urgent enforcement direction that are withheld by the Secretary of State in the interests of national security in accordance with section 105Z23(6) of the Communications Act 2003.” This new clause would ensure that the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament is provided with any information relating to a designated vendor direction, notification of contravention, urgent enforcement action or modifications to an enforcement direction made on grounds of national security. New clause 3—Network diversification— “(1) The Secretary of State must publish an annual report on the impact of progress of the diversification of the telecommunications supply chain on the security of public electronic communication networks and services (2) The report required by subsection (1) must include an assessment of the effect on the security of those networks and services of— (a) progress in network diversification set against the most recent telecommunications diversification strategy presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State; (b) likely changes in ownership or trading position of existing market players; (c) changes to the diversity of the supply chain for network equipment; (d) new areas of market consolidation and diversification risk including the cloud computing sector; (e) progress made in any aspects of the implementation of the diversification strategy not covered by subsection (a); (f) the public funding which is available for diversification (3) The Secretary of State must lay the report before Parliament (4) A Minister of the Crown must, not later than two months after the report has been laid before Parliament, make a motion in the House of Commons in relation to the report.” This new clause requires the Secretary of State to report on the impact of the Government’s diversification strategy on the security of telecommunication networks and services, and allow for a debate in the House of Commons on the report. Amendment 1, in clause 14, page 21, line 27, at end insert— “(3) The Secretary of State must, in the process of carrying out reviews and drafting subsequent reports, consult the appropriate ministers from the devolved governments.”
It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate on Report. As I may have mentioned before, I am a chartered electrical engineer; before I entered Parliament, I worked for 20 years helping to build out the networks—fixed wireless and mobile—that became the internet. I am proud of that work and of the immense contribution that the telecommunications sector makes to our society, our economy and our security I am very pleased that today we are dedicating parliamentary time to our telecommunications sector. I thank all Members across the House who served on the Bill Committee for our many hours of fruitful debate as we strove to secure improvements to the Bill. I also thank the officials of this House, particularly in the Public Bill Office and the Library, who have provided such excellent support I declare an interest: many provisions in the Bill deal with the regulator Ofcom, and my last telecommunications role was with Ofcom. I joined it in 2004 just a few weeks after it was born, when it was to be a light-touch regulator, small and nimble. As a consequence of my time in the sector, I have been calling for greater security, particularly for our mobile networks, since I first entered this place in 2010 The Labour party and I welcome the intention behind the Bill, but a number of areas in it need to be addressed. We are here today because of the Huawei debacle of the Government’s making. The Government have been forced to require the removal of Huawei, at an estimated cost of £2 billion and a delay of two to three years to our 5G roll-out, after overseeing Huawei’s rapid rise to be the foremost supplier to the telecoms company that carries our country’s name and universal service obligation: British Telecom The telecoms supply chain review found that there were no incentives for our mobile network operators to provide secure networks. Moreover, successive Tory Governments have squandered the world-leading position on broadband infrastructure left to them by Labour in 2010, as the United Kingdom has fallen down the league table from 27th to 47th in the world for average internet speeds. This lack of sovereign capability and absence of an effective telecoms strategy has resulted in our dependency on high-risk vendors, which the Bill seeks to address I am sure that you will be pleased to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I will not repeat the same arguments on Huawei that have dominated the debate over recent years. Given where we are now, we support the aims of the Bill. National security is the first duty of any Government, and Labour will always put national security first. Our telecoms infrastructure is clearly critical to our defence and security, as well as our economic prosperity We agree that, as the Bill sets out, the Secretary of State should have powers to designate vendors of concern and require mobile network operators to take appropriate action, and that Ofcom should have the power to monitor and enforce those directions. However, we wish to improve the Bill in three key areas, which our new clauses 1, 2 and 3 seek to address The first area is national security. Labour prioritises national security, and the sweeping powers that the Bill gives the Secretary of State must be used in the interests of securing our critical national infrastructure. Removing Huawei does not, in and of itself, make our networks secure now or protect them against future threats; that requires a number of additional measures, some of which are in the Bill and some of which are not. For a start, if our telecoms network is to be secure, there must be expert democratic oversight of the measures that make it secure—yet the Bill makes no provision for Parliament’s experts, the Intelligence and Security Committee, to be informed or consulted. We want to fix that Secondly, the security of our network depends on an effective plan to diversify the supply chain. We are very concerned that the Bill does not even mention diversification and thus risks short-changing our national security, our technological sovereignty and our telecoms infrastructure. We want to ensure that progress is made in diversification as a prerequisite for the security of the telecoms network and a UK sovereign capability should be a part of that Thirdly, the Bill gives many new responsibilities and powers to Ofcom. That follows a vast expansion of Ofcom’s remit over the past 10 years. We want to make sure that Ofcom is appropriately resourced to carry out its duties and to be forward looking, not simply looking back One of the great failings of the Bill is that the Government are so fixated on fighting the last battle—the Huawei battle—they are not looking to the future. That is, in part, because various Government Back-Bench Members have very real concerns about the rise of China and its influence on our infrastructure. But these concerns, however well justified, seem to be blinding the Government to threats that are not Chinese in origin. We want to fix that. We want Ofcom to have the resources and the will to monitor the evolution of our telecoms networks, so that future threats, wherever they come from, can be identified and we do not find ourselves forced, as we are now, to make a huge change to our networks, at a huge cost to our economy I turn to new clause 1. As I said in my opening remarks, I joined Ofcom in 2004 when it was in its infancy as a slimline regulator. I kept a copy of the Communications Act 2003 on my desk. Since then, that Act has already doubled in size as Ofcom has acquired responsibility for critical national infrastructure: the BBC; the Post Office; online harms—that Bill is coming down the road; and, in this Bill, parts of national security as well. This latest expansion of Ofcom duties will necessarily add a strain not only to its budget, but to its resources. In January, in response to my written question, the Government stated that Ofcom would have the resources that it needs to do the job, in which case the Minister should be keen to support new clause 1, which requires Ofcom to report on the adequacy of its resources in fulfilling its functions under the amendments made in the Bill Ofcom lacks experience in national security measures—this was discussed during the evidence stage—and the expansion of duties will require the recruitment of people with the required level of security clearance and experience. That is not going to be easy, as we heard during the evidence sessions. Emily Taylor of Oxford Information Labs said that Ofcom “will have to acquire a very specific set of skills and capabilities and that will require substantial investment and learning as an organisation”.––[Official Report, Telecommunications (Security) Public Bill Committee, 19 January 2021; c. 72, Q84.] These skills are rare. The memo from the Minister, for which I am grateful, sets out how Ofcom and the National Cyber Security Centre will work. While it is welcome that they will work together, it did not provide the reassurance that we need. Indeed, it suggests that Ofcom will be entirely dependent on the NCSC for cyber skills and therefore, presumably, unable to understand the advice that it receives from the organisation New clause 1 requires Ofcom to report annually on the adequacy of measures taken by network providers to comply with changes introduced in the Bill, empowering the Government to track the effectiveness of the legislation. However, new clause 1 does more than that. It ensures that Ofcom has the human and informational resources to be forward looking. As I said, we are concerned that the Bill is backward looking and does not look to future threats. New clause 1 requires Ofcom to provide an assessment of emerging or future security risks based on its interrogation of network providers’ asset registers I am pleased that the Government are taking steps—as I understand it from the Minister—to formalise existing best practice in the telecoms sector and ensure that national providers maintain asset registers. I can tell Members that that has not always been the case. As the Minister said during the Committee stage, asset registers are an “important part of the existing landscape”––[Official Report, Telecommunications (Security) Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2021; c. 162.] But I ask him: why does he not take this further? We need to ensure that we have a good understanding of our national assets and so can assess emerging threats. Doing so would have made Huawei’s dominance visible earlier and it would now enable warning signs of future concerns—and there are future concerns. Again, Emily Taylor said: “I feel a little like we have been fetishising 5G and a single company for the last two years, perhaps at the expense of a more holistic awareness of systemic cyber-security risks… Healthcare systems probably would not have been top of the list two years ago, but now they are. The SolarWinds attack shows that the identity of the vendor is not always the key risk point. SolarWinds is a very trusted vendor from a like-minded, close ally country, and yet it turns out to be a critical single point of failure across key, very sensitive Government Departments, both in the US and the UK.––[Official Report, Telecommunications (Security) Public Bill Committee, 19 January 2021; c. 74, Q88.] So I want the Minister to consider that in his response on this proposal.
The shadow Minister is a considerable specialist in this field; I particularly endorse what she says about the importance of a non-partisan approach to national security in this and other legislation. As noted on Second Reading, the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament has long been concerned about the security of the UK’s telecommunications networks. Our 2013 report “Foreign Involvement in the Critical National Infrastructure” identified serious failings in the way that successive Governments had managed the entry of foreign telecommunications companies into the UK market—Huawei especially—and we urged the Government not to sacrifice security in the pursuit of investment when it came to our critical national infrastructure.
It is a pleasure, once again, to follow the Chair of the ISC, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), as I did during the passage of the National Security and Investment Bill. He speaks with great wisdom and experience on these matters, and the Minister would do well to heed such advice from his Back Benches. It is also a pleasure to follow the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), who also speaks with great experience in this field. I have been fortunate enough to sit on a number of Bill Committees with her, and it is clear that telecommunications is very much her forte Let us consider the Bill in a wider context, before I drill down on the new clauses. We are essentially looking at foreign investment in our critical, national infrastructure. In real terms this is not a new thing. We are all aware, I hope, of the ISC report from 2013 on that very matter, and Huawei, and its role within our infrastructure, did not necessarily come as a surprise to anyone. I read the Bill’s Second Reading with much interest. The Labour party was trying extremely hard to absolve itself of any blame in that regard, which made for light entertainment over the past evenings. Of course, the Government are just as complicit in that regard, and complicit with a small c, because they were not necessarily looking at things with the view that they have now From my experience in this House, the Government have not covered themselves in glory when it comes to this topic. When I came into this place in 2019, one of the first key issues that was talked about—aside from Brexit, of course—was Huawei’s role within the UK, and we have seen the Government flip-flop from one view to another. It is testament to the hard work of many Government Members that they got the Government to realise just how serious this topic is and, indeed, was in years gone by Although there are concerns, the only thing that has really changed in the many years since 2013 is the seriousness with which the Government are treating this matter, and that seriousness extends to my colleagues and me. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) made clear on Second Reading and in Committee, we are supportive of the Government’s efforts in this regard, as we were with the National Security and Investment Bill, but there are a couple of areas where the Government still need to provide a level of assurance. Notwithstanding the remarks that have rightly been made in relation to scrutiny by the ISC, importantly we need to be clear that the Government are going to pick up the tab in Scotland for all the equipment that will now be made surplus to requirements. We cannot have a situation where that is not the case, because it is their actions that have led to the situation we are in. We also need to ensure that the replacement strategy is both safe and secure, so that we do not find ourselves in a situation such as this ever again Notwithstanding the justified security concerns that we all have, perhaps the key thing lies in and around the issue of telecommunications. As was referenced by the shadow Minister, although not in the same detail, there are around 1 million people in rural Scotland who do not even have access to 4G. Of course, telecommunications is reserved to the UK Government—it is the responsibility of the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman), and he will be cognisant of the fact that the 4G roll-out has not been as good as it should be. We all want to see the 5G roll-out, to ensure that we are in as advanced a position as possible, but we must ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated. I would certainly welcome assurances from the Minister in that regard That leads me to the SNP’s amendment 1, which seeks to ensure that the Government consult in full with the Governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is vital that we have that link and that, while we remain a part of the United Kingdom, the UK Government work in partnership with the Scottish Government on such serious matters It will come as no surprise to the Minister that we are supportive of the new clauses tabled by Labour on ensuring that there is diversification, that there is parliamentary oversight and scrutiny, and that the ISC plays a key role. I would like to hear from its Members that they are equally supportive of the view that the devolved Administrations should play a key role in telecommunications.
It is always a pleasure to return to old arguments and ensure that they are still live, and I intend to do just that. From the beginning, I have supported the process and initiative taken by the Government; it was not without struggles early on. I do not intend to go into the details, but I will refer to them. Back in 2019 and early 2020, it became quite a battle over whose advice was better. It seemed to me at the time—and, in a way, I do not blame the Government for this—that the National Cyber Security Centre gave the Government poor advice about the security risk, which was tempered by the Government’s need to go ahead and get 5G moving That is always the problem that we face. If organisations are to give Government advice on security risks, it must be completely separated on the basis that that is their advice; they must not temper it to suit the Government. We have seen that happen all the way through—it is not just this particular Government. They have made the right decision, and I will come back to that, but if we go back, this has happened also with Labour Governments and Conservative Governments of the past. Successive Governments have underestimated the growing risk that is coming particularly from China, but also from other countries. They were already aware of the risk from Russia.
No, but I will never waste an opportunity, as it is obviously a joy to intervene on my right hon. Friend, who was asking how much deeper our relationship can go with a country that has sanctioned parliamentarians in this House for basically raising human rights abuses and security concerns.
I am getting so used to just doing what I am told by my hon. Friend when it is necessary that she only has to look in this direction and I give way to her—my apologies What I was really trying to get to the bottom of is that I do not think that this is feasible any longer. The Bill illustrates the dichotomy that lies at the heart of the Government’s position. We are trying constantly to talk about these trade relationships, but at the same time we recognise that the country that we are discussing them with is a totalitarian state that is guilty of what many, including myself, believe is a genocide of a whole ethnic group—more than one ethnic group. It is a state that is intolerant, that is suppressing democracy and free speech in Hong Kong, that is threatening Taiwan and India, and that has said that it is in possession of the South China sea. I could go on with that list. We can recognise the compilation of all those things and that there is a security risk, and yet at the same time in the other place we are told, “Don’t worry. We are still trying to do trade deals.” It is quite interesting that we have reopened an economic and financial dialogue under a JETCO—a joint economic and trade committee—which was originally paused because of the imposition of the national security law in Hong Kong. The discussions have now restarted, although we did not hear much fanfare. We sort of discovered that they had restarted, but there was no announcement from the Dispatch Box that we were restarting them. There are no dates involved, but the discussions are restarting, despite the sanctions against individuals and so on, and despite our sanctions against Chinese officials—although I still wish that we could do more. I note also that the European Union was heading in the same direction with its agreement, only now, because of the sanctions on its MEPs and so on, it has decided that it is not going to do that. I simply raise the question: if we think that this country and this Government —the Chinese Communist party, the Government of China—are such a potential threat, should we really be trying to reopen those doors, despite the sanctions that we have in place, the sanctions that they have put in place, and the very clear threat that they now pose to our security I simply say to my hon. Friend the Minister that I was going to move my amendment, which would have said that the Government should immediately declare many of these companies high-risk vendors by the very nature of the security law that exists in China. However, I would also say, in support of what has been said already, that the Government need to use the internal possibilities in our Parliament. We have a Committee that is cleared to the highest level of security in these areas, and it is important that we use that Committee. If the Government get private advice from the Committee about what it thinks is going wrong with their position, I think that will benefit and improve them I therefore ask my hon. Friend to take my amendment into consideration and to answer that point, to think seriously about how we can strengthen the Bill further and, if he can, to make the reservations of this place felt to his colleagues in Government. We are deeply concerned about trying to ride two bicycles at the same time: recognising a deep and growing threat to democracy not just here but around the world from the Chinese Communist party, while trying to beg China to do trade deals with us, notwithstanding the fact that it behaves so badly.
It is a pleasure to join you, Madam Deputy Speaker, from the far north of Scotland. Before I make two points that will be familiar to the House, may I compliment the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on a most interesting speech? I afford myself a wry smile; we are where we are today, which is rather different from where we were when I attended the Westminster Hall debate in which he made the same point. I think that he would be allowed some quiet satisfaction at having changed the Government’s course as significantly as he has, because—I shall return to this point—this is about the defence of the realm Let me make a second initial remark, with reference to the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn). As a former Member of a place based in Holyrood, in Edinburgh, I wholeheartedly support the notion of working with the devolved Administrations. It makes absolute sense. If we believe in the security of the realm, we all have to work together for the better good As I have said already, my two points will be familiar to the House. The first is that, having done the armed forces scheme, I know it is very useful in bringing elected Members face to face with the realities of the defence of this country. For me, it was something of a wake-up call. There is no doubt, as the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green said, that there are nations out there—Russia, China, North Korea and others—that do not concern themselves with the good health of the United Kingdom. We have only to look at the hijacking of the Ryanair airliner in recent days, or indeed the crime that was committed in Salisbury, to see that the actions of states can be very bad indeed for us as a country, so in some ways this whole debate is a bit of a wake-up call. We have to ask ourselves where we stand in the world, what we can do and whether we are going to stand up for what we believe is right The Bill has the support of my party, in that it helps to protect the vital interests of the United Kingdom and the people who live in and love our country, as we all do. The key point emerging from that is that, as others have said, there will have to be an element of co-operation with other countries that share our ideals and interests. We think of the Five Eyes countries, of our European friends and of other countries all over the globe—perhaps India, perhaps South Korea, perhaps Japan—that we could work with more closely to further the best interests of us all My second point—yes, I am going to talk about this yet again, so perhaps I should offer an apology to the Chamber—is on something that the hon. Member for Aberdeen South referred to: we talk about 5G in the UK, but there are parts of Scotland that do not have 4G. As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), said, there are bits of Scotland where connectivity is very poor indeed. In the past, I have made the perhaps not very clever joke that in parts of my constituency, we might even be better off with two tin cans and a length of string, so there is a lot of work to be done, to say the least.
It is an honour to contribute to this measured debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am fearful of lowering the tone, but I have been speaking to the Minister—I congratulate him on the amount of communication he has had with us Back Benchers about our concerns—and when I was thinking about how best I could sum up our dialogue, I recalled that Ronald Reagan once said: “The…most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” I think that, for a Minister, the most terrifying words are: “I’m a Back Bencher and I really am just here to help”. So without our removing the momentum, we really are here to help First, I need to put on record my thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) for tabling the amendment, which, unfortunately, was not selected today. I also put on record my support for what my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) has proposed, with the support and expertise that he can bring to the debate and legislation, and I hope that the Minister can reflect on both those opportunities down the line. There is much to welcome in the Bill, but I fear that technology can sometimes move faster than we can legislate in this country. I want to touch on two issues: one is national security and the other is resilience and diversifying our supply chain I will start by being very helpful as a Back Bencher. I know that the Minister may have cast his eyes on a report that I recently produced for NATO. I sit on the Science and Technology Committee and I was tasked to put together a report on science and technology threats, looking particularly at east Asia. In the report, there is a puff box that he may want to reflect on; it talks about South Korea and the amount of work that it has done in innovating and developing new technology so that it is truly resilient in its national 5G infrastructure. I believe that 85 cities will have coverage by the end of 2021, and they are not reliant on any external Government to provide them with that service, so I urge him to go away and look at what South Korea is doing and possibly see how we can become more resilient in this country I want to raise the subject of resilience and security because I sit on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee and we have been undertaking a report on links back to Xinjiang. However, companies also gave evidence to us that should cause some concern for the Minister, and with regard to this piece of legislation. This is basically about companies headquartered in China that have access to data we are using or manipulating, and to algorithms we are creating here in the UK In particular, I want to reflect on the evidence given to the Select Committee from TikTok. We invited TikTok to come in and give evidence about its algorithms and whether it is distorting them to stop information about Xinjiang and Uyghur being out on the platform. Unfortunately, the more we dug into TikTok, the more complex and concerning it got for us. TikTok is a media company and a platform. Most kids will have access to it, and most people here may have access to it as well. However, it has a very complex ownership structure, which is why it is important that it is reflected somewhere in the Telecommunications (Security) Bill. It is important because TikTok is a subsidiary of a global parent company, ByteDance Ltd, which is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, but there is a China-based subsidiary of the same global parent company called ByteDance (HK) Ltd The reason why this should be of some concern is that when we took evidence from TikTok UK’s branch, we were told that ByteDance could in no way have access to UK data and that the two things were completely separate. However, the problem is that we can legislate in this country for what we want to do to keep our country and our people’s data safe, but when a company we are working with has headquarters in China, it has to abide by completely separate sets of rules and regulations, so we end up in a two-tier system Let me just reflect on what a company such as ByteDance has to adhere to. I am talking about China’s National Intelligence Law 2017. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green spoke about article 9, and I want to reflect on article 7. It states, and this has been translated into English so it may not be perfect: “Any organization or citizen shall, in accordance with the law”— the Chinese National Intelligence Law 2017— “support, provide assistance and cooperate in national intelligence work, and guard the secrecy of any national intelligence work they are aware of.” Fundamentally, companies have to hand over data when they are asked, but when they are asked by another Government—say, our Government—they have to deny that they are doing it. I am concerned about how robust our legislation is today or how robust our legislation will be going forward if companies are abiding by separate sets of intelligence laws based in China On a similar theme, let us take a closer look at Hikvision in particular. There was a very good recent report by Reuters, which basically states that half of London councils are using Hikvision, even though Hikvision is banned in the United States. Last week, Italian media reported that Hikvision equipment in the country was “communicating with servers” in China despite being on a supposedly closed network. I am not quite sure what “communicating with servers” means, but for me alarm bells are ringing The points I want to land with the Minister are: how robust is the legislation we have in place for today, let alone tomorrow, and how can we ensure that the processes to legislate in this country keep pace with the threats we are facing? I suppose the fundamental point is that China has its own National Intelligence Law, which completely contradicts what we are trying to do here in the UK. Does the Minister have any thoughts about how we can ensure that our security is not undermined by China’s National Intelligence Law? What guarantees can the Government give to constantly look at, review and update this, and also to hold to account the companies we may be anxious about We seem to be setting up a two-tier system: one for us in the west with the countries we work with, and a completely separate system for China and the companies it wishes to work with. I fear that, unless we put down a marker, we are going to lose out to a country such as China, and I hope that the Minister can comment on that when he comes to the Dispatch Box at the end of the debate.
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow all the right hon. and hon. Members who have made contributions First, new clause 1 is designed to ensure that there is an obligation on Ofcom, in legislation, to report on the adequacy of its resources and assess the adequacy of the measures taken annually by telecommunications providers to comply with their duty to take the necessary security measures. The hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) referred to security, and I will speak briefly about that shortly. It also requires Ofcom to assess future areas of security risk based on its interrogation of network providers’ asset registries. That does seem to me to be standard, but it is essential that there is regulation and control of these providers, on which so many of us—indeed, probably all of us—rely so heavily. The Minister may well believe that this obligation is already included in the Government’s Bill, and if that is the case, perhaps he will confirm that that is the position. If that is the case, I am sure that that will highlighted subsequently I have seen, during the privatisation of water services and other public bodies, that private companies have little desire to provide any more information than is legally required. They just give us the basics of what they want us to know. I believe that there is an obligation for Ofcom to actively regulate, and to do this we must provide adequate funding. To make this happen, is it a funding issue or can we legislate to ensure that they tell us all we need to know? I will consider the words of the Minister on this imperative regulatory function I want to echo the concerns of the hon. Member for Wealden, who comprehensively addressed the issues that concern us all. She referred to companies that have their headquarters in China and how that impacts on us here in the United Kingdom. Our duty in this House is to our citizens: to the citizens of Strangford, to the citizens of Wealden and to everyone across the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and we probably all seek assurances on these matters. Again I look to the Minister to do that in his summing up New clause 2 relates to the provision of information to the Intelligence and Security Committee. Does the Minister agree that it is imperative that the appropriate Committees have the right information on security matters? I am a firm believer in the need for information share. It has always been my policy to ensure that those around me in my political life, my social life and my personal life are aware of all the issues that concern them. It is also important that MPs have all the information on board. I am also a firm believer in the chain of command. This may well be due to years of part-time service in uniform; I spent 14 years as a part-time soldier. It is really important that the chain of command is in place. However, there are also times when it is in the interests of the nation that not all is revealed, and there will be a reason for some things being classified as top level only. I understand that; I often ask the police about things that have happened back home, and I say, “Don’t tell me anything I don’t need to know, but if you can tell me, and I can tell others, let me know that.” Our job as parliamentarians is to scrutinise the Government, to hold Ministers to account and to strive for the good of the nation, and I ask the Minister to clarify why the Government do not feel that new clause 2 is necessary. Does he, for instance, believe that this is already accounted for? If it is, perhaps he could tell us the position on that. I would like to understand the rationale behind withholding information from a regulated Committee and what constitutes high-level information that should be withheld. Again I look to the Minister, as I often do in debates in this House, for a response to satisfy me that new clause 2 is not needed My final point relates to amendment 1 to clause 14, which proposes: “The Secretary of State must, in the process of carrying out reviews and drafting subsequent reports, consult the appropriate ministers from the devolved governments.” As a Member of Parliament, I have always wished to know what the devolved Administrations are doing. In my case, that relates to the Northern Ireland Assembly. When I saw the amendments and new clauses, I assumed that this provision would have been included as a matter of course. Surely it is a matter of the greatest importance—especially in Northern Ireland, which is fast becoming the capital of Europe’s cyber- security—that the devolved Administrations, and in this case the Northern Ireland Assembly, should have a full understanding of any emerging cases. I say with great respect to everyone else in this Chamber that the cyber sector in Northern Ireland is leaps and bounds ahead of other parts of the United Kingdom. Maybe only the south-east of England can match our level of advancement. We have incredible skills and staff available in Northern Ireland, and the cyber-security sector has grown greatly. So can the Minister reference the mechanism by which this information share can take place without any amendment? Can the Minister confirm that the Northern Ireland Assembly will have a key role to play in this, and tell us how that will work within the legislation before us today?
Chillingly, the head of military intelligence recently concluded that the difference between being at war and being at peace is becoming increasingly blurred. In short, Britain is under perpetual attack.
rose—
I give way to the Chairman of the ISC.
In support of what my right hon. Friend says, he will recall that one of the main reasons why the Government felt it so difficult to rid themselves of Huawei was that there would then be only two remaining possible suppliers, and if one of them got into difficulty, we would have total dependence on a single supplier. If we do not diversify, it really has knock-on effects: we sometimes have to improperly consider using suppliers that are really a risk to our security.
As my right hon. Friend knows, it is not only the Committee on which he and I serve that has highlighted that point; other Committees of this House have, too, and the Government themselves have acknowledged it. We really need to look at how, having accepted the thrust of his argument, the Government intend to respond. What is the action plan? I know that the Minister will have much to say about this, but my right hon. Friend is absolutely right This is part of a wider problem of the concentration of power in the hands of what I described earlier as a handful of unaccountable corporate monopolies. There is a curious assumption that somehow those organisations will be intrinsically virtuous, but that is simply not the case. Commercial organisations are just that: they are interested in commerce. They are not there to do what Governments and this Parliament exist for, which is protecting the interests of the whole of the people.
One thing that worries me a little is that Huawei is Chinese-owned. Nokia and Ericsson are not, but they get a lot of their kit from China, so they are not pure either. That is a worry for diversification.
It is. I referred a moment or two ago to the provisions of the Bill that extend existing powers to take account of supply chains, so the point is acknowledged in the legislation. It brings me neatly—it was not scripted, I hasten to add—to the next part of my speech, because in that process much powerful regulation is put into the hands of Ofcom. I have questions about that for the Minister as this is not territory that traditionally Ofcom has navigated. It will require a step change in Ofcom’s capability and approach to manage the additional responsibilities Ofcom was previously responsible solely for assuring the resilience of networks. No list of mandatory standards has previously existed and historically Ofcom produced guidance that merely directed communication service providers towards the main source of advice and best practice. The responsibilities to ensure that providers comply with the new security duties will, as I said, require a step change in what Ofcom does, given that it will now have the authority to practically assess the security practices of large telecom providers, take action where security is at risk of being compromised, and make information available to the Government and provide annual security reports to Ministers That brings me to the issue of scrutiny, which has been addressed with by various contributors to the debate so far. Given Ofcom’s new powers, the means by which it can be held to account becomes salient. Of course, Ofcom is accountable to Ministers, but we need Ministers to be accountable, in an effective way, to this House. There is a long debate to be had about the role of various Select Committees in that regard, and it is a debate to which I have contributed previously and the Chairman of the ISC, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), has already spoken eloquently. I simply say to the Minister that there needs to be a well-established and rigorous process by which the new powers can be assessed and checked not only by Ministers of the Crown but by those to whom Ministers of the Crown are accountable. Confusing accountability and scrutiny risks weakening both by obscuring the first and diluting the second I know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you would not want me to conclude any speech without some literary reference. C. S. Lewis said: “Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” The experience that I have had over 25 years in the House—of being a shadow Minister trying to hold Ministers to account, a Minister being held to account and now a Back Bencher trying hold both to account—is that unless the process is right, scrutiny simply will not be effective I have talked about vulnerability and the recognition of the need for greater regulation. By the way, if anything, the Bill does too little. It is a good Bill and it does a great deal that I welcome, but over time we probably need to go further. I have previously drawn the House’s attention to the history of legislation affecting security here: it has typically been periodic with few big Bills having been brought to the House that became Acts concerning matters of security. But I repeat what I have said before: I suspect that over the coming years we will have more and more legislation to ensure that our country remains secure, given the dynamism and character of the threats we now face I end simply with this. The Bill is good work, but it is—if I might put it as generously as I possibly can to the Minister—work in progress, and I hope that during that progress we see further attention given to the issues of both diversity in the marketplace and scrutiny by this House. A fundamental requirement of Government is to protect our infrastructure and economy and, by doing so, protect our people, for in doing that we protect all our futures.
It is a real pleasure to follow some of the speeches we have heard, particularly those from the Chairman of the ISC, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), and from my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). I rise to support the Government, but I do so with some reservations, which largely reflect concerns that I still have as a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee. I am concerned about oversight and the scrutiny of decisions made by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport that will have an impact on national security. The issue is growing as commercial companies get more and more involved in such matters. The Government’s current view is that DCMS, Ofcom and the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee could probably watch over these matters. Yes, they probably can, but I am not so sure.
indicated assent.
Good. When my right hon. Friends the Members for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) and for Chingford and Woodford Green start talking, I know I am in trouble So we on the ISC are subject to section 1(1)(b) of the Official Secrets Act 1989, and, whatever side of the House we sit on, we have all been appointed to the Committee by the Prime Minister with that in mind. However, not every Member of Parliament or Clerk has signed the Official Secrets Act—some have, but many have not. Obviously, I am not being personal about colleagues because a lot of them can keep secrets far better than I can: as my wife says, I have a big mouth. Okay—but I do keep secrets of the state, Minister ISC Clerks have something called developed vetting security clearances, but not all DCMS Committee Clerks would. Developed vetting security clearances require the individual concerned to undergo a lengthy and somewhat intrusive investigation—some of the questions are appalling. Assuming that DCMS Clerks were to have such developed credentials and were able to handle top secret material in hard copy, such as documents that need to be secured in security-accredited lockable cabinets within a security- accredited office, anything with a top secret grading on it or an IT system with such grading would need to be accredited and checked out very carefully May I also raise the matter of meetings where top secret material is discussed? I may be wrong, but I do not think there is such a meeting room in the Palace or in Norman Shaw—[Interruption.] Sorry, I meant Portcullis House—I have only been here 11 years. A room with clearance would be required even for us to be able to look these documents, store them or discuss them. I do not think it is a secret that the ISC cannot meet here—we have to meet somewhere else. We go to a place that is accredited and checked, where documents can be stored and to which our Clerks have ready and easy access. All discussions concerning such a level of security take place in that room. We are not allowed to write something down and walk it out—everything has to be left there, unless it is specifically on a certain kind of paper and we are informed of that very strictly The product of ISC investigations can be laid before Parliament only after a redaction process with the intelligence agencies and confirmation from the Prime Minister that nothing in them might breach national security, so I think it would be rather difficult for the DCMS, Ofcom or the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee to be able to oversee top secret material produced by the Department and still obey national security rules. In short, we parliamentarians might not have oversight of some key decisions made by Ofcom and DCMS. That can work—I have no doubt the Minister will say that—but we could be blindsided. The Government think otherwise at this stage, and I am prepared to accept that promise, but this might quickly run into difficulties when classified material has to be examined by people from Parliament who are specially selected to do it In summary, I repeat that I will be supporting the Minister—of course I will, as I am loyal, just like a dog—but it does not stop me raising a flag of concern. There will always be problems around these matters. I hope that that will not be the case but I would not be surprised if, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings has said, we are only at the start of a process and we have to revisit this shortly Finally, may I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker, as I do not feel great and I am a bit dizzy, so my voice is not the usual? I am going to sit down now.
We heard you loud and clear, Colonel Bob.
It is a great pleasure to follow my eminent right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart)—if only I were as good As the final Back-Bench speaker this afternoon, it is incumbent on me to be supportive of the Government, which of course I am, and this excellent Bill. We are where we are today for two reasons. First, it shows that the Government do listen to Back Benchers. Secondly, the Bill is a pretty good bit of work and it ticks the box, as indeed it should. As defence and national security become ever more virtual and online, it has never been more important to secure our lines of communication, both domestically and internationally, with our allies. I urge all Members to consider the notion of strategic independence, which we have spoken a lot about during the covid crisis. As we go forward, it is really important that we aspire to be able to operate autonomously as a global nation alongside our allies. I believe that the Bill is important for three reasons. First, it will allow for better security both domestically and internationally. It kicks out the high-risk vendors from our network—what’s not to like? Secondly, it placates our allies. New Zealand, Australia, the USA, Canada and others were quite noisy when Huawei was originally admitted to our network, so let us hope that this will placate them, cement that relationship and, perhaps in time, even enable us to admit Japan and other close allies. Thirdly, it opens the door for other 5G providers to come in, which is a good thing, and I support the UK’s diversification strategy Having sat on the Committee for this excellent Bill, it is a pleasure to see it back here on Report. The Bill takes forward the Government’s commitment to the UK telecoms supply chain review, introduces a new security framework, amends the Communications Act 2003, introduces new security duties, brings new powers to the Secretary of State and strengthens Ofcom’s regulatory powers, allowing it to enforce the new framework. That is all very positive. It also introduces new national security powers for the Government to impose, monitor and enforce controls. Again, that is a positive step I am pretty happy with the Bill as it stands, but in the interests of objectivity, I will talk to a number of the new clauses and amendments. On new clause 1, the Government are aware that the Bill gives Ofcom significant new responsibilities, and it will need to increase its resources and skills to meet those new demands. Ofcom’s budget is approved by its independent board, and the Minister has today confirmed that the budget limit set by the Government will be adjusted to allow Ofcom to carry out new functions effectively. Ofcom is already engaged in this space—we are already proactively looking over the horizon and scanning for future threats—so I am happy that the Government have got this about right New clause 2 would ensure that the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament is provided with information relating to a designated vendor direction. I am sympathetic to this, but the Government know what they are doing. As the Minister said, the ISC’s primary focus is to oversee the work of the security and intelligence agencies. Its remit is clearly defined in the Justice and Security Act 2013, so the Bill is not the appropriate place to achieve an overall enhanced role for the ISC.
I am sorry to have to reiterate this point. There are other ways in which our concerns could be addressed, such as by adjusting our memorandum of understanding, rather than putting it on the face of the Bill, so I am with my hon. Friend as far as that is concerned. However, it is very clearly within our remit to oversee not only the agencies but those parts of other Departments where highly classified information is concerned. That is just a matter of fact—it is in the agreement between us and the Prime Minister.
I empathise with my right hon. Friend’s view, and I agree that he has a point. My position is the same as the Government’s: I do not think that this Bill is necessarily the vehicle through which we should look at the future of how the ISC operates. I am a keen follower of the ISC and its output. Its work is eminent, and my right hon. Friend’s point is well made.
Let me cement that point but also perhaps offer an olive branch to the Minister, if I might be so bold. If the Minister, when he sums up, were to make a firm and binding commitment that he, for example, and others will appear before the ISC at our request to be scrutinised on these and other matters, that might go some way—not the whole way, but some way—to assuaging doubts and fears.
I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. Again, I empathise with the point. I will happily leave it to the Minister to make his view known in his summing-up later.
Before I call the Minister, may I say that I am anticipating three Divisions, on new clauses 1, 2 and 3? If there is to be an additional vote, I would like to be informed so that I can call it, but I understand that there are going to be only three Divisions.
I thank all those Members who have contributed to the debate today. It is an important debate because digital connectivity is an integral part of all our lives. For countless people across the country, having fast and reliable broadband and a good mobile connection is vital to our way of life, but for us to truly reap the benefits of the gigabit-capable broadband and 5G, we need to have confidence that they are secure and that means securing the networks on which they are built, the supply chains on which they depend, and the equipment and services that support them. The Bill demonstrates clearly the Government’s commitment to ensuring the security and resilience of our telecoms networks Let me turn to the new clauses and amendments. I shall start by addressing new clause 1. As the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom already plays an important role in ensuring the ongoing security and resilience of our networks by enforcing the current security duties under the Communications Act. This Bill will build on that experience, giving Ofcom new responsibilities and a range of new powers. What the new clause would do is require it to publish an additional statement as part of its annual report. Happily, I can reassure hon. Members that the Bill already has various reporting mechanisms included within it. Under the new and snappily named section 105Z, Ofcom will need to regularly report to the Secretary of State. Subsection (4)(a) makes it clear that that report must include information on the providers’ compliance with the duties imposed on them by the Bill Ofcom will also need to report on telecoms security in its annual infrastructure report, and clause 11 specifies that this should include information on the extent to which providers are complying with their security duties under new sections 105A to 105D. The Secretary of State will also need to regularly report to Parliament on the effectiveness and impact of the new telecoms security framework On the final point in the new clause of the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) about publishing information on emerging and future security risks, that is not of itself necessarily the most productive way of handling security risks, but the principle that she is trying to get to is very much part of what the Government are seeking to do and, of course, it would be part of what we intend to make sure that we talk about as much as we can within the bounds of national security I turn specifically to budget and resources. The hon. Member has set out her concerns about Ofcom’s access to resources and capabilities. It is an issue that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) also touched on. I can tell the House today that Ofcom’s security budget for this financial year has been increased by £4.6 million on top of its current security budget. This funding will allow Ofcom to more than double its headcount of people working on telecoms security, ensuring that it has the necessary capability and capacity to deliver its new responsibilities under the Bill. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central is aware that I have written to the Intelligence and Security Committee about that security resourcing. It was at a level that I cannot go into on the Floor of this House, but I hope that provides the kind of reassurance that she seeks Specifically on the future risks that I alluded to a moment ago, we have ensured that the Bill is looking to the future. For example, clause 12(3)(b) amends Ofcom’s information-gathering powers under section 135 of the Communications Act to ensure that it can request information from providers concerning future developments in their networks that could have an impact on security and, when reporting on security, Ofcom must include any information that assists the Secretary of State in the formulation of security policy, allowing him or her to make an informed decision about what should be published as well in due course New clause 2 has been the subject of the majority of this debate, and rightly so. One of the phrases used about the ISC was that it adds value; this Government do not dispute for a second that it adds huge value, and I welcome the tone with which the Chairman of the ISC, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), has approached this. I appeared before the ISC with some trepidation, as is probably appropriate for all Government Ministers, but it was a hugely productive part of this process and something that I am more than happy to do again. I do not think that my right hon. Friend necessarily thinks that piecemeal changes to the ISC’s role are the way to pursue what he seeks, but the annual report that he has mentioned will certainly be looked at closely by the Government.
I am very happy to agree with what the Minister has just said. It would not be necessary to keep trying to put these provisions on the face of each individual Bill every time a new unit is set up in a different Department, or a new duty laid on a different Department, if it could be agreed with the Government that the memorandum of understanding would be adjusted as it is meant to be adjusted when these changes occur. However, sadly, no Front Bencher has yet been able to give us an assurance that that is going to happen, and I know that the Minister will not be able to do so, either.
As I say, I am sure that my right hon. Friend will make that point in the annual report, and the Government will look closely at it. However, Members can take some comfort from the fact that much of the advice in relation to the more sensitive technical and national security matters within the scope of this Bill will be provided by the National Cyber Security Centre, and its activities already fall within the scope of the ISC, as my right hon. Friend knows. However, I welcome his approach to this, and I hope that his mechanism, rather than that of new clause 2, will be the one he will support today I turn to the last of the new clauses tabled by Opposition Members. New clause 3 aims to include the diversification strategy in the scope of the Bill. Diversification is crucial to the future of our UK networks, which is why the Government set out their plans to diversify those networks in the 5G diversification strategy in November 2020. That strategy includes steps to invest in research and development, to remove technical and commercial barriers to entry for new suppliers, and to increase our influence in standard- setting bodies—all issues that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings and others on the ISC are keenly aware of the importance of We are pursuing a huge range of different mechanisms to enable diversification, because the Government are fully committed to ensuring that their strategy comes to fruition. However, the diversification strategy moves the whole market forward by broadening the supplier base in many ways that are beyond the security measures that are the purview of this Bill, including increased innovation and competition and the overall growth of the telecoms supply mechanisms To give the House an idea of some of the non-legislative measures that we are already pursuing, they include the investment in R&D development facilities such as the National Telecoms Lab and the SONIC—SmartRAN Open Network Interoperability Centre—lab that is jointly at work with Ofcom. We are also working to remove barriers to entry for vendors such as by co-ordinating the sunsetting of legacy network technologies, working internationally to co-ordinate diversification objectives, and exploring the use of commercial incentives to address the cost of incorporating new suppliers into a network.
I asked a question to do with the Northern Ireland Assembly and how cyber-security in Northern Ireland will be protected. Can we have an assurance on the Floor of the House today and through Hansard that that will happen?
I will come on to the devolved aspects in amendment 1 in a moment, but it is of course vital that we continue the collaborative relationship with the Northern Ireland Executive and with the Welsh and the Scottish Governments as well The Bill places security requirements on individual operators. They are hugely important, but they are not diversification requirements on the Government’s national scale. Defining diversification in legislation would be limiting in a hugely rapidly evolving market. I know that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central understands the need for agility, and putting what she proposes into legislation would run counter to that ambition On the devolved Administrations, amendment 1 would require the Secretary of State to consult Ministers from the devolved Governments when reviewing the impact and effectiveness of clauses 1 to 13. As the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn) noted, telecoms is a reserved matter under each of the devolution settlements. I say that, however, in the full knowledge that a constructive and close working relationship with each of the devolved Governments is hugely important, be it in Project Gigabit, in the shared rural network, or indeed in matters such as this. I look forward to that collaboration continuing; it will drive forward our connectivity I turn briefly to the amendments that were not selected. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) has spoken passionately about these matters, both privately and publicly. I do not want to go into a huge amount of detail on amendments that were not selected, but I simply say that the actions the Government are taking in the Bill speak powerfully for themselves On the specific matter of issuing designation notices to vendors headquartered in other countries, it is important to consider not just whether the kinds of laws that my right hon. Friend mentions exist, but how the Government in question intend to use them. A friendly democracy may, as indeed many do, have laws that would enable it to yield information and data from companies headquartered within their territory. The conduct of such a Government, and our relationship with them, may reassure us that they would not use those powers to do harm to the UK, but there are other cases where Governments that have these laws have acted contrary to the national interest of the UK in the past. As we set out in the illustrative notice for Huawei, there is a law in China that enables the Chinese Government to collect information from companies headquartered within its territory. As the Foreign Secretary has stated, we know that the Chinese state has in the past used its power to undertake malicious cyber-activity. The designation notice that I mentioned demonstrates how the Government could take those sorts of laws into account when exercising the powers that are already in the Bill I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) for her work on the NATO Science and Technology Organisation. We very much welcome her preliminary draft report. I would like to express the Government’s commitment to deepening our co-operation with partner nations such as Japan and the Republic of Korea I thank all hon. Members on the Government Benches, and indeed on the Opposition Benches, for their constructive engagement throughout this debate. This is an important Bill that enjoys strong cross-party support, in the main. The sooner we can pass it, the sooner we can set about the crucial work of ensuring that our public telecoms networks are secure and resilient. I commend the Bill to the House.
This has been a very well-informed debate. I am sorry if my own digital connectivity did not enable my contribution to be heard as perfectly as it should have been, but I hope we have corrected that There were many excellent contributions from both sides of the House. It is important to note that the House is in quite rare agreement on a number of questions regarding the Bill, particularly on the importance of national security. The representatives of each of the parties in the debate—the hon. Members for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn), for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and the Minister himself—shared support for the primacy of national security and recognition of the importance of our telecoms networks in our national security, and I was pleased to listen to their contributions. I thank the Minister for his response and for the tone in which the debate has been conducted However, I will say briefly, with regard to new clause 1, which seeks to ensure that Ofcom has the skills and expertise needed to undertake its new duties in the midst of all the other responsibilities that Parliament is asking, as well as reviewing future provision and threats to the network, that the Minister’s comments on the increase in the cap on Ofcom’s budget did not begin to address our concerns. We have, effectively, a snapshot of the financial resourcing available now. The new clause seeks to ensure that we have an understanding of the resourcing as it continues—as threats evolve in the future—and particularly that we are able to look forward to new and evolving threats on the basis of a thorough understanding of the assets in each network operator’s network Indeed, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) emphasised the step change in the requirements of Ofcom that the Bill represents. The Minister implied that Ofcom would be able to do everything requested in the new clause when it comes to looking at asset registers, for example. I simply do not understand his reluctance to put that in the Bill, given the important role that Ofcom is to play in our telecoms security. I am afraid that I do not feel that he answered my points on new clause 1 On new clause 2, members of the Intelligence and Security Committee—its Chair, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis); the right hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart); and the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings—eloquently articulated many of the arguments for why the ISC needs to be part of the scrutiny of this Bill. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Beckenham was particularly detailed in his description of the very room requirements for assessing national security issues. Having worked at Ofcom, I know its rooms very well, and I do not think that they meet the requirements that he set out It is worth noting that the ISC was one of the first parliamentary organisations to raise issues around Huawei, back in 2013. It seems very wrong that it should be excluded from involvement in scrutinising how the Bill is implemented, given that it is the only parliamentary grouping with the appropriate security clearance. Although I appreciate the Minister’s constructive tone, I do not think that he answered the questions raised or sufficiently justified the Government’s aversion to ensuring a process for ISC scrutiny, so I will press new clause 2 to a vote Finally, the most complex of our new clauses is new clause 3, which would ensure that the diversification of our telecoms networks was achieved as a prerequisite for their security. We heard from the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) about how telecoms markets have been constructed to enable the consolidation and monopoly power of particular players, and particularly Huawei. Unfortunately, he did not go on to say how in the Bill the Government would deliver on a UK sovereign capability, but he was absolutely right about how the market has effectively failed The hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) used her experience on NATO’s science and technology committee and on this Parliament’s Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee to encourage the Minister to truly examine our network resilience. New clause 3 is designed to ensure the ongoing ability to examine network diversification and resilience We heard from the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings about the impact of the unaccountable power of monopolies. Again, since the Bill does not mention a diversification plan or diversification strategy, we cannot see that it will do anything to address that issue. The hon. Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) said that the Bill supports network diversification. I know that that is the intention, but without our new clause I cannot see how it will actually achieve it The Minister reiterated the diversification plans, which are not a plan—as I set out, they have no detail and no action. As for his attempt to explain why the Government have omitted from the Bill any reference to diversification, I have to say that I found it entirely incomprehensible. It was as if referring in the Bill to diversification would limit the meaning of diversification; if that were the case, we would be unable to refer in any Bill to many of its intentions or outcomes I remain convinced, and there is agreement on all sides of the House, that we need to ensure that diversification of our telecoms supply chain goes hand in hand with ripping out Huawei and reducing our dependence on the two remaining providers. It is very important that we take this opportunity to change the Bill so that the diversification of our telecoms networks is an integral part of Ofcom’s reporting on the progression of those networks, so I will also press new clause 3 to a vote.
As I announced earlier, there will be three Divisions. As usual—if anything is usual these days—the first will take eight minutes and each subsequent Division will take five Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time I thank right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions today, and I also thank the excellent team of Clerks of the House, those at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and all those involved in the preparation of the Bill. In particular, I thank those who work at our agencies to support so much of what goes into our national security: they are the best among us, and all of us in the House are grateful for their service. The first priority of this Government is to keep people safe and this Bill is just one step in achieving that objective. It is a precise and technical Bill but an important one none the less. While we might have disagreed on some of the details, it is encouraging that there is such broad consensus across this place and I hope that that spirit of co-operation continues when the other place considers the Bill The Bill will ensure the security and resilience of the UK’s telecoms networks for years to come. Bringing it into force on Royal Assent cannot come soon enough. It will create one of the toughest regimes for telecoms security in the world. It will protect our networks and shield our critical national infrastructure both now and in the future, as technologies grow and evolve. With this Bill, we are delivering on our commitments in the 2019 telecoms supply chain review, which were informed by the advice from the world-leading NCSC and GCHQ. Today, we have taken an important step towards putting those commitments on a statutory footing and taking action to protect and secure our important networks I hope that, in my response to the amendments and new clauses, I provided reassurance on the role of Ofcom, the importance of diversification and the other matters raised. I welcome the constructive challenge of Members on those points, and I hope I have reassured them that we are pushing in the same direction. I thank all Members for their contributions. I commend the Bill to the House and look forward to it passing through the other place.
I thank the Minister for his statement and echo his remarks in thanking all the Clerks and officials of the House and the Department who worked on the Bill, as well as our security services for the protection they provide day and night and for the input of the NCSC and GCHQ to the Bill I want to make it clear that the Labour party supports the Bill as a necessary step in protecting our telecoms national security. It is important that we legislate to ensure that Government have the power to act when faced with circumstances such as those presented by Huawei or, even better, to prevent dependency on high-risk vendors from arising in the first place. We will therefore not oppose the Bill on Third Reading. We recognise that national security is the first duty of every Government, and we support the measures to promote national security in the Bill At every stage of the Bill’s passage, we have seen an engaged and informed level of debate. As a chartered telecoms engineer, I particularly welcome the time that the House is spending on considering our telecoms infrastructure, even in these circumstances, which are to be regretted: we should not have got here. Parts of our debate have resembled a wake for the telecoms sector we could have had with a UK sovereign capability. The telecoms sector should have been subject to a more active, proactive interest for years now—or, shall I say, 10 years? We have lacked a telecoms industrial strategy and that, together with a focus on foreign investment over national security, is why we are here. Successive Conservative Governments have allowed the telecoms sector in the UK to be dominated by a high-risk vendor. Competition on price rather than security has become the rule for the telecoms operators. The market failed, but Ministers did not notice; they thought that security could be left to the market This is at a time when digital has become part of every part of our lives. We now spend a quarter of our waking hours on the internet. The UK telecoms industry contributes £32 billion to the economy and directly provides nearly a quarter of a million jobs. It has an impact on all our lives. As we are experiencing during the pandemic, it is an enabler of almost everything we do, and in the future—by which I mean in the next few years—it will bring about even more significant changes to how we live, work and engage with one another From driverless cars to advanced manufacturing, digital connectivity is essential. Indeed, we can argue that the pandemic has given us a taste of the future and moved the future closer. It has shown us how important good, fast, stable connectivity is, with millions still depending on it to work from home and stay in contact with friends and family. The pandemic has encouraged—indeed, required—a mass migration online, with businesses that were not digital-ready suddenly forced to operate online. It is salutary to recall that before covid there was a question of whether broadband was a vital utility. That was a matter of debate; it was debated as part of the Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Act 2021. The pandemic has since proved beyond doubt that telecoms is an essential utility, but, although our telecoms infrastructure has held up during the pandemic—I congratulate telecoms operators on that—it could have been so much better. Many in rural areas or unable to afford decent broadband will not thank me for praising our telecoms networks When Labour left office, we had world-leading infrastructure. That is no longer the case. We are now 47th in the world for broadband speeds. I say that to emphasise the significance of the upheaval that the sector is facing after the Government’s decision to strip Huawei out of the network, at a cost of £2 billion and two to three years delay to 5G roll-out. It is a decision that we supported and continue to support, but we cannot let solving one problem give rise to numerous more. Unfortunately, the holes that remain in this Bill will do just that. Let me emphasise how important this Bill is in ensuring that we get regulation and investment right for a sector that contributes so much to our economy, as well as to our work and social lives We must make sure that we do not find ourselves in a similar position again, and that our telecoms network and supply chains are resilient and protected in future—even, critically, as the geopolitical environment evolves. Our telecoms infrastructure lacks security and resilience. The Government have taken no steps to maintain or develop a sovereign telecommunications capability, and their broadband strategy—if we can call it that—has far more U-turns, dither and delay than meaningful policies The Bill is passing to the other place with significant failings. The first is national security. Labour prioritises national security. The Secretary of State and the Minister both agreed during the proceedings that the Bill needed to include sweeping powers to address matters of national security, so we remain concerned that the Committee that provides parliamentary oversight on matters of national security is being excluded from oversight of the measures in the Bill Secondly, the security of our networks depends on an effective plan to diversify the supply chain. As our amendments have fallen, the Bill still does not even mention supply chain diversification or the diversification taskforce, even though we all agree that we cannot have a robust and secure network with only two service providers, which is the number that we will have left once Huawei is removed from our networks I am going to say this once more for the Minister: we need a diversified supply chain and that means a diversity of suppliers at different points of the supply chain. Britain has great start-ups that are just desperate to help address this issue. Where is the support for them? The future of telecoms networks is moving away from closed, proprietary boxes to open interfaces and innovation in the cloud. That provides a real opportunity for some of our innovative companies, but the Government have still not laid out how this is to be realised, as their own diversification taskforce report recently made clear. Is the UK going to benefit from the costly debacle of ripping out Huawei—an integrated supplier? Right now, the only beneficiaries would appear to be Ericsson, Nokia and lawyers. We put the Government on notice that we will be holding them to account on that Thirdly, the Bill gives sweeping new powers and responsibilities to Ofcom. This follows a vast and continuing expansion of Ofcom’s remit. Ofcom lacks experience in national security, and changes to its duties will require the recruitment of people with the required level of security clearance and experience. The Minister and the Government have sought to evade scrutiny on that. We will seek to hold them to account. As part of that, we are very concerned that the Bill in its current form is not forward thinking enough. It lacks the processes to provide the foresight needed to ensure that we are not in this same position again. Where is the horizon-scanning function to identify emerging threats and potential weaknesses in UK telecoms providers’ asset registers? If our networks became dependent on one cloud service provider, such as Amazon Web Services, how would we know To conclude, we support the Bill as a necessary measure to protect our telecoms national security interests, but we are concerned that the Government have allowed ideology to undermine effectiveness when it comes to this Bill, and we will continue to seek to improve it.
I agree with the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah): this is a Bill to try to block hostile states and organisations from breaching our national security, and its intentions are absolutely on target, and all of us agree with them I do not believe that we will not have to revisit parts of the Bill to ensure that in the end Parliament is sovereign over information. For instance, it does not seem right that Ministers and Ministries keep the information to themselves and it is not passed on, albeit in redacted form or through the ISC We have to get oversight right, so in the end we may have to revisit the legislation in the next few months and years as a result of the experience we have. I hope not—I hope the Minister is right that we will be able to have oversight without having to revisit the legislation, but I suspect we might not. There it is—I promised to be short, and I will sit down now.
I am a strong believer that brevity is a great charm of eloquence, so that is a statement that would be well taken on board by the shadow Minister in future. I was hoping for a power cut in Newcastle—I am being kind First, I place on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) for his partaking in the debate on Second Reading. He did us a great service in that regard. I also thank Josh Simmonds-Upton in our research team, who put a great deal of effort into the Bill This is a Bill that we will support. We will give it close scrutiny moving forward, and I hope that the Government will work on good terms with the Scottish Government moving forward in this regard Question put and agreed to. Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
I am going to suggest that as we go through the next motions, the Serjeant at Arms sanitises just the Government Dispatch Box in order for us to save a little time.
With the leave of the House, we will take motions 5 to 7 together Ordered, Backbench Business That Imran Ahmad Khan, Gareth Bacon, Bob Blackman, Patricia Gibson, David Johnston, Nigel Mills and Kate Osborne be members of the Backbench Business Committee European Statutory Instruments That Owen Thompson be discharged from the European Statutory Instruments Committee and Richard Thomson be added Finance That Lilian Greenwood be discharged from the Finance Committee and Mr Nicholas Brown be added.—(Bill Wiggin [V], on behalf of the Committee of Selection.) Health and Social Care Ordered, That Neale Hanvey be discharged from the Health and Social Care Committee and Anum Qaisar-Javed be added.—(Bill Wiggin [V], on behalf of the Committee of Selection.) Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments Ordered, That Owen Thompson be discharged from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and Richard Thomson be added.—(Bill Wiggin [V], on behalf of the Committee of Selection.) Justice Ordered, That Kenny MacAskill be discharged from the Justice Committee and Angela Crawley be added.—(Bill Wiggin [V], on behalf of the Committee of Selection.) Committees
With the leave of the House, we will take motions 11 to 13 together Ordered, Procedure That Douglas Ross be discharged from the Procedure Committee and Gary Sambrook be added Public Accounts That Sir Bernard Jenkin be discharged from the Committee of Public Accounts and Mr Mark Francois and Antony Higginbotham be added. Women and Equalities That Angela Crawley be discharged from the Women and Equalities Committee and Anne McLaughlin be added.—(Bill Wiggin [V], on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)
Can I just pause a second to ask those who are leaving to do so in a covid-friendly manner, and to give the Minister an opportunity to come in? There we go.
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker There has been an underlying problem with NHS dentistry in the Lowestoft and Waveney area for a long time, with dentists retiring, leading to resources and dental capacity being taken away from the area, notwithstanding the need and demand for NHS dentistry. Many, but not all, of the remaining practices have difficulties in recruiting and retaining dentists. The situation has been exacerbated by a lack of funding, with net Government spending on general dental practice reduced by a third over the past decade. In recent months the situation has reached crisis point, due partly to covid but primarily to the closure due to retirement of two NHS dentist practices in Lowestoft and the closure of the mydentist practice at Leiston in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey). The latter was due to the difficulty of recruiting dentists to work in the area This is a national crisis. Official figures in March 2020 showed that 26% of new patients could not get access to an NHS dentist. The situation has worsened during covid, with more than 20 million NHS dental appointments lost nationally since the start of the pandemic. As has been reported today, the British Dental Association’s members survey reveals that almost half the respondents intend to stop working in NHS dentistry in the next 12 months, and two thirds estimate that they will not meet the new 60% activity targets they have been set. This is the worst survey that the BDA has ever carried out, and urgent action is required to stop dentists leaving the NHS in their droves The situation is worse in Waveney. Community Dental Services, an employee-led social enterprise, has recently opened a new dental clinic in the old magistrates court in Lowestoft. That investment is greatly welcomed, although CDS highlights the challenges that it is facing in the area. It is concerned about the lack of access to NHS dental services. Lowestoft and Waveney is an area of high need for dental services, yet there is a serious lack of provision, which has been exacerbated by the backlog caused by covid and, as I have mentioned, by the retirement of well-established local general practitioners. The perceived remote location of the Waveney area and the distance from all the existing centres of dental training make recruitment difficult CDS emphasises the need for a focus on prevention, particularly among children. The treatment of children under general anaesthetic for the removal of teeth that cannot be saved is the highest cause of admittance to hospital for general anaesthetic treatment in England and Wales. CDS advises that the reduction in local authority funding to support targeted or universal prevention—I am not attacking local authorities for this—has had a significant impact on the Waveney population due to reduced oral health improvement services. This limits CDS’s ability to reach out to all the people who need its services The impact on young people needs particular focus. In Suffolk, the proportion of children who saw an NHS dentist fell by half due to the pandemic: 60% in 2019 compared with just 31% in 2020. This translates to 43,000 local children missing out on their dental appointments compared with the year before. CDS, which is a paediatric dental specialist, has a high number of referrals from other practices of children with multiple decayed teeth that require complex treatment, quite often under general anaesthetic. The lack of general dental services locally makes safe discharge difficult, if not impossible, thereby creating further pressure on services. This has a devastating impact on children’s life chances, and could well prevent them from achieving the best start in life Covid has made the situation worse. The interruption of routine dental care and the subsequent reduction in patient appointments has created a backlog of patients. The pandemic has also meant the cancellation of and significant interruption to the dental general anaesthetic list at the James Paget Hospital at Gorleston in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), which causes greater problems. The list will recommence on 1 June, and the backlog of patients needing urgent care is substantial, but this increases the pressure on dental practices, which have responsibilities for their patients’ dental care. It should also be pointed out that there has been no consultant orthodontist at the James Paget since mid-2020, resulting in patients having to travel further for care, and for children this disrupts their education I am receiving approximately 10 emails a week from constituents, many of whom are in agony, looking for an NHS dentist. Some will go private, but for many who are on relatively low wages this option is not open to them and is one they cannot afford. One constituent has been quoted £2,400 for a new front tooth and £2,000 for a bridge repair. Others who are in need of urgent attention, as I have mentioned, go to A&E at the James Paget in Gorleston. There, all that the exasperated consultants can do is to prescribe them antibiotics and painkillers. This is completely unacceptable. Another constituent, who had a new denture fitted in 2019, needed it to be adjusted as it made his mouth sore and had a poor bite. He had no option but to use his old dentures, which were worn down and had a tooth missing. He has only just seen a dentist and is now awaiting the new dentures. These are just a few cases that highlight the agonies that many people are going through Andy Yacoub, the chief executive of Healthwatch Suffolk, summarised the situation well. He said: “We are living through a dental disaster, with little to no clear sign of when these problems will ease.” He also said: “This latest review by Healthwatch England strongly supports our own local view that there is huge inequality in the availability of NHS dental care amongst our population…This includes that some people have waited unreasonable lengths of time to get an NHS dentist appointment, while being told private appointments were available within a week.” In Suffolk, he said that we are being “inundated by feedback on a daily basis from those struggling to access these services. One individual revealed to us”— Healthwatch Suffolk— “that they required urgent hospital treatment after overdosing on painkillers to combat their symptoms,” while another “told us they couldn’t find a dentist to treat a tooth which had reached a point where it was decaying.”
I confess I have a slight self-interest in this, because my father was the NHS dentist in Fakenham for 34 years. The problems in North Norfolk with dentistry are terrible, with long waiting lists and people not being able to be seen. The Healthwatch report from the past day or so corroborates that. It strikes me that the contracts are some of the root causes of that, as is the disparity between the private and public sectors. What can we do to try to get more people to join this profession? I have one example in North Norfolk where, for more than 10 years, no newly recruited dentist has wanted to come and work at the surgery.
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. The situation is very bad in Waveney. It is also bad in other parts of East Anglia, not least in North Norfolk and in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow). It is particularly bad in East Anglia, and one reason for that is that we are perhaps a little away from the centre of things, and it can be difficult to recruit people to work in the area. My hon. Friend is right that one solution is to reform the existing contract, which dates from 2006, and I will come on to that as I look at some short and long-term solutions that need to be instigated immediately In the short term, I urge my hon. Friend and Suffolk colleague the Minister to take the following actions. First, we must reduce units of dental activity targets. The previous target of 20% was appropriate, but the new 45% target is wholly unrealistic. Many practices will be forced substantially to reduce the number of emergency cases that they provide and to replace them with routine check-ups that are less time-consuming, resulting in an even longer backlog of outstanding emergency and urgent care cases Money that is currently clawed back by the NHS if dentists do not deliver UDAs must be reinvested in the Waveney area. Dentists under-delivering does not indicate low local demand, and any clawback should be reinvested into local dental services, not transferred to other areas. That situation is particularly prevalent in East Anglia. In 2019-20, 9.1% of total contract value was clawed back in the region, compared with 4.8% nationally across England I confess that I do not completely understand the opaque world of UDAs, but I know that the system is short-changing my constituents, many of whom are in agony. For children, there could well be lifelong consequences. Some NHS dentistry practices in the Waveney and Norfolk area want to take on more patients, but they are not able to do so as the UDAs are not available. John Plummer & Associates is a privately owned family dental practice with 10 NHS practices in Norfolk and Waveney. As NHS dental practices in the Lowestoft area have closed in recent years, dentists from those practices have joined John Plummer. Naturally, their patients would like to follow them, but because no more UDAs are now available, the dentists have been unable to treat them, as they will not be able to provide adequate treatment for their regular patients. Those UDAs are then lost to the Waveney area forever. So much more NHS dentistry could be provided in the Waveney area if more NHS dentistry was allowed. John Plummer & Associates would open a walk-in emergency NHS dental service, but it is not able to do so as it is not allowed to do any more NHS work The continuing problem with covid is limiting the number of people that dentists can see each day. That can be eased by installing high-capacity ventilators in dental surgeries. That will reduce the period between appointments, during which the rooms are cleaned, but most practices cannot afford that. I recognise that there is quite a bit of devil in the detail, but the Government can directly increase access to NHS dentistry by providing capital funding for this equipment, as the devolved Administrations in Wales and Northern Ireland plan to do In the long term, root-and-branch reforms need to be instigated immediately. There is a need to get more NHS dentists practising in this area, and the Association of Dental Groups has put forward a six-point plan to achieve this. First, the number of training places should be increased. Earlier this month, Healthwatch Norfolk called for a dental school to be set up: based in Norwich, it would be able to serve the Waveney area and, indeed, the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker). As quickly as possible, the Government must instigate a recruitment drive, increasing the number of UK dentistry training places and introducing incentives for dentists to relocate to areas such as Suffolk and Norfolk Secondly, EU-trained dentists should be recognised. Their role is vital, and there must be continued access to NHS dentistry for EU-trained professionals, thereby preventing further shortfalls from arising. Thirdly, overseas qualifications should be recognised. The General Dental Council’s recognition of dental qualifications should be automatically extended to approved dental schools outside the European economic area, ensuring a smooth process for suitably qualified dentists to work in the UK—notably those from countries such as India. That should also include the doubling of places available under the overseas registration examinations Fourthly, the complex and lengthy process of completing the performers list validation by experience examinations—known as the PLVE—for overseas dentists should be speeded up, simplified and harmonised right across the country, with additional measures introduced to ensure that the process takes no longer than eight weeks Fifthly, whole dentistry teams should be allowed to initiate treatments. Allied dental professionals are, at present, not able to open a course of treatment. This means that they cannot raise a claim for payment of work delivered, with many practices unable to fully utilise therapists as a result; allowing whole dentistry teams to initiate treatments would address this problem The Association of Dental Groups’ sixth and final point is that the Government should create a new strategy to promote NHS workforce retention. They must reform the NHS contract, which is the major driver of dentists leaving NHS dentistry. A new contract, focused on the oral health needs of patients and targeting improved access and preventive care, should replace it With regard to the forthcoming health and social care Bill, with the commissioning of dentists set to move to integrated care systems, it is vital that dentists have a voice and are properly represented on ICSs. There is a worry that the possible pooling of budgets across primary care could lead to further cuts to NHS dentistry, and everything must be done to ensure that this does not happen Fluoridation of water can play a key preventive role in oral health, and it is very important that changes to the framework under which fluoridation schemes are carried out are accompanied by the capital funding that is necessary for those schemes to actually be put in place. I anticipate that we will consider this matter in more detail over the next few weeks when we debate the Bill I now come to the topic of new dental contract arrangements. As mentioned, underlying most of the problems of NHS dentistry is the fact that the current contract, which dates from 2006, is inadequate and now completely unfit for purpose. It must be replaced as quickly as possible. The BDA is looking for this to happen by April 2022 at the latest, and the new contract must break with the units of dental activity, ensure that NHS dentistry is available to all those who need it and prioritise preventive care My hon. Friend and Suffolk colleague the Minister is faced with a major task. From her perspective, it is unfortunate that the music has stopped on her watch. In summary, there are three things we need to be doing. I urge her, in the very near future, to provide practices, such as John Plummer & Associates, that will tackle the enormous the backlog of work with the resources to do so. We must end the cycle of retirements leading to funds being removed from the Waveney area, never to return. Secondly, we must tackle the growing scandal of children having to undergo major dental surgery. That requires much work in the short term in hospitals such as James Paget University Hospital, but in the longer term the introduction of major public awareness preventive initiatives is vital. Thirdly, the dysfunctional 2006 contract should be replaced as soon as possible.
First, I congratulate my hon. Friend and Suffolk colleague the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing time for this important debate. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker), who for the second time today has spoken about the challenges of dentistry that we have As my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney said, this is not a new problem; it was a problem and challenge pre-covid. The pandemic has definitely shone a light, and things have become much more challenging in the world of dental provision during the pandemic. Dentistry has been significantly impacted because of the risks associated with the aerosol-generating procedure that dentists do and, obviously, with the saliva generated when someone is carrying out a procedure on someone else’s mouth. In response, dental practitioners have been required to wear full personal protective equipment to keep them, their teams and their patients safe. Public Health England is reviewing the current guidance on infection prevention and control. I mention this because it goes to my hon. Friend’s point on fallow time—the time between the dentist putting their instrument down and cleaning down their room, and then seeing the next patient. These things have been big constraints in trying to have a rapid throughput of patients through the consulting room. Fallow time now is as low as 10 minutes in many cases, although that does depend on material factors such as the ventilation and so on I am talking to NHS England about the use of ventilation and the ability to support dental practices in putting ventilation in, but I gently point out that what sounds easy in a sentence in this place is often challenging. The buildings are not always owned by the dental practices, and in order to put ventilation systems in we have to take the rooms being used to deliver care out. So there is that combination of challenges, but there is new research on ventilation and lighting, and we are constantly looking at these things to see how we can further support the profession An important step forward has been to reduce the amount of time between seeing patients, in order to facilitate more care for more patients, but we have taken the action we have because infection control sits at the heart of what we have to do. I stress that because, with the variant of concern in some of our towns and cities around the country, we have to very mindful that we are looking for progress as to how we proceed with dentistry. I agree with much of what my hon. Friend said about making sure we are looking for opportunities, but we have to be mindful of the fact that we are not yet clear of this pandemic, and that brings enormous constraints The thresholds that have been set for dental practices since the start of the year have been based on data on what is achievable while also complying with infection prevention and control. My hon. Friend alluded to the 45%, which was the level of dental activity placed on practices in the fourth quarter of last year. That figure is now 60%, and 80% through orthodontics. This is the tension that exists in this whole area. Sixty per cent is still 40% lower than what we delivered in pre-covid times—obviously. The challenge is to make sure that we are able to see the backlog, that we drive forward with looking after the most vulnerable and those with the highest degree of need, and that we do not lose ground on what has gone before, while also having to deal with complexities such as retirements and contracts coming back and so on and so forth. However defective the 2006 UDA contract is, it is not just a question of swapping one for the other The current thresholds are monitored on a monthly basis, and the new thresholds have been put in place for six months. Dental practices have been asked to deliver as much care as possible, prioritising urgent care, particularly for vulnerable groups. They are delaying planned care, ensuring that they are dealing on a needs basis with those in the most acute need In addition to these activity thresholds, NHS England has provided a flexible commissioning toolkit. I am very keen for the profession to get real-world examples of what can help deliver the service, based on the successes that have been achieved locally. Some of those successes have been achieved in our own particular area. Flexible commissioning is used to convert units of dental activity, or UDAs as my hon. Friend has referred to them, to activity that focuses on priority areas, such as improving access to urgent care, or targeting high-risk patients, which was exactly what he was asking us to look at in his speech. We are already doing that. It is good practice and regional commissioners can implement it. I am very keen to make sure that that practice is being used as much as it possibly can be. I am having very frequent discussions with NHS England to make sure that we are monitoring the use of these measures As well as flexible commissioning, support is also available to local NHS commissioners to put that capacity where we need it most. In the east of England, NHS England has developed the transformational dental strategy, the aim of which is to prioritise urgent care, prevention and inequalities. Despite our efforts to increase services, we know that patients are still experiencing acute difficulty in finding an NHS dentist—that is also true in my constituency A feature of the debates that we have had today is the availability of private provision in areas where there is no NHS provision. NHS England is charged with commissioning to the need in an area. Making sure that we commission to the need in an area is something that contract change, which I am very keen to see delivered by April 2022, addresses, but it is highly complex. I have met stakeholders in the UK. Some people suggest that the Welsh system is better. Others favour the French system or the one that exists in some of the Scandinavian countries. I have met members of the dental profession from all those places and, actually, no one has a perfect system. We are trying to take what is good about the various systems and ensure that we deliver in localities so that people can have access to care when they need it, with a particular focus on prevention We have a web-based programme in the east called service provider, which provides up-to-date information on dental services that are available. Patients experiencing difficulties are able to contact NHS England’s customer care centre and call 111 for help in accessing emergency dental care. All NHS dental practices in the east of England have been asked to reserve at least one slot per day for urgent dental care to improve capacity and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney said, allow greater access. In addition, we have not stood down the 600 urgent dental centres that we had across the country during the height of the pandemic; we have left those in place, and we have a network of them across both Norfolk and Suffolk However, we know that information on NHS dentists is not always easy to access. Alongside increasing access for patients, it is crucial to support NHS dental practices and mixed practices—and, arguably, private practices—in order that we can start to have a more balanced approach. As my hon. Friends the Member for Waveney and for North Norfolk mentioned, part of the challenge that we have is retention. That is the case particularly in our area, but it is something that I have discussed with Cornish colleagues too; my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) and I have discussed at length how the problem is not unique to the east of England Practices have continued to receive their full contract payments minus agreed deductions, providing that levels of activity are met. An exceptions process has also been put in place for practices that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. It is wrong to say that we want anyone to feel that they are not supported to deliver what they can. We have also made personal protective equipment available free of charge through a dedicated portal; and as of a week ago, we had delivered more than 367 million items free to dentists, orthodontists and their teams If it has done anything, the pandemic has continued to highlight the fact that transformation in dentistry is necessary, particularly if we want to make sure that we drill down on the oral health inequalities that exist across the country. I am meeting the chair of Healthwatch tomorrow, and I am sure that, among other things, we will discuss access to dentistry at some length. We need to develop a sustainable, long-term approach to dentistry that is responsive to the population. It needs to provide high-quality, urgent treatment and then restorative care where clinically necessary, but prevention must sit at its core The majority of oral health failures are preventable. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney spoke about children. There is nothing more upsetting than a child being in acute pain and having all their teeth removed. That is a broader problem. Through flexible commissioning, we can ensure that we are doing supervised tooth brushing by encouraging local authorities to put that in, but we can also enable parents to do their part and ensure that they can help their children learn good habits right from the early days. Parents can encourage their children to look after their teeth by rubbing their gums before their teeth even appear, making sure that they understand how important it is In addition, any system that we design must improve patient access and oral health, and offer value for money for the taxpayer. It must also be designed in conjunction with, and be attractive to, the profession. NHSE is leading on dental contract reform work. Importantly, it is engaging with stakeholders, including the ADG, which my hon. Friend spoke about. It will be looking at what changes can be made to dental contracts in the short term to offer some improvements and some relief and respite to everyone, while details of the next stage of reform will be agreed by April 2022. Making NHS dental contracts more attractive to the profession will help with vital recruitment and retention, and I know that all my hon. Friends in the Chamber, particularly across rural and coastal areas, will welcome that. Health Education England’s Advancing Dental Care programme has also been exploring opportunities for flexible dental training pathways and how we train our dental workforce to improve recruitment and retention. I am also very keen to make sure that we use the broader dental team as efficiently as we can, because dental technicians, dental nurses, hygienists and so on hold many skills that, particularly, could be used for prevention. However, with another hat in my portfolio on, I think of the obesity agenda and making sure that we all look after ourselves a bit better and have healthier lifestyles. Everything that we consume goes in through our mouths. Dentists are wonderfully placed, as are their teams, to help to encourage us to have a healthier lifestyle and to eat a little less sugar We remain committed to prevention and improving oral health, and I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney supports—I think, from his asks—the direction that we are trying to go in by changing the UDAs, concentrating on making sure that we have the skill mix right, focusing on prevention and looking at retention. As he said, however, this is a complex area. I am also having discussions with the GDC—he spoke about recognising dentists who have trained overseas and making sure that once we are assured of standards of education and so on, things are a bit simpler On making sure that we can expand schemes, subject to funding being secured and consulted on, I want to look at the expansion of fluoridated water. As my hon. Friend said, it is one of the simplest ways that we can improve oral health intervention, and we could significantly improve children’s health across the country. It is unacceptable in this day and age that young children have total dental clearances due to preventable tooth decay. The return on investment on fluoridation is very compelling and there needs to be a renewed focus on the investment in prevention We are committed to increasing dental access both in the short and the long term so that we can ensure equality of access no matter where in the country a patient lives. But this is complex. We are working hard at it. We are working with the profession, but we all need to double down both on prevention and making sure that we are all walking in the same direction to bring accessible oral healthcare to people Question put and agreed to.