Health Bill (Thirteenth sitting)
Will the Minister give way?
Showing every spoken contribution, including 12,868 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
- Hansard source
- Hansard source
Health Bill (Thirteenth sitting)
I am a member of the Health and Social Care Committee, and the hon. Member is absolutely right to say that Healthwatch England raises issues with us. When the Department assumes those roles and functions, I very much doubt that it will be as keen to disclose such issues to the Committee.
- Hansard source
Health Bill (Thirteenth sitting)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. This is another example of the Government seeking to abolish an independent voice and merge its functions into an organisation that, frankly, will probably benefit to some extent from not having that independent scrutiny, but it is not for the betterment of patients or indeed the system. Healthwatch England is effective specifically because it is an independent voice for patients. We have not heard any compelling arguments for why, just because the system is not perfect, this change is better than leaving it alone. The argument has been advanced that this brings patient voice closer to decision making, but I would hope that the directly elected Ministers who represent people are what bring the voice of the people closer to decision making in the Department of Health. They should be the ones bringing patient voice to the heart of decision making—I am sure that they do, of course—and there are other means by which the Department formulates policies and decisions; it does not need to remove an independent patient voice through Healthwatch England, which serves a different purpose, to enhance that. That different purpose is this: some of the things that Healthwatch England advocates for and shines a light on are uncomfortable truths for decision makers and the Department of Health. It looks far too cosy to now bring that function into the decision-making process. Some of these issues need the light shedding on them that comes with an independent organisation providing patient voice. We have heard how the Select Committee and MPs, in their free-ranging Back-Bench function, benefit from hearing that voice through an independent organisation such as Healthwatch England, because it allows them to fulfil their scrutiny function. This is not just about decision making; it is also about scrutiny of decisions once they have been made. What will the Select Committee, MPs and journalists do when they no longer have the light shed by that independent voice? As my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon has pointed out, representatives who are employees in the Department of Health and Social Care rightly have other overriding primary duties to the employer—the Department itself. Let us ensure that patient voice is articulated by those who do not have a primary obligation to their employer, but have an obligation to an independent organisation with functions that serve solely to amplify and project the voice of patients. There are a number of issues with the abolition of local healthwatches, but I will save that for the next discussion. I want to make the wider point that there is a centralisation issue here too. Whether the Government like it or not, this measure will centralise powers into the Department; it will take outside powers from Healthwatch England and bring them in-house. That is nothing short of a centralising measure. The Minister needs to address the justification for that, because the more negatives there are to this decision, the more we need to understand the positives. So far, they are light indeed, or she has failed to articulate them. I think that there is a reason she has failed to articulate the positives: they simply do not exist. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I urge her to take some more interventions, because the arguments she has given to the Committee in her speeches at the end of each discussion have tended to raise more questions than they have answered. We can only deal with that by intervening on what she says.
- Hansard source
Health Bill (Thirteenth sitting)
The Government’s proposal to abolish the independent voice of patients is a mistake. It is a backward step, and I have seen no compelling reason why it should happen. Apparently, the voice of patients is going to be realised through integrated care boards and local authorities themselves, but that is not an independent patient voice. The very point of independence is that that voice is represented through an organisation that has no other function—no other skin in the game other than to represent that voice. It is remarkable that the Government are taking this step. I suspect the Minister will say—she has already given a number of reasons—that this is happening in order to bring the voice of patients closer to those who make decisions, but that is not the function of Healthwatch. If she wants to achieve those things, she can achieve them while maintaining Healthwatch as an independent patient voice. That independent voice ensures not only better decision making, but more effective scrutiny of decisions that have been made, and it does it by ensuring there is no blending or conflict of interest within a certain organisation—the decision maker. It does it by ensuring that light is cast on the critique, the scrutiny and the voice of patients, and that that process takes place outside the closed doors of, in this case, the integrated care board, not behind them. I suspect that the Minister will say that the system is not working, because there are too many good reports by Healthwatch that sit on a shelf and have not been implemented. I would far prefer for us all to be able to see reports that have not been implemented sitting on a shelf and try to do something about them than for the patient voice to be heard behind closed doors and not acted upon. That is the inevitable conclusion from this merger—this abolition of the independent patient voice. I want to talk about my experience on the Isle of Wight of the important work that our local healthwatch does. It assists me in my role as a parliamentarian and representative of the people, which is to scrutinise the decision-making of my local integrated care board and others, by providing the objective and unfiltered voice of patients through data, statistics and records, all of which will be lost within the ICB when this abolition takes place. Guess who is often on the sharp end, or who is often critiqued by the evidence provided by Healthwatch? It is the ICB itself. Therefore, it is no wonder that Professor Croisdale-Appleby, the chair of Healthwatch England, agreed with the characterisation that this looks like the ICBs or other bodies marking their own homework. They will get to decide which part of the patient voice is acted upon, and which part is ignored, without the public gaze or scrutiny that is provided by an independent report that decision makers, parliamentarians, local councillors and the independent media can also use. I will give a particular example from the Isle of Wight. Not so long ago, the integrated care board for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight proposed to reduce funding for Mountbatten hospice on the island and to redistribute that money to the mainland—it was, in my view, outrageous. The integrated care board had all the information available at its fingertips to realise that that was a bad proposal, and it had all the patient voices and views that it could possibly come across to realise that it was a mistake. It did not first consult representatives, such as me, my neighbour the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) or local councillors, before making its proposal. It was then Healthwatch’s data on the views and voices of patients, which had already been gathered, that helped the hon. Member, local councillors and me to make an argument against the proposal, directly to the ICB, in the media and to councillors at county hall. Without the tools that Healthwatch provided, it would have been so much harder to make that case. The ICB backed down on that proposal, but, if all that infrastructure, and all the information that Healthwatch independently provided, had sat behind closed doors within the ICB, we would not have had the opportunity to make our case and reverse the decision. That is one of the many thousands of real-life examples across the country where the affected patient voice was aired and properly used to reverse a bad decision, and it is an ability that will be lost. Another issue is the fact that the centralisation of powers will inevitably water down the patient voice. There are over 150 local healthwatch branches, but there are not 150 integrated care boards. In the case of the Isle of Wight—I use that as an example because it is my own patch, but it will be the same situation up and down the country—we have our own Healthwatch Isle of Wight, which represents the unique insight and views of patients on the island. If those powers go to the integrated care board, that will cover Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, a population nearly 10 times as big. Our unique patient voice will be watered down into the patient voice of Hampshire; while the Hampshire patient voice is equally valid, that will nevertheless reduce the unique insights of smaller populations all over the country by including them in something bigger. Particularly unique to my constituency and Isle of Wight West is health travel—that is, the reality of having to cross the Solent on a ferry to access so many health services. That is something that Healthwatch Isle of Wight uniquely understands through its direct consultation and work with island patients. Indeed, the people who work for our local healthwatch and its trustees are islanders. They do not just get it because they hear it; they get it because they live it. If that entire function is taken up to the Hampshire and Isle of Wight level, that unique insight will be lost. The ICB may give some regard to the cost of ferry travel and the implications of the disruption caused by having to travel on a ferry in order to access a hospital service that is not available on the Island, but its decision making will be much devalued in weight if it does not have the unique, independent patient voice coming from the Isle of Wight via our Healthwatch.
- Hansard source
Summer Jobs
Nowhere is the summer job more important for young people finding work than on the Isle of Wight, but employers are telling me that it is increasingly hard to employ young people because of the tax and the red tape that this Government have put on them, so it is no wonder that youth unemployment is up. I have an idea for the Minister: why does he not reform welfare and reverse the decisions made by his Government so that young people can find a job?
- Hansard source
Future of British Horseracing
Like my hon. Friend, I am no expert on the racing world, but I am lucky enough to represent Fakenham racecourse. Does he recognise that the loss of a racecourse impacts not just the racing world but the community that hosts it, both in direct employment and, importantly, in the indirect employment that supports the surrounding community and infrastructure? Furthermore, does he agree that, when a course goes, it goes forever and will never be replaced?
- Hansard source
Draft West Midlands Combined Authority (Key Route Network) (Amendment) Order 2026
Thank you for agreeing to chair us today, Sir Desmond. May I take this first opportunity to apologise to all members of the Committee for my late attendance? I am afraid I was at the Bar of the House of Lords, listening to the noble Lord Hendy speaking on Second Reading of the Railways Bill; his soaring rhetoric got the better of me, and I took my eye off the time. It is quite right, as the Minister has said, that the West Midlands Combined Authority is currently the odd one out when it comes to the application or the designation of key route networks. All other MCAs have the power to designate KRNs administratively, whereas, as we have heard, the WMCA has to use secondary legislation. These draft regulations therefore appear to the loyal Opposition to be a sensible tidying-up exercise and we do not intend to divide the Committee on it. The measure only works, however, if the powers that are devolved are used well. This is one of the big debates that we have in a central Government such as ours: we seek to devolve power to the lowest common denominator, to get power closer to the people, but at the same time, in giving up authority, we also give up the ability to change other people’s mistakes. With, perhaps, a new Prime Minister, I think that that is an issue we will be considering more frequently in this place. There are many examples, even to date, where devolution has not been successful, particularly when it comes to transport schemes. We only have to look outside the window at the mess that Mayor Khan is making of London with his persecution of drivers. There are many hon. Members on the Labour Benches—I have spoken to some; they are not in this room, I admit, but they sit on the Labour Benches—who look at low traffic neighbourhood orders with despair.
- Hansard source
Draft West Midlands Combined Authority (Key Route Network) (Amendment) Order 2026
I have already made clear that I think this is a sensible statutory instrument, and I am not proposing to oppose it. It is none the less a relevant consideration when considering devolution, of which this is a part, that we look at the wider issue of devolution to make sure that this is a sensible course of action. That is why it is relevant in this debate to consider what has happened in London, and also in Birmingham, where there has been notorious mismanagement of the roads fund, leading to a lack of repairs despite many hundreds of millions of pounds in private finance initiative credits’ having been awarded to that council. There is a bigger issue, of which this statutory instrument is a part—a sensible part, I accept—and it is incumbent upon the Minister to explain, in her response to my comments, how she will ensure that local authorities and mayoral combined authorities, particularly the West Midlands Combined Authority, use the powers granted effectively to enhance the experience of road users, rather than merely giving them powers and washing her hands of them.
- Hansard source
Early Release of Prisoners
It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), whose incredibly powerful speech gave voice to the victims and the impact that the horrific abuse has had on them. He has led on this issue consistently in this House, and his words should carry incredible weight. Today we are debating what should be an uncontroversial motion: to exclude from the Government’s automatic early release scheme anyone convicted of a serious offence against a child or an adult, including rape, and anyone convicted of attempted conspiracy or incitement to commit such offences. By any definition, those are some of the most serious crimes. I find it very difficult to understand how anyone would oppose the common-sense position that sex offenders should not benefit from the Government’s early release scheme. Sadly, it has been necessary to bring forward this motion, because Labour Members and Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords voted down our amendments to the Sentencing Act that would have done precisely that: prevent the early release of such offenders. Now it seems that there will not be a vote and our motion will simply be accepted. That is very welcome if it reflects a shift in policy, but the Minister who opened the debate was not clear whether he accepted that shift in policy or was simply making a tactical retreat on a vote that the Government knew they would lose. He repeatedly set out the rationale for the changes, as he had done earlier today to the media. The urgency is clear. Thousands of victims have received letters—my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley spoke about the offensive nature of those letters and their dreadful impact on victims—telling them that in September the first wave of criminals will be released. Others will not yet have been informed. The Minister once again failed to give the basic figure for the number of sex offenders who will be released under the provisions. Surely he must know—it is his job to know—and he should be honest and up front with the House. We can already picture the unedifying scenes of bottles of champagne being opened at the prison gates when these offenders are released. Meanwhile, the survivors of their crimes will—as they told every Member of this House in the letter to which the shadow Justice Secretary has referred—be feeling scared, heartbroken and angry that their perpetrators are not facing justice. The Minister once again rolled out the Aunt Sally argument that without these measures the justice system would have fallen over, but it is now two years since the general election; two years in which the Government have chosen to let people out early rather than take action on prison places. There are 16,000 people on remand in our prisons, yet the Government are failing to ensure that our courts are used to the maximum capacity.Today, for example, 14% of the Crown courts are not sitting. Where is the commissioning of emergency prison capacity? Where is the greater use of the rapid deployment cells that the previous Government rolled out, including at HMP Norwich in my county? Where is the urgency? That should be a national priority.
- Hansard source
Early Release of Prisoners
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The Lady Chief Justice appeared before parliamentary Committees to tell MPs that she could have more sitting days if only the Government would produce, I think, about £20 million of funding—a fairly minimal amount in the scheme of the £1.3 trillion that the Government spend every year—rather than go down the route of removing people’s right to jury trials in certain cases. The prison places coming online are those commissioned by the last Government. Yes, I accept that we should have commissioned more, but the Minister has confirmed in parliamentary answers that no new prisons have been planned or approved by this Government since the general election. Politics is about choices, and Ministers have chosen early release and softer sentencing rather than ensuring public protection and punishment. That is despite Ministers saying that the most serious and violent offenders would be excluded from this change. Anyone who has listened to the testimonies shared with the House by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley could not consider that they do not represent the most serious and violent offenders.
- Hansard source
Early Release of Prisoners
I agree with my right hon. Friend. It looked like Labour MPs were set to be whipped against this motion to stop the early release of sex offenders who had committed crimes against children. When I was first elected to this House, I had to explain to my Whip and the Minister in post that I would not support a measure to bring forward an early release scheme for offenders—I expect that many of my newly elected colleagues did the same—and that measure was withdrawn. While MPs may not be whipped to vote against the motion, and there seems to be common cause from Government Members in the Chamber, we heard nothing in opening from the Minister, who spoke but failed to address the next steps. There might be some grounds for optimism as apparently the right hon. Member for Makerfield is looking at how to tighten the scheme to exclude such offenders, but if that change is to happen, the legislation needs to come forward now. We know that the new Prime Minister will not be in post until we have risen for the summer recess. Tomorrow and Thursday, we will have general debates in the House. The motion—it looks like it will pass without a Division—calls on the Government to bring forward legislation immediately, so if the Government are accept the motion, what is their plan? Will they bring forward commencement regulations to delay implementation, as set out earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy)? Will they table emergency legislation tomorrow, Thursday or next week? We had no response on that from the Minister, which I found deeply disappointing. Those who were in the Gallery earlier and those victims across the country deserve answers today on what the Government will do. By passing the motion, we can begin the process to prevent those guilty of rape or grooming from being released early, we can provide reassurance to victims that we put their interests first, and we can show that public protection is our priority.
- Hansard source
Topical Questions
Just this year, Norway has opened up a licensing round for 70 new oil and gas blocks. It is reopening three old gas fields and has permitted development plans for three new fields. Meanwhile, this Government are still banning licences, taxing the industry out of business and not permitting Rosebank and Jackdaw. Why does the Secretary of State think he is right and our Norwegian friends are wrong?
- Hansard source
Health Bill (Twelfth sitting)
On a point of order, Sir Roger. I am a parliamentary patron and champion of Action on ME. I feel I ought to put that on the record, as we have an amendment on ME.
- Hansard source
Health Bill (Twelfth sitting)
As my hon. Friend said earlier, the problem comes when this new body within the CQC has to investigate the CQC. In the oral evidence session, I asked Dr Dash what would happen if the problem was CQC, and she gave what is probably the most extraordinary answer out of the many extraordinary answers she gave. It is worth repeating: “Well, we then have to deal with that as a problem. That is the same as saying, ‘What happens if the problem is this organisation or that one?’…What if the GMC is a problem? What if the Nursing and Midwifery Council is a problem?”––[Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 8, Q9.] She did not answer my question at all. In fact, she entirely sidestepped it. How can we have confidence in the Government’s proposal if the architect of the procedure cannot answer the most basic questions about the investigatory framework?
- Hansard source
Health Bill (Twelfth sitting)
Before I address the clauses, I say for the record that 21 years ago this morning, 52 people were murdered and 784 injured by Islamist terrorists in London. I pay tribute to all the medical professionals who treated those people in such difficult circumstances. I will speak to clauses 59 to 63 together because they all concern one of the most significant structural changes proposed in the Bill: the abolition of the Health Services Safety Investigations Body as an independent statutory organisation, and the transfer of its functions to the Care Quality Commission. At first glance, that may appear a relatively modest machinery-of-government change. The Minister argues that HSSIB’s functions will continue, its statutory safe-space protections will remain and operational independence will somehow be preserved. However, when one examines the evidence presented to the Committee, and that given to the Health and Social Care Committee, of which I am a member, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify the problem that this merger is intended to solve. Instead, what emerges is a remarkable degree of consensus among those with the greatest expertise in patient safety that this proposal carries significant risks while offering little measurable benefit. The question before us is therefore not whether HSSIB’s statutory functions can be transferred to another organisation, but whether Parliament should abolish an institution that it deliberately created to be independent. That distinction matters. Across public life, we recognise that effective scrutiny depends on institutional independence. Government expenditure is examined independently by the National Audit Office, citizens complain to independent ombudsmen rather than to the organisations about which they are complaining, air accidents are investigated independently by the Civil Aviation Authority, and rail accidents are investigated independently of the regulator. In each case, Parliament has recognised that organisations charged with investigating failures should not also be responsible for regulating, inspecting or enforcing against those they investigate. Healthcare should be no different. Indeed, if anything, healthcare should demand an even greater degree of independence. Learning from failure depends on the confidence of patients, clinicians and families that they can speak openly and without fear that the information that they provide will later be used for regulatory or enforcement purposes. That is precisely why HSSIB was created. Its purpose was never to attribute blame but to understand why systems fail, identify the underlying causes of patient harm and ensure that lessons are learned before similar tragedies occur again. That philosophy represented a deliberate shift away from a culture of blame and towards one of learning. It was modelled consciously on the air accidents investigation branch, whose success over many decades has demonstrated that independent, no-blame investigations produce better safety outcomes than investigations driven primarily by enforcement. It is therefore difficult to understand why the Government now seek to move away from the model that other safety-critical industries continue to regard as fundamental. Clause 59 would abolish that independent body and transfer its functions to the Care Quality Commission. In doing so, it would bring together two organisations with fundamentally different statutory purposes, different powers and, perhaps most importantly, different cultures. HSSIB investigates and the CQC regulates. One exists to ask why the system failed; the other exists to ask whether the organisation complied with required standards—those are not the same questions. Nor do HSSIB and CQC require the same relationship with those from whom evidence is obtained. An investigation depends on trust; a regulator depends on compliance. An investigator encourages candour; a regulator necessarily retains enforcement powers. The different roles are not a weakness of the system; they are precisely why Parliament chose to establish separate organisations. I would be grateful, therefore, if the Minister could explain what assessment has been made of the impact on public confidence of the investigator and the regulator becoming part of the same statutory organisation. More specifically, what assessment has been made of the likely effect on clinicians’ willingness to speak openly if the organisation receiving confidential evidence also contains the regulator responsible for inspecting and enforcing standards? That concern has been expressed not only by the Opposition, but repeatedly by independent experts—and indeed, we just heard the hon. Member for Lewisham East asking similar questions. Even the Care Quality Commission has expressed reservations. Evidence that it submitted to the Health and Social Care Committee earlier this year acknowledged that a lack of clarity remains regarding the respective roles of HSSIB and the CQC. Rather than resolving that uncertainty, the proposed merger risks deepening it. The CQC warned that preserving an effective separation between its investigatory and regulatory functions would be essential if confidence in HSSIB’s safe space were to be maintained, and it recognised the genuine risk of perceived conflicts of interest if those functions become blurred. I think that should give the Committee pause for thought. When the organisation receiving the additional responsibilities is itself warning about the difficulty of maintaining the boundaries, we should listen very carefully. If the CQC believes that the risks exist before the merger has even taken place, what confidence can Ministers offer that those risks will somehow disappear afterwards? Similarly, the all-party parliamentary group on patient safety, of which I am a member, has expressed concern that HSSIB should remain institutionally independent so that its evidence-based recommendations can continue to command confidence across the health system. Such concerns, as I said, are not confined to Parliament, nor are they confined to one political party. They are shared by patient safety organisations, healthcare professionals and those directly involved in investigating serious incidents. During our oral evidence sessions, I put a straightforward question to Dr Penny Dash. I observed that I could find almost no one apart from her and the Department who believed that moving HSSIB into the CQC was the right course of action. That was not intended as some sort of rhetorical flourish; it reflected the evidence before us. Former Secretaries of State, patient safety experts, independent investigators and numerous professional organisations have all questioned the proposal. Despite the breadth of concern, the Government have not produced compelling evidence that HSSIB, as presently constituted, is failing. Nor have they demonstrated that the separation between investigation and regulation is itself creating harm. Instead, Ministers have repeatedly assured us that HSSIB’s operational independence will remain, that safe space protections will remain and that independent investigations will remain. If that is indeed the Government’s position, an obvious question follows: if HSSIB will continue to operate independently, if its investigations will continue to be conducted independently and if its statutory protections will remain intact, why is it necessary to abolish the independent organisation at all? That question goes to the heart of clauses 59 to 63, and throughout the evidence presented to the Committee, I have heard no convincing answer. The Government ask Parliament to believe that everything that makes HSSIB valuable will continue unchanged, but at the same time, they ask Parliament to dismantle the very institutional structure deliberately designed to protect those characteristics. That is not merely an administrative contradiction, but a constitutional one. If institutional independence genuinely matters, it should be preserved. If institutional independence does not matter, Ministers should explain why Parliament was wrong to establish it in the first place. That question of necessity leads directly to the Government’s principal justifications for clauses 59 to 63, the Dash review. The Government have repeatedly relied on that review as the intellectual basis for abolishing HSSIB as the independent body, yet when one examines the report and the evidence given by its author to this Committee, the case becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. Without doubt, the review identifies a genuine problem: it concludes that the patient safety landscape has become crowded and in places confusing. Dr Dash told the Committee that she had identified more than 150 organisations operating across the wider patient safety landscape, and that clinicians were spending considerable time responding to different organisations, requesting information, completing forms and participating in overlapping reviews. She said that the system had become “busy and confusing”, and that that was distracting clinicians from improving the quality of care.
- Hansard source
Health Bill (Twelfth sitting)
My hon. Friend makes several key points, and he is absolutely right: what problem are the Government trying to solve here? If we believe in independence, believe in an investigatory body and believe it is working well—and it demonstrably is working well—why on earth would we change it? That goes to a further point: these clauses not only potentially provide for a transfer of HSSIB into CQC but add risk and failure in that procedure. My hon. Friend asks how we can be confident that the system is going to work if a patient or a clinician does not want to put their head above the parapet because they are frightened that there will be regulatory consequence. That is a fundamental problem with the Government’s proposal. As I have said several times in this speech, we have not had the answer to that and no answer seems to be forthcoming. I may touch on that in a bit more detail in a moment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash was clear on this topic when he gave evidence to the Committee: “My concern was that the NHS and actually health systems across the world are not very good at learning lessons when there are tragedies.”––[Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 29, Q52.] That is the problem that HSSIB was created to address and why I struggle with the Government’s argument. If the problem is that the NHS does not learn lessons effectively, the answer should be to strengthen the organisation designed specifically to help it to learn, not to weaken the independence of that organisation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash identified the precise part of the system that remains broken. He said: “the Bill does not do anything to address the bit that is not working well, and that bit is that the NHS is still very poor on acting on recommendations that are made”.––[Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 30, Q52.] That is the crucial point. The Government’s justification for the merger appears to be based on a concern that there are too many recommendations, too many reviews and too much duplication, but the evidence of my right hon. Friend highlights a different problem. The issue is not that we do not know what needs to change but that we too often fail to act on what we already know. The answer to that problem is not fewer independent investigations but stronger accountability for implementing recommendations. Indeed, my right hon. Friend made that point powerfully in his evidence. He explained that “What there needs to be is a formal system with a legal obligation on the Government.”––[Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 30, Q53.] He warned that too often recommendations disappear into what he described as “agree in principle”, which allows organisations to acknowledge a problem without committing to a timetable for fixing it. The Government are proposing structural change because recommendations are not always acted on, but the problem is not the existence of HSSIB; it is the absence of sufficient accountability when recommendations are made. The Government appear to be addressing the wrong failure. There is another important point from my right hon. Friend’s evidence. He explained that one of the long-term purposes of HSSIB was to reduce the need for expensive public inquiries. He told the Committee that “Ideally, when something goes wrong, what you want is for there to be an investigation and for lessons to be learned, so that grieving families can say, ‘Well, at least we are confident that this wouldn’t happen again.’” However, because families often lack confidence that lessons will actually be learned, they understandably seek public inquiries. My right hon. Friend explained: “families still think the only way they can get real change is through a public inquiry”––[Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 32, Q56.] That is an important warning. If confidence in HSSIB is reduced, the unintended consequence may be more public inquiries, not fewer—more cost, more delay and, most importantly, more time before lessons are learned and acted on. That is the opposite of what the Government say they want to achieve. The Government’s second argument is that safe space can be protected through legislation. I accept that Ministers intend to preserve those protections; however, the evidence we have heard demonstrates that the issue is not simply one of statutory wording but of culture and confidence. My right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash gave a particularly important example: he explained that the CQC plays a vital role because it rates healthcare organisations. Hospitals and GP practices care deeply about whether they are rated “outstanding”, “good”, “requires improvement” or “inadequate”. His concern was this: “If a staff member is talking openly to HSSIB about a failure of governance in their organisation, and that is the same organisation that could decide whether they get stripped of their ‘outstanding’ rating and downgraded to ‘good’ or ‘requires improvement’, my concern is that some people may worry and say, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be open, because this could affect my hospital’s rating.’”––[Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 33-34, Q59.] That is the practical problem: the Government’s argument relies on the assumption that staff will distinguish perfectly between different parts of the same organisation, but the concern is that a frontline clinician may not see those internal distinctions. They may simply see that the investigator and the regulator now sit under the same roof. When people are deciding whether to disclose something that may have consequences for themselves, their colleagues or their organisation, perception matters. As my right hon. Friend said, “we have to be really careful that people still have confidence in the safe space function if this merger goes ahead.”––[Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 34, Q59.] A similar point was made by Professor Carl Macrae from the University of Nottingham. While giving evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee, he said that it is difficult to conceive how legislation alone could overcome the fundamental conflict created by merging an independent safety investigation body with a regulator, given that the two organisations perform inherently different functions. The Government’s case depends on trust surviving that merger, but the evidence tells us that trust is precisely what is at risk. Dr Benneyworth made a similar point from HSSIB’s perspective. She told this Committee: “There needs to be much more clarity about governance and how that will work in the legislation to protect independence.” She went further and suggested that if the Government proceed, there would need to be much stronger safeguards, including “a legal duty on the CQC to protect the safe space.”––[Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 26, Q44.] That evidence is significant because it is not a witness arguing that change is impossible; it is the organisation at the centre of this proposal telling this Committee that the legislation, as drafted, does not provide sufficient reassurance. The Government’s response cannot simply be that they intend to be careful. The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), said that the integration would be approached with “enormous care”, but we have to ask what that actually means in legal terms. Where are the enforceable safeguards? What prevents a gradual erosion of independence once HSSIB is part of the regulator? History tells us that institutional safeguards matter precisely because they protect against future changes in culture, leadership or priorities. A body can begin with the best of intentions, but still drift over time—that is why Parliament creates independent institutions in the first place. It is not because Ministers are untrustworthy; it is because good governance recognises that structures matter. In this case, the structure matters enormously. Those concerns become even more significant when we consider the legal framework around protected information and the practical operation of safe space. The Government’s argument appears to rest on the belief that if the right protections are written into legislation, the independence of HSSIB can be preserved, but the evidence we have heard suggests that the challenge is much more fundamental. The question is not simply whether information is legally protected but whether staff, patients and families will continue to believe that it is protected. That distinction matters. During our evidence session, Dr Benneyworth highlighted a very specific concern about the drafting of the legislation. She explained that, at present, the clauses related to connected individuals could create uncertainty about who in the CQC might have access to protected material. She said: “The legislation needs to be much clearer around the protection of protected disclosure materials, to give the system confidence in our ability to hold and not share confidential information.”—[Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 25, Q41.] That is the crucial point: the success of HSSIB depends on confidence that information provided in confidence will remain within the investigation process. If there is uncertainty about whether information could move elsewhere in the organisation, the very existence of that uncertainty risks undermining safe space. Dr Benneyworth went further. She explained: “There needs to be a legal duty on the CQC to protect the safe space.”––[Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 25, Q41.] That is a remarkable admission. The organisation whose functions are being transferred to the CQC is telling Parliament that the Bill, as drafted, does not provide that sufficient certainty. The Government’s response cannot simply be that everyone involved will act in good faith. Good governance requires more than good intentions; it requires a structure that protects independence, regardless of who happens to lead an organisation in future, who is Secretary of State or who is in government. That is why Parliament creates these independent bodies in the first place. There is also a practical issue that cannot be dismissed. Dr Benneyworth explained that HSSIB is unique because it can investigate every part of the healthcare system, including national bodies. She told the Committee: “At the moment, we have the ability, being an independent organisation, to investigate any part of the system where there is a concern.”––[Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 23, Q38.] That includes looking at how national systems operate, how regulators function and how different parts of the health service interact. That independence is important, because sometimes the problem is not the provider delivering care; sometimes the problem is the system around it. A regulator may look at whether an organisation has complied with standards; an independent investigator may ask a different question: why did the system make it possible for failure to happen? The questions are complementary, but not interchangeable. Dr Benneyworth made precisely that point when discussing national failures. She explained that some problems cannot be solved by regulating an individual organisation, because the underlying issue sits elsewhere in the system. She said that is not something that can be changed by a regulator—a fundamental distinction. Regulation can identify whether standards have been met and independent investigation can identify whether the system itself needs to change. Both functions are necessary, but combining them risks weakening both. Those concerns sit within a wider challenge on candour in healthcare. The statutory duty of candour was introduced following the Francis inquiry into the failures of the Mid Staffordshire health trust. The duty’s purpose was straightforward: when something goes wrong, patients and families should receive an honest explanation. Despite that legal duty, however, evidence remains of a defensive culture within parts of healthcare. Legal advice can sometimes encourage organisations to think first about liability, rather than about learning. Administrators can understandably become concerned about litigation risk—and where fear dominates, openness suffers. That is precisely why the safe space matters. HSSIB was created to provide an environment where the priority is not defending an organisation, but understanding what happened. If we weaken confidence in that environment, we risk making the wider culture of candour even harder to achieve. The irony, of course, is that the Government argue that the merger will strengthen patient safety, and yet the evidence suggests that it could weaken one of the most important ingredients of patient safety: openness. I also want to express concerns shared with me directly by people working within HSSIB. During a meeting with some of my constituents who work in the organisation, individuals involved in patient safety investigations raised significant concerns about the proposed move. They believe that bringing HSSIB into the CQC represents a backward step for patient safety. They also expressed concern that the rationale for the merger has shifted. Initially, the argument appeared to focus on streamlining and reducing duplication; increasingly, however, it appears to be about reducing the number of safety recommendations being made. That misunderstands the problem. As I have pointed out before, the challenge is not the existence of recommendations but ensuring that those recommendations lead to action. Indeed, I was informed that HSSIB has already been developing a recommendations monitoring system, specifically designed to improve implementation and oversight. In other words, the organisation is already working to address the very issue now being used as justification for restructuring it. That brings me back to the evidence given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash. He identified what I believe to be the central weakness in the Government’s argument: “the Bill does not do anything to address the bit that is not working well, and that bit is that the NHS is still very poor on acting on recommendations that are made”.––[Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 30, Q52.] That is the point that Ministers need to answer. If recommendations are not being implemented, strengthen implementation; if accountability is weak, strengthen accountability; and if learning is not embedded, create mechanisms to ensure that learning happens—but do not weaken the independence of a body responsible for identifying those lessons. The risk is that the Government solve the wrong problem. They will remove the independence of the investigator, while leaving untouched the failure to act on what investigators discover. After considering the evidence presented to this Committee, the evidence that we heard in the Select Committee and my conversations with my constituents and others, I remain unable to support clauses 59 to 63. That is not because I oppose reform or believe that the patient safety landscape cannot improve—of course it can. The NHS must continue to learn, adapt and improve, but improvement requires honesty about what is working and what is not. The evidence suggests that HSSIB’s independent investigative model is one of the things that is working and that failure lies elsewhere. It lies in whether recommendations are being implemented, whether organisations learn quickly enough and whether staff feel safe enough to speak up. The answer to those problems is not to remove independence, but to strengthen it. The creation of HSSIB represented a recognition by Parliament that healthcare needed the same principles of independent safety investigation that serve aviation, rail and other high-risk industry so well. Those principles exist for a reason: when something goes wrong, society needs an organisation that people trust to ask what happened, why it happened and what must change to prevent it from happening again. That organisation must be separate from those responsible for regulating the system. It must be able to investigate without fear or favour. It must command the confidence of patients, families and healthcare professionals. The Government say that the protections will remain, but the evidence we have heard overwhelmingly demonstrates that confidence in those protections is precisely what is at risk. Once institutional independence is removed, it simply cannot be recreated through internal guidance or assurances. The structure matters, the culture matters and the trust matters. For those reasons, I urge the Minister to reconsider clauses 59 to 63. If the Government believe that improvements can be made to co-ordination, accountability or implementation, discussions on that should absolutely continue and the Opposition would welcome them. However, the clauses go much further. They remove the independent status, which is so important. Given the enormous human and financial cost of avoidable harm in healthcare, Parliament should be extremely cautious before weakening one of the few mechanisms specifically designed to prevent it.
- Hansard source
Health Bill (Twelfth sitting)
As I said throughout my speech, I am against this proposal whatever the nature of the CQC. However, does it strike my hon. Friend, as it strikes me, that the problems of moving the functions of HSSIB into the CQC are compounded given that the CQC, as he alluded to, is not functioning well and does not have the confidence of patients and clinicians?
- Hansard source
Health Bill (Thirteenth sitting)
I hesitate to intervene on the hon. Gentleman, because he seems to be straying into the next grouping and I do not want to encourage him down that route, but now that he has raised it, I share his concern. I do not know what it is like in his area, but the ICB areas that local branches of healthwatch will be absorbed into are even larger than counties. In my area, Surrey and Sussex make up three administrative counties. That is an even larger area. The provisions are clearly not the solution to the problem that the hon. Gentleman is outlining.
- Hansard source
Health Bill (Thirteenth sitting)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Ms Lewell. I think right hon. and hon. Members will be disappointed to know I am not going to speak too long on this, but they need not worry: in the next grouping, usual service will resume. I want to pick up a few points on the abolition of national Healthwatch. When we took evidence from Sarah Woolnough of the King’s Fund, I asked her a fairly open-ended question about when she gave evidence at the Health and Social Care Select Committee. I put it to her that she “seemed to suggest that the Government could achieve what they needed to in the 10-year plan without this reorganisation.”––[Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 15, Q23.] She gave me an answer that essentially said it could all be done without the need for the reorganisation that is in the current NHS Bill. I then asked Mr Jacob Lant, a representative from National Voices, whether he would agree with that and, unprompted, because I did not mention Healthwatch in my question, he replied: “Yes. I kind of think, as the debate goes on, that—with the changes to Healthwatch in particular—you could achieve so much without legislation. You could beef up the internal functions for listening to a patient and engaging with them without legislation—there is no requirement for that. You could invest more resource in that, and you could do the same with Healthwatch.”––[Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 16, Q24.] We already know from the evidence that we received, unprompted, from National Voices and the King’s Fund that the abolition of NHS England will not solve the problems that the Minister, the Government and the Department think are there, and indeed it could be done in a different way. I listened closely to the hon. Member for Lichfield. He seemed to be presenting a number of problems, but the solution that the Government have come up with does not hold water. As right hon. and hon. Friends have said, the removal of Healthwatch England and the introduction of a director for patient experience simply does not work because the independence—which is so fundamental to the HSSIB that we talked about— of local healthwatches, which we will talk about, and of Healthwatch England is fundamental to the ability of that organisation to do its job. In a previous career I worked for the Getting It Right First Time programme in the NHS. When that programme first started, it sat outside the structures of what was then NHS Improvement, latterly NHS England. At that point we could make recommendations to the NHS— I do not mean this flippantly —in a way that was unrestricted. As soon as we were brought into NHS England, into a governmental structure, the recommendations that we put forward were looked at and scrutinised and we were told often, “We do not have the money to afford that”, or, “That is not in our plan.” And that is precisely what will happen if recommendations are put through the director of patient experience. As others have said, when this director of patient experience arrives at a Select Committee, he or she will be there to represent and defend the Department and Ministers, understandably, because that is who he or she will work for. They will not be able to stand up, go on television or the radio, do the broadcast interviews or make representations, because they will be a creature of the system rather than a scrutineer of the system and an advocate for patients. That is a fundamental problem, and while I accept that there may be ways to improve Healthwatch England, as Members have outlined, this simply will not do it.
- Hansard source
Health Bill (Thirteenth sitting)
I want to address this clause because I believe that the Government are making a significant mistake by abolishing Healthwatch England, as they have just done with the group of amendments, and local healthwatch organisations. The Government have sought to reassure the Committee that the functions currently carried out by Healthwatch will continue; however, that is not the question before us. The question is whether those functions can continue with the same degree of independence, credibility and public confidence once they are absorbed into the organisations that they currently scrutinise. Having listened carefully to the witnesses who appeared before the Committee, and having reflected on the debate on Second Reading, I do not believe that the Government have demonstrated that they care. Once again, the Government’s case rests largely on the recommendations of Dr Penny Dash. Dr Dash argued that patient engagement should sit much closer to those responsible for planning and delivering services, that providers and commissioners gather and respond to patient experience themselves, that integrated care boards already possess engagement functions capable of undertaking that work, and that the variation between local healthwatch organisations means that the current statutory model is no longer justified. Those are interesting arguments, but they were examined by this Committee and, in my view, were not sustained by the evidence that we subsequently heard. Indeed, what struck me throughout the oral evidence sessions was not simply that witnesses disagreed with Dr Dash’s conclusions but that they challenged the central assumptions on which they depend. Dr Dash’s recommendations assume that independence is desirable but not essential. The overwhelming weight of evidence presented to this Committee suggests precisely the opposite. That distinction matters, because this debate is not fundamentally about patient experience. No member of this Committee disputes that patients should influence the design and delivery of services; Healthwatch already exists to help to achieve precisely that. The issue before us is different: it is whether those speaking on behalf of patients should remain institutionally independent of the organisations whose decisions they are expected to scrutinise. Throughout our proceedings, I have become increasingly convinced that that is the question that Ministers have not answered adequately.
- Hansard source
Health Bill (Thirteenth sitting)
Obviously, I have sympathy for what the hon. Member is trying to achieve—ensuring that our data systems are free from potential hacking by either state or non-state actors is very important—but I cannot see anything in new clause 4 about the size of contracts. Does his suggestion relate to any contract, however small, that was given to a non-UK-based company? It is not clear what he means by a non-United Kingdom company. Is that one that is headquartered here, one that is listed on our stock exchange, or one that has a CEO who is a British citizen? I am not quite sure what he means by a UK-based company, but if we can define an outside-based one, is he saying that any contract of any size given to such a company will have to come to Parliament?
- Hansard source
Topical Questions
T6. During the election, the Government promised to cut bills by £300; in fact, they have gone up by £300. With that level of financial acumen, the Secretary of State will fit right in, in his new job at the Treasury, but my constituents and local businesses want their bills cut now, not at some nebulous point in the future. When he gets to the Treasury, will he remove the taxes on our energy industry, to ensure that bills actually come down?
- Hansard source
Large-scale Solar Farms
Ministers have consistently been trying to argue that solar needs 1% of agricultural land, yet in a spectacular display of disjointed Government, their own land use framework talks about 9% of our agricultural land being taken out of food production for environmental schemes. At the same time—[Interruption.]
- Hansard source
Large-scale Solar Farms
At the same time, EDF chief executive Simone Rossi has said that the Energy Secretary’s expansion of solar and wind is creating far more electricity generation capacity than is needed. EDF is even calling for a pause on the approval of new projects, so before he shuffles over or perhaps shuffles off, will the Secretary of State use his last days in post to see sense, drop the dogma, and save our countryside from yet more farm-destroying, inefficient solar?
- Hansard source
Summer Jobs
I beg to move, That this House regrets the combination of the rise in employers’ National Insurance contributions, the impact of the Employment Rights Act 2025, and the regulations that make it more difficult for young people to get their first job; further regrets the destructive impact that the Government’s policies have had on entry-level, flexible and seasonal work in particular; also regrets the Government’s plans to give Mayors powers to introduce an overnight visitor levy, making staycations in England less attractive and less affordable, while risking jobs in the tourism and hospitality industries that depend on domestic visitors; calls on the Government to change course to support summer jobs, flexible working and seasonal work, on which the hospitality, leisure and retail sectors depend; and further calls on the Government to abolish business rates for high street businesses, to boost the economy and save summer jobs. We know that a good start in life is critical, and that is certainly true in the world of work. Everyone remembers their first job—sometimes fondly, other times not. A first job, however, is not just a first wage; it is the first time a young person learns the world of work. It teaches them that it will pay them for what they can do, that they have a role to play, that they are needed and that they belong. It is where they learn to turn up on time, to look a customer in the eye, and to take pride in a shift well worked and a wage honestly earned. So this debate is not insignificant; it is about whether the next generation gets that same chance or whether the Government pull the ladder up behind them. I contend that, rung by rung, that is exactly what they are doing. As a Conservative, I have always believed in the dignity of work, of the security and freedom that a regular wage brings, but today too many people are being held back. For their sake, it is important that we reflect on why. They are not being held back by a lack of their own ambition—that exists in abundance. Nor are many people being stopped by their parents, schools, colleges or universities—they all want them to succeed. Instead, more often than not, as the chief economist at the Institute of Directors has pointed out, it is Government policy that, in her words, is “choking off work opportunities for young people”. Over 1 million young people aged 16 to 24 are now not in education, employment or training.
- Hansard source
Summer Jobs
I am always grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He clearly learned in his first job the importance of showing up and he certainly does every single day in this place, which I commend him for. I agree with him, and I will set out in detail what I believe are the causes of the situation we find ourselves in today, with 1 million young people aged 16 to 24 not in education, employment or training.
- Hansard source
Summer Jobs
That is exactly right. There is no point in pay being on an upwards trajectory, which we all support, if there are no jobs in the first place. Actually, under this Government, the record is clear that employment levels are in decline, not on a positive trajectory.
- Hansard source
Summer Jobs
Of course, that is exactly why the previous Conservative Government had such a huge focus on skills, training and vocational courses. My own constituency of Grantham and Stamford benefited at the time from much-needed funding to boost skills and vocational training, so my right hon. Friend is absolutely right.
- Hansard source
Summer Jobs
I give way to the hon. Member for Harlow.
- Hansard source
Summer Jobs
I will always agree on the need for financial literacy, but the point we are making today is that we believe in work—work as a route out of poverty, work as a way to increase the prosperity of this country—and we are highlighting the red tape that is now strangling businesses and preventing them from hiring young workers, which would otherwise give them a step on the ladder.
- Hansard source
Summer Jobs
Let me make some progress for the moment. It is clear that something is not working, as we have all been saying, so we have to try to understand and explain why that is the case. We should not need to point this out, but higher taxes and more regulation are simply not conducive to economic growth or higher employment. If we consider what a business must now weigh up before looking to hire somebody, first, of course, there is the jobs tax—a tax that targets not profit or success, but the very basic act of employing another human being.
- Hansard source
Summer Jobs
Time and again, we in the Opposition try to make the point that it is not the result of any one particular policy; it is the overall environment. We do not, as a state or as a Government, create jobs; it is businesses that create jobs, and they need to know that the Government are behind them. They need to know that there is an environment in which they can invest in people. Right now, for a combination of reasons, that is not the case.
- Hansard source
Summer Jobs
I am very grateful to the hon. Member for making that point. As I was saying, it is not one particular policy that impacts this issue. As he points out, it is a combination of factors, particularly to do with geography in rural areas such as his but also in Lincolnshire, and I agree that transport connectivity is a critical part of that. The way in which we pay for more public infrastructure, by the way, is to boost tax receipts through work, employment, enterprise and risk taking, but that point has been lost right now, because Labour’s £25 billion jobs tax has forced businesses to cut back hiring at every level, especially young people. Thousands of people have now been let go because of the Chancellor’s choices. Secondly, there are the permits, restrictions and forms—all the red tape that is wrapped around those looking to employ young people who simply want to work during the summer. That is a fact that we are trying to highlight through our motion today, and I encourage everybody to look at the detail of it, because it is not often talked about in this place, but out there, among young people, it is.
- Hansard source
Summer Jobs
Completely. There is even now a tax on the great British holiday, which impacts my hon. Friend’s constituency, Mr Speaker’s and many others. The overnight visitor levy, known as the holiday tax, threatens my hon. Friend’s area, just as it threatens Whitby, Scarborough, Blackpool, Bournemouth, the Norfolk coast and even my county in the Lincolnshire Wolds. The Government call it “modest”, but the seaside landlady who is struggling to fill her rooms calls it the difference between a season that works and one that does not. UKHospitality has warned that this tax means that consumers visiting destinations in England are charged double the tax of visiting Paris and 70% more than in Barcelona or Rome. In effect, the Government’s half a billion-pound holiday tax represents little more than a self-inflicted trade tariff on domestic breaks, driving holidaymakers overseas.
- Hansard source
Summer Jobs
The facts are there for all to see. As I was saying, it is vital that we support the business community, and that includes small businesses. So often the narrative is about large multinationals, but it is SMEs and small business owners who drive our country forward and employ people across the country, especially young people. Another thing that businesses in this country are facing is the now infamous Employment Rights Act 2025, which has created so much red tape that the corner café has to focus on hiring a lawyer before it hires a waiter. The Government have laid down so many requirements for employers who need to move underperforming employees on. Indeed, their own law says that after six months, employees are protected from unfair dismissal, but I have to ask, where were these protections for the poor old Prime Minister, with whom they dispatched over a single weekend on WhatsApp? He got less probation than a probationary barista. It is one rule for the shop floor and another rule for the Labour Front Bench.
- Hansard source
Summer Jobs
The whole point here is that businesses, the country and people need flexibility. The whole country runs on choice and flexibility, and if there are unnecessary restrictions that harm economic activity and prevent young people from entering the workforce when they want to, that is clearly not a good thing for our country. I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, because he makes a very good point about the Employment Rights Act, which we have made it very clear we disagree with. This is not just about the dismissal elements of the Employment Rights Act. The Act also makes British businesses have a fair and open recruitment process. Businesses must find the right candidate, on merit, from a proper field of candidates, and yet here we are today with the Government filling the highest office of the land from a shortlist of one! They will regulate the Saturday job to within an inch of its life but run their own leadership contest with all the rigour of a one-ticket raffle. They will hold a whole by-election to find work for one man, while imposing a permit form on every under-16 in the country, a Sunday working ban and a levy on the town in which they live. It is the same old Labour time and again: “Rules for thee, but not for me.” It is two years since the last election, and Labour’s policies are starting to bite. Job vacancies are down by almost 150,000. Thousands of job opportunities have gone, and the youth unemployment rate is up by 2.5%—that is 735,000 young people now out of work. Borrowing costs have hit record highs. Labour is spending more on welfare than defence, education and prisons combined. Our economy is shrinking. It does not have to be this way. We have a plan that respects young people and the fact that they want to work hard and succeed. We have a plan to back young people already in work and support those who want to find work and gain experience, especially through a summer job. Where Labour’s red tape harms employment, we will work with businesses to scrap it. That includes red tape on the employment of under-16s, such as the two-hour Sunday working limit. In sectors where Labour’s taxes threaten the largest impact, we will choose a different course: we will abolish business rates entirely for thousands of retail, hospitality and leisure businesses on our high streets, with a 100% relief benefiting one quarter of a million firms. We have ruled out the Government’s disastrous holiday tax on working families and treasured domestic tourist destinations. Unlike the Government, we understand that to back businesses and employers is to back their customers and the people they employ too. We cannot lose the aspiration of a generation because of the barrier raised by the failed choices of this Government. Young people want to work. They want to do their bit; they want to build their own futures. It is our job not to stand in their way but to support them. Our plan does just that. The Labour party has spent all summer worrying about one man’s job. We say worry about all the others, back British businesses, back our high streets and back the young people of this country, who ask for nothing more than the chance to work.
- Hansard source
Future of British Horseracing
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. It is a pleasure to see leading trainer Nicky Henderson here today. That should indicate how important this debate is to the racing industry. I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) on securing this debate. I should make clear at the outset that my husband is a board member of the Racecourse Association and chairman of the National Horseracing College. Previous speakers have set out the importance of the horseracing industry to the economy, tax receipts and jobs, not to mention its importance to local communities and to sporting excellence in the UK. This sport is genuinely world-leading, and we should all be immensely proud of it. I do not actually think the Government need persuading of the case; they already understand it. That can be seen from last year’s Budget, when the Chancellor exempted horseracing from her increases in gambling taxes, something that was welcomed by the horseracing industry following its “Axe the Racing Tax” campaign. I do not fear this Government deliberately seeking to destroy or undermine horseracing in the UK, but I very much fear them doing so inadvertently through ignorance. I am not asking them to do something to support horseracing. Instead, I am urging them not to do two things in particular that would decimate horseracing in the UK if they went ahead. My first request is that the Government direct the completely hopeless Gambling Commission to abandon any form of financial risk assessment or affordability checks in relation to the betting industry. The previous Government rightly said that any checks should be entirely frictionless, but the pilot that has been carried out has been a complete failure. Rather than flogging a dead horse, the Government and the Gambling Commission must abandon this policy. Despite the claim that financial checks are not being carried out—merely showing the incompetence of the Gambling Commission, which is made up of people who know nothing about gambling and do not even understand their own policies—those checks are already driving punters in their droves to the black market. Roughly 10% of gambling in the UK is now carried out on the black market, and that is growing rapidly, all due to the Government’s tax policies and the Gambling Commission’s regulatory policies, which mean that the regulated sector cannot compete with the black market. That is, of course, bad for player protection, and it is also devastating for the horseracing industry, which relies on the betting industry and punters for much of its income.
- Hansard source
Future of British Horseracing
Better support is needed from everywhere—that is what I am talking about—but those are key issues that are undermining the industry. That is why I will press on with the key matters today that are threatening the racing industry. Will the Minister assure the House that those affordability checks will be abandoned, despite today’s senseless announcement by the Gambling Commission? My second request is that the Government ignore the siren voices of the Social Market Foundation and its recent policy suggestion to double the tax on category B gaming machines from 20% to 40%. The SMF tried to portray itself last year as a friend of horseracing, and unfortunately some in the industry, who should have known better, were taken in. That proposal proves beyond doubt that the SMF is not a friend but an enemy of the horseracing industry. Such a swingeing increase in the tax rate—which would also destroy casinos and bingo halls—would virtually collapse the remaining betting shops in the UK, whose numbers have already reduced rapidly in recent years. Regulus Partners has calculated that this policy would close 70% of the remaining betting shops, reducing their number from 5,500 to just 1,500. Each and every betting shop contributes a significant amount of money to horseracing through levy payments and, especially, media rights payments. Will the Minister set out how much money horseracing gets from betting shops and take this opportunity to rule out the Government carrying out the SMF policy proposal? Will she also explain how many betting shops she believes will close if the SMF tax proposal on machines is implemented? The simple fact is that, if the Minister will not stop the affordability checks and does not get a grip on the reins of the out-of-control Gambling Commission, and if the Government will not rule out vastly increasing the tax on category B machines, any promise today to support horseracing will be completely worthless, and will undermine the Chancellor’s policy in the last Budget. I await the Minister’s speech with great interest, as will the entire horseracing industry.
- Hansard source
Future of British Horseracing
I appreciate that the Minister might not be able to answer some of the very specific questions I raised, so could she make sure that the Gambling Minister writes to me with the answers?
- Hansard source
Climate Change: International Discussions
Has the Minister discussed the Peak Cluster project with her international counterparts? What have they made of the lack of cost-benefit analysis by the British Government? Will carbon dioxide be imported from abroad into the UK if this ludicrous and unpopular proposal goes ahead?