China: Threat to UK Interests
8. What assessment she has made of the level of threat that China poses to UK interests.
5,731 spoken contributions under 12 words (interjections such as “Will the hon. Member give way?”) are hidden. Show them
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China: Threat to UK Interests
I thank the Foreign Secretary for that answer. There is a rumour going round Whitehall that the Foreign Secretary is not the Foreign Secretary, and that the real Foreign Secretary is Mr Jonathan Powell. That could not possibly be the case, of course, because it would make a mockery of the ability to hold the Foreign Secretary to account. Can the Foreign Secretary demonstrate that she really is in charge by telling us the precise instructions that she gave Mr Powell before he met the Chinese Foreign Minister four days ago?
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Catapults and Antisocial Behaviour
It is, as ever, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) on arranging this debate. He is a tireless champion for his constituents. I can testify to his enthusiasm for Spelthorne Gymnastics, as he shared with us all some videos of his visit, of which my only criticism was that he was not in formation in them, which is something I expect to be corrected at the earliest opportunity. Law and order is the bedrock of a strong society, but the laws we make in this House are meaningful only when they are enforced. In too many areas, there is a troubling gap between the rules on paper and the reality of people’s lives. When it comes to catapults, we have the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, the Wild Mammals (Protection) Act 1996, the Animal Welfare Act 2006, the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 2021 and the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, all of which authorise meaningful powers for police officers to stop this sort of behaviour, but many people feel that those powers are not being used effectively, and too often they are right. We have heard this afternoon too many examples from my hon. Friends the Members for Spelthorne and for Windsor (Jack Rankin), and from my county neighbours, the hon. Members for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) and for Dartford (Jim Dickson). If they would like us, as a cross-party group, to discuss this issue with Kent police, I would be very keen to join them. I know the issue too well from reports of catapult-related crimes in my own constituency. In Marden, criminals have killed wildlife. In Staplehurst, bus windows have been smashed and passengers injured by flying glass. In Tenterden, a kitchen window was shattered by a catapulted marble. In Cranbrook, Woodpeckers Preschool suffered three smashed windows overnight. This sort of behaviour is horrible for those subjected to it, and it must not go unchallenged. It erodes trust in the state and contributes to a sense that our country is becoming more lawless and disorderly. Early responses to my ongoing constituency crime survey show that of those who say they have been a victim of crime, roughly two in three did not report it, because they felt that would not lead to any action. Our constituents do not want to live in a society in which someone can smash a pre-school window or kill a theoretically protected animal with a catapult and simply get away with it. Catapults themselves are not new, but as we have heard this afternoon, the scale and brazenness of their misuse are. In Kent, for example, police believe that slingshot usage has risen by more than 40% in just two years. For too many people, antisocial behaviour is becoming the background noise of everyday life, creating a creeping sense that our public spaces are not safe or respected. We must be honest about what this behaviour means in practice. It is criminal damage, intimidation and harassment, and, far too often, cruelty to wildlife. As several hon. Members have said, it could easily also become assault or bodily harm. On paper, these offences carry serious penalties, but our legislation is only as strong as our willingness and ability to enforce it. At the very least, the Government must ensure that our current laws are being properly enforced before looking to make new ones. Sadly, under this Government, police numbers have been falling. There has been a decline of more than 1,300 officers in a single year. Recruitment is down by 17%. Rising costs from recent Budgets, particularly changes to employer’s national insurance contributions, have created millions in unplanned pressure for policing. What is the Minister’s plan to increase recruitment and retention of police officers? Will she set out the assessment the Home Office has made of the impact of the national insurance changes on policing capacity? This October, the Opposition put forward a plan to tackle those sorts of crimes. We would recruit 10,000 additional police officers, backed by £800 million of funding, and would triple the use of stop and search, returning it to 2008 levels and giving officers the backing they need to take weapons and dangerous items off our streets. Will the Minister adopt our plan for 10,000 new officers and 2,000 in hotspot patrol areas? Will she confirm that the Government will give the police the powers and political backing they need to enforce the laws Parliament has passed, including through greater use of stop and search? Our public safety depends not only on the passing of Bills in this House, but on our ability to enforce our laws consistently and effectively.
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Women and Girls: Isle of Wight
I congratulate my constituency neighbour on securing this debate and highlighting the issues, and thank him for his ongoing work to help to make the island a better place to live for women and girls. I associate myself with all his remarks and arguments. Policymakers and commissioners have often overlooked the unique challenges that we face as an island. I urge the current Government, although it would be true of any Government, to remember the challenges we face and to be prepared to make special provision for us, because we are a populated island in England, which is a unique thing.
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Criminal Court Reform
The Justice Secretary blames the court backlog on a reduction in funding by the past Government, yet he plans to reduce access to jury trials permanently. Is not the truth of it that he does not want to fund courts because his Government have prioritised welfare for the few over justice for the many?
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China: Threat to UK Interests
15. What assessment she has made of the level of threat that China poses to UK interests.
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China: Threat to UK Interests
Last night, the Prime Minister said some tough things about China. He said: “It’s time for a serious approach” to the national security risk from China. The first opportunity to demonstrate that serious approach is on the planning application for China’s new super-embassy—complete, as we now know it is, with secret basement rooms. In her previous role, the Foreign Secretary wrote a letter in favour of the application, but given her new instructions from the Prime Minister, does she now agree that the application should be refused?
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Catapults and Antisocial Behaviour
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp), and my constituency neighbour, for securing this important debate. Without it, I doubt that I would have the chance to raise in Parliament an issue that is extremely important to my constituents in Windsor, Eton, Datchet, Horton, Old Windsor and Wraysbury, where his constituency and mine border each another. In particular, I will focus on a recent series of heinous offences that has touched many of my constituents—that is, I am afraid to say, the callous murder of swans with high-velocity catapults. Swans are an iconic symbol of Windsor and of this country. They are the king’s birds. The yearly tradition of swan upping is a great community event, with all the mute swans along the Thames being counted and given a health check. As such, swans are treated with reverence—like royalty—in my community and across this country. I have visited local swan charities and seen the work that they do to nurse swans back to full health and get these beautiful animals back in the water, where they should be. That is what creates such affection between these animals and our community. Having met the brilliant Wendy Hermon at Swan Support, an outstanding local charity, I have seen at first hand just how much she cares for swans and other precious Thames wildlife. Unfortunately, during my recent visit, Wendy had to detail to me the most recent horrific slaughter in Old Windsor of a proud male swan affectionately named Pete, who had a mate and multiple cygnets, which, sadly, have now been left behind. Having seen these birds up close, we all know that swans are truly magnificent animals, and to see images of them floating dead on the water provokes a feeling of real sadness and, frankly, outrage. Why anybody would do such a thing is beyond me. It is completely unnecessary, and it is barbarous. I also have fears about the individuals who carry out such acts, presumably in a group setting, egging one another on, and presumably for the benefit of social media. Where does that antisocial urge end, and what could it possibly escalate to? Recently, a cat was killed in Datchet. We need to nip this in the bud before it becomes people next. Back in April, we had a really productive meeting. It was called by Swan Support and hosted by Eton town council. We were joined by the police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley, the King’s swan upper, Eton town councillors and a local royal borough councillor. We concluded at the time that the royal borough should introduce a public space protection order, which would give the police the power to challenge people, issue a fine and seize catapults, in the right instances. We thought that that was the best way forward. However, I am sorry to say that in the following five months it seems like little progress has been made. That is typical in the royal borough for something not involving Maidenhead. Runnymede borough council has been receptive and is cracking on, and I know that Spelthorne borough council, in the constituency of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Spelthorne, has already been successful. I am, however, glad to say that after the excellent work of Wendy at Swan Support, and others pushing the royal borough, the consultation on a PSPO banning the carrying of catapults in Windsor, Eton, Old Windsor, Datchet, Horton and Wraysbury has finally opened. I urge as many of my constituents as possible to respond to it on the RBWM Together website. I hope to see the ban introduced after the consultation ends on 8 January. As it stands, a police officer could see a group of youths—I am afraid to say that in my constituency it is often youths from the Traveller community—walking around the town with catapults, clearly not using them for fishing bait, and yet be pretty powerless to confiscate them. That must change. I look forward to hearing from the Minister what more can be done to cut down on antisocial behaviour and the misuse of catapults, so that my constituents can have peace of mind and our swans can be protected. I hope she will join me in urging the royal borough to do the right thing and introduce the PSPO.
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Topical Questions
T3. Australia has listed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a state sponsor of terrorism. What discussions have Ministers had with their Australian counterparts about matching that important action against terror at home and abroad?
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Draft Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 (Prudential Regulation of Credit Institutions) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2025 Draft Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities) (ESG Ratings) Order 2025
It is always a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Harris. I will follow the Minister’s lead by starting with the ESG ratings order before moving on to the draft regulations. The Minister usefully and clearly set out the Government’s view of the ESG ratings order and what it aims to achieve. I want to ask two questions in particular, straight out of the gate. First, although she referred to this slightly in answering the hon. Member for Dorking and Horley, could she go into more depth about the approaches taken in other jurisdictions—particularly the United States and the EU? What are the specific implications for our competitiveness? She mentioned that she is open to alignment with other jurisdictions, and she specifically said that she is open to allowing the ratings of overseas ratings providers to be recognised in this country. But will she address the specific point about competitiveness and where the order stands in the global ecosystem of ESG ratings regulation? It would be helpful to understand that. Secondly, I understand that in the responses to the consultation concerns were raised about charities being granted an exemption. Is the Minister concerned that charities, and particularly household names, might publish ESG scores against certain companies and sectors that investors take seriously, despite there being a lack of transparency on how those scores were reached? I have taken a particular interest as that legitimate concern stood out from the consultation. As the Minister considers those answers, it is useful for us to step back as we think about ESG to ensure that, as we scrutinise the draft order, we talk about the overall effectiveness of ESG in supporting the interests of savers and investors in the country. My view, having led an ESG team in my previous life—I think this view is shared by a lot of savers and investors in the industry— is that investment managers should always act with the aim of delivering sustainable returns for investors. From the teacher who has paid into their pension their whole life to the entrepreneur who has just sold their business and invested all their money, many people from all walks of life entrust their money to investment firms and portfolio managers, and they rightly expect financial professionals to uphold their fiduciary responsibilities. In recent years, however, many, including me, have expressed the view that the rise of ESG has allowed and encouraged some fund managers to impose their own values on investment portfolios, thereby potentially impacting the returns achieved for thousands of investors. Of course, where individuals have enough money for a separate account, or where other retail investors choose to invest in a dedicated ESG fund, that is their choice. They may well pay a premium for not investing in certain industries and be comfortable with that.
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Draft Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 (Prudential Regulation of Credit Institutions) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2025 Draft Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities) (ESG Ratings) Order 2025
If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will come on to that point. It is a very hot topic right now, in terms of our national security, and I think there are implications when it comes to ESG ratings and the overall ESG approach that many fund managers take. As I was saying, the overall picture is that there is a risk that everyday savers might miss out on returns because of the values and ideals pursued by a particular fund or fund manager, without their expressed wishes necessarily being taken into account. If we accept, as many do, that this is a problem for funds, it follows that it extends to those who provide ESG ratings, too. Therefore, more transparency, which this measure achieves, could and should help to mitigate the risk for savers. At a broader level, I have made very clear my personal opinion that ESG has gone too far towards values-driven investing, while neglecting to include our collective national, strategic and economic interest. At a time when the world is increasingly geopolitically unstable, and with an aggressive Russia at the door of Europe, is it really responsible or ethical to shun investment in defence companies? I believe this mindset undermines our national security effort, but it also means that savers and investors could miss out on better returns. The FTSE 100 index is up around 19% for the year to date, compared with shares in Rolls-Royce, which are up 77%; shares in BAE, which are up 38%; and shares in Babcock, which are up 118%. Those companies form the bedrock of the British defence industry. Over the past year, they would have delivered better-than-average investment returns for savers, but so many savers have been excluded from investing in such companies, perhaps without their knowledge. Similar national importance could be attached to oil and gas companies and investments. Even the Climate Change Committee has been clear that the consumption of oil and gas will be needed for years to come as part of our energy security. Yet just last week, the National Energy System Operator warned that Britain could face gas shortages by 2030 if the industry—
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Draft Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 (Prudential Regulation of Credit Institutions) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2025 Draft Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities) (ESG Ratings) Order 2025
I am grateful for your guidance, Mrs Harris. This is related to ESG, which is about environmental, social and governance principles, and accordingly an investment approach and ratings. I was talking about defence as part of the “S”, and oil and gas as part of the environment.
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Draft Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 (Prudential Regulation of Credit Institutions) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2025 Draft Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities) (ESG Ratings) Order 2025
I will end my point by simply suggesting that it is not serving investors or the country well by being excluded from oil and gas companies or defence stocks as part of an ESG strategy that they perhaps did not know about. I now turn to the draft regulations, which revoke assimilated EU law relating to financial services and replace it with rules set by the Bank of England and the PRA. This is part of an ongoing process to repeal and replace assimilated EU financial services law following our departure from the European Union. The purpose of the draft regulations is largely to revoke the relevant parts of the assimilated prudential regime, as set out in the capital requirements regulation, and replace them with the PRA rules, as the Minister set out. As the Minister made clear, the draft regulations make consequential technical amendments to UK legislation for the purpose of legal coherence. In practice, any references to revoked CRR provisions will be read as references to the corresponding PRA rules. Where no PRA rule exists, the amendments will help to avoid gaps in the legal framework, with which I think we can all agree. This instrument continues the process begun under the previous Government, as the Minister said, and therefore the Opposition do not oppose it.
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Draft Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 (Prudential Regulation of Credit Institutions) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2025 Draft Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities) (ESG Ratings) Order 2025
I am very grateful to the Minister for outlining the Government’s position on defence stocks. I wonder whether she could do the same for oil and gas.
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Homelessness: Funding
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers, and to take part in this debate about the adequacy of funding to support homeless people. At the outset, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), for securing this debate. I know how important this topic is to him, and his forensic opening speech this morning emphatically underlined that. I am confident I speak for all sides of the House when I say how appreciated his tireless efforts have been to address the tragedy of homelessness. I also thank all hon. Members who have contributed to this debate. Just over a month ago, I had the pleasure of coming to this place and hearing 17 speeches from a range of hon. Members on the issue of homelessness. Some of them are here again today and some are not. I said at the time that homelessness is a “social tragedy” wherever it occurs and for whatever reason. That we are back here again shows both the importance of this issue to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East and its significance to hon. Members across the House. Unfortunately, since the last debate, things have got worse rather than better. The future cost of living looks worse—certainly in the wake of last week’s rather gloomy Budget. The future of house building and the Government’s manifesto promise to build 1.5 million homes appear to be in dire straits, and the state of local government finances again appears bleak and unlikely to improve. On top of all of that, the long-awaited homelessness strategy, first pledged in the Government’s manifesto a year and a half ago, continues to be late and remains unpublished. The strategy was first promised to us in 2024, with the publication repeatedly said to be forthcoming. We were then repeatedly told by the Minister’s predecessor that it was due for publication following the conclusion of the spending review—which was six months ago. In a parliamentary question answered just last week we continued to be told that it will be published “later this year”. It is 2 December today and the year is running out. It may be advent, the season of waiting, but there are many who consider this to be an unacceptable and damaging delay, particularly the charities and homeless people waiting for the Government to take serious action. It would be a very welcome early Christmas present if the Minister were to announce its publication this morning. In saying that, I acknowledge that the Government have not been totally idle. They have introduced some additional funding: a £69.9 million uplift to the rough sleeping prevention and recovery grant, an additional £10.9 million for supporting children experiencing homelessness, and £3 million for the rough sleeping drug and alcohol treatment programme. The funding is welcome, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said in his opening speech and others have mentioned, funding must come with strategy and purpose and that is something we are yet to see. As I said in this Chamber in October: “prevention must be at the heart of any national strategy for tackling homelessness”.—[Official Report, 21 October 2025; Vol. 773, c. 312WH.] That was a central focus in the last Government’s approach which produced £2.4 billion of funding to tackle rough sleeping and homelessness including the rough sleeping initiative and £547 million over the period from April 2022 to March 2025 before schemes such as the RSI were rolled up into one by the current Government. The rough sleeping initiative provided locally led tailored support and services for rough sleepers, providing direction and strategy at the most local levels. The Minister’s Department has so far failed to provide itself and its fellow Departments with a national strategy. Simply spending money will not do the job, and funding without purpose or direction can actually damage efforts to achieve the critical goal of ending homelessness. Much of the responsibility and funding for tackling homelessness lies with local government. Bills for homelessness accommodation have soared to £3.8 billion across 2024-2025—a 25% increase in a single year. There are now a record number of people in temporary accommodation, including 169,050 children in England—a 12% increase in a year. The result of that is that councils are now warning that homelessness poses one of the biggest threats to their financial viability. Homelessness is a statutory demand-led and highly acute pressure on local government. The Government’s answer so far has not been to provide more support, but to take money away from many councils as part of their so-called fair funding formula. In introducing what my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly) has called their “unfair funding” model for local authorities the Government are funnelling money away from councils predominantly in the south to send to councils predominantly in the north. It is hard to see that as anything other than a partisan cash grab and a punitive targeting of many well-run councils, especially penalising those who have historically kept council taxes low and controlled spending better. Some of the most affected areas, including the south- east, are witnessing a large rise in homelessness and simultaneously a potentially catastrophic drop in funding thanks to the fair funding policy. How does that reconcile with the need to go further to tackle this soaring issue? The answer is that it does not. It certainly does not help that councils are being punished and losing money for the crime of being comparatively well run when they are still trying to play their role in providing temporary accommodation to those 126,040 households.
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Homelessness: Funding
I will not. I apologise to the hon. Gentleman, because I know he cares passionately about this issue, but we are running out of time. I need to leave time for the Minister to respond and for my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East to conclude. The figure of 126,040 households is a 15.7% increase on 2023. The Government need to rethink this policy for the sake of local government and those who have a statutory requirement to help. It is not just local authorities that are under additional pressure. Homeless Link found that thanks to the Chancellor’s national insurance hike, the 2024 autumn Budget removed between £50 million and £60 million of vital funding from smaller organisations that provide homelessness services. It is sad that the Government’s announcements on homelessness funding, as welcome as they are, to some extent merely fill the gaps that the Treasury created. It is also important that the Government work to make housing more affordable, including with proper funding for social and affordable homes. Unfortunately, the Government are not making the progress that they promised. On funding for affordable housing, despite the Chancellor’s boast when announcing the package at the previous spending review, the Institute for Fiscal Studies noted: “Upon closer inspection the promise of £39bn over 10 years is less generous than on first appearance…The small print suggests spending of about £3bn a year over the next three years, which is not a million miles away from what is currently spent on the AHP”— affordable homes programme— “This is why enormous-sounding numbers should always merit further scrutiny”. The Government are also failing on making social and affordable homes available. Figures show that, with the lowest number of additional homes for nearly a decade, the Government are on track to fall well short of the target of 1.5 million additional homes in this Parliament, possibly not even reaching 1 million. That is considerably worse than the 2.5 million new homes delivered by the previous Government, including 1 million in the previous Parliament, of which 750,000 were affordable homes. That was despite having to grapple with the pandemic for the better part of two years. In conclusion, it is clear that Ministers must work more quickly and effectively to provide local authorities and charities with the strategy and direction they need. It is vital to move at a greater pace to ease the temporary accommodation crisis, get more social and affordable homes built in the most affected areas, and finally publish the homelessness strategy first promised in July 2024 but repeatedly delayed to the detriment of those relying on it to work. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.
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Criminal Court Reform
Nobody would disagree with the Lord Chancellor’s diagnosis—the criminal courts are in crisis. It is the treatment that is in dispute. The question is whether the watering down of jury trials will be the solution, when in fact the problem is a lack of judges, court space and infrastructure, and inefficiencies in the system. Crucially, it is about a lack of appropriately trained defence and prosecution counsel who can deal with the complexities of these cases. Is this not a case of the Government choosing to prioritise other areas of spending, such as welfare, over our courts system?
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Budget Resolutions
This Budget is entitled “Strong foundations, secure future”; sadly, it is anything but, with weak foundations and an insecure future. For all this talk of fair decisions, this Budget’s biggest scandal is that my constituents are not being given a fair deal in any way whatsoever. My constituents, like those of Members across the House, who work hard to support themselves and their families and who innovate and start businesses that provide jobs, have been deeply let down by this Budget and Labour’s previous Budget. My constituents and people right across the country will pay more while being deprived of investment in the services they need due to this Government’s political decisions. My constituents, and those of the Health Secretary himself, were promised by Labour a full rebuild of Whipps Cross hospital, as started by the previous Conservative Government. The health secretary went as far as to say that he supported the “Whipps Won’t Wait” campaign before the election, but as soon as his Government were elected he changed his tune to “Whipps Must Wait”. As a result, Whipps Cross now faces a £170 million backlog of maintenance costs due to the Government’s delay. This rebuild and that of Princess Alexandra hospital in Harlow—again promised by Labour—are needed by my constituents now. Folk in Epping Forest have some words for the Transport Secretary. The Central line is consistently delayed, overcrowded, and over-hot in summer, with screeching rail noise. The trains are in need of modernisation, and all this is compounded by horrendous graffiti like something out of Gotham City, which is getting worse day by day. Could the Transport Secretary have a word with the Mayor of London about investment in the Central line and deterrents for graffiti? All those decisions come on top of choices that the Government had already inflicted before last week, none of which they have reversed with this Budget. The Government’s plan to jeopardise the heart and lungs of Epping Forest—its precious green belt—under the misleadingly termed “grey belt” is completely at odds with our constituency’s environment and natural beauty. We need the right homes in the right places, but we cannot have this top-down approach. The rise in national insurance contributions in last year’s Budget means that businesses in Epping Forest face a dilemma: stop hiring new staff or freeze pay for existing staff. That cannot go on. While the Government choose to be ambiguous when it comes to spending, it is very clear where they can make savings. They could save £1.8 billion by cancelling their flawed policy on digital ID, or they could save £35 billion on their flawed Chagos islands policy. Labour is also now waging a war on motorists by hiking fuel duty and disincentivising electric and plug-in hybrid car drivers with a mileage charge. That is not sustainable moving forward. We have seen political choices from a desperate Labour Government. It is sad that they have completely disregarded Conservative plans that would help our economy, such as scrapping stamp duty and abolishing business rates for retail, hospitality or leisure businesses. The people of Epping Forest and the UK deserve better than the retrograde decisions made by this Labour Government. We need to push back against this high-tax, low-delivery Budget.
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. As we consider the clause and new clause 2, I want to be clear that the Opposition recognise the importance of the Bill’s overarching aims. Candour, transparency, frankness and, above all, the requirement that public officials act in the public interest are principles that I am sure Members from all parties support. As we commented on during evidence sessions about the chief coroner, it would be quite wrong to portray good-faith efforts to ensure that we give due consideration to each and every possible implication of the Bill as in any way not giving due regard to its noble aims, in particular the considerable effort and good intentions of the many campaigners supporting it, including the ones we heard from during the evidence sessions. As the Minister commented, I do not think that anyone could have been anything but deeply moved and reflective on hearing the experiences that the witnesses went through in such appalling circumstances. They were a limited group, but one made up not just of those affected by Hillsborough but those affected by many other scandals in which the state and its bodies covered up and mistreated people. Ultimately, even if we believe that the Bill could be improved, and we will hold the Government to account for any unintended consequences, we support the Bill and do not expect to oppose it on Third Reading. I hope that that is an important message for the campaigners supporting it. However, we want to probe the Government’s thinking and suggest possible improvements. Before we come to the specifics of our new clause, I will comment on clause 1 as a whole, as it lays out the core purpose of the Bill and highlights just how far the political class as a whole has to come in delivering candour, and how contentious these matters can be. In the very weeks we have been considering this Bill, with the Government professing to want to drive further improvements in the candour and frankness of accountability, we have been having a heated and highly contested public debate about what constitutes candour and frankness. I raise that debate not to further discuss it in Committee—it would not be appropriate to engage in it for its merits—but just to highlight exactly how contentious such things are. We have a Chancellor who, in my view, has clearly failed to operate with candour and frankness, but I am sure that view is fiercely opposed by other members of the Committee.
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting)
As I said, that is an example. I am not wishing to make the point—[Interruption.] I have said quite clearly that you will disagree with me on that, but that is the point that I am making.
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting)
Thank you, Sir Roger. Committee members have been fiercely disagreeing on something that relates directly to the matters that we are considering today on frankness and candour. I think that demonstrates just how challenging these things will be. We are the politicians who are putting forward this legislation.
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting)
Absolutely. The Bill is focused on those examples that are clear and egregious, where it is easy to say that there has been a failure of candour or a deliberate attempt to cover up. The legislation will cover many other situations, however, including Members of Parliament. As Members of Parliament, we are expected to operate with a degree of frankness and candour, and yet just this week we have been fiercely debating whether one of our own has or has not done that. It is important for Members to reflect on the wideness of the ramifications outside the purely obvious examples of what might constitute candour, or a lack of it.
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting)
Thank you for that further clarification, Sir Roger. These issues are absolutely live and happening all the time—this week alone, we have seen examples of it—and we need to understand the implications of the Bill. I am far from alone in recognising the difficulty in defining terms such as “candour” and “public interest”. John Coggon, professor of law at the University of Bristol law school, writes: “The public interest has no single, fixed definition. Even as a technical term of art its sense varies both for being context dependent and for being a question that may be settled by different sorts of institutional actor. It may, for instance, demand consideration of national security, national economic interest, protection of health, maintenance of a justice system, protection of fundamental rights. And determinations may be made by courts, politicians, legislators, executive agencies, and so on. Each can and will bring different forms and ranges of consideration to the process of determining what the public interest demands, and whether those demands are compelling.” Anyone who has spent any time inside a public body—a police force, a regulator or a Government Department—knows that the public interest can mean very different things to different people. It is shaped by context, role, circumstance and sometimes professional norms. What one official believes to be in the public interest, a Minister, senior civil servant or statutory body might see very differently. That is not mere theory; it is the daily reality of modern governance. Questions were raised during the evidence sessions about how the public interest might be used inappropriately in defence of an allegation of misconduct in public office. As new clause 2 points to, paragraph 1(8)(b) of schedule 1 specifically allows for the withholding of information in the public interest. Failing in that area could lead to both those we would wish not to be prosecuted being prosecuted and those we want to see prosecuted escaping justice. It is an important area of how the Bill will operate. I am not so ambitious as to suggest that through the Bill the Committee will be able to create a perfect definition of public interest, but I speak in support of the new clause in an attempt to ensure that the Government recognise that they need to properly engage with that issue if the Bill is to be successful. A definition of the public interest need not be exhaustive, as I have said, but the wide-ranging ramifications of the Bill place an onus on the Government to ensure that the frontline civil servant of any kind has somewhere to look and turn to when wrestling with these matters—a starting point that might help them to structure their thinking and make decisions. By failing to define the term at all, even in the most basic way, the Bill risks giving us a duty that is challenging to operate for a junior civil servant. It risks more uncertainty about compliance, inconsistency between institutions and even potential litigation where prosecutors or courts are left to decide after the fact what Parliament must have meant. The obvious challenging scenario is when officials need to consider situations where there are competing public interests—national security versus transparency, value for money versus speed of delivery, or personal privacy versus public accountability. Without more assistance for thinking those matters through, how does an official protect themselves from the—possibly criminal—allegation that their judgment call was not in the public interest among competing interests? The new clause does not attempt to dictate exactly what public interest must mean; it simply requires the Secretary of State to set out a structure or framework in regulations, subject to approval by both Houses. Ultimately, if this legislation is to achieve the cultural change that the Government claim it will, the foundations must be clear and easy to understand. Public officials should not be left purely guessing what Parliament might have meant, or how we expected them to weigh these issues—Parliament should tell them. New clause 2 offers the Government the opportunity to do exactly that, and I hope they will take it.
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting)
The Minister rightly describes how tightly the courts consider these matters in detail. As the Bill puts a whole range of very junior civil servants in the firing line, does she at least accept that guidance or materials might be helpful to assist a broader audience in how they approach these issues in their day-to-day work?
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting)
I emphasise that we need clarity on this. Those of us who were able to attend the meeting with the intelligence services will know that they seemed to provide quite a clear account of their individual personal responsibility and all the ways in which they thought the Bill would affect them. That was quite clearly contradicted in our evidence from other witnesses. I am grateful to the Minister for sending round a further note to Committee members this morning, and for our brief chat ahead of this sitting. Even that note raises further contradictions, however, because it says, and I quote, that “the individual public officials working for the UK intelligence services are capable of being caught by the offence of failing to comply with the duty of candour”. It lists some other ones, but it includes the duty of candour. Further down, it says, “the Bill specifies that the duty of candour and assistance can only be addressed to public authorities and not individual public officials”. The Minister was able to give me a brief, informal explanation of that, but I do think this is extremely important. It may be that people are happy for the security services to be excluded to a certain extent, but we have to vote on a shared understanding of what exactly the Bill does in relation to them as entire organisations, as well as to the people who work for them and those who are in charge. I would be grateful if the Minister provided some clarity on that.
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting)
I beg to move amendment 3, in schedule 1, page 26, line 30, at end insert— “(1A) Inquiries under subsection (1) include those designated by the Secretary of State as local inquiries into grooming gangs.” This amendment would apply the Duty of Candour to the five local grooming gangs’ inquiries announced by the Government and any further ones established.
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting)
I rise to speak to amendment 3, and I also welcome the intention behind amendment 1. Amendment 3 relates to the scope of the duty of candour as it applies to non-statutory inquiries. Members will know that the Bill does not just impose a duty of candour on public bodies in major statutory inquiries that are set up under the Inquiries Act 2005; it allows Ministers to apply that same duty to non-statutory inquiries—or inquiries that, for various sensible reasons, may not require the full statutory machinery but none the less investigate matters of profound public concern. Paragraph 2 of schedule 1 sets out the conditions under which a non-statutory inquiry may fall within the Bill: it must be initiated by a Minister; it must be intended to produce a published report; and the Minister must certify that the events in question have caused, or are capable of causing, public concern. That is a broadly drawn but important framework. However, there is a real risk that some of the most sensitive, complex and deeply distressing inquiries currently being established will fall entirely outside this regime. I refer specifically to the local grooming gangs inquiries announced by the Government. These inquiries were promised to victims, survivors and affected communities as part of the commitment to shine a light on failures by public agencies over many decades to protect vulnerable children. They will be examining events that could not be more clearly connected to public concern and public confidence. Unless they are expressly captured by the Bill, however, the public bodies involved will not necessarily be subject to the statutory duty of candour that the Bill intends to deliver; it will be left to the whims of the Government of the day. Given the chequered history of this Administration, that is not a position that we would want to be left in, and it is not a position that many victims would want to be left in. The amendment is therefore designed to remove any doubt by making it clear that the non-statutory inquiries designated by the Secretary of State as local grooming gang inquiries fall squarely within paragraph 2. It is a simply, clarifying amendment that protects victims, the integrity of the process and the public from the possibility of these inquiries falling into a grey area. It is worth reminding the Committee why this matters. Across multiple towns and cities, victims were failed because agencies did not share information, confront uncomfortable truths and, in some cases, tell the public the full story. A duty of candour is not a mere formality in this context; it is an essential means by which we ensure that the same patterns of silence, defensiveness and institutional self-protection do not re-emerge. If the Bill’s purpose is to raise standards in public life, to restore trust and to ensure openness in the face of institutional wrongdoing, surely these inquires—the very ones where a failure of candour has had the most devastating impacts—must be included explicitly. The Government may well argue that the wording already allows these inquiries to be covered. If that is the case, there is no harm in making it clear. If it is not the case, there is every reason for us to fix that today. This amendment is not partisan. We heard from Mayor Burnham about his direct experience of a local grooming gang inquiry that lacked a duty of candour, and how he felt the inquiry would have benefited enormously from one. He supported our amendment to ensure that all other local inquiries would be subject to such a duty once the Bill became law. The timing may not be perfect, but given the speed with which the Government seek to proceed with the Bill, and the positive impact it could have even now if public officials knew that this was incoming, I cannot see any reason why the Government would oppose the measure. It is straightforward and would ensure that when victims and survivors are told that lessons will be learned, we will do everything possible to guarantee that that is done honestly, fully and transparently by ensuring that inquiries have all the information they need. Amendment 1—I believe this was touched on earlier, in relation to panels and what will fully constitute inclusion in the Bill—is helpful to ensure that when a Minister commissions one of these important panels, it is not simply left to them to decide whether it suits them to include the duty of candour. I therefore welcome that amendment.
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting)
On amendment 1, I accept the Government’s intention to clarify further how these things will operate. On panels and non-statutory inquiries, although there is sometimes in Government a resistance to public inquiries for the wrong reasons, sometimes it is because they are expensive and time-consuming. The real opportunity for applying the duty of candour more widely is that if we can ensure that non-public inquiries get all the information they need, they are much more likely to be successful, thereby avoiding a future public inquiry with all the associated costs that lawyers make a huge amount of money from. On amendment 3, although the Minister outlined the future public inquiry, the local inquiries have not been cancelled. There is clearly a view that they must also proceed. I cannot see any reason why we would not want them to proceed on the basis that they are subject to the duty of candour.
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting)
On that basis, the Minister should not have any objection to the amendment, because it would confirm that position more explicitly. We will therefore push it to a vote. Question put, That the amendment be made.
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting)
I rise briefly to support the amendment and the points made by the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills. It is about not just existing contractual arrangements, but how there might be perverse incentives for people to create different structures if they think that, through contracting or subcontracting, they will escape the accountability under the Bill. I am keen to hear from the Minister. Probably the example that everyone has in mind is the Post Office scandal. That was a direct contractor, but it could have had subcontractors and so on. When the Post Office was conducting its private investigations, it might have used subcontractors to do some of those investigations. That would not be an unusual step for an organisation to take, so it is important that we get clarity on this issue.
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting)
Another example of what we have been discussing this morning is Primodos and drug companies. Does the Minister expect drug companies to be captured as well?
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Third sitting)
Does the provision of treatment to an individual constitute an incident? That is what we have been talking about in relation to Primodos.
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting)
Perhaps the point the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills was making was that the Minister referred to a separate piece of legislation, the Public Records Act 1958, and I am not sure that that legislation includes things like contractors and subcontractors.
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Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting)
I hope I can be of assistance. I think the clause is about the public authority’s obligation to explain to its employees all the things they can do to raise a concern. I do not think that it is directed at the individuals who might be required to do things. It might be better for it to say that the authority must ensure that that information is available. If we read it in the context of the public authority’s obligations, it is about what the authority should tell people, rather than placing any obligation in relation to individuals’ actions. I hope that might explain it more clearly.
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Criminal Court Reform
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. During the questioning, the Justice Secretary referred to the Victims’ Commissioner supporting these proposals. For the record, will he make it clear that, sadly, the Victims’ Commissioner passed away a number of weeks ago and cannot possibly have seen these proposals? He may have been referring to the incoming Victims’ Commissioner, who starts in January, but the statement she has released today makes no reference to the Justice Secretary’s proposals on changes to jury trials. I wonder if he might have inadvertently misled the House about that.
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Topical Questions
The Elections Act 2022 expanded the franchise to over 3 million British nationals living overseas. As MPs, we have a duty to represent those who have lived in our constituencies, but we do not know who they are or where they are. How can our embassies help?
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Budget Resolutions
The hon. Lady is outlining an extensive programme of capital expenditure on the national health service. Between last year and this year, we have had the largest set of Budget increases in the history of this country, but are the Liberal Democrats proposing that we should tax the British public even further to pay for the kind of thing that she has just described?
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Budget Resolutions
I will start on a positive note by commending the lines on productivity in the Red Book, and the recent comments that various Ministers have made about that. Productivity has to be the No. 1 objective in getting our NHS to where it needs to be to deliver for our constituents. I have to say to the Health Secretary that objectives two and three are probably dentistry and adult social care, and on those, I have heard less positive news. Dentistry in particular is still struggling as a result of the units of dental activity created by Gordon Brown back in the day—a system that has bedevilled the provision of dentistry in this country and is in urgent need of reform. Without that reform, we will make no progress at all on one of the principal issues in the health service that concern my constituents at the moment. I think that a degree of humility is important when we talk about the NHS, and I say that with all due respect to the Health Secretary, because otherwise he will be setting himself up for a fall. Reform in the NHS is fiendishly difficult, and we all remember the ghost of PFI, which still stalks the corridors of our hospitals and clinics and will do so for some time to come. The day before the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave her pre-Budget speech, her boss—the Prime Minister, no less—took the very unusual step of personally moving the Second Reading of a Bill. The Bill was admittedly a very important one indeed, and the Prime Minister might have thought, perfectly understandably, that it was too important to be delivered by his Justice Secretary. It was the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, which begins its Committee stage today. At the heart of the Bill is a new duty of candour, and despite its name, it extends well beyond the holders of public office. It carries a legal obligation to act transparently, creates new criminal offences of misleading the public, and contains new codes of conduct based on the Nolan principles of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, leadership and honesty, and it imposes appropriate sanctions. Lying is a very strong test, Madam Deputy Speaker, and you would call me out of order if I applied it to any right hon. or hon. Member, but this Government, through their Bill, are insisting on another test. They are insisting on a test of candour, and a duty of candour is a noble principle, but nobility cannot be confined to one area of the public realm; it has to be universally applicable, and it has to be applied from the top. Now, I am not accusing anyone of lying, but it should be abundantly clear that in preparing for this Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not approach her duties with the candour that she and her colleagues are demanding of others—which the public have a right to expect—and that is incorporated, in principle at least, in the Bill that the Prime Minister introduced on Second Reading just a few days ago. I suggest that before that Bill comes back to the Floor of the House, the Chancellor might like to reflect on the duty of candour as far as it applies to Ministers. I feel that a new clause that would make it more difficult for her and her successors to stray into the kind of shenanigans that we have seen over the past couple of months would be greatly welcomed by the House.
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Budget Resolutions
I am grateful for your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. What has unfolded since September reflects badly not just on the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or the Prime Minister, or the Government, but on all of us. On 17 September, the OBR—
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Topical Questions
The child nutrition fund is one of the most effective ways to enhance the impact and value for money of official development assistance spending by mobilising domestic resources, with philanthropic and private capital having the potential to multiply UK ODA contributions as much as sixfold. In 2023, the UK Government committed to a £16 million contribution to fund. Will Ministers confirm that the commitment will be honoured despite the changes in ODA spending?