House of Lords
Tuesday 10 December 2024
Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Leeds.
National Youth Strategy
Question
Asked by
To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in developing a National Youth Strategy.
We have started our engagement with young people in the sector. Yesterday the Secretary of State met young people in Bristol to discuss the role of young people in the strategy and how we as a Government can support them. We are in the process of establishing a youth advisory board and an expert advisory board. Over the coming months, we will hold further face-to-face engagements and seek the views of experts in our sectors and as many young people as possible, to put young people back in charge of their own destiny.
I thank my noble friend for that Answer and support the Government’s initiative. Does she agree that all young people need access to positive out-of-school activities with trusted adults, to develop confidence and resilience and to reach their own potential? For so many, such opportunities are limited through disadvantage, disability, poor circumstances and the severe cuts we have seen in youth services over the last 14 years. How will the Government ensure that this strategy levels up that inequality of opportunity among young people and reaches those most in need?
I wholeheartedly agree with my noble friend. The national youth strategy will allow us to better target funding and services where they are most needed and to reduce geographical disparities in choices and chances. We will continue to deliver additional hours of positive activities and adventures away from home for disadvantaged and vulnerable young people. In addition to better youth spaces, we will complete youth investment fund projects in disadvantaged areas, providing safe spaces and equality of access for young people from all backgrounds.
My Lords, does the Minister accept that more than 1 million young people took part in the National Citizen Service, with an approval rate of over 90%, making it probably the most successful youth programme in the last few decades? Given that, and given that it was good for social cohesion, mixing young people from different backgrounds together, good for the social soft skills that young people need such as confidence, leadership and teamwork, and good to get young people out from behind their screens and into the great outdoors, can she explain why—apart from short-term, political “not-invented-here-itis”—the Government decided to scrap it?
I do not recognise the portrayal of the decision-making process that the noble Lord outlines. I remind him that when we came into power there was no youth strategy. This is part of our process of ensuring that every young person has a youth service that works for them. It is not to take away from what the NCS provided, but the world is very different now from the world in 2010. The youth strategy that we will deliver as a Labour Government will provide opportunities for all.
My Lords, does the Minister agree that any youth strategy has to look at how it integrates into the voluntary sector of the general adult world? We assume that most young people will get slightly older. Will the Government make sure they have somewhere to go after they finish the youth strategy schemes?
The noble Lord makes a really interesting point, and I would be very happy to discuss it further with him next time we meet.
My Lords, I too very much welcome the Government’s plan to develop a national youth strategy. Does the Minister agree that a major element of such a strategy should be a holistic and consistent approach to citizenship, with a standard curriculum that focuses on interactive and immersive learning? Furthermore, given that the National Citizen Service no longer exists, does she agree that citizenship education would be best located in all primary and secondary schools?
The noble Baroness makes a really valuable point about the role of citizenship. It is essential that pupils develop an understanding of their place in a democratic society so that they can become responsible citizens in modern Britain. As noble Lords will be aware, the DfE has launched an independent curriculum and assessment review, which will look at exactly the type of issues the noble Baroness raises.
My Lords, a range of youth services were cut by the last Government. Policies were axed directly in Whitehall or because of severe cuts to local authority budgets. It will not be possible to reverse the damage overnight, but does my noble friend have any timescales relating to the strategy she outlined earlier?
We intend to develop the strategy over the next year and to publish it in 2025. The key issue around how we are developing it is coproduction; it will be a coproduced strategy that is cocreated with young people in the youth sector who know best what young people now require.
My Lords, given that the uniformed cadet service has more than 139,000 members and provides some of the best social mobility available to young people, exposing them to some of the most highly trained and highly dedicated people in the world, can the Minister guarantee that it will take part in the formation of this national youth strategy?
We encourage all young people involved in existing schemes to take part and get engaged with the formation of the strategy. I will take the noble Lord’s point back to the department and write to him to ensure that happens.
My Lords, further to the point just raised about the cadet forces, they are amazingly successful. As our military is getting smaller and smaller, and the world is getting more and more dangerous, there is a lot of merit in ensuring we can get youngsters into these forces. Will the CCF element of that now have increased funding? It has been shrinking, and therefore fewer schools have CCF units.
We are really keen to see the Combined Cadet Force grow, and the MoD funding in this academic year supports the ambition to grow to 60,000 cadets in 500 school cadet units across the UK. That is in addition to the annual cost to the MoD of the Combined Cadet Force, which is estimated at more than £42 million a year.
My Lords, the decision by the noble Baroness’s department three weeks ago to close the National Citizen Service dismayed a generation of young people and the many brilliant organisations that work with them. As my noble friend Lord Cameron says, it transformed the lives of more than 1 million young people. The organisation UK Youth has pointed out that the Government’s decision, as well as their failure to renew the youth investment fund, will take hundreds of millions of pounds out of the sector, including funding for around 250 youth organisations that were expecting to work with NCS from April. Why did the Government take this decision to announce the closure of NCS rather than looking at ways to repurpose it, and without announcing what might replace it and plug the gap it leaves behind?
As the noble Lord will be aware, there is a whole host of other programmes delivered by the department in addition to the National Citizen Service. We did not want to do what the previous Government did with vinspired and let the organisation wither on the vine.
My Lords, what is the national youth strategy doing, if anything, about the issues surrounding county lines?
One of the things about not having a youth strategy that goes across government is that we have not necessarily had joined-up work. I am happy to get a response to the noble and learned Baroness on that, but my understanding is that this is one of the issues that the Young Futures hubs will work on. They are committed to intervening early to stop young people being drawn into crime and other poor outcomes.
My Lords, can the Minister say how many youth clubs were closed during the Conservative Government’s time in office, and how many will be reopened within the next year or two?
I do not have a specific answer on how many were closed, but I think it was a lot. Local authorities’ youth funding in England fell by 73% under the previous Government and, between 2011-12 and 2022-23, the number of local authority-run youth centres—actually, I do have the figure—fell by 53% in England, from 917 to just 425. If you are looking at legacies of the previous Government, that is quite a damning indictment.
My Lords, if the Government are so keen to expand the role of cadets in a national youth strategy, why have they just pulled the Department for Education’s funding for the cadet expansion programme?
I might look to the previous Government’s record and the £22 billion black hole that they left in this country’s finances.
Europe: Arts and Creative Industries
Question
Asked by
To ask His Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to facilitate touring in, and trading with, Europe for the arts and creative industries.
My Lords, the Government fully recognise the scale of the challenges facing creative and cultural professionals wishing to tour in and trade with Europe. We are working to address these while resetting relationships and deepening ties with our European friends. In line with our manifesto, Ministers have raised touring with European counterparts on multiple occasions, and officials are collaborating across Whitehall with stakeholders and meeting their European counterparts to advocate for pragmatic solutions. This is a priority for the Government.
My Lords, I welcome the Minister to her new role and thank her for the meeting we had with her. I hope that it was helpful in understanding that this affects not just music touring, important though that is, but the visual arts, craft, fashion and film. Without a commitment to rejoining the single market, how will the Government deal effectively with these pressing concerns and secure the place of our arts and creative industries in Europe?
I thank the noble Earl. We had a very interesting conversation. There tends to be an assumption that we are talking about music when we talk about touring, but it covers the broadest range of elements, including fashion, gaming and so many things. We make it clear that we are looking to reset the relationship with Europe. We are not talking about returning to where we were. There has already been high-level engagement with the Prime Minister on several occasions and with other Ministers, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer met Finance Ministers for the first time just yesterday. These are the conversations we are having with great urgency on how we can address some of the problems.
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for the way he has stuck to this agenda, and for the service he has given to the arts in so doing. In the review that the Minister is undertaking, will she understand that many aspects of the arts and culture are devolved, whereas trade is not? Therefore, can she set up a mechanism for co-ordinating with the devolved regimes to help advise the Government on the course they may take?
I also add my thanks to the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and all other Members of this House for raising these matters repeatedly; it is important to focus on what is happening. I note very carefully the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and, obviously, we shall be having an interesting debate later today about Welsh opera, for example. These relationships are critical, and I will take back the noble Lord’s comments.
My Lords, last week the Prime Minister launched the Plan for Change—a great statement of support for our creative industries, because it was launched at Pinewood Studios. However, those industries are crying out for us to rebuild ties with Europe. Our young people are being cut off from European culture, and vice versa, yet the relatively narrow youth mobility scheme suggested by the EU has been rejected by the Prime Minister. Can the Minister explain why?
To reiterate my earlier comments, the negotiations are ongoing, and it would not be appropriate to go into the detail of where we are. Let us be honest: this is incredibly complicated. I do not think anyone really understood the level of complexity involved in leaving the EU and all its greater implications. I hear the noble Baroness’s comments; they will be fed in. I am very heartened by the change in relationships, the willingness to embrace and have discussions, and, most importantly, collaboration with the wider sector, which will absolutely direct the course of travel.
Bishop!
No, it is Labour. To hell with the Bishop.
Oh!
My Lords, I welcome my noble friend the Minister’s comments about resetting relations with Europe. As someone who for many years accompanied my own children, who were members of youth orchestras, around all the major countries of Europe, I ask whether in the discussions the Government are now having with partner countries in Europe special emphasis will be given to making it easier for youth orchestras to travel in the summer, both to and from Europe, to enrich the musical, cultural and educational needs of our young people.
One of the enormous benefits of taking part in these debates is that one always learns something new. For instance, I have now learned all about the issue of cabotage—I do not know whether other noble Lords are fully apprised of it—and the sheer difficulty of physically moving across Europe when you have all the individual countries to deal with. Of course, these matters are close to our hearts; we all value young people travelling across Europe as our closest partner, and these areas are being fully discussed.
My Lords, I know many people in the creative sector who are worried about the generational impact of this issue. We have already heard the phrase “plan for change”, but this generation is losing the vital experience not only of performing abroad or doing whatever they do but of the business of getting there in the first place. We are hearing that the Government are working hard and that it is a priority, but is there a timeline? For many of those people, that matters.
I thank the right reverend Prelate for his comments. The backdrop to what we are dealing with is a failing apprenticeship levy for creative industries. The number of students studying music at A-level is down by 45%, which indicates clearly the urgency of this issue. I cannot give him a specific timeline at the moment. Also coming from the great city of Leeds, I know his great commitment in this area and the joint work that has been done across partners in this space. We understand that this issue is urgent, and we are addressing it accordingly.
My Lords, many musicians play musical instruments containing materials now covered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species—or CITES—but, as the noble Earl said, this issue affects artists in other disciplines too. The convention obliges musicians to obtain a musical instrument certificate when travelling internationally and to travel through a CITES-designated port. St Pancras station is not so designated, meaning they cannot take the Eurostar, which adds extra cost and hassle and is of course worse for the environment. What progress have the Government made in discussions with Defra about making St Pancras a CITES-designated port so that musicians can use it?
The noble Lord highlights another area I have learned about from this debate. CITES is clearly a critical factor, as is the whole issue around St Pancras and how we can move forward. I do not have the detail that he asks for. I will take it back and report back on progress.
My Lords, reduced opportunities for exchange between EU and UK artists impact not only on touring but on career development and the innovations that come through collaboration. I remain optimistic that this Government will deliver on their manifesto promise about touring artists. In the meantime, will they consider rejoining Creative Europe, which enables the network building and audience development that would come through touring but is not currently possible? Why are the Government not pursuing that as an opportunity?
The noble Baroness raises important issues. At this moment in time, there are no plans for rejoining Creative Europe, but that does not mean that conversations are not ongoing or that we are not having a pragmatic look at how we can replace the work done through that so that we can come up with a bespoke way forward. It is critical that we encourage our young people by enabling them to pursue their dreams and to perform in Europe, because that opens up the world stage as well. It is not just a question of problems in Europe; not performing in Europe has a knock-on impact on their ability to move to other parts of the world.
My Lords, does the Minister not recognise that when this matter was discussed during the trade and co-operation agreement negotiations both sides made mistakes? The European Union side asked us to do some things that went beyond what the then Government were prepared to do and the then Government rejected them out of hand. We need to start from a better basis than that. As was said, and my noble friend Lord Clancarty has been a remorseless pusher for this, we need to set some kind of target for getting this done. Would it not be a good idea if it was done by the time the Prime Minister meets his colleagues in the European Council on 3 February?
I am sure that the noble Lord is correct and that many of us recognise that mistakes were made on both sides, but we are expressing what we are doing as a “reset” of relationships. We cannot just turn the corner and rebuild relationships; it has to be worked on and done in an environment of trust. It would not be appropriate for us to go ahead without making sure that we have our partners with us. That is what the Government are committed to do, and I very much look forward to the progress made over the next few months.
Guns Manufactured by 3D Printers
Question
Asked by
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the number of guns manufactured by 3D printers circulating in the United Kingdom.
I am pleased to tell my noble friend that no viable fully 3D-printed firearms have been found by law enforcement in the United Kingdom. In 2023, there were 25 instances where police seized 3D-printed component parts or other items associated with 3D printing of firearms.
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. He will have seen the reports this morning that the person who supposedly shot the insurance executive in New York was carrying a 3D-printed weapon. He will be aware that the firearm of choice for young men in Australia and New Zealand is now a 3D-printed weapon. He will be aware that it is possible, by searching for FGC-9 on the internet—I apologise for offending the sensibilities of anyone in the House, but FGC stands for “Fuck Gun Control”—to get detailed manuals of how to make a 3D-printed firearm. What is being done to stop the circulation of such manuals? Is it an offence to download such a manual, as it would be in other circumstances?
I can tell my noble friend that it is an offence to manufacture and distribute a prohibited weapon, such as a handgun or semi-automatic rifle, however it is manufactured. That carries a sentence of life imprisonment. The maximum penalty for possessing such a prohibited weapon, including any 3D-printed prohibited weapon, is 10 years’ imprisonment with a minimum penalty of five years. We will keep legislation under review and there will be opportunities during the course of this Session to review that legislation in relation to any issues that might need to be brought forward.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Harris, raises a serious point. Although, as the Minister said, there have not been too many instances, there have been quite a few where guns have been produced. One big thing that has changed over the past few years is that, apart from producing plastic-based guns, people are now able to produce metallic guns, which means they have more than one use. Of course, we do our best to control that production. We have very strict gun controls in this country. You cannot own a prohibited weapon—a handgun or an automatic weapon—so we are left with rifles and shotguns. If we lose this control point, which 3D printers allow, we will be in a serious situation. Would it be wise to consider banning the software, and the importing of the software, for these 3D printers? Finally, should there be some follow-up investigations on the list of people who have had these 3D printers delivered to find out what they are using them for and whether any of these guns have been produced on those particular printers?
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his helpful intervention. I say quite simply again that 3D-printed firearms are captured by existing firearms legislation. If a 3D-printed firearm is made, it is treated in exactly the same way as any other type of illegal firearm. So they are covered by the legislation, but the suggestions he made are worthy of consideration. We keep those matters under review. Again, there will be opportunities in this Session to look at those issues as a potential police and crime Bill goes through this House.
My Lords, the barrier for acquiring these weapons has been lowered by advancing technology, with criminals, extremists and everyone else being capable of making these guns in a shed or in their own home. Does the Minister accept that it is not good enough to rely on a Private Member’s Bill to tighten the law in this area, and that the Government really need to act as a matter of urgency on this?
I am not aware that the Government are relying on a Private Member’s Bill. There is a Private Member’s Bill coming forward, but it is not a Government-sponsored Bill; it is being undertaken by a Back-Bencher in the House of Commons. We will reflect on that legislation, look at what is needed and make sure that, if there are loopholes, we tie them up. Ultimately, legislation is there to say that firearms are illegal, and there are severe penalties for the ownership and distribution of those illegal firearms. If there are gaps in the legislation along the lines that noble Lords have mentioned, we will review that in due course next year.
My Lords, noble Lords have heard the strong view of the House, from the noble Lords, Lord Harris and Lord Hogan-Howe, among others, that there is a gap in the criminal canon for the downloading of software to make 3D-printed firearms. Clearly, it would be appropriate for the Home Office immediately to launch a consultation on making it an offence to download the software to create 3D-printed firearms. Will the Minister commit to initiating such a consultation immediately?
I will take that as a representation to the Government about their proposals for next year. The Government are exploring all legislative options to criminalise the possession and supply of 3D-printed firearms templates. We are looking at that now; I hope the noble Lord will have patience in this matter.
My Lords, as well as 3D-printed firearms, there has been a significant increase in 3D-printed components used to convert blank firing guns into operable firearms—so much so that the head of the NCA has called for legislation to deal with this issue. Is my noble friend in a position to commit to ensuring that any legislation deals with the illicit manufacture of the components that can turn innocuous blank-firing pistols—which are available for purchase without any licence—into lethal weapons, and not just 3D-printed firearms?
The question of hybrid weapons, again, is covered by existing legislation, in the sense that it is an offence carrying a penalty of life imprisonment to distribute them, and an offence carrying a penalty of between five and 10 years’ imprisonment to hold and own them. If the hybrid nature of firearms is being developed, that again is an issue that we are currently looking at, currently examining. There is a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons for consideration in January. The Government will respond to that Private Member’s Bill and will reflect on the points made in both this House and the House of Commons.
My Lords, I had the pleasure of doing a Private Member’s Bill with the late Sir David Amess, which dealt with the supply of machinery that could manufacture, for instance, counterfeit passports. Building on the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, when we look at this matter, could we make sure that we look also at any 3D printing of bullets—which is apparently at the cusp of being possible —as well as handguns?
Absolutely. Again, I am in danger of repeating myself to the House. Those matters are under consideration. The Government will review all legislation. Again, the Government’s main aim is to strengthen what we already have: a penalty of life imprisonment for the illegal manufacture and distribution of weapons, and a penalty of five to 10 years for the holding of an illegal weapon. We are keeping these matters under review. I hope the House can hear what I say and understand the consideration that we are making.
My Lords, as a design and technology teacher with four 3D printers in his department, I am fully aware of the advantages and limitations of 3D printing. Does the Minister agree with me that, rather than concentrating on a tiny number of potential weapons, it would be better to look at hunting knives on the streets as a far more dangerous thing?
In proposed legislation in the King’s Speech, the Government are looking at how we can tackle the whole issue of knife crime. Again, there is a range of options for potential action by government there, which will be outlined by the Government in the coming months. I will take what the noble Lord has said as another representation on that, but I hope the House will understand that knife crime is central to the Government’s plans for the reduction of crime and of young, innocent deaths.
It is also important that we reflect on matters that have been raised about the potential manifestation of different types of firearm. I have said that it is illegal currently, that we will reflect on legislation in the House of Commons and that there will be opportunities in legislation later this year, in this Session, to examine those matters accordingly. I hope that noble Lords can hear what I have said.
My Lords, my noble friend the Minister will remember that, when we were in the Home Office, I put huge pressure on identifying and stopping the production of bullets, and bullets became the real focus—because without the bullets, of course, the guns are pretty useless. Could I add my concern that, if they start printing bullets, it will become rather different and we will need to look at this in a very different way, because that would be extremely serious?
How could I forget my years in the Home Office with my noble friend? We spent 2009-10 in the Home Office sharing opposite offices; it was a fascinating and enjoyable experience. My noble friend makes some very valid points. Again, I am in danger of repeating myself. The issues that the House is bringing to my attention about the potential manufacture of bullets, guns and hybrid guns are currently, potentially, covered by existing legislation. If they are not, we will review that in the light of Private Members’ Bills, discussions and representations. There are opportunities to continue that discussion further.
Health: Quad-demic
Question
Asked by
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce the impact of a potential “quad-demic”, involving high prevalence of influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, COVID-19 and norovirus, following the warning of Professor Sir Stephen Powis, the NHS national medical director.
My Lords, levels of hospital admissions due to flu and norovirus are higher, while Covid hospitalisation rates are lower and RSV hospitalisation rates are about the same as the same time last year. The impact of these infectious diseases can be reduced through our annual vaccination programmes for flu and Covid-19, as well as the new year-round vaccination programme for RSV, and by observing good hygiene measures. Some 16.6 million flu vaccinations, 9.3 million Covid-19 vaccinations and 1.2 million RSV vaccinations have been delivered so far this winter.
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for that comprehensive Answer. I have to say that “quad-demic” was a new phrase for me and so I was very keen to understand what the Minister made of the announcements from the NHS national medical director, Sir Stephen Powis. From my point of view, it is vital that we learn the lessons of the last pandemic and I know a huge amount of work is being done to understand the implications of the recommendations from Module 1 of the inquiry. But, as I understand it from Sir Stephen’s announcement, the uptake of NHS vaccine programmes is much lower than last year, so I am concerned for us to be reassured that if uptake does not improve in the run-up to Christmas, we are ready and we have learned the lessons from last time and we will not panic and start making foolish decisions about PPE acquisition, for example.
We are absolutely committed to learning the lessons from Covid in order to build resilience. The recommendations of the independent review of procurement by Nigel Boardman have already been implemented and a Covid Counter-Fraud Commissioner has already been appointed to scrutinise contracts to learn the lessons and recover money for taxpayers. Professor Sir Stephen Powis, who I have spoken to about this, was not suggesting that there is a pandemic but more that four infectious diseases are coalescing to create a situation and that vaccination is crucial. His comments were a call to the public to get vaccinated, which I also endorse.
My Lords, currently the RSV vaccination is available to the older age group of 75 to 79 year-olds—of course, it is available to a younger age group for vulnerable people—unlike in the CDC advice, which is that over-75s should get the immunisation. Older people are more susceptible to RSV and end up with more severe disease and hospitalisation, so why is the advice in the United Kingdom that the over-80s should not get immunisation? It has been suggested that the trials had insufficient evidence. The two trials for Moderna and Pfizer showed that efficacy was maintained in the older age group and therefore the JCVI’s interpretation is rather narrow in scientific terms —or is it to save money?
I listened carefully to the noble Lord. The JCVI considered that there was less certainty about how well the RSV vaccine works in people aged 80 and over when the programme was introduced in 2023, and that is because, as the noble Lord said, there were insufficient people aged 80 and older in the clinical trials. The JCVI continues to keep this under review, including looking at data from clinical trials and evidence in other countries, and there will shortly be an update to your Lordships’ House in respect of research and clinical trials.
The Minister says that we are determined to learn the lessons of Covid. During Covid we had vaccination rates of 90% but, as she said, only 16 million—just 25%—of our citizens have had the flu jab and vaccination rates among children are also deteriorating at a rate. I say this with some personal interest because there was an outbreak of the quad-demic in my own household at 2 am today. There are three times as many people in hospital today with flu than in this week last year. Can the Minister please explain what she is doing to increase vaccination rates, particularly among children?
We are aiming communications —I know the noble Lord will be familiar with this from his previous role—particularly at groups that are less represented in terms of vaccinations. From my discussions with the national medical director, I do not recognise the reference that the noble Lord made to hospitalisations; they are as I set out in the Answer to my noble friend. However, we are far from complacent and continue to push vaccination. We will get vaccination rates up because they are the best line of defence against infectious diseases.
My Lords, the chief medical officer at the UK Health Security Agency stated last week that NHS staff should get the flu vaccination. The Government’s own statistics show that last week, in the largest trust in the country, only 7.9% of those eligible had had flu jabs, and on average the number is in the lower 20%. Why has this happened? What are the Government doing urgently to improve the take-up of the flu vaccine by NHS staff?
I must be honest: I cannot explain here the exact reasons why NHS staff are not taking it up, but I assure the noble Lord, as I have assured other noble Lords, that our focus is on getting vaccination rates up. That is why the national medical director made the comments that he did, as well as assuring me that we are not nearing a pandemic.
My Lords, undoubtedly the vaccination programme has had an important influence and impact on our National Health Service as well as our economy. What further vaccines and vaccination programmes will be accelerated on to the national immunisation programme this year and in further financial years?
My noble friend has campaigned tirelessly for the vaccine rollout in respect of RSV, for which I thank her, and I know that many others would wish to thank her for that too. With regard to the other vaccines about which my noble friend asked, we will continue to work with the JCVI and, as there are further developments, I will update your Lordships’ House.
If the spread of any of the four viruses listed by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, were to turn into a pandemic, hospital capacity would be an issue of concern. Hospital capacity is already an issue in most winters. With that in mind, figures released last week show that NHS hospitals are operating at 95% capacity. Therefore, what discussions are the Government and the NHS having with the independent healthcare sector to utilise its spare capacity to help to alleviate the pressures, both this coming winter and in the face of future pandemics?
The noble Lord will be aware that being prepared for winter is crucial. It has felt for too long as though winter crises have almost become normalised. Certainly, our move towards a 10-year plan will ensure that we have an NHS that can provide all year round. To give one statistic on Covid, in the week beginning 1 December there were 1,390 hospital beds occupied by confirmed Covid-19 patients per day, which was 41% lower than in the same week last winter. However, we are absolutely aware of this issue and we are not expecting a difficulty in respect of beds.
My Lords, in her original Answer the Minister spoke about hygiene measures. I wonder whether she could expand on the advice that will be given to the public about considering washable face masks that can be recycled; about improving handwashing because of norovirus; and, particularly as we go into the Christmas season, about not washing poultry, which causes the droplet spread of campylobacter in kitchens and can lead to severe gastrointestinal infections. These will all increase the workload on the NHS if combined with the other infections that we have spoken about.
Prevention is key, rather than just focusing on cure. Communications thus far are focusing on handwashing; I will discuss the other points the noble Baroness raises with the department.
Personal Statement
My Lords, during the second Oral Question I made a comment from a sedentary position regarding giving priority to Bishops at Question Time. I sincerely apologise for any offence or upset that has caused, particularly to the Bishops.
Police Officers: Recruitment
Private Notice Question
Asked by
To ask His Majesty’s Government (1) what steps they are taking to recruit 13,000 additional police officers, and (2) what assessment they have made of the impact of a proposed reduction of Metropolitan Police officer numbers on this commitment.
As part of our safer streets mission, the Government will restore neighbourhood policing by putting police back on the beat, with 13,000 additional police officers, police community support officers and special constables in neighbourhood policing roles across England and Wales, including in London. Last week, the Prime Minister announced a £100 million fund which will be made available in 2025-26 to support the initial delivery of the 13,000 additional neighbourhood police and details of delivery for the coming year will be confirmed at the provisional police funding settlement later this month.
My Lords, the media report that the Metropolitan Police is going to cut 2,300 officers and 400 staff next year because of a £450 million funding shortfall. This clearly will be devastating for the service. Does the Minister agree that the Government will therefore struggle to hit their target of 13,000 new police officers? Does this news put the Government’s mission-led strategy at risk?
The Government’s target of 13,000 police, police and community support officers and special constables will be met to ensure an increase in neighbourhood policing by the end of this Parliament. We have put the funding of £100 million in place next year to ensure that resource is in place to meet that initial mission which we will complete and be judged on by the end of this Parliament. The police settlement has not yet been determined. It will be announced next week, before Christmas. It will be consulted on between Christmas and January and it will be a matter for approval by Parliament by February. As yet, much of the discussion is speculation. I simply say to the noble Lord that his record still needs scrutiny and he needs to remember that his Government reduced police officer numbers by 20,000, reduced the number of PCSOs from over 16,000 to 8,000 and reduced the number of special constables from 20,000 to 8,500 in the course of their term of office. We will meet our targets. We will meet our mission statement and he will judge us on that.
My Lords, the previous Government slashed neighbourhood policing and saw a massive increase in anti-social crime, knife crime and street crime. Does the Minister think the Opposition need to reflect on their past record before they come up with suggestions of how we fix the problems they created?
The Opposition’s record is one of the reasons they are the Opposition now. The reason they lost the election is because confidence in policing dropped; confidence in the results and outcomes of policing dropped; shoplifting went up 29% in the last year, when the noble Lord was in office. There was also a 40% rise in shop theft over that period in office, and a reduction in the number of police officers. What we are trying to do—this is a difficult task, which I hope the House will bear with us on—is to increase the number of neighbourhood police, put in place respect orders, improve the quality of policing through confidence measures, invest in our policing and ensure that we secure the things the previous Government did not.
My Lords, the Met is not the only police force that is struggling; most police forces are struggling. This is a legacy of a decade of expecting the police to cover the work of other public services, which are underfunded and overwhelmed by demand—for example, mental health, child protection and youth services—because there is nobody else to pick this up. The previous Government knew the pressure the police were under but failed to fund them to deal with it. Does the Minister agree that only full-scale police reform will deliver the type of neighbourhood policing that local communities are crying out for?
I am grateful to the noble Baroness from the Liberal Democrat Benches for raising that. One of the key aspects of the Government’s police reform programme is the question of police reform. It is about improving standards. It is about giving extra responsibility to the College of Policing and working with chief constables to look at how we raise standards in policing. However, it is also about making sure we have those 13,000 neighbourhood police. They can pick up on a range of intelligence, help raise confidence in policing and, as the noble Baroness has mentioned, liaise better with hospitals, social services and probation on how to deal with areas and hotspots of crime that are currently avoided because neighbourhood policing is not as efficient as it should be on the ground. We intend to review all of that. If the noble Baroness and the House will bear with us, plans will be brought forward to strengthen that in legislation over the next 12 months.
My Lords, people might expect me to automatically assume that the Met is right in this argument; I do not. Having taken over in 2011, when we lost around £600 million, and when 20,000 police were reduced nationally, we had to maintain our 32,000 by making sensible savings. I am always a bit sceptical, as many of us are, when public services make that argument. But will the Government consider two things when making their announcement next week? First, a disproportionate amount of the Met’s budget is spent on national duties, for example, counter- terrorism, protection of the Government, diplomatic and royal protection, and other things on behalf of the country. Secondly, the amount of population growth we have seen in this country has disproportionately affected London. The population is now well over 9 million and around 2 million people visit this city each day. Where they need policing, of course, the Met has to provide it. Those two arguments need to be considered carefully when the Government are making their decisions on where to allocate resources.
The noble Lord has far more experience than even I could bring to this issue. His words carry a very strong resonance. I am pleased that he reminded the Opposition of the challenges they put into policing in 2011-12, with funding reductions and real challenge in that system. He is right that the population of London faces not just its own challenges but the challenges of tourism and major events, and it has national responsibilities. Those are matters that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary is reflecting on as part of the £100 million settlement for next year, and the £500 million she has announced for wider policing issues next year. She is cognisant of that fact. I hope the noble Lord will understand that I cannot go further, because I would be pre-empting statements that will be made before Christmas on the settlement not just for London but the whole of the England and Wales policing family.
My Lords, I congratulate His Majesty’s Government on the laudable aim of increasing the number of police and others in front-line services. As I travel around Beds and Herts, I hear that there are plans for cuts in policing. This is at a time when in rural areas there is a fear of rural crime, which I do not think will be addressed by what will predominantly be allocation in urban areas. It is very real; there is a lot of fear and huge costs, particularly to our farming community. What can His Majesty’s Government do to build on the success of initiatives such as Operation Ragwort, which worked across counties? It made a significant improvement without huge additional cost.
One of the important issues that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary announced last week was on the College of Policing and others looking at good practice and how we can drive efficiency and crime reduction at the same time. One of the areas where that is being looked at is how we can roll out co-operation between different forces, efficiencies in procurement and making sure that we learn the lessons of good practice, such as the scheme that the right reverend Prelate mentioned. Those are on the agenda. Rural policing is equally important, but again—I hope the House will bear with me—I am not at liberty to talk about the settlement, as that will be announced next week. It is right and proper that it is done in that format.
We will hear next from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, please.
My Lords, I declare my interest as set out in the register and apologise for not doing so the last time I spoke. The current Metropolitan Police Commissioner says that the force has survived over the last decade or so only by selling property and running down reserves, of which there are next to nothing left. What is the Government's response to what he has said?
Again, there is a range of resources that the Government are trying to put into policing, which we will be announcing next week. There is a range of initiatives the Government are bringing forward, and I hope the noble Lord will bear with me and reflect on what is said in due course.
I want to give time for the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, to get in his question.
My Lords, would the Minister be good enough to tell the House what is the exact cost to the police forces in England and Wales of the increase in national insurance contributions? How much are the Government going to contribute in cash terms to meeting those additional costs?
One hundred per cent, my Lords.
My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether the Home Office is looking at police support staff as neighbourhood police, because they do not get moved every two years?
It is important that we have stability. Very often, when I was a Member of Parliament, the police chief in the local area would be in post for two years and he or she would either retire or would be promoted and go up the ladder. We need to have some stability. Part of the purpose of neighbourhood policing is to try to get stability and local intelligence, including from police support staff on the ground.
My Lords, I was on the police authority when Boris Johnson took an axe to police numbers. I remember it very clearly and it damaged the Met because it took out a swathe of officers, and then other officers had to go and do backroom jobs. I remember it clearly, so I think it is a bit hypocritical of this side of the Chamber to start complaining to the Government. My question is: will all those new officers have really good training in dealing with domestic assault against, mainly, women, and in understanding that it can lead to much worse crimes?
The Government have a strong commitment to halve the level of violence against women and girls over a 10-year period. We had a Statement last week on some aspects of that in this House, and we will be looking at developing further policies to reduce the level of violence against women and girls. Key to that is police understanding of the sensitivities and potential escalation of that violence, and probation and monitoring the effect on individuals who commit—in inverted commas—low-level crime initially, which can then escalate into sometimes tragic events. The point that the noble Baroness makes is extremely valid, but it is on the Government’s agenda, and I hope she continues to press me on that as time goes on.
My Lords, the noble Lord will recall that, back in the first Blair Administration, we inherited a recruitment crisis in the police service. Back then, Jack Straw very sensibly ring-fenced additional funding for our police service. Is it the Government’s intention to do that this time round? Perhaps we could take heart from the efforts made by those areas where there are Labour police commissioners and their efforts to maintain recruitment. Can we ensure that those who are not Labour commissioners carry out the Government’s will in recruiting extra police?
My noble friend makes some important points. The police landscape has changed dramatically since 1997, in that we now have police and crime commissioners, who have a responsibility for setting the precept and setting budget priorities in their areas. That is a matter for them, but the Government are clear that, on top of that—over and above what the police and crime commissioners have scope for—we will look at how we can encourage the greater use of those 13,000 officers. Again, those matters will be reflected on as part of the police and crime settlement that will be announced in due course, because the Government are committed to 13,000 officers and they will be judged on that. Therefore, they need to have some levers to make sure that those 13,000 officers are in place.
My Lords, given that we have seen a steady rise in crime over the last eight years under a Labour mayor, we are the only part of the country—the Met, that is—that did not hit its recruitment target. What support will the noble Lord give the Mayor of London to make sure he hits that target when he issues him with extra police officers that he will have to find? He did not find any last time, so where are they hiding this time?
If I recall, the Mayor of London found the confidence of the people of London—not everybody did in that election. The Mayor of London had the confidence of the people of London, and he had the resources from previous Governments. It ill behoves the noble Lord to talk about underfunding in London over the past eight years when he stood as the candidate in that election and when his party was responsible for that underfunding. Let us look at where we are now: from 4 July, this Government are committed to increasing police numbers and increasing neighbourhood police officers by 13,000, and they have put £100 million into resources and £500 million into overall policing. Next week, we will make a police statement announcement for London and elsewhere. Let us be judged on that.
Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill
First Reading
The Bill was brought from the Commons, read a first time and ordered to be printed.
Migration and Border Security
Statement
The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Monday 2 December.
“With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a Statement on net migration, asylum and border security, and on the collapse in controls that took place over the last five years, the damage done as a result, and the action we are now taking to turn that around.
Last Thursday’s official statistics show how over the last five years controls in the immigration and asylum systems crumbled, legal and illegal migration both substantially increased, the backlog in the asylum system soared, and enforcement of basic rules fell apart. Net migration more than quadrupled in just four years to a record high of nearly 1 million people, and it is still more than three times higher than in 2019. Dangerous small boat crossings rose from 300 people in 2018 to an average of over 36,000 a year in the last three years—a hundred-and-twentyfold increase. In just a few short years, an entire criminal smuggler industry built around boat crossings has been allowed to take hold along the UK border.
The cost of the asylum system also quadrupled to £4 billion last year. In 2019, there were no asylum hotels; five years on, there are more than 200. Returns of those with no right to be here are 30% lower than in 2010, and asylum-related returns are down by 20% compared with 14 years ago. That is the legacy we inherited from the previous Government, one that former Ministers have themselves admitted was shameful.
We should be clear that this country has always supported people coming here from abroad to work, to study or to be protected from persecution. That has made us the country we are—from the Windrush generation to the Kindertransport; from international medics working in our NHS to the families we have supported from Ukraine. But that is exactly why the immigration and asylum systems have to be properly controlled and managed, so that they support our economy and promote community cohesion, with rules properly respected and enforced, and so that our borders are kept strong and secure. None of those things has been happening for the last five years. The scale of the failure and the loss of control have badly undermined trust in the entire system, and it will take time to turn things around.
Let me turn to the changes that are needed in three areas. First, on legal migration, recent years have seen what the Office for National Statistics calls
‘large increases in both work-related and study-related immigration following the end of travel restrictions and the introduction of the new immigration system after the UK left the EU’.
Conservative Government reforms in 2021 made it much easier to recruit from abroad, including a 20% wage discount for overseas workers. At the same time, training here in the UK was cut, with 55,000 fewer apprenticeship starts than five years ago, and the number of UK residents not working or studying hit a record high of over 8 million. This was an experiment gone badly wrong, built on a careless free market approach that literally incentivised employers to recruit from abroad rather than to train or to tackle workforce problems here at home.
This Government are clear that net migration must come down. We are continuing with the visa controls belatedly introduced by the previous Government, including the higher salary threshold, the 20% discount and the restrictions on dependant visas for students and care workers, but we must go further to restore order and credibility to the system.
Since the election, we have set out new plans to ban rogue employers who breach employment laws from sponsoring overseas workers; we have reversed the previous Conservative Government’s decision to remove visa requirements for a number of countries from which large numbers of people arriving as visitors were entering the UK asylum system instead; and we are reviewing visas further to prevent misuse.
However, we also need to overhaul the dysfunctional UK labour market that we inherited, including by bringing together the work of the Migration Advisory Committee, Skills England, the Department for Work and Pensions and the new Industrial Strategy Council to identify areas where the economy has become overreliant on overseas recruitment, and where new action will be needed to boost training and support. That work will be at the heart of our new White Paper, showing how net migration must and will come down, as we set out new ways to link the points-based system with new requirements for training here in Britain.
Let me turn to the asylum system. Last week’s figures showed how the previous Government crashed the asylum system in the run-up to the election. In their last six months in office, asylum decisions dropped by 75% and asylum interviews dropped by over 80%, so only a few hundred decisions were being taken every week instead of thousands. Caseworkers were deployed elsewhere and the backlog shot up. We have had to spend the summer repairing that damage, getting caseworkers back in place, restoring interviews and decisions, and substantially boosting returns. It will take time to deal with the added backlog and pressure on asylum accommodation that that collapse in decision-making caused, but the swift action we took over the summer has prevented thousands more people from being placed in asylum hotels, saving hundreds of millions of pounds.
Today I am also publishing the full spending breakdown of the previous Government’s failed Rwanda partnership. In the two years that the partnership was in place, just four volunteers were sent to Rwanda, at a cost of £700 million. That included £290 million paid to the Government in Kigali, and almost £300 million for staff, IT and legal costs. The result of that massive commitment of time and money was that 84,000 people crossed the channel from the day the deal was signed to the day it was scrapped. That so-called deterrent did not result in a single deportation or stop a single boat from crossing the channel. For the British taxpayer, it was a grotesque waste of money.
Since the election, we have swiftly redeployed many of the people who were working on fantasy planning for the Rwanda scheme to working instead on actual flights to return those who have no right to stay in the UK. That has helped to deliver nearly 10,000 returns since the election. Enforced returns are up by 19%, voluntary returns are up by 14%, illegal working visits are up by approximately 34%, and arrests from those visits are up by approximately 25%. I can tell the House that this new programme to tackle exploitation and ensure that the rules are enforced will continue and accelerate next year.
Let me turn to border security. Six years ago, fewer than 300 people arrived on dangerous small boats. Since then, an entire criminal industry has taken hold and grown, with routes stretching through France, Germany and beyond, from the Kurdistan region of Iraq to the money markets of Kabul. The criminals profit from undermining border security and putting lives at risk, and it is a disgrace that they have got away with it for so long.
Since the election, we have established the new Border Security Command, announced £150 million over the next 18 months for new technology, intelligence and hundreds of specialist investigators working; struck new anti-smuggling action plan agreements with the G7, and bilateral agreements with Italy, Germany, Serbia and Balkan states; and increased UK operations with Europol and the Calais group. In recent weeks, international collaboration has led to high-profile arrests and shown the smuggling gangs that we will not sanction any hiding place from law enforcement.
I can tell the House today that we have gone further, with a major new international collaboration. The Iraqi Government and the Kurdistan Regional Government share our concerns about the people traffickers operating through their country who have helped to transport thousands of people across Europe and across the channel, but joint action to tackle those problems has previously been far too weak. That is why last week I visited Baghdad and Irbil to sign new co-operation agreements on border security, migration and organised crime. As part of those agreements, we will invest half a million pounds in helping the Kurdistan region to enhance its capabilities on biometrics and security, and in training Iraqi border staff to tackle organised immigration crime. We have also made new commitments on joint operations, information sharing, pursuing prosecutions and disruptions, and further work on returns. Those landmark agreements are the first in the world for an Iraqi Government focused on playing their part in the world.
Most people in Britain want to see strong border security and a properly controlled and managed migration and asylum system where the rules are respected and enforced; one where we do our bit alongside other countries to help those who have fled persecution, but where those with no right to be here are swiftly returned; and where it is Governments, not gangs, who decide who can enter our country. For five years, none of those things has happened, and people have understandably lost faith in the entire system. We now have the chance to turn that around: to fix the chaos, bring net migration down, tackle the criminal gangs and prevent dangerous boat crossings; to restore order, control and fair rules that are properly enforced—not through gimmicks, but through hard graft and serious international partnerships. I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the opportunity to respond to this Statement, although it will not surprise him that I do not agree with the picture painted in it by the Home Secretary. Labour’s historic record on immigration and border policy has been one of consistent failure, and its sudden conversion to the rhetoric of border security and reduced migration will fool no one.
Let us not forget that Labour presided over one of the most chaotic periods of migration in British history during its previous time in government. Between 1997 and 2010, it oversaw huge levels of immigration and failed to predict or manage the pressures of EU expansion. It created a system that was riddled with inefficiency. Its lax approach undermined public confidence, overwhelmed local communities and laid the groundwork for many of the issues we are grappling with today.
The Home Secretary’s Statement on small boat crossings is a striking example of Labour’s penchant for opportunism. Although it now expresses outrage at the rise in dangerous crossings, it offers no credible solutions. Labour’s record shows a consistent reluctance to back measures that tackle the problems at their root. It opposed the Nationality and Borders Act to such a degree that it set the record for the most defeats to be inflicted on a Bill since 1999—34, to be precise. Labour has resisted stronger enforcement measures and remains vague about what it would actually do to stop the criminal gangs exploiting vulnerable people.
I can put it little better than the shadow Home Secretary, whose question the Home Secretary left unanswered when this Statement was made in the other place. He said:
“Yesterday marked 150 days since 4 July, and in that time a staggering 20,110 people have made the dangerous, illegal and unnecessary crossing—over 20,000 since this Government were elected. That is an 18% increase on the same 150 days last year, and a staggering 64% increase on the 150 days immediately prior to the election”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/12/24; col. 44.]
Perhaps the Minister can inform us why those numbers have gone up so much. No doubt he will confirm that it is right that the approach of simply seeking to “smash the gangs” alone will not prevent or reduce crossings in small boats. Let us also remember that Labour’s alternative to the Rwanda plan has been little more than empty words. It has no credible plan to deter illegal crossings, no clear commitment to returns agreements and no strategy to address the root causes of migration.
Finally, since the Statement was debated in the other place, we were told in media reports on Sunday that the Prime Minister has decided to scrap the scheme to help refugees integrate, learn English and find jobs. My right honourable friends Rishi Sunak and Robert Jenrick launched the scheme last year to help to overcome barriers faced by refugees to integrate into local communities and society. The refugee employability programme was backed by a funding deal from the Home Office of £52 million until June 2025. Could the Minister tell us why this decision was taken? Does he not want to see refugees integrate into their local communities? It seems that the Government are too keen to scrap useful schemes just on the basis of destroying our legacy in government.
In sum, we have seen time after time that a Labour Government fail on migration. With their empty words on small boats and an asylum crisis of their own making, it is unsurprising that they have taken these baffling decisions, such as scrapping the refugee employability programme and providing no viable deterrent. It is a sad day when we have hit such a high level of illegal channel crossings, with the risk to life that they pose, and, I regret to say, the higher level of deaths in the channel.
My Lords, first, I declare my interests, as I am supported by the RAMP organisation.
I start by reflecting on the issues of the past few days, particularly those around the Saydnaya military prison in Syria, where we can see tables with 20 nooses on top of them and a crematorium where people’s bodies are disposed of. That was what people were fleeing from in their numbers when they came from Syria, yet the previous Government refused even to listen. They put a cloth over their ears and said that they would not hear people’s case for leaving.
There is an issue for those Syrians who are in this country, seeking refuge. I know that the Minister will tell me that the Government have paused the scheme whereby their cases will be assessed, and I understand why that is the case. However, the longer that they have to wait in limbo, the worse is going to be the sense of personal deprivation and loss of dignity that comes with the system that they find themselves in. I would be grateful if the Minister could start by telling us how quickly the Government intend to deal with this matter in order that they can process those people who are waiting in the queue for their case to be heard.
The previous Government left an immigration system which was not working for business, universities, families or migrants themselves. In the legal migration methodology that the last Government used, they did not want to deal with it, and they left huge gaps in what was happening within our social care and university sectors. Despite the expansion in the numbers of people arriving on the health and social care visa, we still see huge challenges, with labour shortages in social care, alongside deeply worrying levels of exploitation of migrants on this visa. As the number of people entering the UK on a health and care worker visa has reduced, what steps are the Government taking to address the labour shortages in the care sector and the reported exploitation of those on that visa where the employer has had a licence removed?
In the previous Government’s efforts to reduce net migration, little consideration was given to the impact of these changes and whether the correct balance was being met. One area of concern is the increase in the salary threshold for British citizens to bring their spouse or partner to the UK. What assessment have the Government made of the impact of this policy on British citizens, including children, who are unable to live as a family unit in the UK?
We welcome the international co-operation being sought to tackle the criminal gangs involved in channel crossings. However, we urge the Government to address the demand side as well as the supply side. Safe routes have to be part of the solution for those fleeing persecution and using dangerous routes to reach the UK. Will the Government consider a pilot of the humanitarian travel visa system for tiering the high grant-rate countries, and hear how they have to make their cases, just as the people of Syria are still waiting to hear their cases in this country?
I am grateful to the noble Lords. I do not know where the noble Lord, Lord Murray, has been for the past 14 years, but I do not think he has been in the same place that I have been. His solution to the question of small boats and migration, illegal or otherwise, was to establish a £700 million fantasy Rwanda scheme, which removed resources from legitimate areas of tackling illegal migration and focused on trying to stop people crossing the channel in small boats. When that deterrent passed this House, 84,000 people still crossed the channel with it in place. It was not a deterrent: it did not work, and it wasted money on a scheme that stopped us from focusing on the things that this Government are focusing on.
We have ramped up the number of returns of people who are not allowed here legally; we have removed 9,400 people since 5 July, including 1,500 foreign national offenders; and we have put additional resources into the Border Force scheme and created a Border Security Command. Only this day, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has met her German and French counterparts to put in place new action on tackling criminal gangs downstream. As we speak now, there is a meeting between Home Secretaries from across Europe to ensure that we tackle this collectively across this area. Talking to European colleagues was something that the noble Lord and his party did not really take to.
We have put £150 million into a Border Security Command and have led a new international effort. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has been to Iraq to secure an agreement with the Iraqi Government on criminal gangs for both sides of that fence. We have funded an extra 100 specialist NCA officers, increased the number of asylum claims dealt with, and increased the speed of those asylum claims. I remind the House that in 2019 there were no hotels in use for asylum seekers. Because of the failure of the noble Lord’s Government’s policy, there were over 200 hotels used over that five-year period, and we are committed to ending that practice. In short, I will not take lessons from him on migration. He has a record to defend; he cannot defend it. He needs to look at what this Government will do to unpick the mess that his Government left of this asylum system.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord German, that the Syria situation is extremely serious. We need to monitor it on the ground. We are very much aware of the atrocities of the Assad regime, and of the further atrocities being unearthed as we speak. We need a political resolution and to look at having stability restored. To be open and honest with the noble Lord, I say that we need time to reflect on how we deal with the asylum issue and claims made—or counter-made—from individuals who were in Syria or who are now in this country accordingly. We need to do that because there are potentially still individuals who might use this circumstance to travel in a way that will damage the interests of the United Kingdom. I hope that he will reflect on the fact that we will certainly need to look at that in time.
The other questions that the noble Lord asked are equally valid. He put a number of suggestions forward, which I will consider, as representations on the position as a whole. We have commissioned the Migration Advisory Committee to look at the question of skills and the need for future skills, and to report back to the Home Office and the Prime Minister in due course. We have also looked at establishing further work on a White Paper on net migration and other aspects of migration, outlining the needs and where the challenges arise. Both will take time, and although the noble Lord is entitled to scrutinise, to press and to suggest, I hope that he will bear with us. When the new year comes, he can contribute, in a very positive way, to the two challenges of commissioning the Migration Advisory Committee and establishing the route for a White Paper, which will lead to wider discussion.
My Lords, a report in Sunday’s Observer indicated that the quality of decision-making on asylum claims suffered significantly in the interests of speed under the previous Government, leading to an increase in appeals, nearly half of which were successful. What steps are being taken now to improve the quality of decision-making?
My noble friend makes an extremely important point on which the Government are not only reflecting but taking action. The slowness of asylum appeals, the poor quality of some decision-making and the level of appeals taking place all added to the pressures on the asylum system and therefore on accommodation, hotels and the other aspects of providing for people who had an asylum claim that was not yet finalised. We are focused on that area. We are trying to speed up asylum claims, and to ensure that we reach earlier decisions and that the quality of decision-making is improved. They are hard challenges, as she will understand, but they are certainly on the Government’s agenda.
My Lords, does the Minister agree that instability in Syria is likely to give rise to a surge in migration? He will be aware that, when the Soviet Union collapsed, we put in place a Know-How Fund to assist the transition to better governance and a better economy. Does he agree that, with the risk of increased migration from Syria, we should consider, in concert with the European Union and perhaps other willing states from the Middle East, something approaching a Know-How Fund to improve governance and the economy of Syria?
The noble Viscount makes an extremely important point. The Government have put in place an £11 million fund to support humanitarian aid. The Foreign Secretary has met his Turkish and Emirati counterparts and the UN special envoy, and he will look at those issues in due course. With due respect to the noble Viscount and others, if we were talking this time last week we would not have expected to be where we are now. Things are moving very speedily, but the Government are cognisant of the fact that they need to help secure the stability of a new regime and, at the same time, examine the consequences of that regime change in a way that encourages peace in the region.
My Lords, I will pursue the point about casework. Does the Minister agree that there is a balance between speed, accuracy and the application of all the humanitarian factors that one needs to keep in mind? Thinking about what it must be like to deal with the applications, I have only admiration for those who work on them. I do not expect the Minister to be able to answer this, but I wonder whether the Home Office is providing enough support for supervision, as well as general support for those faced with the applications.
I also want to mention asylum hotels, which the Minister mentioned. I hear an increasing call for support for people living in asylum hotels—more than just accommodation. Perhaps the Home Office can bear this in mind in its contracting of accommodation, because asylum seekers need more than just a roof over their head.
Finally, I will no doubt be showing my ignorance, but perhaps I could ask a question on the Statement. We are told that illegal working visits are up 34%. What are illegal working visits?
First, on that point, legislation was passed in 2014 by the then Conservative Government, which the then Labour Opposition supported. I was the shadow Minister. It was to ensure that we crack down on illegal working in a range of establishments, for two reasons. First, individuals who are here illegally should not be exploited by unscrupulous employers. Secondly, in employing people illegally, those unscrupulous employers are undercutting the ability to pay decent wages and give decent conditions of service to people who work legally, while undercutting the costs of other businesses. Therefore, it is not appropriate. The Government are trying to up that, building on the legislation that was passed. I hope that I have noble Lords’ support in this. We are also looking at building on that legislation to ensure that we can take further steps accordingly.
The noble Baroness also mentions two aspects. One is asylum hotels. This is difficult, but it is the Government’s intention to end the use of asylum hotels at an early opportunity. We will be progressing that. At the moment, give or take one or two hotels, we are at the same number that the Government had in July, but we are aiming to reduce that significantly, because it is a cost to the taxpayer and, as the noble Baroness says, it is not conducive to the good health and well-being of those people who are in our care for that period of time. Again, that is a long-term objective. On her first point, we are trying to speed up the asylum system in an accurate way to ensure that asylum claims are assessed quickly. Then, where they are approved, individuals can have asylum, and, where they are not approved and people have no right of abode, they can be removed. At the moment, that system has no energy in it, to the extent that we want it to have. We are trying to put some energy into that system.
The Minister mentioned the work of the Migration Advisory Committee, looking at skills. It rather sounded as though we would be allowing additional people into the UK on its recommendations, whereas I believe the focus should be on upskilling UK young people and UK unemployed so that they can fill the skills gaps that we have. The shadow Minister made a point about the winding down of the scheme to encourage integration in the UK and to encourage people to learn proper English, as you see in other countries. Could the Minister kindly answer the question that was asked?
On the first point, I hope that I can reassure the noble Baroness that the purpose of the Government discussing this aspect with the Migration Advisory Committee is to look at the question of skills shortages and where individuals potentially can add to the gross domestic product and contribute to society as a whole. There may well be some skills shortages, but we are reviewing that in relation to the potential for a range of matters. This will be allied with the White Paper, which looks at the level of net migration and how the net migration target that was set previously is managed by the new Government.
The noble Baroness’s point about integration is extremely important. Let me take away the points that she and the noble Lord made and give them both a fuller answer as to the outcome of that discussion.
My Lords, my noble friend Lord German raised the question of Syrian refugees, and the Minister was right to point out the situation that prevails at the moment in that country. There is ample evidence, photographic and otherwise, of large numbers of refugees from neighbouring countries making their way back into Syria to go back to their homeland. What are the Government doing to give help and assistance to refugees who want to return to Syria? What assistance is being given to those who may wish to withdraw their application for asylum?
Again, I hope I can help the noble Lord, but this is a very fast-moving situation; we were not here this time last week. There are challenges in Syria, with people moving back there from neighbouring countries and the United Kingdom, and people, potentially, still seeking asylum from a new Syrian regime that they do not support. These issues are all on the table. I hope the noble Lord will understand, but I do not wish to commit now to definitive policy solutions to those issues, because the Government are reflecting on them. So I will simply say that the £11 million of humanitarian aid that the Foreign Secretary announced this week is a start. If the noble Lord and the House will allow us, those are matters that we can maybe discuss in slower time, when the Government have assessed the position fully and determined what best we can do with our partners to assist that position.
My Lords, much has been made of the Syrian situation by many noble Lords this afternoon. Does this not open up a question as to what the asylum rules are really there for? We do not know quite where Syria will end up—it is early days, as the Minister very correctly said—but many Syrians will be looking to go back home. During the years of civil war in Syria, Lebanon warmly accepted many Syrians, but it was quite bizarre that, during the height of Lebanon’s recent problems, many Syrians went home from Lebanon saying that Syria was safer than Lebanon at the time.
Are we not in a situation, if Syria does settle down, where we can consider whether temporary asylum is probably a better way forward for the world? Ultimately, is it not the case that the brightest, best, fittest and strongest people, having left their country at a time of conflict, would actually wish and want to return home to rebuild that country for the future? Is that something the Government would support: a temporary asylum basis rather than a permanent one?
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. Individuals can always choose to return if the situation in their home country that they were fleeing and seeking asylum from changes. In this circumstance, we have temporarily paused decisions on Syrian asylum claims while we assess the current situation and we are keeping country guidance under review. With due respect to all noble Lords, we do not yet know how this will pan out; we do not know who the good guys and the bad guys are going to be; and we do not know ultimately what will happen in the new Syria that might emerge from the collapse of the Assad regime.
The same is true for Ukrainian citizens and others who flee and seek temporary asylum or relief from a particular war situation or from poverty and hunger. We judge those on an individual basis: asylum is given, or it is not; people are returned, or they are not. I would like to keep to that system, but recognise that circumstances change, as has been shown in the last week in Syria.
My Lords, perhaps I might revert to Syria. The question of war crime trials will arise. Does the Minister agree that the Government should give earnest consideration to going to the Security Council to try to get a resolution remitting war crimes to the International Criminal Court? Or, if that is not possible, for obvious reasons, should the Government consider invoking the Rome statute to achieve that purpose?
If the noble Viscount will allow me, those matters are slightly beyond my remit. I would not wish to commit the Government to any particular course of action on that, but I will certainly pass his comments to the Foreign Secretary who, along with the Prime Minister, will be considering these matters. It is not within my direct gift; I could comment on it and give him a view, but it may not subsequently prove to be the Government’s one—so I wish to retain the right to silence, if the noble Viscount understands what I mean.
The noble Lord, in response to an earlier question, referenced the ambition to close asylum hotels. There has been much discussion recently about the impact of net migration on housing stock, et cetera. Has he evaluated the impact of that policy on the availability of social and affordable housing, and how does he expect to be able to house the net migration figures?
My right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister has already committed in the House of Commons, in a Statement repeated in this House, to increase dramatically the number of social houses, affordable houses and housebuilding sites generally across the United Kingdom, as a matter of some urgency, to meet the housing need.
The question of hotel accommodation, and of what happens to individuals post that, is a significant issue. With the Migration Advisory Committee and the future White Paper, we are trying to look at how we deal with those issues. The immediate government objective is to reduce and ultimately close the number of hotels being used, because they are an expensive way of providing that level of housing for individuals. There were no hotels in 2019; there are now more than 200 in use. It is not good, for a range of reasons, to continue that mechanism of policy, so we are trying to exit it. That takes time, and the evaluation of the consequences of that withdrawal also takes time, but I hope that the noble Earl, along with this House, will bear with us while we wrestle and grapple with those issues.
My Lords, I am sure the Minister shares the world’s horror at the recent announcement from the Taliban of the latest repressive measure against women in Afghanistan, which has banned women from medical training, including banning the training of female midwives. This serves as a reminder of the vulnerability of the entire Afghan population, but particularly those many Afghans who served both the UK military and UK-linked institutions who remain in the region in extremely endangered circumstances. I note that the International Rescue Committee applauded the small initial step that the Government took on family reunion for families separated during Operation Pitting, but what more are the Government doing to assist those Afghans, to whom we have a real responsibility, to find a safe, orderly route to seek asylum in the UK?
It is extremely important that we have a responsibility to those individuals who served and supported what I would call coalition forces in Afghanistan. It is particularly important that we uphold the rights of women to lead their lives in their own way in Afghanistan and to have opportunities to do so. The points that the noble Baroness has made are worthy of reflection. If she will let me, I will report her comments today back to my colleague Minister, who is directly responsible in the Home Office for those matters, and respond to her in due course.
My Lords, in response to questions from the noble Lord, Lord Murray, the Minister gave the impression that not much progress had been made in negotiations and actual action on the ground in dealing with the small boats. I was wondering whether he could acknowledge that a huge amount of work was done in negotiating with France. Can he spell out what action he is taking that is different from what we were doing? Secondly, the individual now heading up the small boats border force said when he was appointed that part of the strategy should be deterrence. Where is that deterrent?
I think there is a different type of deterrent from that which the noble Viscount would wish to exercise, and which I am guessing he supported when the noble Lord, Lord Murray, brought the proposals forward. The Rwandan scheme, in my view, was not a deterrent: it was a costly, £700 million fantasy that would have secured even more resource in due course. We have scrapped that scheme, saved that £700 million, reallocated that resource to Border Force with £150 million as an initial starter, and appointed Martin Hewitt to co-ordinate not just Home Office activity but policing and international efforts. The results of that are the type of thing happening this very day here in London, with agreements being signed by the French, the Belgians, the Dutch and the Germans to secure co-operation on criminal gangs. I hope the noble Viscount will note that the numbers of prosecutions and returns, and the speed of asylum applications, are starting to pick up. That is because the resource we saved from being wasted—it was a legitimate choice for the Government to make, but one I did not support—is now being put to good use.
My Lords, I go back to the questions asked by my noble friend on the Front Bench and my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe about the integration and English fund, which was put in place by the former Government and which the current Government have scrapped. I do not expect the Minister to answer this now because he has already said he will write, but was some assessment made on the likely impact that the scrapping of that fund would have on community cohesion? Will he commit to write to the House on this?
Of course. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his contribution. He held the office that I hold now, and he knows how difficult it is and how slow things can be. I will try to answer him as fairly as I possibly can. A good grasp of English and a good level of integration are critical, even when asylum claims are granted, because they make individuals less open to exploitation and abuse. They help with an individual’s general integration into society post any formal asylum application being approved. I will put the correspondence the noble Lord has requested in the Library of the House, and I look forward to him reading it in due course—perhaps even between Christmas and the new year.
Scotland Act 1998 (Transfer of Functions to the Scottish Ministers etc.) Order 2025
Motion to Approve
Moved by
That the draft Order laid before the House on 28 October be approved.
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this order, which is a result of collaborative working between the UK and Scottish Governments. This order comes following agreement by the previous Government to transfer to Scottish Ministers the function of making environmental outcomes report regulations, replacing environmental impact assessments in respect of electricity works consenting in Scotland and the Scottish part of the renewable energy zone, so that the power will be held concurrently with the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. This transfer of functions reinstates powers lost by Scottish Ministers upon repeal of the European Communities Act 1972. The order before us today will be made under Section 63 of the Scotland Act 1998, which provides
“for any functions, so far as they are exercisable by a Minister of the Crown in or as regards Scotland, to be exercisable … by the Scottish Ministers concurrently with the Minister of the Crown”.
This Scotland Act order is a demonstration of devolution in action.
The UK operated a system of environmental impact assessments in reliance on powers conferred by the European Communities Act 1972. The function of making environmental impact assessment regulations in respect of electricity works consenting in Scotland had been transferred to the Scottish Ministers concurrently with the Secretary of State in 1999. Following the designation of the Scottish part of the renewable energy zone, the extent of the Scottish Ministers’ electricity consent functions was extended to the Scottish part of the renewable energy zone. Subsequently, the Scottish Ministers’ associated EIA regulation-making powers were also extended to the Scottish part of the REZ.
The power to make environmental impact assessment regulations was lost upon repeal of the European Communities Act 1972. In 2023 the then UK Government took powers in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act to make environmental outcomes report regulations intended to replace environmental impact assessment regulations. This instrument transfers functions to Scottish Ministers to make regulations under Chapter 1 of Part 3, “Planning data”, and Part 6, “Environmental outcomes reports”, of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 and related ancillary functions.
In relation to the assessment of the effects on the environment in connection with applications for consent, approval or variation of consent for electricity generating stations under Sections 36 and 36C of the Electricity Act 1989, and associated overhead line infrastructure under Section 37 of that Act, these functions will be exercisable concurrently with the Secretary of State. Before the Scottish Ministers seek to exercise functions by virtue of this order, they will be required to consult with the Secretary of State.
This order reflects a commitment made to the Scottish Government during the passage of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. I am pleased that the UK Government are working to address this matter, and I hope noble Lords across the House will support this SI.
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her explanation of the SI. Obviously, timing is significant as the Government are committed to ramping up the drive to net zero. We have to acknowledge that these powers are also necessary. Plans for large onshore facilities to receive electricity from offshore wind farms are already proving controversial on the ground in Scotland. Similarly, requirements for major new pylon routes to deliver the electricity south are also attracting objections. These are issues that people are engaged with, and they need to how they can be resolved and where the responsibility lies.
There are challenges here because the Government are committed to delivering zero-carbon electricity by 2030—five years from now—and a huge infrastructure investment is required. The problem here is a conflict between delivering essential national targets and meeting environmental standards, and community consent.
The order devolves powers to Scottish Ministers but states that they will be, as the Minister said, “exercisable concurrently” with the Secretary of State, and that Scottish Ministers will be required to consult the Secretary of State. I looked at the debate in the Scottish Parliament on this proposal and the following exchange was recorded. The convener asked the Scottish Minister:
“What scope is there for the Scottish ministers to take their own approach to environmental outcomes reports? Is there scope for ministers to vary the powers that apply under the regulations at present?”
The Minister, Kate Forbes, replied:
“That is a complicated question with a complicated answer”.
The convener then asked:
“In exercising the function, if you were to take an approach that was in conflict with the UK Government’s approach, where would the power reside to make the final decision on that?”
Stewart Cunningham, the relevant civil servant, said:
“If the Scottish ministers want to exercise the power, they must consult the secretary of state, but they do not require the consent of the secretary of state. We could still exercise the power, even if that was in conflict with the UK Government, but it”—
that is, the UK Government—
“could potentially use the power to cut across what the Scottish Government was doing. I imagine that there would have to be some degree of dialogue and negotiation”.
The convener’s comment was:
“In short, it is like saying, ‘Proceed until apprehended’”.
The essence of devolution is that some powers are reserved, some are devolved and some are shared. Under the SNP, the Scottish Government, for most of their time in power, have behaved as though they believed that they had the independence that was denied by the referendum, and, whenever they found a power that was shared or reserved, they tended to cry foul. So it is welcome that the mood music is a little more constructive, both ways round, and that there seems to be a recognition now that the reality of devolution is that Scotland has two Governments who have different responsibilities and sometimes they have shared responsibilities.
It is conceivable that the Scottish Government may wish to amend applications for substations—the onshore receiving stations—or for pylons requiring some power lines to be undergrounded. That would not necessarily be unreasonable but could substantially increase costs and add delays, and therefore cut across the UK Government’s target of achieving net zero by 2030. Could the Scottish Government reasonably impose requirements to achieve community benefits—or, to put it this way, can the Minister indicate, if there was a difference of view, how this might be resolved?
In an ideal world it is to be hoped that the Scottish Government would be interested in the viability of investments bringing offshore wind through Scotland—they would want them to work—and, at the same time, the UK would be sensitive to reasonable variations in the environmental impact of achieving that. But it seems to be clear at the moment that the Scottish Government and Scottish Ministers are unsure of how the UK Government will approach these concurrent powers. Can the Minister enlighten the House? I am not sure that she can, because we are not sure about the circumstances where the issue might arise.
It is welcome that this sensible SI is being introduced. I suppose I am expressing my concerns about the experience of the way the two Governments have operated over the past 15 years or so, where the willingness on both sides to get a reasonable compromise was not always in place. In one sense, the Minister cannot anticipate whether either side would be reasonable or unreasonable, so by all means we should pass the SI, but we need to know the process by which any possible disagreement between the Governments could be resolved. Indeed, if there was to be no resolution, is there a dispute mechanism? I was on the committee that debated how these things could happen, which came up with extremely sensible proposals for how disputes could be resolved, so there are mechanisms in place that have never been applied. Are those the kinds of mechanisms that could be used?
This is a sensible proposal but it raises some questions. At the moment, from what I can see, Ministers in Scotland do not know what the answers are.
My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness for setting out the background to this statutory instrument. We will not be opposing it. As she set out, its purpose is to enable the exercise of concurrent powers in relation to assessing the environmental impact of, and granting planning consent for, generating stations and overhead lines in Scotland; in essence, devolving powers to make certain regulations in these areas to the Scottish Government.
In the light of the fact that Scottish Ministers are not currently able to amend or replace the procedures in the Electricity Works (Environmental Impact Assessment) (Scotland) Regulations 2017, which are devolved to the Scottish Government, it makes eminent sense to transfer the relevant functions in this order. That work began under the previous UK Government, as the noble Baroness will be aware.
However, there are several concerns about the UK Government’s broader policy direction in this area. First, across many parts of Scotland there is concern that the onward march of overland grid infrastructure, including the imposition of pylons, risks spoiling the countryside and may also restrict agricultural land use. As we set out in our manifesto, our clear preference is for undergrounding where it is cost competitive. What is the UK Government’s position on under- grounding cables?
Related to that, the noble Baroness may be aware that several noble Lords tabled amendments to the Government’s Great British Energy Bill that aim to protect both the beauty of our countryside and our agricultural output as we progress to a clean energy future. Can she confirm that the UK Government are committed to protecting the beauty of our countryside and improving the UK’s agricultural output?
Further—and this point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce—the draft order provides that Scottish Ministers would have to consult the Secretary of State before exercising their powers. However, what happens in cases where the Scottish and UK Governments disagree and views diverge?
Finally, and related to the above, does the noble Baroness share our concerns that, whatever the substantive merits of the order, there is a risk that the procedures involved will add further complexity to an area of planning that is already highly complicated and diverges hugely across the nations of the United Kingdom?
I thank the noble Lords for their contributions and for the short, sharp nature of our debate in your Lordships’ House. I have been asked a series of questions. I hope to answer all of them. If I do not, I am sure my civil servants will make sure that I respond appropriately and will write to noble Lords.
On the specifics raised, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, for his recognition that we are attempting to reset the relationship between the Westminster Government and Holyrood. We will do everything we can to make sure that this works and is effective.
There were several questions pertaining to how this would work in reality and the impact on divergence, so I hope noble Lords will bear with me. Both noble Lords raised the question of what would happen if we were to diverge significantly. The requirement to consult is to provide an opportunity for the UK Government to give views on the exercise of these powers, noting the UK Government’s wider responsibility for international matters that may influence the use of these powers. The nature of the powers allows for divergence between nations—in fact, that is devolution in action. However, there are specific provisions in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act—which we all lived through, during many days of debate in this House—that would allow Governments to ensure interoperability between regimes, even if there were to be divergence.
On how consultation between Scottish Ministers and the Secretary of State will work in practice, this will mirror the standard approach to consultation with Scottish Ministers, providing information about the use of these powers in advance of the powers being used. This would allow UK Ministers to provide any feedback on the proposed use of the powers, which is especially important given the UK Government’s role in international matters that may influence the use of these powers.
Both noble Lords touched on reforming the consenting process for electricity infrastructure in Scotland, which is a key part of current discussions and of public interest. The UK and Scottish Governments agree that modernising and removing inefficiencies in the Electricity Act 1989 is the best route to speeding up low-carbon energy infrastructure deployment in Scotland, which will be vital to achieving cheaper, clean power by 2030 and onwards. The UK and Scottish Governments have been working together closely to develop a set of reform proposals. A public consultation seeking views on the reform proposals closed on 29 November.
With regard to divergence, before Scottish Ministers seek to exercise functions by virtue of this order they will be required to consult with the Secretary of State. The issue of divergence on this matter is built into the regulatory framework. As I said earlier, this is devolution in action and it will be a pragmatic tool for managing divergence in the making of regulations on this matter.
On the substantive subject matters raised by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for England and Wales, the policy on undergrounding is set out in the energy national policy statements. Overhead lines are usually the starting presumption for large electricity network projects, as they were under the last Government, except in nationally designated landscapes, where the usual starting presumption is that large electricity network projects should be undergrounded. The design and development of energy transmission infrastructure, including which technology will be used, is a matter for the developer, with the design considered through the planning process and approval needed by Ofgem. While the underpinning legislation of electricity networks is reserved to the UK Government, planning and consenting decisions about electricity infrastructure in Scotland are devolved to Scottish Government Ministers, which is why this SI is so important.
Before I move on, I want to thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for starting the work on this SI when he was in government. We are now delivering on commitments made by the previous Government. Committee stage of the Great British Energy Bill continues next week, and I am sure that will be a fundamental part of the conversation. I want to assure the noble Lord that this Government consider protecting the beauty of our countryside, and protecting our country, as foremost responsibilities.
In closing, this instrument demonstrates the continued commitment of the UK Government to work with the Scottish Government to deliver for Scotland and the people of Scotland. On that basis, I commend the SI to the House.
Motion agreed.
Home Detention Curfew and Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods (Amendment) Order 2024
Motion to Approve
Moved by
That the draft Order laid before the House on 13 November be approved.
Relevant document: 10th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)
My Lords, in moving this order, I thank members of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for the scrutiny of this statutory instrument. The Government laid this draft order on 13 November. I hope that has given noble Lords an opportunity to scrutinise the order and its accompanying explanatory documents. I welcome this further opportunity today to be clear about what the order will do and the Government’s reasons for taking these measures.
The draft order is a key part of our continuing efforts to resolve the capacity crisis in our prisons. After inheriting from the previous Government a prison system on the verge of collapse, on 12 July the Lord Chancellor was forced to announce a measure to address the immediate risk of running out of prison places. This was a change to modify the automatic release point for those serving standard determinate sentences from 50% to 40%. Specified offences were excluded from this modification. The draft order before us now makes further important changes to that original measure by excluding further offences from this modification.
As part of our continuing efforts to avoid running out of prison spaces, the order amends the provisions relating to the home detention curfew—HDC—by extending the maximum time that an offender can spend on HDC in the community. HDC enables eligible, risk-assessed offenders to be released from prison six months early, subject to an electronically monitored curfew. We are proposing to extend the maximum time that an offender can spend on HDC from six months to 12 months. To be clear, the eligibility and suitability criteria remain the same—for example, sex offenders are still excluded in statute and those serving sentences linked to domestic abuse are presumed unsuitable under the policy.
It is right that the sentencing review is given time to do its work, but the capacity crisis in our prisons has not gone away. When we introduced emergency measures in July, we believed that they had bought us about a year. However, after the summer of disorder, the next crisis could be just nine months away. For that reason, we must implement further measures urgently to ensure that we do not face running out of places again. This change to HDC will help to ensure that the criminal justice system is able to function as it should, helping to prevent further acute capacity pressures and avoid running out of prison places, which would cause criminal justice gridlock.
As to the purpose of this draft order, it relates to release measures within the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The first part of the draft order deals with HDC. HDC has been in operation since 1999. The scheme enables certain prisoners to be released from prison early while remaining subject to significant restrictions on their liberty. Offenders who are released from custody on this basis are tagged and placed on a curfew. This curfew must be for at least nine hours per day, by law, but is generally around 12 hours per day as a matter of policy. The curfew requirement must remain in force until they reach their conditional or automatic release date. Those released on HDC are subject to probation supervision and other restrictions as necessary. These may include GPS location and alcohol monitoring, exclusion zones, non-contact conditions and travel restrictions. If offenders breach the terms of their conditions, they can be recalled to custody to serve the remainder of their custodial sentence.
The rules on eligibility will not change as a result of this draft order. Offenders must complete half of the custodial part of their sentence before they can be considered eligible for HDC. Release on HDC is also entirely discretionary. There are a number of offences that are excluded from its scope by statute—for example, serious violent offences and all sexual offences. Other types of offending are presumed unsuitable as a matter of policy, including those often associated with domestic abuse, such as stalking, harassment and coercive control. Offenders serving sentences for any of the presumed unsuitable offences will not be considered for release unless the prison governor is satisfied that there are exceptional circumstances justifying this. Any offenders who meet this test will still be subject to a rigorous risk- assessment process before release on HDC is approved.
We are proposing to change the maximum period that an eligible prisoner may spend on HDC. We plan to extend it to 12 months from the current maximum of six months. Offenders eligible for HDC will continue to be risk-assessed and will still be subject to strict licence conditions and an electronically monitored curfew. As the previous Prisons Minister stated in February, the reoffending rate for prisoners released directly from custody was close to 50%, but for the types of offenders released on to HDC it was 23%.
The previous Administration committed to doing a review when HDC was extended from four and a half months to six months. That review did not take place, and the growing crisis in our prisons has meant that we need to take further action. HDC is closely monitored by HMPPS and the MoJ, and data on releases and recalls is regularly published. That will continue. I must be clear that this measure is urgently needed to reduce the pressure on the prison system. The challenges facing us across the prison estate are such that we must take urgent action to allow the sentencing review to take place. By extending HDC, we are using a long-standing mechanism that has robust safeguards built into it.
The order will also amend the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods) Order 2024, which established the SDS40 early release measure by modifying the automatic release point for those serving standard determinate sentences for eligible offences from 50% to 40%. The SI seeks to exclude six further offences from the early release measure.
SDS40 was delivered extremely effectively, but there was a problem with 37 prisoners who were released in error. Those offenders had been prosecuted under a repealed law that we had not excluded from SDS40. The Court of Appeal had ruled that we should treat the offenders who had been prosecuted under this offence after it had been repealed as if they had been prosecuted under the new offence, which was already excluded from SDS40. That ultimately meant that those prisoners were not identified as being ineligible for early release under SDS40. All the offenders released in error were returned to custody.
Subsequently, a thorough search uncovered similar anomalies where legislation creating criminal offences has been repealed and replaced. We had already taken the decision to exclude such offending, which relates to stalking, harassment, sexual harm and so-called revenge pornography, from the scope of emergency early release.
We are therefore acting quickly to exclude five further offences from SDS40 to ensure that the spirit of the original exclusions is delivered. This will ensure that anyone convicted of any of these offences cannot be released early under SDS40.
The draft order also excludes murder from SDS40. Anyone convicted of murder in the UK would have received a mandatory life sentence so would not be eligible for release under SDS40. However, some jurisdictions do not have life sentences so it is possible that in a small number of cases a UK national convicted of murder in a foreign jurisdiction may be given a determinate sentence for murder by that foreign court and may then be repatriated to the UK to serve that sentence in a prison in England and Wales. We want to ensure that no offender in this position could be released under SDS40.
Shortly after coming to power, the Government took decisive action to stop our prisons from collapsing. SDS40 was an emergency response to the crisis that we were faced with. We worked at pace to ensure that the scheme was as effective as possible while protecting the public by excluding the most serious offenders and providing specific protections for victims of certain domestic abuse offences.
We have kept SDS40 under constant review and are now acting quickly to address a small number of anomalies in the original legislation. The draft order extends to England and Wales only, and there should be no direct effect on the devolved Administrations. I beg to move.
My Lords, both as Victims’ Commissioner and a victim going through the criminal justice system, I was horrified to read the NAO report published week which assessed government plans to expand the prison population. The report told us that on current forecasts the population would exceed prison capacity by 12,400 by the end of 2027. It is impossible to see how this can be absorbed by any building programme, let alone one that can be completed in just three years. It leaves the Government in an impossible position of having to explore all alternatives and it is against this backdrop that we find ourselves here today.
I am told that the home detention curfew scheme is hugely effective. Other than in the context of reducing the prison population, I am not sure how this statement can be made. As far as I am aware, there has been no recent evaluation of the scheme, but I would be interested to hear on this point from the Minister. Prison governors are responsible for selecting offenders who are suitable for the scheme. It is to their credit that compliance levels are relatively high. However, can we really be confident that current compliance levels will remain if the scheme is, in effect, doubled in length? Again, I would be interested to hear the Minister’s view.
It will come as no surprise when I say I come to this debate from the perspective of the victim. As I have said before, most victims seek justice, not vengeance. On hearing a sentence being delivered, the victims expect the sentence handed down to be served in full. This is not unreasonable; surely it is what we mean by justice. Victims listen to the remand time that has been deducted from the sentence; they know that part of the sentence will be served on licence, but they struggle to accept a prison sentence being reduced—by up to 12 months—through one or other early release scheme simply to reduce prison population pressures.
I fear that retrospective pruning of sentences by all successive Governments over the years has had a corrosive effect on public confidence in our justice system. How can you trust a justice system if all Governments keep moving the goal posts? It also adds an extra layer of complexity on sentencing and, heaven knows, sentencing is already complicated in the first place.
I make a plea to this Government and future Governments: let this be the very last time we have to extend an early release scheme to bail us out of another prison crisis. We need a sustainable sentencing regime where the sentence handed down is the same as that victims hear and the same as that the offender will serve, and we need a prison system that has the resilience and the means to meet the challenge.
My Lords, we support the principle of this order and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, for his helpful introduction and explanation of it. He acknowledged, indeed asserted, that the background to the measure is the capacity crisis of which we have spoken over a number of years under the previous Government. This order is, in essence, the amendment of an emergency measure taken in the face of extreme pressure on the Government as the space in prisons simply ran out.
We recognise the need to extend the time, in the face of the continuing crisis, that may be spent on home detention curfew or HDC. It is significant that the reoffending rates among HDC prisoners are lower than those among the prison population at large on release. We also recognise that, for the technical reasons that the noble Lord has outlined, there need to be changes to the range of offences where eligibility for release under SDS40 is established.
As prisoner numbers have risen, with longer sentences resulting from sentence inflation, from legislation introducing longer sentences and legislation imposing longer periods which have to be served in custody as a proportion of the whole sentence, we have to look at how we deal with this crisis in the future.
While we support the principle of this order and the orders that have preceded it, I will ask the Minister for assurances in two specific areas before making a number of general points. First, it is an essential part of the early release scheme that offenders be tagged and that, when tagged, they are properly monitored within the community. Many were alarmed by the number of reports at the beginning of this scheme of offenders being released without tags. The noble Lord, Lord Timpson, described that as “completely unacceptable”, and we agree. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister details of steps the Government have taken to ensure that nothing like that can happen again. It would also be helpful to hear further details of how well the steps taken to monitor prisoners who are tagged on release are working in practice.
The second specific concern is about the information given to victims of released prisoners about their release under the early release schemes. They have a right to know details of the release of the perpetrator of crimes against them. I recognise that victims of domestic violence, sexual offences and stalking have a particular concern about this; they are not affected by this order in particular. I should say that we welcome the establishment of a pilot scheme in London for tagging released stalkers. In relation to a wider group of offenders, how far will lessons learned from the pilot be applicable to offenders released early more generally? Might it be sensible for tags to be retained in suitable cases, where victims are under possible threat, beyond the earliest release date of the offenders?
My main point concerns the prison population overall. The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, looked at similar figures to those I will now cite. The most recent government projections are alarming. They specifically take into account that the early release scheme will continue under the present arrangements for the duration of the projected period, which runs until 2029. Current usable operational capacity—to use the government phrase—is 86,382. That is the capacity of the prison estate. Yet the current figure for prisoner population already exceeds that at 87,000. By March 2029, on the lowest level of prediction—of course, a range is posited—the figure will be 95,700. On the highest projection, the figure will be 105,200, with a central figure of 100,800. We have to get that figure down.
As a first step, we have to get the figures down to a level within the capacity of the prison estate. As at the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, pointed out, that cannot be achieved by building alone—not least because the prison building programme is delayed by intractable planning delays, inevitably, and the lengthy time needed for prison construction. If you work out the figures, it is even then quite clear that the most optimistic proposals for prison building cannot meet the projected rise in prison demand.
It is often truly stated that we imprison more offenders than almost any other European country and we imprison them for longer, and it is well known that there is very little evidence that longer sentences do anything to assist in the reform or rehabilitation of offenders. So may we have—not today, but in the very near future—an overarching statement of how the Government propose to reduce the prison population in the medium to long term?
The task is not only to get the population down within the capacity of the prison estate. We need to build in spare capacity. I will make a number of points on why that is so important. I will make them briefly because I have made them many times before. First, we must address overcrowding. Cells made for one are packed with more than one prisoner each. That is inhumane and it also increases the risk of violence within prisons—prisoner on prisoner, and prisoner on staff—because of boredom, frustration and discomfort. We must maintain the conditions of our prisons and we must do better because they are squalid; we must improve the conditions. That means that the current position, where cells scheduled for maintenance are being kept in service, with maintenance programmes deferred, is simply not good enough. We have an excessive use of temporary cells, which lack the ancillary features required for prison life to be remotely civilised.
Then we must address the current need to shuffle prisoners around the prison estate in a chase to find spare beds somewhere in the system without regard to prisoners’ needs in terms of geography and continuity. That shuffling is damaging for rehabilitation. It breaks ties with families and communities, which is particularly important in the period leading up to release. That shuffling prevents continuity of prisoners’ contact with staff in prisons, particularly, again, when prisoners are being prepared for release and need that staff contact. Constantly moving prisoners around the prison estate prevents continuity of educational courses and vocational training courses—where, indeed, such courses are available, which is far from universal. Alongside these necessary improvements, we must relieve the pressures caused by present understaffing and the low morale within the prison service that goes with it.
We should be working towards achieving a civilised and civilising prison estate. We are a long way short of that now. On these Benches, we fully recognise that the Government are on the back foot and we know that Ministers are doing their best to relieve a very difficult situation. We will support them in their efforts to change that, but there is much work to be done.
My Lords, we too welcome this order. I understand the reasons set out by the Minister. Under the previous policy, the automatic release point for the sentences for offences being added to the order was 40%. Under this order, in some circumstances, this will change back to 50%. Furthermore, the maximum length of a home detention curfew period will be extended from 180 days to 365 days.
While we welcome this order, I have a question to ask the Minister, further to the points made by my noble friend Lady Newlove. While the order would allow the Government to keep prisoners under home detention or in custody for longer, can the Minister outline the estimated impact on prisoner capacity in the near future of this decision, and how it is proposed to utilise this new power? Is it the intention in the medium term to return the home detention curfew power to 180 days? I also look forward to hearing responses to the cogent questions posed by the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames.
My Lords, I briefly intervene, if I may. In doing so, declare my interest: until about 1 pm this afternoon, I was a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust. I largely agree with my noble friend on the Front Bench and the noble Lord, Lord Marks. I agree with them because I have made that very same speech probably about 20 times in the last 10 years—nobody listens, it does not matter. The short point I want to make is this: who monitors the monitors? One of the problems that we have noticed over the last several years, when looking at the use of tags, is that far too often the monitoring organisation falls down. One expects ingenious people on tags to try to get out of the restrictions imposed by them, but one does not expect the monitor to fall down in its duties. Can the Minister please assure us that rigid steps are being taken to make sure that the monitors are monitored, and that if they fail, there is some form of contractual sanction?
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who contributed to this short debate. I agreed with all the points of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, on the importance of victims, but one point that is worth emphasising is that it is a discretionary matter for the governor as to whether a home detention curfew is granted. My understanding is that 40% of applicants for home detention curfews fail that application. That is distinct from SDS40, where there is a mandatory reduction from 50% to 40%; whether a home detention curfew is granted is a discretionary matter. The noble Baroness was broadly supportive of the measures in this SI, and I thank her for that.
The noble Lord, Lord Marks, raised a number of interesting points. The one I found most interesting was about extending tagging on perpetrators beyond the HDC period and maybe beyond the licence period— I do not know exactly what he is suggesting. As he will know, a sentencing review is under way, and it may be that there is an increased use of technology. I will make sure that the noble Lord’s point is fed back to the Ministers who are enabling David Gauke and his team to do that review.
A couple of days ago, I met the Estonian Justice Minister, and a couple of weeks ago, I was in Poland. It was interesting to talk to the Justice Ministers in both those countries about how they are extending their use of technology in a number of ways—there are a lot of possibilities there. I would not be at all surprised if this is looked at further as part of the sentencing review.
The noble Lord, Lord Marks, went on to talk about the capacity of the prison estate and the need to have spare capacity so that the system can essentially be managed properly for the benefit of the prisoners. This means that they can complete their courses and be relatively near to home, so that family ties are not broken. All the noble Lord’s points on that are absolutely right. What he said is very ambitious, but I hope the Government are matching his ambition in the sequencing of the steps we are taking to try to have a prison system that reduces reoffending—that should be, and is, the primary objective of any prison system.
The noble Lord, Lord Marks, raised a point that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, raised, on who monitors the monitors. My noble friend Lord Timpson is monitoring the monitors, and he is having absolutely regular meetings with Serco to reassure himself that the technology is working properly and that the further technology that we will need will be available. This is a real issue, and the noble Lord is right to raise it. It is very much alive in my noble friend’s head, if I can put it like that.
The noble Lord, Lord Murray, asked whether we would return to the old regime in due course. The answer to that is that we will keep the current proposed changes under review. One difficulty that we have had is that the situation is changing so quickly that it has proven difficult to do a proper review in a stable regime. The previous Government did not do a review of the previous regime when it went from four and a half to six months, and the current changes from six to 12 months need a suitable amount of time to bed in, to make sure that a proper assessment is done so that the Government can take a view about future steps. I hope that that puts the noble Lord’s mind at rest—the Government will constantly keep these matters under review.
Motion agreed.
Police Act 1997 (Authorisations to Interfere with Property: Relevant Offence) Regulations 2025
Motion to Approve
Moved by
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 29 October be approved.
In moving this Motion, I also ask that the House approves the National Security Act 2023 (Consequential Amendment of Primary Legislation) Regulations 2025.
Both these instruments, which were laid before this House on 29 October 2024, relate to the National Security Act. This Act, which received Royal Assent in July last year under the previous Government, includes a number of measures to protect the public, modernise our counterespionage laws and disrupt the full range of modern-day state threats. Among those measures is a prohibited places regime, including a suite of tools and offences to protect and capture harmful activity in and around some of the UK’s most sensitive sites, including by modern threats such as unmanned aircraft, which noble Lords will recognise colloquially as drones. It is essential that we make these two amendments, to ensure consistency of approach to the consequential amendments in both English and Welsh versions of related legislation and to ensure that our law enforcement bodies have the right tools to do their critical work.
It might help noble Lords if I outline the first instrument, the Police Act 1997 (Authorisations to Interfere with Property: Relevant Offence) Regulations 2025. This adds drone-specific offences under the National Security Act 2023 to the list of relevant offences in the Police Act 1997, which provides police and other authorised officials with the legal authority to employ counter-drone equipment to detect and prevent the use of drones in the commission of relevant offences. The amendment is essential to enforce the National Security Act, as it ensures that police and other authorised officials can authorise the appropriate technical tools to tackle and combat drone misuse. If we do not proceed with the legislation, there may be instances where an offence under the National Security Act 2023 is committed but the police are unable to authorise the use of their equipment.
The second instrument, the National Security Act 2023 (Consequential Amendment of Primary Legislation) Regulations 2025, amends the Welsh language version of the Public Services Ombudsman (Wales) Act 2019. Last year, when changing the English language version of the Act through the National Security Act 2023 (Consequential Amendments of Primary Legislation) Regulations 2023, an oversight took place, as happens occasionally, and the corresponding change was not made to the Welsh language version. It will be with this order today. The instrument will correct this oversight, ensuring that there is no misunderstanding when consulting the Welsh language version of the Act regarding the ability to disclose information obtained in the course of an investigation by the Public Services Ombudsman, if required in relation to a prosecution for offences under the National Security Act 2023.
I hope that that is relatively clear. These are two simple amendments, and I hope that I have made it clear from these remarks that the regulations will ensure the correct application and enforcement of primary legislation, supported by the previous Government, which has already been agreed by Parliament. Passing them will be an important step to correcting an inaccuracy and giving powers to enforce legislation.
My Lords, there is no doubt that our laws need to be kept updated to reflect the evolving security threat, the speed at which technology is developing, and the increasingly unstable global situation. So, on balance, we accept that both these instruments are proportionate and will support them.
Our concerns around the National Security Act regulations relate to the knowledge test for these offences, given the steep penalties involved. Does the Minister recognise that the sensitivity of a site might not always be obvious, and that a site’s sensitivity can be fluid, particularly in the case of military vehicles? Could he provide some clarity around the kinds of restricted areas the legislation will apply to, and give assurances that a reasonable person—for example, innocently flying a drone in the countryside—will be protected?
In relation to the Police Act regulations, my understanding is that these allow the police to use counter-drone measures against an unmanned aircraft flying over sensitive military sites, and I have a number of questions in this area. Who has responsibility to deal with unidentified drones around these sites? The military already has its own counter-drone capability; will the police powers run alongside that?
Last year, there were almost 400 police drones operating, of which more than two-thirds were made by DJI, a Chinese firm that the US has linked to the Chinese military—although the company denies this. The previous year, the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner warned that the UK police estate was “shot through” with Chinese-made surveillance drones, used by 23 of the 31 police forces operating drone cameras. At that time, the National Police Chiefs’ Council said it would carry out the necessary review to ensure that national security standards were being met. Perhaps the Minister could say whether that review was carried out.
Just five months ago, West Midlands Police told a magazine that its current drone fleet included 12 DJIs, as well as two made by Autel, another Chinese-based company. Autel was also supplying drones to Nottinghamshire Police and Wiltshire Police, before it was sanctioned by the British Government last month for arming Russia to fight in Ukraine. In light of this, is the Minister satisfied that the police are working with drone providers which can be trusted and whether there are measures in place to ensure that these drones cannot be used to monitor or collect information on critical UK infrastructure?
The drone industry is booming, with estimates that there could be over 76,000 commercial drones in UK skies by 2030—so these security concerns will not go away. China is currently way ahead of everyone else in this area, with DJI the world’s largest commercial drone manufacturer. So it is vital the Government do all they can to support the UK drone industry, which is already responsible for several world firsts.
We support the legislation, but our focus must be on ensuring that our police have the right tools and expertise to counter these threats, wherever they arise. We should heed the lesson of the Trojan horse and ensure that any “spy in the sky” is not already in our midst, starting with the security of our own police drones.
My Lords, we welcome and support both these orders. The first statutory instrument adds offences under the National Security Act to the list of relevant offences in the Police Act 1997, enabling the use of counter-drone powers by police and other authorised officials. This means they will have the power to use counter-drone technology and to take action against unmanned aircraft or drones which are being operated in an area around a prohibited place or a cordoned area without authorisation.
As has already been noted by noble Lords, we have seen an exponential increase in the use of drones in crime. It makes perfect sense to empower the police to tackle this rising threat. It is consistent with the evolving threat reflected in the debates on the National Security Act, which passed through this House last year.
I turn to the draft National Security Act 2023 (Consequential Amendment of Primary Legislation) Regulations 2025, which are also supported on this side of the House. As the Minister explained, this is a consequential amendment to the Public Services Ombudsman (Wales) Act 2019. One can understand how these incidents occur, and it is clearly appropriate to make the order that is sought.
The National Security Act was a landmark achievement for the previous Conservative Government and passed with a good measure of parliamentary support across both this House and the other place. It reflected the evolving national security threat that our country faces. It places Britain at the forefront of efforts to protect our citizens, businesses, institutions and defence establishments from the ever-changing threats posed by hostile actors, cyber threats and covert intelligence measures. The only question I have for the Minister is: when does he estimate that the National Security Act will be fully in force?
I am grateful for the contributions from His Majesty’s Official Opposition and the Liberal Democrat Benches. I am grateful for the Opposition’s support for both orders, which are relatively straightforward and, I hope, totally uncontroversial. I hope that this House today, as well as the House of Commons in due course, will support them.
I will start with the extremely important and valid points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. The first relates to the potential for individuals not to know about a site or for the site sensitivity not to be obvious. The Government have considered that, where appropriate, steps should be taken to ensure that all prohibited places are clearly signposted for the benefit of the public. They will remain discretionary for a time, because it will not always be appropriate or practical for security reasons, but the prohibited places offences under the National Security Act 2023 take account of this. Whether or not signage is in place depends on the circumstances, and that would then determine whether or not an offence has been committed. For most places, signage is in place. There will be a limited number of places where there is no signage—but, again, it is not appropriate, even today, to talk about what types of prohibited places they may be, for reasons that are obvious.
The National Security Act 2023 protects our most sensitive sites against activity, which is why we welcomed it when it was introduced by the previous Government. Section 7 of the Act sets out what the prohibited places are, including certain Crown land in the UK, the sovereign base areas, defence establishments, and areas for the defence of a foreign state or the extraction of material for UK defence purposes, as well as sites owned or controlled by the UK intelligence services and used for their functions. Such prohibited places are inherently sensitive and therefore may be at risk. An offence might be committed under Section 5 if a person carries out unauthorised conduct in relation to that prohibited place. As has been mentioned, there would be a defence under legislation for that.
The noble Baroness asked, quite rightly, who has the responsibility of dealing with unidentified drones around these sites. The police forces play a major initial part in protecting UK defence sites from drone misuse, but responsibility for that misuse will depend on the site and its specific circumstances. The Home Office is trying to support the development of the national police counter-drone capability, which has taken place over the last five years. The SI provides greater assurances and outlines circumstances where action can be taken in relation to cordoned-off drone areas.
The noble Baroness specifically mentioned Chinese matériel. The National Police Chiefs’ Council is looking at, and collaborating with, military partners and other state drone operators to make sure that we align security standards. That means that we are looking at a national procurement framework that includes drones as part of this, and we are engaging with police forces to ensure that the suppliers added to the framework meet the required security standards.
Again, that will determine whether drones of any particular provenance are allowed to be used by UK police forces and others. That security assessment will, I hope, reassure the noble Baroness.
The final question, from the noble Lord, was about the full implementation of the National Security Act. I have to say to him: when parliamentary time allows and when government decisions have been taken. I will inform him when that moment is due to arrive.
Motion agreed.
National Security Act 2023 (Consequential Amendment of Primary Legislation) Regulations 2025
Motion to Approve
Moved by
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 29 October be approved.
Motion agreed.
Local Digital Television Programme Services (Amendment) Order 2024
Motion to Approve
Moved by
That the draft Order laid before the House on 5 November be approved.
My Lords, over a decade since the first service launched, local TV continues to complement our national public service broadcasters by providing local content, including news and current affairs, to audiences across the UK. From London Live, which broadcasts just a few miles up the road in Kensington, to Notts TV in Nottingham and NVTV in Belfast, there are now 34 local TV services broadcasting all over the UK.
These services bring social and economic benefits to the areas that they serve, not only through making and showing programmes that meet the interests of their local audiences but by providing training opportunities, often giving people their first experience of working in the television sector. For example, one local TV service, KMTV, has developed a partnership with the University of Kent and provides training opportunities for journalism students. In a TV sector that is all too often London-centric, local TV services provide a way into the industry for those based in all parts of the UK, as 11 are based in the north of England, five in Scotland, three in Wales, and one in Northern Ireland.
All these services are carried on the local TV multiplex, which enables their broadcast on digital terrestrial television, known as Freeview. The multiplex is operated by Comux UK, which is co-owned by the local TV services themselves. The multiplex plays a central role in the local TV ecosystem by providing subsidised carriage for all the local services and is funded by using the profits generated from the carriage of a small number of national services.
However, the climate for local TV has been challenging. Services have struggled to maintain consistent audience numbers and develop sustainable revenues from advertising. Last year, the TV advertising market in the UK experienced its biggest decline since the 2008-09 financial crisis. While this has impacted all commercially funded broadcasters, it has been particularly acute for local TV services, which operate with a smaller audience base than their national counterparts. The previous Government committed to change the local TV licensing regime to enable the extension of the local TV multiplex until 2034, and to consult on the options for the renewal or relicensing of the 34 individual local services. That consultation ran from June to September last year and received responses from current licence holders, media and telecoms companies, and members of the public.
In the consultation, the then Government set out their proposals for a light-touch renewal process for the multiplex licence, led by Ofcom, and the conditional renewal of all 34 local TV services, subject to Ofcom’s assessment of their performance to date and their plans for the next licence period. Respondents to the consultation were broadly supportive of this approach. Some respondents, particularly the incumbent licence holders, raised concerns regarding the disproportionate burden that renewal might place on licensees. They also emphasised the importance of the renewal process being concluded in a timely fashion to deliver the certainty that the sector and its commercial partners require.
My department has taken these responses into account in drafting this order and worked closely with the independent regulator, Ofcom, which will administer the renewals process, to refine its provisions. A previous version of the order was laid in draft before Parliament earlier this year on 7 May, but it was subsequently withdrawn. This was because the delay to the order coming into force caused by the general election meant that Ofcom would not have had time to complete the renewal process and still be able to run a competitive relicensing process in the event that any licences were not renewed.
In light of this, the updated order includes additional powers for Ofcom, with the consent of the current licence holders, to extend the local TV licences by a period of 12 months. This will ensure that Ofcom will be able to conclude the renewal process at least 12 months before the extended licences would otherwise expire. The order has been considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Neither committee raised any concerns about the legislation.
The Government believe that the renewal process provided for by this order is in the best interests of the sector’s long-term health and sustainability by providing stability over the next licence period, while ensuring a proportionate degree of regulatory oversight. We want local media, including local TV, to thrive and, importantly, keep communities informed about local issues and decision-making. Enabling the renewal of the local TV licences is an important part of these plans. I beg to move.
My Lords, I am grateful to Daniel Cass, chief executive of That’s TV, for his views and queries on the order. The local TV sector welcomes the power granted to Ofcom to renew the UK’s current 34 local TV services on Freeview. It is important that the renewal process implemented by Ofcom does not become unduly onerous. The draft order requires Ofcom to assess both programming and business plans for the new licence period from 2026 onwards. However, Freeview is diminishing. This makes business planning for the new licence period highly challenging.
The DCMS should seek to ensure that Ofcom focuses on what is most important. In particular, the aim should be for Ofcom to protect core local news delivery on local TV services in the new licence period. For most local TV services, their news bulletins are funded by the commercial advertising secured around their non-news entertainment programming. If this model is to remain viable in the coming years, it is unlikely to be a realistic option for Ofcom to be puritanical about non-news programming and how it is delivered. If Ofcom asks local TV services to deliver more local programming than the market can realistically support, this will have the opposite of the desired effect, with services closing.
The costs and benefits of holding licences needs to remain at the forefront of Ofcom’s assessment process, or it risks becoming a fantasy exercise. On Freeview, local TV services benefit from electronic programme guide prominence regulated by Ofcom. However, there is no guarantee of either carriage or prominence for the digital apps now being planned by local TV operators. I suggest to the Minister that the Government need to work with the industry to secure a pathway for local TV operators to launch their apps on internet-connected TV platforms.
My Lords, this was Jeremy Hunt’s big idea 10 years ago, when he said that Birmingham in the USA had several local TV stations and Birmingham in the UK had none. BBC licence fee money was used—I think it was £25 million—to establish local television, and there was an ongoing budget of £5 million a year. Jeremy Hunt’s idea of 34 local TV stations, from Manchester to Maidstone and Bristol to Belfast, was given a prime spot on Freeview TV, but, of course, the stations soon struggled financially, not least because of Covid, as all media outlets did.
Now we see a sector which is not local television; there is no way in the world that having repeats of old films and travelogues is local television. Yes, there is some local news—10 minutes on weekdays—but, in fact, on many occasions, they run next to each other so that they have more time to put on repeats of old films.
I welcome the fact that we are going to extend the current licence for 12 months to give Ofcom the time to set this all up, but, during that period, I hope that we look and make a proper, realistic and honest appraisal of what local television should be. To me, local television is not a syndicated 10-minute news bulletin with hardly any, if any, local television programming.
The only thing I think is true is the point that the Minister makes that it gives people an opportunity to develop skills in that particular media field, but I would like some research on this. For example, I wonder how many local people are involved in Local TV Liverpool. I think it is no longer called that—what is it called now? I think it is called That’s TV, because the same programme is syndicated across different cities of the UK.
If we are serious about Jeremy Hunt’s original idea of local television, then let us explore whether that model works financially. If it does not, then the money—if there is any still going—would be better spent on extending other local provision, whether in local newspapers or radio.
Over the years, we have seen a sort of pretence that we need to support local news. We have seen local commercial radio stations syndicated in London, with all the skills and the same programmes being developed in London. We have seen local journalism decline and decline, and we have seen the BBC’s local radio stations have their budgets cut as well. It has always seemed bizarre to me that, on the one hand, the BBC and the licence payers are paying for local democratic reporters, which are given to national newspapers, for example, yet at the same time we are seeing local radio cut to the bone. The time has come now to be really honest about this, and this extension will give us time to properly explore that.
My Lords, local television services currently reach up to 15 million households. These services are provided by 34 local TV services, which are licensed by Ofcom. The provision of local television brings news, current affairs and creative arts programmes directly to communities in a way that national broadcasters cannot.
Under the current legislative regime, the licences for these services would expire, meaning that Ofcom would be required to launch a whole new round of licensing negotiations, creating disruption to those who consume these services and potentially damaging the broadcasting stations involved.
Under our watch, in 2023 we launched a public consultation on how to deal with the relicensing of the local television services. The responses to that consultation informed the drafting of this statutory instrument, which was laid before Parliament on 7 May this year but was, naturally, held up by the general election.
His Majesty’s Official Opposition therefore welcome the Government’s action in bringing forward this order once again. Without it, these crucial local television services would be thrown into disarray. By allowing the automatic extension of the current licences, we are providing greater certainty to the industry while also allowing Ofcom to run the renewal process for the future. Once Ofcom has assessed the state of the current providers, it will be able to renew the licences up to 2034, thereby allowing for the ongoing continuation of the local television services.
However, this order raises a few questions. First, the Explanatory Memorandum highlights that there are a number of barriers to entry for the local television market. What steps are the Government taking to reduce those barriers and ensure open competition in future licensing rounds? Secondly, the Minister will be aware that the previous Government published a White Paper in 2022, titled Up Next. Does His Majesty’s Government have any plans to take forward the recommendations from that policy document? If not, do they have their own proposals for ensuring that the local regulatory regime is up to date? We look forward to the Minister’s response.
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have contributed to what has been quite a brief debate on an important issue. I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, about the significance of the potential of the local TV sector. We want to see the local TV sector survive and thrive long into the future and provide genuinely local content, particularly local news and current affairs.
A number of points raised today explore issues that arose through the consultation and renewal process, and they have been considered by the Government in taking forward this policy. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, raised concerns about the extent of local content. I think there are potential issues around the ability of some local TV services to make genuinely local content that meets the needs of local audiences. We recognise that the climate for sustainably funding local content can be a challenging one. However, this requirement remains at the heart of the local TV system, and therefore it is right that it is considered through the renewal process. I am happy to write to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, with the details he requested, but I can confirm that although licence fee money was used in the set-up of this service, no government funding is currently used for the local TV system.
Before renewing a licence, Ofcom will need to be satisfied that an applicant can comply with the conditions in its licence as renewed, which in the case of the local TV services will include specific local programming commitments. Ofcom published a statement earlier this year setting out further detail about how it will assess whether a service is meeting its programming commitments, and licence holders will need to consider those as part of their renewal applications.
The noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, raised local TV services not receiving prominence on apps, as part of the new online prominence regime established in the Media Act 2024. Local TV services do not currently have an on-demand app, and it is therefore difficult to have confidence that such an app would provide significant quantities of public service content and put that content front and centre, which are two key requirements of the new prominence regime. However, we are aware of concerns raised by the sector that any apps it might develop in the future would not have the potential to benefit from the online prominence regime, so we will keep this matter under review. As I said earlier, Ofcom, as the independent broadcasting regulator, will lead the process to extend and then renew the licences for the local TV multiplex and all 34 individual local TV services. The Government look forward to Ofcom commencing that process promptly after this order comes into effect.
We agree with the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, that the process should be proportionate. Last month, Ofcom published a statement setting out how it will approach the process in accordance with the legislation and the steps that applicants will need to take to have their licences renewed. This has ensured that licence holders have advanced sight of the requirements associated with the renewal process before the application deadline at the end of March next year, and it enables them to start preparing their applications before the legislation comes into force. Enabling the renewal of the local TV licences will ensure that services continue to receive the same regulatory benefits they have enjoyed since 2013. This includes not only access to and prominence on Freeview but prominence on regulated electronic programme guides for simulcast satellite, cable and internet-delivered television services.
The noble Earl, Lord Effingham, raised a number of questions; if my response so far has not covered them, I will address them. The local media strategy will be central to addressing some of the points he raised. The Secretary of State has announced plans to develop a local media strategy in recognition of the importance of that vital sector, and we will work across government to develop it.
The order will ensure that local TV continues to complement the national public service broadcasters and contribute to the plurality of our wider broadcasting ecosystem over the next licensing period. We want local TV services to continue their important contribution to the training and development of the next generation of journalists and broadcasters, and to bolstering democracy and scrutiny of decision-making at the local level. This order is an important step in enabling that to happen. I am grateful to noble Lords who contributed to the debate. I beg to move.
Will the Government give Ofcom a steer on how local news will be provided—the amount of time it will be provided for, providing it on the weekend, not just weekdays, and whether any local programmes will be included? Will the local television have a presence in the city it covers, and will that city’s name be included in the title of the station?
I will write to the noble Lord on those points, rather than answering on the hoof.
Motion agreed.
Housing (Right to Buy) (Limits on Discount) (England) Order 2024
Motion to Regret
Moved by
That this House regrets that the Housing (Right to Buy) (Limits on Discount) (England) Order 2024 (SI 2024/1073), laid before the House on 30 October, will reduce the number of social tenants who can purchase their property, undermine home ownership and cut new house building.
Relevant document: 7th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument).
My Lords, this statutory instrument will reduce the number of qualifying secure tenants who have the opportunity to buy their rented home at a discount. This will reverse our record in the period 2012 to 2024, which enabled almost 160,000 sales under the right-to-buy scheme. On our watch, the right-to-buy discount was incrementally increased. In 2012, the maximum cash discount went up significantly from regional levels of between £16,000 and £38,000 to a new national level of £75,000. In 2013, the maximum was propelled further in London to £100,000, and from 2014 the maximum discounts rose annually, in line with the percentage change in the consumer prices index. The current maximum discounts available are £136,400 in London and £102,400 outside London.
Our aim is to move towards a scenario where people own their own home and are less reliant on local authorities. Being able to buy your own home is a critical feature of social mobility. It allows people to acquire an asset which translates into wealth, which can then be passed on to the next generation, which in turn gives more opportunities in life. The Government have cut the maximum discount to between £16,000 and £38,000, which means that secure tenants of local authorities who want to buy their home will have to pay materially more for their property.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has released a policy paper on the review of the right-to-buy discounts which showed that sales will be reduced by 25,000 over five years. By the department’s modelling, under the previous Government’s rules 35,000 people would be able to buy their social housing by 2029, but under this Government’s new rules that figure would only be 8,500. That means that 26,500 people will potentially miss out. The Government’s own modelling has shown that there would be 7,000 sales annually to 2031 if our rules were kept. However, that number will shrink to 1,700 per year under this Administration’s new rules. That means an average of 5,300 people per year will not be able to buy their home under the new restrictions.
The Government are clearly looking to create an environment where the local authorities are able to channel a larger proportion of receipts from social housing sales into building new social housing. In July 2024, the Government increased the flexibility on how councils can use their right-to-buy receipts to accelerate the delivery of replacement homes. The caps on the percentage of replacements delivered as acquisitions, and the percentage cost of a replacement home that can be funded using right-to-buy receipts, have been removed. Local authorities can now combine right-to-buy receipts with Section 106 contributions. We understand that these flexibilities will be in place until the end of 2026, subject to a review. Furthermore, the Government in the Autumn Budget stated that councils will no longer be required to return a proportion of the capital receipts generated by the sale of the home to His Majesty’s Treasury.
We appreciate that the Government are looking for ways to build more affordable housing. However, we do not think that this should be achieved at the expense of aspiring home owners who are saving to purchase the home they have lived in for, in many cases, a considerable amount of time.
The Government believe that fewer social houses in local authorities is indicative of a problem. We would argue that creating a system that results in an ever-increasing number of social homes on the local authorities’ books is unsustainable. To clarify, we absolutely must make provision for the most economically vulnerable and in need, so that come rain or shine they have a roof over their heads. But the endgame should be to help people stand on their own two feet, independent in their own home, which they themselves have purchased. I beg to move.
My Lords, I declare that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Back in 1980, when the right to buy was brought in, I was in favour of it in principle, because it devolved power and responsibility from the state to the individual. It seemed to me that it would lead to greater investment in homes if more private cash was spent on upgrading the country’s housing stock. I did not support selling off social housing without any replacement, always urging for one-for-one one replacement. But that never happened, and worse, around 40% of those homes sold ended up in the private rented sector, with higher rents pushing up the housing benefit bill.
Paragraph 5.5 of the Explanatory Memorandum is very clear in its explanation of this statutory instrument. It says:
“The Government’s objective is a fair and sustainable right to buy scheme that protects existing social housing stock whilst ensuring that secure tenants who have lived in, and paid rent on their homes for many years, retain the opportunity to own their home. This statutory instrument will directly support that objective”.
The two key words seem to me to be “fair” and “sustainable”. It is fair that those who have paid rent for many years should be able to benefit from their rent being seen as a form of deposit, and this statutory instrument will still enable them to do so.
Back in 1980, it was only fair that council tenants of long standing should not be excluded from the benefits of inflation on the capital asset they were renting. But the situation is very different today. Discounts have got bigger. Housing for social rent has been neglected. There is a massive affordability crisis in buying a home for those on lower incomes as prices have continued to rise steeply. Yet rented housing—private or public—is nowhere near enough to meet demand from those unable to buy, and more people than ever are homeless.
It is inappropriate to allow the current right-to-buy system to continue without amendment. Indeed, in Scotland and Wales, right to buy has been scrapped altogether. That is not what the Government are doing in England. They are cancelling the possibility of extending the right to buy to housing association tenants, but the right to acquire, which has a lower level of benefit, will continue to be available.
It is true that the Government are reducing the levels of discounts and extending the qualifying period to 10 years as a tenant from a minimum of three now, and avoiding financial loss where a property has received investment prior to sale. As the Deputy Prime Minister has said,
“we are losing more social homes than we can build, at huge cost to families, to taxpayers, and to communities”.
That is undeniably true, and the aim of this SI is to do something about it—and we need to do something about it, with 1.2 million households on council waiting lists.
The noble Earl, Lord Effingham, in winding up the debate on housing supply and homelessness last Thursday for the Conservative Benches, said:
“Homelessness should have no place in this country”.
He also said:
“Everyone wants to end homelessness”.—[Official Report, 5/12/24; cols. 1340, 1342.]
That is quite a comment on the record of his party in government in recent years. Homelessness indeed should have no place in this country and the level of homelessness is very troubling. There are 123,000 households and 159,000 children in temporary accommodation. Council spending on temporary accommodation reached £2.29 billion last year, which the National Audit Office said recently is “unsustainable”—it is unsustainable.
Homelessness cannot be solved without having more social homes for rent. Is this statutory instrument fair? Is it in the public interest? Does it strike a balance between the needs of the taxpayer not to lose money, and to get a fair price for a property, and the wishes of the tenant? I think it is fair and I have concluded that it strikes the right balance. I find it very puzzling that the Conservative Opposition in this Chamber can now happily say that it is right knowingly to sell off social housing when, in the period of their Government from 2015, they did not replace social housing adequately.
We have a housing crisis and the Government have to do something about it. They will, in the course of time, review the decision they are making on this SI. However, I wish to make it absolutely clear that my party is very supportive of this SI as an essential step in producing enough social housing for rent.
My Lords, until May, I was the leader of a council for 17 years. Under my leadership, every single home lost to right to buy was replaced, and then some. We delivered 1% of the entire national affordable housing stock each year through the 2010s. That needs an authority that is organised and ambitious, and a clear idea of what the state is for. Did we sit there moaning about right to buy? No, we did not; we just got on with it. We struck hard bargains with landowners and developers. We recycled capital receipts. We built new homes for rent, of different tenures and different types, in both towns and villages, but mainly for social rent. That income kept council tax down for everyone. It can be done.
Throughout the 2010s, it helped that there was a 25% new homes bonus kicker for the delivery of new homes under social rent. It certainly helped when the last Government changed the rules so that we got to keep all the money to reinvest in new homes rather than see it go to the Treasury, particularly for temporary and short-term accommodation, where the need has become suddenly greater following Covid.
I can tolerate restrictions on right to buy on brand new homes, but I cannot abide those who stand in the way of a family cherishing an older property that could be brought into their ownership, the money for which would allow a new, much more modern and cheaper to run home to be built. For too long, blaming right to buy has been an excuse for inaction on house- building by councils. It has been a case of blaming the Government rather than rolling up your sleeves.
I am disappointed that the Government are diluting the incentive for families to take the plunge to seek more security and a stake in society. I particularly regret that the statutory instruments committee had to drag the full extent of these regressive proposals out of the Government, who either had not shown or did not want to show how many families would be disadvantaged by this proposal.
This is a moment to realise that right to buy has been one of this country’s most transformative policies and has done more to drive social mobility and give families a stake in society. That is something everyone in public life should aspire to promote, but perhaps that is asking too much from a Government who are putting limits on aspiration in so many walks of life, not driving it forward.
I rise briefly to take part in this debate. Before doing so, I draw Members’ attention to my register of interest: I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a director of a fully privately funded affordable housing provider that actively encourages its tenants to buy their homes after five, 10, 15 or 20 years. It is called Rentplus and it does what it says on the tin: you rent at a discounted price and you buy at a discounted price. I work for somebody in the private sector who preaches the possibility that home ownership should be within everybody’s reach.
I will support my noble friend by going through the Division Lobby with him when he chooses to divide, but I will not agree on the reason. My reason is not that the Government are being unreasonable in setting the numbers they have chosen. Putting numbers on a piece of paper is a big mistake when talking about property markets; they are so varied in so many places for so many different reasons that it is better to put a percentage figure. I disagreed with what the last Government did by increasing the discounts to such a level that only really rewarded avaricious grandchildren, not the hard-working tenants who had occupied their homes for a long time. A number of elderly people were pressured into buying their houses for a capital sum that would go to their grandchildren. That should not have happened unless that grandchild had lived with those grandparents.
But, as my noble friend Lord Fuller said, right to buy is probably the single biggest piece of social mobility legislation enacted since the war. It enabled a million families to gain access to capital who never had done in the history of their families. I do not think anybody has done any work, but somebody should do, on how many businesses were set up in this country by people who could leverage capital they had not previously had access to. For a number of reasons—I think about our care sector, as people need access to capital to be able to pay to have care nowadays—this country would fall apart without it.
We should not lose sight of the fact that just over a million homes were lost to councils through right to buy, but 2 million homes were lost to councils through propositions put forward by the Tony Blair Government. Out of the 4 million homes that used to be in council ownership pre-1980, 1 million, so 25%, were lost through right to buy and 2 million—50%—were lost through LSVT. Councils such as my own were summoned to the Government Offices for the Regions to explain why they were not transferring their homes out. So this is not a tribal issue between the red team and the blue team; it is a proposition about whether we believe most people in this country aspire to be home owners. Clearly we do—I think all of us across the Chamber believe that—but do we also believe that people should be able to live in a safe, secure, decent, affordable home even if their financial circumstances mean that they are unable to do that completely unaided at the time they need it?
Right to buy is a good thing, but the right to build is the most important thing, and I agree that the Labour Government are right this time round to allow councils to keep 100% of the receipts, which would otherwise have been lost to the Treasury. Who wants to give money to the Treasury? It is much better for it to be spent locally. If the Labour Government had said that the discounts would be set at a local level by local councils to stimulate demand but not to reward avaricious grandchildren, I would not be going through the Division Lobbies tonight. But that is not what they have said; they have said, “Whitehall knows best. We’ll set an arbitrary figure that’ll have no bearing to the marketplace in a year or two’s time”.
My Lords, I draw Members’ attention to my interests as detailed in the register, including being a councillor in Central Bedfordshire, which has its own housing HRA. I very much support my noble friends’ comments regarding the opportunities that right to buy has given to so many people, but I will highlight the fact that this is an issue not of the sale of council homes but of a complete failure to build.
There are 4.25 million affordable homes—an increase of some 35,000 over the last two years, even with the sale of around 30,000 affordable homes in that period. I am pleased that the last Government had the 100% retention of right-to-buy receipts, which facilitated councils building homes. If we are to build the homes that we need, it is essential to maximise all avenues to building more homes. Allowing tenants to buy their own homes with a reasonable incentive and reinvesting the proceeds in new homes is an opportunity for more, not fewer, homes.
I will give the example of my own council, and I will trump my noble friend Lord Fuller because Central Bedfordshire was at 1.5%, not 1%. I am proud that, as leader of Central Beds, we had a proactive council house building programme. For example, in the period 2021-23 we built 259 homes and acquired a further 76, and we sold 82 under the right-to-buy rules —a net increase of 253. Without the proceeds from right to buy we would have ended up building substantially fewer homes. That would have meant tens of families—possibly even 100—not having a home because we would not have had the right-to-buy proceeds. That is important, because it gives more people the opportunity for an affordable rented home.
I reiterate: the ability to reinvest proceeds from right to buy is an opportunity to provide more, not fewer, homes. The issue is one of getting homes built, which should be the focus, not curtailing opportunity.
My Lords, from listening to this debate, I recognise that there is a certain amount of agreement around the Chamber. It seems, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Porter, that this is very much a question of balance. Of course right to buy was a wonderful thing for many people, but the right to have a roof over your head is also pretty important. Therefore, if you take it too far and there are no council houses to put vulnerable people into, you will have a real problem. It seems there is a consensus that could lead to the right way forward—namely, the right amount of houses being available for right to buy but preserving enough and, as has been said, building more to protect fragile communities.
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for bringing this debate. We are in the middle of the most acute housing crisis in living memory. Too many are left without access to a safe and secure home.
To the noble Lords who have been leaders of councils, I say: so have I. For many years as a council leader, I struggled really hard to persuade our treasurer to find the funds to build homes, only to see them sold for less than it cost us to build them. That is why the Government are committed to working with councils and other providers of social housing to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation.
We have heard much about aspiration. For the over a million people sitting on those waiting lists for a long time and the 117,000 families in temporary and emergency accommodation, social housing is their aspiration. Our job as a Government is to get the balance right between offering homes for sale and retaining stock for social rent. That balance is critical to solving our housing crisis.
In the Budget, we set out a series of measures to support social housing providers to increase their capacity, confidence and motivation to invest in new and existing homes. We are providing £450 million to councils to house some of the most vulnerable in society, as well as injecting £500 million into the affordable homes programme; we are helping councils to borrow more cheaply from the Public Works Loan Board until the end of 2025-26; and we are consulting on a new five-year social rent settlement, which would allow rents to increase to provide the certainty that social housing providers need to plan for the long term.
However, we cannot achieve our ambitions while councils are losing homes quicker than they can replace them through the right-to-buy scheme. As noble Lords have said, right to buy has supported social tenants to own their homes. It boosts opportunities for families across the country who may not otherwise have been able to access home ownership. We are committed to the right-to-buy scheme.
However, the scheme must be reformed in order to better protect the existing stock of social rented homes, provide better value for money for the taxpayer and ensure fairness within the system. Between April 2012 and March 2024, there were over 124,000 council right-to-buy sales. In the same period, fewer than 48,000 homes were replaced. At the same time, demand for social housing has grown, with nearly 1.3 million people on the waiting list, as I have said, and 117,000 households, including 150,000 children, in temporary accommodation, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley.
The failure to replace those homes that have been sold is a contributor to the urgent and rising need for social rent homes in most communities across the country. The cost of this has been borne not only by those low-income families unable to secure a social home but by the taxpayer, in the form of a rapidly rising housing benefit bill. This is unsustainable and represents poor use of public money.
The Government therefore acted on the commitment in our manifesto and reviewed the increased right-to-buy discounts introduced in April 2012. This review concluded that the increased discounts had had a negative impact on social housing stock. If maximum discounts had been kept at previous levels, we estimate that there would be an average of 7,000 sales annually, with only around 3,000 to 4,000 replacements. This would not support the Government’s objective to deliver a fair and sustainable scheme and to protect existing social housing stock.
As a result, the Government brought forward the secondary legislation that we are debating today to return the maximum right-to-buy cash discounts to pre-2012 levels. Discounts now range from £16,000 to £38,000, depending on where a tenant lives. Reduced discounts will better protect council housing stock to meet future housing needs and better enable councils to replace the homes sold. An estimated 25,000 homes will stay within the social rented sector over five years, meaning the sector will be larger as a result. Where homes are sold, councils will retain a larger portion of the receipt to build and acquire new homes. Social tenants—an estimated 1,700 a year—will still be able to buy their own home.
At the same time, we have increased the cost floor period from 15 years to 30 years to better protect council investment in building or maintaining properties. This will give councils greater confidence to scale up delivery of social homes for those who need them most.
In the Budget, we also confirmed that councils will no longer be required to return a portion of the capital receipt generated by a right-to-buy sale to the Treasury. I will not comment on giving money back to the Treasury, as the noble Lord, Lord Porter, did, but I think this money is better suited to being in local areas to build housing. This is in addition to the increased flexibilities in how councils can spend the receipts, which we announced in July. These changes will better support councils to build and acquire new council homes to meet local housing need.
Finally, we launched a consultation on 20 November on wider reforms to the right-to-buy scheme. We are seeking views on eligibility criteria, further protection for new-build properties and how best to support councils to replace homes sold.
I turn now to some of the questions that noble Lords asked. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Fuller, Lord Porter and Lord Jamieson, for setting out their plan for building more homes in their local areas. I have seen what they have been doing; we did the same in my local authority. But it has not been easy and, hopefully, these measures will make it easier.
The noble Lord, Lord Fuller, spoke about the impact of right-to-buy discounts. As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, we are not removing the right to buy but just changing some of the provisions. We want long-standing council tenants to be able to buy their home, but this must be balanced against the need to protect our social housing stock for those who need it most. The noble Lord, Lord Fuller, spoke about when the statutory instrument was introduced. We did publish a detailed review document alongside that, which set out the impact on council stock of the increased discounts introduced in 2012 and the impact on sales of reducing discounts.
Following comments from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which we always welcome, we have updated the Explanatory Memorandum to include a link to the review document, as well as the headline impact of the reduced discounts on sales.
On the discount levels mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, the Government have reviewed the increased discounts introduced in 2012. We concluded —as he suggested—that the impact on council stock has been too high. Returning to pre-2012 levels of maximum discounts will ensure the scheme is fairer and more sustainable, while supporting a reasonable proportion of tenants to still be able to buy their property.
The noble Lord, Lord Porter, mentioned the LSVT transfers. He is correct but, of course, many of those homes were still for rent and were retained in the rental stream, albeit in a different form from the council housing.
The noble Earl, Lord Effingham, spoke about helping social tenants into home ownership. We made it clear in our manifesto that we would be reviewing the increased discounts introduced in 2012, and highlighted this in our housing statement in July. Tenants were given three weeks to make an application before these new discounts came into force.
As regards replacement stock, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, was right to say that, when this whole scheme was introduced way back in the 1980s, it was always intended that there would be one-for-one replacement. However, there never has been one-to-one replacement; in my view, that has been the major flaw in the whole scheme.
The noble Lord, Lord Porter, referred to the flexibility in using receipts. I am pleased that we are allowing councils to keep 100% of the receipts generated by right-to-buy sales. That has totalled around £183 million a year. Coupled with the increased flexibilities in how councils can use receipts, announced in July, this will help accelerate and increase the delivery of replacement homes.
As I have said, it was always the intention that right to buy would involve one-for-one replacement. Now, we need to introduce new reforms to help that along. These are the right reforms that the country so desperately needs. The Government will keep discount levels under review to ensure that the right balance between protecting social housing stock and enabling tenants to access home ownership is being struck.
We had an extensive debate on housing in your Lordships’ House just last Thursday, when there was broad agreement across the House that we needed a generational change in the delivery of housing to meet the aspirations of a generation that has been locked out of housing. For some, that aspiration is owning your own home; for them, we will be introducing a mortgage guarantee scheme. For many others, that aspiration is secure social housing. Our Government are focused on both.
My Lords, I want to thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, as well as the Minister for her feedback.
As she mentioned, just three business days ago, we debated housing supply and homelessness in your Lordships’ House. Please let me briefly flag some valuable and relevant contributions from that debate.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, said that young people tell her that
“they fear they will never own their own home”.—[Official Report, 5/12/24; col. 1330.]
The noble Lord, Lord Snape, added that
“it is unfair, particularly on the younger generation, that house ownership has become so difficult”.—[Official Report, 5/12/24; col. 1336.]
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble Lord, Lord Snape. I believe that this SI makes it much more challenging for everyone, both young and old, to get on the housing ladder and benefit from property ownership, creating not a house but a home that is their own. On that, I would like to test the opinion of the House.
Movement of Goods (Northern Ireland to Great Britain) (Animals, Feed and Food, Plant Health etc.) (Transitory Provision and Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2024
Motion to Approve
Moved by
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 28 October be approved.
Relevant document: 8th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
My Lords, this instrument forms part of the Government’s commitment to implementing the border target operating model by ensuring that sanitary and phytosanitary controls are applied to European Union and rest-of-world goods entering Great Britain through Northern Ireland. These controls are essential to maintaining the United Kingdom’s biosecurity and food safety, as well as focusing the benefits of unfettered access arrangements on qualifying Northern Ireland goods.
The instrument uses powers conferred by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. It has two main purposes. First, it applies pre-notification and sanitary and phytosanitary certification requirements to goods that are not qualifying Northern Ireland goods entering Great Britain through Northern Ireland. These requirements are consistent with those already applied to certain European Economic Area goods and those entering Great Britain from Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the Faroe Islands and Greenland under the transitional staging period. This means that European Union and rest-of-world goods entering Great Britain through Northern Ireland are treated the same as such goods entering Great Britain through Ireland.
Secondly, the regulations make consequential amendments to various pieces of sanitary and phytosanitary legislation. The qualifying Northern Ireland goods definition was amended earlier this year for food and feed goods. The consequential amendments in the legislation that I am presenting today ensure that the updated definition is reflected consistently across the regulatory framework.
I emphasise from the outset that the Government remain fully committed to ensuring unfettered access for qualifying Northern Ireland goods to the rest of the UK market. The Windsor Framework Command Paper, published by the previous Government in February 2023, and the Border Target Operating Model, published in August 2023, clearly state that Northern Ireland businesses will have unfettered access when moving qualifying Northern Ireland goods into Great Britain. The Border Target Operating Model also states that European Union and rest-of-world goods will be subject to sanitary and phytosanitary controls when moving from Northern Ireland into Great Britain. The approach adopted in this legislation is consistent with those commitments.
The instrument does not make any changes to the arrangements for moving qualifying Northern Ireland goods into Great Britain. Qualifying Northern Ireland goods are not required to undergo any of the controls implemented by this legislation and will continue to move freely within the UK internal market. Indeed, by applying controls to European Union and rest-of-world goods entering Great Britain through Northern Ireland, these measures more closely focus the benefits of unfettered market access on Northern Ireland traders moving qualifying Northern Ireland goods. This will sharpen their competitive advantage.
The sanitary and phytosanitary controls applied to European Union and rest-of-world goods entering Great Britain through Northern Ireland under this instrument are temporary. We will revoke this instrument when the transitional staging period, which allows for easements in the performance of official controls, ends. That is currently set at 1 July 2025.
A long-term approach for further controls on European Union and rest-of-world goods entering Great Britain from the island of Ireland is yet to be implemented. The temporary nature of the instrument allows for biosecurity controls to be in place for these goods entering Great Britain from Northern Ireland ahead of that, although that is of course without prejudice to unfettered access protections granted to qualifying Northern Ireland goods. I must also highlight that this instrument extends to England, Wales and Scotland.
I reaffirm the Government’s steadfast commitment to supporting the businesses and communities of Northern Ireland while safeguarding the integrity of the UK internal market. I beg to move.
Amendment to the Motion
Moved by
At end insert “but that this House regrets that the draft Regulations implement the Northern Ireland Protocol and Windsor Framework which prevent Northern Ireland being a full part of the United Kingdom’s internal market, and undermine the democratic and constitutional rights of the people of Northern Ireland.”
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for moving the Motion, for the discussions that we have had and for her engagement with noble Lords and noble Baronesses from Northern Ireland on the various issues that affect us under the Windsor Framework protocol. I move my regret amendment because the regulations implement the Northern Ireland protocol, which has been renamed the Windsor Framework but in European law is still called the Northern Ireland protocol, and which prevents Northern Ireland from being a full part of the United Kingdom’s internal market for a large number of goods and agrifood products, as well as undermining the democratic and constitutional rights of all the people of Northern Ireland.
We had a debate in recent weeks on another statutory instrument. I am grateful that we have the opportunity to debate yet another statutory instrument flowing from the withdrawal Act and the implementation of the Windsor Framework because it is important that, in this Chamber and the other place, we have the opportunity to scrutinise and examine laws that are made by way of subsidiary legislation but carry out the wishes of a foreign political entity as far as Northern Ireland is concerned. It is therefore all the more important that we should be aware of what is happening.
While they may be described as technical in nature, the substance and import of these regulations have significant political and constitutional consequences. Together with the many other statutory instruments and subordinate legislation under the protocol/ Windsor Framework already passed and to be passed by this House and the other place, these constitute a substantial body of law imposing EU jurisdiction over part of the UK.
The Minister mentioned that the regulations are temporary in nature. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee included in its eighth report a number of paragraphs on the regulations. In its submission to that committee, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said that the long-term approach to sanitary and phytosanitary controls, including checks on EU and rest-of-world goods entering Great Britain from the island of Ireland, as it put it, is yet to be announced. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell your Lordships when we can expect the long-term approach to be implemented, whether this House will be consulted about those long-term arrangements and indeed what arrangements are in place to consult Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Executive on those measures. In the meantime, these are the regulations that we have in front of us.
Now we are told—and the Minister has said this again this evening—that Northern Ireland businesses will have full, unfettered access when moving qualifying Northern Ireland goods to the rest of the United Kingdom internal market directly from Northern Ireland to Great Britain and indirectly via the Irish Republic. At the same time, non-qualifying Northern Ireland goods must comply with all the relevant GB sanitary, phytosanitary and customs requirements.
Of course, it should be stated that the reason we are even debating how goods are moved between one part of the United Kingdom and another is the deplorable situation that Northern Ireland now finds itself in, where our country is divided by a customs border due to the implementation of the protocol/Windsor Framework accepted by the previous Government. The reality is that there is no such need for any kind of legislation or processes for moving goods between London and Edinburgh or from Cardiff to Bristol or anything else like that; we are part of one country. Yet when it comes to Northern Ireland, for the first time, we have a situation where a panoply of complex, difficult, hard to understand and operate rules are in place, to the extent that the Government have had to put in place a traders’ support service, which up to now has cost over £0.5 billion, to help people move goods within the United Kingdom—this at a time when the Northern Ireland Executive are really strapped for cash in terms of hospitals, infrastructure and everything else.
That is only part of the cost involved in these restrictions and complex arrangements. It would be also good to know whether the Government intend and continue to pledge that these arrangements for trader support and other movement assistance schemes will remain in place indefinitely, or is it still the plan that at some point they will come to an end and then traders and hauliers will have to bear the cost, which will, of course, be passed on to consumers in Northern Ireland? Concepts such as qualifying Northern Ireland goods and non-qualifying Northern Ireland goods are necessary only because of the protocol, as a result of which we are subject to this panoply of regulations to govern trade within the United Kingdom.
When we look in detail at this statutory instrument, we see that it gives rise to a number of questions. The Government continue to repeat the mantra that Northern Ireland qualifying goods will have unfettered access moving from Northern Ireland into Great Britain. Of course, they cannot say that—and do not attempt to say that to be fair—in relation to goods moving from Great Britain into Northern Ireland, because that is subject to an international customs border now, with all the consequent problems.
Non-qualifying goods coming through the Irish Republic into Northern Ireland and then onwards into Great Britain must, however, comply with all the necessary sanitary, phytosanitary and customs requirements. It would be useful if the Minister could set out how this is to be enforced. The Government seem to be suggesting in this instrument that it will be done in terms of compliance away from the border. Regulation 2(4) says:
“Official controls required by the competent authority to be carried out on relevant goods moving in the course of a relevant movement may be performed at a border control post, or, where such goods do not enter through a border control post, any other of the places specified in Article 44(3) of the Official Controls Regulation”.
Of course, the Official Controls Regulation is not UK law. It refers to Regulation (EU) 2017/625 of 15 March 2017. For much of law now governing trade within Northern Ireland and between Northern Ireland and Great Britain in both directions, we now have to refer to European laws. It is not in the statute book of the United Kingdom; it is in the Official Journal of the European Union. Article 44(3) of that EU regulation states:
“The official controls … shall be performed at an appropriate place within the customs territory of the United Kingdom, including … the point of entry … a border control post … the point of release for free circulation in Great Britain … the warehouses and the premises of the operator responsible for the consignment … the place of destination”.
What is striking about this regulation is that we are told that for movements from Northern Ireland to Great Britain it is perfectly possible to have a border but that the compliance and other checks on goods can be done away from the border in the various situations as outlined in the EU regulation. Yet, when goods are moved in the other direction—from Great Britain to Northern Ireland—we are forced to have full checks with full international customs requirements except in limited circumstances where you are allowed to go through a green lane at the grace and favour of the EU which, of course, can be removed by the EU at its whim, if it suits it, because it is prescribed in EU legislation not in UK legislation.
It is worth asking: why are there double standards? Why is there a different approach? It must be entirely political, because there are perfectly practical answers as to how these checks can be done as the Government are proposing in this statutory instrument and, indeed, is allowed for by the European Union regulations. The same practice, the same approach, could be adopted in both directions. These regulations expose the bogus nature of the arguments for checks and procedures at ports in Northern Ireland for goods being moved from Great Britain. If it can be done for goods going west to east, it can be done this way for goods going north/south between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic and vice versa. People say this is all the result of Brexit; no, it is the result of the way in which Brexit has been done by putting an international customs border down the middle of our country instead of where it should be and managing it as set out in these regulations. That should have been the approach from day one.
In all this, something else should not be lost: goods moving from the Irish Republic into Northern Ireland and staying in Northern Ireland—not moving on to Great Britain but moving from the Irish Republic into part of the United Kingdom—will not be subject to any checks, any compliance requirements or any paperwork. That is the way that the border should be in both directions between Northern Ireland and Great Britain —we are part of the same country after all. But the reason it is so for the Irish Republic and not for Northern Ireland vis-à-vis the rest of the United Kingdom is that Northern Ireland is deemed to be part, and legislated to be part, of the EU single market. It is easier and totally free to move goods and agrifood produce between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic and the Irish Republic into Northern Ireland than it is to move goods within the United Kingdom itself.
That is an intolerable position and a situation that cannot pertain in the long run. If the Government think it is necessary that goods from the Irish Republic and outside the United Kingdom should be subject to full SPS compliance for health and consumer protection purposes, why is the same not true for that part of the United Kingdom where people in Northern Ireland reside? If such goods are staying in Northern Ireland, there are no such checks or compliance—nothing. Are the people of Northern Ireland regarded as lesser citizens, not worthy of that protection that the citizens of England, Wales and Scotland are entitled to? Perhaps the Minister could address that very important point.
Looking to the future, can the Minister outline what happens if this system does not work out? If there are widespread abuses, will it not inevitably mean that there will be a process which will restrict this kind of unfettered passage of goods from Northern Ireland to Great Britain as we were promised? What will that process look like?
I conclude by thanking all who have attended. I look forward to hearing the contributions on all sides and to hearing what the Minister has to say in response.
My Lords, I refer to my registered interests, including my membership of the Government’s Veterinary Medicine Working Group and of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee of your Lordships’ House. I also declare that I support the Windsor Framework, I supported the protocol and I believe, like many others in Northern Ireland, that the Windsor Framework is a means of managing the friction of the trade in goods on the island of Ireland. It is about managing the delicate relationship that exists.
I am pleased that my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock is on the Front Bench. I must congratulate her on all the work she has been doing with the farming community in Northern Ireland. The latest such work was last week during her last visit, which I was told was very successful by the Ulster Farmers Union. They told me to say that they were very pleased that you visited the farm in Glenanne in County Armagh, which is an example of good farming practice in Northern Ireland.
This is the third debate in the last five weeks on regret amendments to Windsor Framework statutory instruments. Only last Friday in the House of Commons there was a debate on a Private Member’s Bill from Jim Allister, the Member for North Antrim. This sought to cancel the Windsor Framework and replace it with mutual recognition—maybe, in shorthand, the Liz Truss protocol Bill—which could impact on Article 2 of the framework on equality and human rights, as required by the Good Friday agreement, and even jeopardise our access to the single electricity market, which is protected by the Windsor Framework.
I ask my noble friends—I call them my noble friends because they are from Northern Ireland—do you really want to wreck our delicate political arrangements? Do you really want to wreck our special trading arrangements—that unique dual access for goods to the EU single market and the UK internal market? Those political arrangements reflect our unique political balance in Northern Ireland between unionists and nationalists and others. In turn, that could also jeopardise our economy and potential for growth.
Today in the Assembly—I do not know the result yet, but I can predict it—there was a debate on the democratic scrutiny committee on the Windsor Framework. I would say, “What have all of all these debates achieved?” but I imagine that today’s vote in the Assembly will result in a review of arrangements of the Windsor Framework. That would afford businesses, communities and individuals across Northern Ireland the opportunity to correct deficiencies and avail themselves of the benefits of two important global markets. This point was made this morning on “Good Morning Ulster” by the chief executive of the Federation of Small Businesses in Northern Ireland, Roger Pollen.
I know that perhaps the real purpose of the proposers —the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, and on previous occasions the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey—is that they want to cancel the Windsor Framework because they see it as causing certain constitutional jeopardy. I remind them that the majority of people in Northern Ireland voted to remain. In the last poll some weeks ago, 57% of the population in Northern Ireland support the Windsor Framework.
All of this is a result of Brexit. None of us can deny or gainsay that; that is what happened. Some in this House and in the other place in the last few years argued in terms of the hardest possible Brexit. What we have got is further division, entrenchment, distress and anxiety in the wider community in Northern Ireland. We need to move on from this by working together, using the anchor of the potential review to achieve better business opportunities and economic growth for all of the community in Northern Ireland. I ask all of my colleagues from Northern Ireland to work together to achieve that.
As my noble friend the Minister has already alluded to, these regulations propose to apply certain sanitary and phytosanitary controls on non-qualifying goods that enter GB from Northern Ireland. The controls include requirement to provide pre-notification as well as health and phytosanitary certification. Defra says this will mainly capture Irish goods that are currently being moved through Northern Ireland to GB for ease of movement.
What we need is an SPS veterinary agreement and a solution to the supply of veterinary medicines in Northern Ireland. This was emphasised to me yesterday by a delegation from the Ulster Farmers Union. This is also the position of the Northern Ireland Business Brexit Working Group. The principal aim of our Veterinary Medicine Working Group is to achieve a positive outcome with the EU for our farmers and veterinarians to ensure a ready supply of medicines and a long-term approach to SPS controls, including checks on EU and rest-of-the-world goods entering GB from the island of Ireland. This is an issue undoubtedly that requires a resolution. Could my noble friend the Minister perhaps give us an update on that? It could provide a solution of us all working together.
We need to capitalise on the opportunities for economic growth of access to both markets, rather than always looking for the negative aspects. The Government have said that they remain firmly committed to protecting the Good Friday agreement and that the long-term approach to SPS controls on non-qualifying Northern Ireland goods entering GB from Northern Ireland will respect these principles and not impact the unfettered movement of Northern Ireland qualifying goods. That is an important assurance for all those involved in farming and business activity, and also for Members of your Lordships’ House. Will my noble friend the Minister agree that it is the Government’s intention and purpose to protect businesses and farming activity in Northern Ireland?
In conclusion, undoubtedly, we all need to work together. I am talking about all noble Lords from Northern Ireland. Get involved in the reset of relations with the EU. Capitalise on our strengths and opportunities. Try to deal with those negative bits and find mitigations that act in the best interests of our farming and business community. Only last week, my friends and colleagues in the SDLP launched their document on Europe in Brussels. They urged for galvanising the benefits of dual-market access by identifying opportunities for high-value cross-border sectors, delivering a green transition and opening an EU Commission office in Belfast to assist in that process to help us all work together.
Finally, we must not forget what Professor Katy Hayward of Queen’s University Belfast said in a recent paper: “The texts and implications” of the Windsor Framework agreement
“need to be interpreted consistently, jointly and publicly”,
because that has been a problem which causes some of the division, entrenchment, fear and anxiety. Northern Ireland’s problems are ones to be tackled collaboratively and by mutual agreement, and not by private deals or public contestation.
I cannot support the regret amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dodds—and he will know that I cannot. Notwithstanding that, however, we have it within our capacity to work together through the anchor of the review of the Windsor Framework to ensure that better mitigations are prov