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12,868 spoken contributions under 12 words (interjections such as “Will the hon. Member give way?”) are hidden. Show them
I very much support the proposals that the Minister is outlining. One of the groups most impacted by waste crime is farmers. There is a farm in my constituency where more than 200 bales of DIY waste were dumped on the land, at an estimated cost of £250,000 to remove. I welcome the discussion on fines, but does she agree that we need to look at whether those fines can go towards the cost of the clear-up to a greater extent, to match the scale of the crimes committed?
I beg to move, That the draft Industrial Training Levy (Engineering Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2026, which was laid before this House on 1 June, be approved. In my view, the provisions in this statutory instrument are compatible with the European convention on human rights. The statutory purpose of the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board is to make better provision for training throughout the engineering construction industry in England, Scotland and Wales. Engineering construction is critical to the Government’s wider ambitions for economic growth, clean energy and energy security. The industry provides the skilled workforce to build, maintain and operate major energy, manufacturing and industrial infrastructure across the country. The continued value of the ECITB and the Construction Industry Training Board was confirmed by a 2023 independent review, which found that a statutory levy remains the most effective model for industry-wide investment in training, and is needed to address persistent structural workforce challenges within the industries covered by the industry training boards. This order gives effect to the ECITB’s levy proposals for 2026, 2027 and 2028. The levy remains the board’s primary source of funding, and the order is required for the board to raise mandatory assessments on employers that are in scope. It continues to receive strong support from employers: more than 85% of levy-paying employers supported the levy proposals, representing nearly 98% of total levy value—well above the statutory threshold of more than 50% support required from industry. A 12-week Government consultation has just closed on a proposal to bring the two ITBs together into a single, unified body to support the combined skills needs of the engineering construction and construction sectors. The Government are now carefully considering the views expressed before making decisions on reforms that may be needed to ensure that the system delivers the support that employers need. I cannot prejudge the outcome but, in order to maintain the ECITB for support for employers, we need this levy order. If the Government chose to proceed with the proposed reform, the earliest that a single body could be in place would be the spring of 2028. If reform required a new ITB levy order, it would come to the House through the usual parliamentary process. I thank the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments for its detailed review of this levy order. The order retains levy assessment rates from the Industrial Training Levy (Engineering Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2023 and retains the exemption threshold to protect small businesses and microbusinesses that are still eligible for ECITB grants and support. An estimated £137.9 million will be raised in levy between 2026 and 2028. It will be invested in meeting the skills needs of the engineering construction industry. It will fund programmes to widen participation, raise skill levels, increase opportunity and maintain occupational standards for the industry. It includes targeted grant support for employers to develop the skills pipeline in engineering construction. Since 2023, more than 5,000 apprenticeship starts have been supported through ECITB employer funding, including electrical, mechanical and nuclear-specific apprenticeships. That support includes direct grants for employers, travel and accommodation costs, and costs of additional qualifications that are required. The funding raised by the ECITB levy directly underpins broader economic priorities. More than 90,000 people are employed in the leviable workforce, contributing an estimated £33 billion in gross value added, which rises to £100 billion when we include the wider sectors serviced by the engineering construction industry. However, the industry faces big, long-standing challenges in recruiting and retaining a skilled workforce, which makes voluntary investment in training harder to secure. Only a statutory levy can guarantee that the skills that industry urgently needs will be provided at the scale required. If this order is not approved, the ECITB will be unable to collect the levy in 2026. That would hit apprenticeships and other vital industry qualifications, employer support programmes, training standards and the future capabilities of one of our most economically significant sectors. It is estimated that the UK needs an additional 40,000 engineering construction workers, and this order will play an important part in supporting major infrastructure projects nationwide. In addition to industry support, the proposals before the House today have received the full support of the devolved Governments of Scotland and Wales. They recognise, as we do, that the ability of the ECITB to raise and invest levy income is vital to ensuring that employers across all three nations can access the engineering construction skills that they need. I commend the order to the House.
I am grateful to all those who have spoken in the debate for the thoughtful scrutiny they have given to this instrument, and I am grateful for the support expressed by the hon. Members for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) and for Torbay (Steve Darling) and my hon. Friends the Members for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) and for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner). What I think the debate has effectively underlined is just how important the work of the ECITB is and the scale of the challenge that faces one of our most economically vital industries, which has a core workforce of 90,000 people and is responsible for £33 billion in annual output. The importance of that industry has been well reflected in the contributions to this debate. It is clear that the engineering and construction industry cannot meet its skills demands in the coming decade without a stable, collective system of investment in training. The evidence is consistent that market forces on their own will not deliver the pipeline of skilled workers that the industry urgently needs. The ECITB levy is the mechanism that enables the collective benefit for the focused skills strategy for this industry. It ensures that employers can access support for training and share the benefits of a skilled, competent and resilient workforce. It also opens up opportunities. It helps apprentices and other new entrants to complete high-quality training, and it helps existing workers to reskill or upskill to progress their careers. The hon. Member for South West Devon asked what the Government are doing to support the industry more widely with skills. Substantial Government investment is being deployed to that effect as part of wider reforms to help employers respond to current and future workforce needs. This includes an additional £1 billion of investment to help deliver some 50,000 more apprenticeship opportunities over the next few years, alongside increased flexibility through the new growth and skills levy and sector-specific skills packages in engineering and construction worth over £800 million. The hon. Lady will know of the targeted incentives for employers, including payments of up to £2,000 for taking on foundation apprentices, which will help more young people to enter skilled careers. The continued investment that we are making in skills bootcamps and increasingly devolved approaches through mayoral strategic authorities are enabling local areas to respond more effectively to local employer demand and skills shortages. Together with support from the ECITB, the measures certainly will strengthen the pipeline of skills, and I agree with the hon. Lady about how important that is. The hon. Lady cited the figure from 2024 that £28 million was invested by the ECITB in training grants and new entrant programmes. That went up to £32.6 million last year. We are expecting continuing increases, and we recognise the importance of being able to fulfil the growing demand that we are seeing. My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) quite rightly reflected how important these measures are for Portsmouth, and she asked for engagement with the all-party parliamentary group. I will pass on that request to the Minister for Transformation, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western), who I am sure will be very pleased to do that. To the questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner), I am afraid that I am not in a position to shed any light on the timing of the decision following the recent consultation. I will, though, pass on his suggestion that trade union representation should be considered when the reorganisation is being reflected on. The shadow Minister asked me a question about the proportion of new entrants. I think she was asking about those who are still in the industry 12 months on. That is not a figure that I have to hand but I will, if I may, drop her a line, if I can get the information to answer her question. The debate has reminded us just how important supporting the needs of small businesses is, ensuring maximum impact and value for money from employers’ levy contributions, and I think that the order gives reassurance on all those points. It maintains support for the engineering construction industry by minimising burdens on employers, holding steady levy rates and protecting smaller firms by maintaining exemption thresholds. Regardless of any future decisions needed to future-proof its support, the industry cannot afford a gap in funding now, and approving this order provides continuity, stability and confidence for engineering construction employers across England, Scotland and Wales. I am grateful for the support this measure has received in the debate, and for all those reasons I urge the House to support it. Question put and agreed to.
I thank the Minister for her statement. I have notified the relevant Member that I am about to name them. Over the weekend, The Telegraph ran a study about the Iranian-born property magnate Sasan Ghandehari pledging to donate millions of pounds to Reform UK. He described the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) as an “honest politician”. Does the Minister agree?
Shabir Ahmed’s crimes are the worst imaginable, and we are all just horrified to learn that he has now been released. As the Government look at every option to remove this vile individual, can the Minister confirm when he expects to bring forward those options and legal solutions to this situation?
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on leadership in policing. The police perform a unique and vital role in our society. They enforce our laws, tackle those who break them, and keep the public safe. These are awesome responsibilities. The officers and staff who uphold them every day, at all levels, are owed our respect, admiration and thanks. At the same time, if forces are to serve their communities effectively, they must secure and retain the trust of those communities. But in recent years, that trust has come under strain. Creaking systems, outdated structures and a lack of central grip from previous Governments have meant that the police have struggled to consistently hit the high levels of performance that we rightly expect of them. Things have to change. That is why earlier this year, the Home Secretary announced the most significant police reforms in 200 years. Our plans will ensure that the right policing happens in the right place, building on the progress that we have already made on restoring neighbourhood policing and driving down serious threats such as knife crime, and creating a new model in which local policing protects our communities and national policing protects us all. The reform programme provides us with a generational opportunity to address the long-standing challenges that have hampered the police’s ability to provide a consistently world-class service to the public. One such challenge centres on the question of how we ensure that our forces have the strong, effective leadership that they need to meet the significant demands that are placed on them. It is a question that is rightly the subject of considerable parliamentary and public scrutiny, especially when things go wrong, as they have in the recent past. Equally, I want to emphasise that there are a great many outstanding officers and staff across the police service, including those in the highest ranks. When failings occur and the public are let down, they feel it more keenly than anyone. The reality is that leadership is about more than just individuals. It is about culture and standards, and about giving every member of the police workforce the support and skills that they need to flourish and become leaders themselves. We are not the first Government to grapple with this topic. Various tweaks have been made to the system over the years, yet the same concerns keep arising, whether they relate to culture, conduct or the retention and promotion of talent. As we roll out our reform programme, this is clearly an issue requiring close examination. That examination has now taken place in the form of an independent review commissioned by the Home Secretary last year. The police leadership commission was established last October and is co-chaired by two former Members of this House with extensive knowledge of policing: my noble Friend Lord Blunkett and the noble Lord Herbert of South Downs. Together with the other members of the commission, they have carried out the most significant review of police leadership in recent times. Its findings and recommendations are published today. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Lord Blunkett and Lord Herbert for the care and skill with which they have approached their task. I am grateful, too, to the other commission members, and all who have participated. There has been a particular emphasis on giving voice to those on the frontline, which is welcome and essential. The review’s report sets out a comprehensive and, in places, candid assessment of police leadership in England and Wales. While the commission found examples of excellent leadership and delivery, it also identified concerns around consistency, capability and culture, and the impact that shortcomings in those areas have on the service received by the public. To quote from the report, “the policing profession has not consistently had the excellent leadership it needs”. It was also clear that those on the frontline are not getting the consistent support they deserve, amid wide variations in approaches to leadership development. The commission highlights the critical importance of leadership to ensuring that policing is prepared for the challenges of the future while upholding the sacred principle of policing by consent, without fear or favour. It is also important to emphasise, as the report rightly does, that leadership must not be confined to the senior officer ranks. It can and does exist in all parts of the service. It should be nurtured at every stage of a policing career—for both officers and staff. The review’s findings are rightly unsparing, and I welcome its willingness to engage with difficult issues, because, as the report’s foreword states: “Fundamentally, this is about ensuring that the public receives the quality of policing to which they are entitled.” I will turn now to the review’s recommendations, of which there are 27 in total. They are ambitious in breadth and scale and, taken together, they make a compelling case for change. While it is right that we now take the time to consider them in full, we welcome the commission’s proposals and the intent behind them. In particular, we are actively looking at the recommendation to create a formal senior constable rank and at how this could be done. The commission also recommends a new professional digital passport for every individual in policing, and other measures to put stronger supporting structures in place around professional development and performance. These could in the future help to build a route to a licence to practise, which is a proposal we included in our police reform White Paper, as one way of raising standards and promoting a stronger culture of professional development. Other recommendations from the review include: a new police leadership fast stream; a new targeted direct entry scheme to fill specific gaps in policing, with a focus on leaders from professions with transferable skills; and a role for the forthcoming national police service in promoting ethical policing at national level. As I have said, we will consider all the report’s findings and recommendations carefully. I am certain that they will be of great assistance as we advance our police reform agenda. A full Government response will follow in due course. In the meantime, we are making progress on leadership-related measures designed to improve public confidence and police performance, such as a new senior appointments panel and reforms to promotion processes, alongside the wider work we are doing on restructuring, including the creation of the national police service, which will provide a single source of strategic leadership and a stronger set of national standards. I will finish where I started: by paying tribute to the thousands of men and women who work tirelessly every day to protect our communities from harm. From the officers and staff on the frontline and their colleagues performing essential roles behind the scenes to the chief constables they ultimately report to, I am grateful to them all. While the threats they must tackle are evolving all the time, what will never change is our commitment to the founding principles of British policing, which dictate that in this country we police by consent, and assert that the police are the public and the public are the police. To uphold these traditions while meeting the demands of modern crimefighting, we must ensure that our police forces are fair, open and meritocratic workplaces that are able to meet the high standards we rightly expect of those entrusted with keeping their fellow citizens safe and driven forward by strong, effective leadership at all levels. Reform on the scale required is no easy task, but working in partnership with policing and aided by the findings of this important report, I believe that we can and will succeed in making our police service stronger and our society safer. I commend this statement to the House.
I thank the hon. Member for welcoming the report. I agree with some of what he said. He is right that it is not the work of critics looking in from the outside. The evidence base was developed through nine months of forensic work, talking to police across all levels within the force, meaning that this is a very honest assessment of the realities in which we find ourselves. As I said in my statement, police leadership has been a problem for some time. Inspections of police forces by His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services from 2023 to 2025 showed that not a single force had outstanding leadership. There are different leadership challenges across all our forces. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the public need to believe in the police and be confident in policing. The statistics on public confidence in policing have been worrying for some years now, and we must all look at them. The hon. Gentleman made the usual point about officer numbers, and I will make the usual point back: as he knows, the Conservative party cut 20,000 police and then recruited 20,000 police, but then put 12,000 of them behind desks. We are taking them away from desks and putting them on the frontline. We are also investing in technology. For example, the £75 million that I put into PoliceAI will transform the bureaucracy on which our police officers have to spend lots of their time, so that they can focus on the frontline. Overall, I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s nice comments on the leadership review. The review has been incredibly important, and it is important that we have cross-party agreement about the need to improve leadership in policing.
My hon. Friend is right. We have to be laser-focused on what will improve outcomes for the public and what will enable the police to do the job that we ask them to do. I do recommend that he reads the report—it is a very good read. At its heart, it says that we want our police to have sound judgment and common sense in their policing. We want them to be freed up to make the decisions that are commonsensical and the right thing to do. To do that, we have not only to strip away the bureaucracy and all the forms they have to fill in, but to ensure that they are trained to be the police officers we want them to be. How do we match that training with freeing up our police to get on and do the job that we all ask them to do in the first place?
Taking those points in turn and working backwards, we are working with the Police Federation on data on police suicide. It is an area where there are some contested figures, and we are trying to rectify that so we have the right picture, as well as putting in place more comprehensive wellbeing support for officers and staff so that they can get support in the difficult jobs they are faced with. The hon. Member asked whether the review will directly inform our reform agenda and the legislation we pass—absolutely it will. It is a very important part of the learnings that we will take forward. The hon. Member points to nepotism and other challenges we have in policing. Hon. Members might have seen Lord Blunkett on the television yesterday talking about that. It is absolutely true, and many the reforms pointed to in the report that we will carefully consider are aimed at taking that away, whether through having a targeted direct entry scheme or the new rank of senior constable. A leadership fast stream has been recommended, which would be interesting to look at. I recommend that he looks at all those recommendations. On bobbies on the beat, we have already increased the number of police on our streets by well over 3,000. As the hon. Member might know, we have a target of 13,000 police by the end of this Parliament.
I completely agree with my hon. Friend and congratulate him on his honesty in his description of his previous chiefs. There are on average fewer than three applicants for each chief constable job, which is frankly woeful, and many are filled by internal applicants. We do not have the pool of people going for these jobs that we want to see. We had already said that through the police reform programme we would set up a national body to help with recruitment, as well as giving the Home Secretary new powers to remove chief constables in extreme circumstances. There is a lot in this report about how we can improve the pipeline up to the chief constable level, but also how we can achieve a better system of promotion within the chief constable ranks and ensure that we get diversity of talent, so that we have—as we would want—a good cohort of people applying for every single job.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his words about the funding for Lincolnshire and join him in praising his PCC—and indeed all PCCs. We never had a problem with the model in terms of the individuals who held those posts; it is more the elected model that we do not think is right. As he will know, Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe is currently reviewing for us what the structures should be in a reformed police force that would sit between a national police service and local police areas; the local police areas will be absolutely key, and he will have some very interesting things to say about them. Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asked for policing not to be woke, not to have courses and so on. There is a lot to unpick in what we want our police to do. We want them to have the skills to make common-sense, good, practical decisions to catch criminals and keep us all safe. In order to achieve that, we must make sure that there is good training, but that has been lacking. There has been very little leadership training at any level in policing. In the Army, 15 years after leaving Sandhurst a colonel in charge of 1,500 people would have had on average 72 weeks of leadership development, whereas in that same time a chief super in the Met would have had two or three weeks tops. That cannot be right. We have to teach people to be the leaders that we need them to be.
I thank my hon. Friend for her question and her constant championing of this issue. She is right. We said in our manifesto that we would look at the powers on children and strip-searching. We have that job still to do, and we will do it in this Parliament; I would be very happy to work with her on it. She is also right that in some areas we have seen some improvements; on stop and search, for example, we have seen significant improvements, but there is a lack of data and an inconsistency in some of the data; we are looking at whether we can improve that so that we have the right picture before us. The work the police leadership commission undertook involved a substantial amount of evidence from women and people from different ethnic minorities, who talked about their struggles within policing. We know that more people from different ethnic minority backgrounds leave at different stages, so there is a job to be done there, and that is highlighted in this report.
I suspect that we are some way away from not having a warranted police officer as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner—but maybe we are not. We are open to looking at how to get some of our police leaders out on secondment in other, similar sectors, so that they can get some experience and then come back, and to looking at direct entry to the police force for people from similar roles. Many people in policing have different views about the correlation with the Army; as part of the review, there was some interesting work looking at what the Army does, and I recommend it to the right hon. Gentleman. The new rank of senior constable is interesting, as are the suggestions about very senior police roles. I urge him to read the report; although, as he says, some of these things are well known, there is a huge amount of nuance and detail that makes it well worth reading.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The report is really strong on the importance of good ethical policing so that we can reset our police leadership culture around high performance, cutting crime, keeping people safe and, on top of that, preparing for the challenges that lie ahead. As we know, the force has not been forward-looking enough in the equipment and training provided to tackle new forms of crime. In addition, we have a very young force: as of March last year, a third of our whole police cohort had been in the police for less than five years, so building experience through an ethical framework is important.
The reform that we have set out more broadly, not just in today’s report, is uncontested in many ways—some aspects are contested, but others are not. There is cross-party and cross-policing agreement about setting up a national police service and on having a more hyper-local focus, ensuring that the public can expect that acquisitive crimes that go unsolved are responded to in the way that they expect. Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe’s current work—as the hon. Gentleman says, it will straddle the periods of two Prime Ministers—is looking at the layers between police forces. There are different ways to approach that issue and we are working through all of them, but I do not think that anyone would disagree with the fundamental premise that, if we do not reform policing, we will not end up with a force that can face the future in the way that we need it to.
My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head, because no police officer should fear that. The reforms suggested in the report are there to support officers and staff to move through the force in a way that gives them the skills and training that they need to do the job that we have asked them to do. That is at the core of what we are trying to do. In relation to his remarks about his Conservative police and crime commissioner, we made the difficult decision to remove police and crime commissioners—that was a hard thing for them to hear, for obvious reasons. They have consistently continued to work with me and the Home Office, to help with the reforms and to keep giving their ideas and time, and I am very grateful to them for that.
I agree. The police have a duty to police without fear or favour, and that needs to be absolute. Everybody is equal under the law. I suspect that over the years, political decisions might have been made that may have made that job harder for the police. However, I do not agree with the right hon. Member’s analysis of what good leadership is. There are many different ways to cut crime and have officers’ backs, so I would not say that he has hit the nail on the head. We expect our officers to cut crime and to keep people safe. We can all agree on that, because that is what we need people to do, but the question is about how we do that. How has leadership been so poor over the years that we are not achieving that outcome? It may be that decisions made in this place are partially to blame, but it cannot be right that, for example, out of 140,000 officers and many thousands more staff, only about 500 officers and staff will start a centrally delivered national leadership programme this year. We cannot be designing good leadership when we are not training people how to do it.
The national police service will set consistent standards and ensure that we have a national workforce strategy setting out exactly how many different people we need and in what roles. The report shows multiple areas where forces have a compliance culture and risk aversion—people do not want to speak out for fear of consequences, and there is a resistance to new ideas. All those things suggest a culture in which people are not being trained, supported or allowed to do the fundamental job that we ask them to do, which is to cut crime and keep people safe. The national police service will be able to set those standards at a national level and ensure that there is consistency across all the forces, rather than the current inconsistent approach.
There is no room in policing for anything other than for the police to do their job without fear or favour, and that involves treating everybody equally under the law. Where the police are trained, have good leadership and are given good support, we believe we can ensure better outcomes for the citizens we are all here to serve. That is the point of the leadership work that has been done over many months, and it is the point of our reform programme. Where things go wrong, of course we must shine a light on that, and a huge amount of work has been done over the past few years—for example, police wearing body-worn cameras, publishing that evidence so that people can see it for themselves, and being quicker to speak publicly about what has happened in certain incidents. Those are all important, transparent changes that we are making to our police, but ultimately we need to make sure we are trying to bring people together through reforms that give them the policing we all need.
I think my hon. Friend would look very fine at this Dispatch Box. I hope he gets to be here and has the privilege I have had of being in this role. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to strip out all the bureaucracy and nonsense that the police have to deal with. All of us who have been out on response with police or been out with our neighbourhood police, or who have spent time with sergeants, know just how much bureaucracy, form-filling and time-wasting they face. We are trying to rip all of that away through reforms and technology so that the police can focus on cutting crime and keeping people safe, which is what they go into the force to do and what we all expect them to do. That is what I want to see, for the people of Harlow and people across the whole of this country.
On the right hon. Gentleman’s last point, there is a suggestion of targeted direct entry schemes at those levels, so there is an opportunity for that. The Government have not yet properly reviewed this idea, but there is a compelling case for the new rank of senior constable. The vast majority of our police—about 113,000—are constables. It is often said that there are people who naturally step into leadership roles and perhaps never become sergeants. They fulfil that function, but are not sergeants. That gap has been recognised in the work that has been done, and we should look at it. There are far fewer people in the top rungs, and then we have this big cohort where there is no role other than constable. That is worth looking at.
The hon. Lady speaks to one of the problems that I highlighted earlier, which is that in the main, fewer than three applicants apply for a chief constable role, and many such positions end up being filled by an internal candidate. It cannot be right, as she said, that in a force such as hers that position will only be filled by somebody internal or thinking about retiring. It is a brilliant job—challenging, yes, but brilliant, definitely —and we should have many people aspiring to it. I again thank all those who have contributed to this piece of work, including many people who have given much of their time to help, to support and to think these things through. There is much in this work that will help us get to a point where, as we would all want, multiple people want to apply when a chief officer role comes up.
Angela, from Great Barr, worked for the civil service for 42 years. She was looking forward to retirement but it became a nightmare when, despite her long and loyal service, she could not get her pension from Capita for six long months, causing her huge distress. Will the Minister commit to holding Capita to account every single day, and will he make sure that we remember this if the company ever applies for public contracts again?
I rise to welcome Lords amendments 1 to 6 and to support the progress being made regarding the implications of this Bill on the vital work of the humanitarian sector. I place on record my thanks to Baroness Northover, Lord Alton, Lord Anderson, Baroness Helic and Baroness D’Souza for all their work in the other place. I would also like to pay credit to the courageous NGOs operating on the frontlines of global crises, who I know are following the progress of this Bill carefully to understand how it might impact on their work. With them in mind, I would like to express my regret that measures covering the humanitarian sector do not go further to provide robust, full legal protections. As Chair of the International Development Committee, I wrote to the Home Office on this matter on 17 June as the sector was facing a terrifying landscape of legal uncertainty. Under the original drafting of the new offences, particularly on assisting or obtaining material benefit from a designated body, humanitarian actors were at risk. In conflict zones, where state-linked or designated actors hold territorial control, neutral humanitarian organisations are often required to engage in dangerous circumstances. That sometimes means that they must negotiate access, pay routine local utilities or permits, or provide medical care to all sides working in accordance with international humanitarian law. Under the Bill, humanitarian workers could have been prosecuted.
Can the Minister give some assurance that, in the guidance, we will be able to see that in black and white, so that the defence is laid out for all to see?
With permission, Mr Speaker, I shall make a statement about foreign interference in UK politics. Genuinely free and fair elections are the bedrock of our sovereignty. They are how our people in this country choose their Government and hold power to account. But we have seen our democracy under attack, whether it is foreign actors trying to find ways to divide us from each other and rip communities apart, funding divisive political actors here in the UK or through misinformation and disinformation online, or public figures refusing to play by the rules and eroding trust by being either unwilling or incapable of being honest and transparent about the support they receive. No Labour Government will allow our democratic process to be distorted by foreign interference, hostile states or malign actors here in the UK seeking to distort our politics. That is why, to complement the stringent steps that we are already taking to protect our democracy in the Representation of the People Bill, the Secretary of State commissioned Philip Rycroft to conduct an independent review of risks posed by foreign financial influence in UK politics. In March, we welcomed Mr Rycroft’s comprehensive assessment. Today, I am pleased to be publishing the Government’s full response, accepting all of Mr Rycroft’s recommendations. The UK already has a strong framework to detect, deter and disrupt foreign interference, but hostile actors adapt and so must we. We will now take forward a programme of reform to strengthen our defences and restore public confidence. In response to Mr Rycroft’s recommendations, we will strengthen our political finance rules through amendments to the Representation of the People Bill. As the House was told previously, we will introduce an annual £100,000 cap on donations and regulated transactions from overseas electors. A cap recognises legitimate participation while ending the risk of unlimited overseas money entering our politics. Recognising that risk continues when British citizens return to the UK, I am announcing that we will also introduce a minimum residency period. An overseas elector returning to the UK must be here for a full calendar year before that cap is lifted. To ensure that there is no opportunity for individuals to circumvent the new regime, once the measures come into force, the minimum residency period will apply retrospectively from the date of our original announcement on 25 March. We recognise that similar risks exist with other electors who have recently lived abroad but were not registered as overseas electors. We will apply the same cap and minimum residency period to anyone who moves to the UK after today and was not previously an overseas elector. To ensure that these individuals cannot circumvent the rules before a commencement, a modified cap will apply retrospectively. An annual cap of £100,000 per recipient will apply to donations that they make between today and the date of commencement of the measures, including any regulated transactions that they enter into from today. On commencement, the cap and the minimum residency period will apply in the same way as for those who were formerly overseas electors. As previously announced, we will introduce a moratorium on all political donations of any amount made via cryptocurrency. Until the regulatory environment is robust enough, donations in cryptocurrency should not be a route for money to be channelled into British politics. Mr Rycroft outlined clearly the ways in which he believes the corporate donations provisions in the Representation of the People Bill can be tightened. Having carefully considered his reasoning, we will amend the corporate donation test so that it is based on post-tax profits, rather than revenue measured over five years. No corporate donor should be able to put more into UK politics than it has made in post-tax profits. That makes it clear that corporate political donations must be rooted in genuine UK-based economic activity, closing a potential loophole that our adversaries might exploit. To ensure that our reforms to the political finance framework are robust and enforceable, we will introduce a new donor declaration to be made by anyone donating above a specified threshold. We will engage with the Electoral Commission and political parties as we develop the declaration, including an appropriate threshold. Mr Rycroft sets out the positive impact that the new “know your donor” rules will have in helping to ensure that parties act in the public interest. He also sets out his concerns about the rigour of those rules. We will strengthen the “know your donor” requirements in the Bill, adding location as a risk factor in parties’ due diligence around donations. We will also strengthen rules and transparency on donations to candidates. Mr Rycroft highlights significant risks in the current rules around these donations, as well as a lack of “transparency around what is spent, or around the donations being used to fund this spending”. We will therefore require candidates to declare that donations used to fund campaigning prior to formally becoming a candidate are from permissible sources. Donations made during that period above £2,230 will need to be declared. We will give the Electoral Commission stronger tools to do its job. Mr Rycroft reports that “basic transparency requirements are essential to sustaining public trust”, and that there is currently “unnecessary inhibition on the enforcement powers of the Commission.” We agree. We will therefore provide a clear statutory basis for standardised political finance reporting that will make the data easier to compare, scrutinise and enforce. We will create a broad, reciprocal information-sharing gateway, allowing the commission to work more effectively with relevant public authorities. We will extend the commission’s powers to require information outside a formal investigation, which means earlier scrutiny, faster action and stronger enforcement where risks emerge. These reforms will give the regulator the powers needed to protect the integrity of political finance. We will strengthen enforcement. The most serious breaches of electoral law, especially involving foreign interference, must be met with the right expertise and capacity. Mr Rycroft concludes that the “robustness” of the current enforcement arrangements require “the police apparatus…to hold the requisite expertise and to be adequately resourced…to deal with the complex instances of criminal breach of electoral law”. We will therefore work across Government and with policing partners to strengthen and formalise national capability in this area. We also accept that criminal thresholds and sentencing must provide a credible deterrent. We will work at pace with law enforcement, the Electoral Commission, prosecuting authorities, devolved Governments and political parties to develop proposals. We will also strengthen our response to the wider influencing environment, including hostile state activity online. Mr Rycroft makes important points concerning the dramatic change in recent years to the context in which our democratic process functions, and how this has “created new opportunities for malign foreign influence”, regardless of whether money is changing hands in the UK. We will never stop working to counter interference in our democracy. As information threats continue to evolve, we are taking robust action to tackle misinformation and disinformation, improving transparency in online political campaigning, building resilience to information manipulation, and supporting those at the very heart of our democratic system to identify and respond to emerging threats. We will also consider further reforms relating to online political advertising, digital imprints, lobbying transparency, and other routes through which foreign money may seek to influence our politics. That will include looking at the adequacy of the current regulated period, and taking forward work on artificial intelligence and algorithms. Finally, we accept the need for clear leadership and stronger co-ordination across Whitehall. Following Mr Rycroft’s recommendation, the Cabinet Secretary has given the permanent secretary of the Home Office lead responsibility for sustaining our democracy. This is a serious and substantial package of reforms that will bring more transparency to political finance, tighten donation rules and strengthen enforcement. This response shows the Government acting now where action is needed. This is a Government who are prepared to do the long-term work to keep our system secure. I thank Philip Rycroft for his important work. The Government will now move swiftly to implement his recommendations. The people of the UK must know that their elections are free, fair, and protected from foreign interference. I commend this statement to the House.
I thank the shadow Minister for his offer to work constructively with the Government on these issues. He and I have worked constructively to date, and we have met on a number of occasions to discuss these issues. The political parties committee at the Electoral Commission is also sighted on the changes. As we go forward, I will meet other parties’ representatives, too. I would have met them today, had we not tabled this statement, but I hope to do so as soon as possible. I underline that the existing standards arrangements are unaffected by these proposals. I look forward to meeting and working with the shadow Minister in the future.
The Chair of the Select Committee has raised some important points. I will not be drawn into discussing the specifics of individual hypothetical cases—we legislate in principle, and I will continue to do so—but I will give her further details of the arrangements in writing. She is correct in saying that we work across Government on this issue. I am joined on the Front Bench by the chair of the defending democracy taskforce—the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle)—which deals with partners across the Government, including the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Home Office, the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office, as well as the Electoral Commission. We work closely with our partners across the Government, and will continue to do so.
The hon. Lady is asking me to consider my job description, but given the sensitivity at the moment, I do not think I will go there. I hear what the hon. Lady has said about caps. I think that there is a role for political donations in our system: it leads to a thriving and healthy democracy that is funded properly and fairly. The Government’s aim was to legislate through the Representation of the People Bill, but in order to be absolutely sure that we had not left any loopholes, the Secretary of State took the decision to commission Philip Rycroft’s review. He did identify loopholes, we have accepted their existence, and we will be working to close them next week. This is an ongoing issue, and we do indeed work across the Government. I have explained about the defending democracy taskforce, and it is a busy and hectic arena, but I try to keep abreast of my entire portfolio.
The Government’s view is that the anonymity inherent in cryptocurrency transactions creates a route for foreign or illegal actors to channel money through our politics, so we are introducing a moratorium on the use of cryptocurrencies to safeguard the integrity of our political finance system. We intend for to moratorium to end once the regulatory environment around cryptocurrencies is robust enough to protect that integrity. Further legislation would be required at that point, and until we get there, the moratorium will stand. I am quite happy to write to my hon. Friend on her other points.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is absolutely correct. Through the Representation of the People Bill, we will take forward measures to address that.
I think the bar will be set very high before the moratorium ends—I can give my right hon. Friend that reassurance. We would need to be sure that no foreign or malign actor could use cryptocurrency to influence our political system before we would even consider lifting that moratorium. I can give my right hon. Friend an assurance that the bar will be very high before that happens—if it happens. We have more work to do on algorithms. We will be working hard with partners across Government to address this, and I hear what my right hon. Friend says. It is a serious issue that we will address.
I do not accept the right hon. Gentleman’s characterisation of this. The political parties have been consulted through the Electoral Commission panel, and we will continue to work with them as we move forward.
I agree with my hon. Friend that the priority is to protect our political system from interference by foreign powers, including Russia. We will always continue to hold Russia to account and to counter the threat posed by Putin’s regime, and we will work at pace across Government to support that work—and not just in the Representation of the People Bill or as a response to the review, but continuously.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I wonder which question the hon. Member would like me to answer most pressingly. On working across Government, yes, we do take this extremely seriously, and the work will not stop just because we have successfully completed stages of the Bill. The work is ongoing, and with our partners across Government we will continually monitor interference in our political system and act against it. On that particular platform, I am sure this is being considered, but I am not going to make a commitment at the Dispatch Box.
I hear what my right hon. Friend has said. I think the important thing is to close the loopholes for individuals returning from overseas. If they are not registered as an overseas elector, from today their contribution will be capped at £100,000 per annum, and I think that we would all support closing that loophole.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, because he raises an important point about enforcement. We are clear that the framework governing political finance must provide a strong, credible and effective deterrent against wrongdoing. It is important to make sure that evidential thresholds and sentencing provisions support, rather than hinder, the effective investigation and prosecution of serious offences, particularly when such offences may undermine public confidence in the democratic process. We therefore accept the underlying intent of Rycroft’s recommendation 12. However, the Government also consider that changes to the knowledge test and sentencing limits raise complex issues of proportionality, fairness and coherence across the wider criminal and electoral law framework. So we will be working closely with Ministers across the whole Government to ensure that this is addressed properly.
The Government’s view is that there is a place for legitimate donations in political financing in the UK. However, the Representation of the People Bill, with the extra insight that Philip Rycroft has produced, will provide us with one of the most, if not the most, strenuous sets of legislation on political financing that the country has ever seen. That does not mean to say that we are complacent and that we will not continue to monitor and act when necessary, but this is truly groundbreaking.
There are a number of arrangements for different citizens—reciprocal arrangements—in different parts of the country and for different countries. I will set out for the hon. Lady the arrangements as they stand at the moment. We are not proposing to change those arrangements.
I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution. As I said previously, it is the Government’s view that there is a place in UK political finance for legitimate donations and we do not intend to introduce a cap.