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I have explained that I will not give way any further. The nation deserves better. It deserves a Government who trust enterprise, rein in the bloated state and live within their means. I urge the House to support the motion and send a clear message: scrap the jobs tax, fix the welfare overburden, protect pensioners and give working Britain the honest, sensible Conservative growth plan it deserves.
T7. The latest central estimate from the Office for Budget Responsibility puts the cost of achieving net zero by 2050 at £803 billion, with half that cost attributed to lost fuel duties. Does the Secretary of State accept that the Government will need to increase duties elsewhere, including on renewables, which could push bills up further?
We must have a fair welfare system—one that provides vital support to those who need it but does not create a barrier to finding work. We need a financially sustainable system that delivers fairness for the taxpayer and does not entrench dependency. The Government’s Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill—which I think has now been shortened to the Universal Credit Bill—barely saves any money. In fact, I think we heard from the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), that it will cost more money, and it will make no impact on helping people back to work. That highlights the Government’s complete failure to reform our welfare system. The welfare bill continues to rise, and economic growth is being strangled as a result. With thousands signing on to incapacity benefit every day, it is clear that we must get serious and take control of welfare spending. We cannot become a welfare state with an economy attached. I will always stand up for those in Mid Bedfordshire who need vital support. The two-child limit is an important safeguard in our welfare system, striking a balance between supporting families and helping parents into work, and ensuring fairness for working families who do not see their incomes grow as their families grow. Working families across the country are having to make difficult decisions about the size of their family.
I will happily give way—the hon. Lady has been trying for some time.
I am sympathetic to the point, but I will get on to how unjust and unfair it is to expect other families to pay for those situations, and the fiscal stability and security we need as a country.
I absolutely agree. It is important that we get people into work so that they can look after their families and make the right decisions for them. Shifting the financial responsibility of children on to the state risks not only entrenching inequality, but opening the floodgates to unsustainable dependency, encouraging parents to have children beyond their means under the assumption that the state will bear the cost. It is neither equitable nor responsible for the state to incentivise larger families through an open-ended benefits system. That is especially true as the cost of our welfare bill and its burden on the taxpayer continues to rise. The fiscal reality must not be ignored. Projections from the Child Poverty Action Group and the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimate that removing the cap would create an additional £1 billion annual cost to the public finances. As we grapple with considerable economic pressures, such a policy shift is simply not affordable. Removing the cap would force the Government to raise taxes further, borrow even more money—when borrowing is already out of control—or divert public funding away from other stretched public services. The Government have lost control of the public finances, and working families cannot afford to take another hit.
I certainly accept that there are many ways to raise taxes, but my constituents and businesses in my constituency are paying far too much tax as it is. We cannot continue to squeeze corporations, businesses and hard-working people further to achieve the hon. Gentleman’s aims. The Government have lost control of public finances. Working families cannot afford to take another hit. I recognise the sensitivity of the debate. It is crucial that we support those in genuine need, and we must work towards ending child poverty. The state, however, simply cannot afford to subsidise unlimited family expansion on the backs of working people.
It was recently announced that the surplus Ministry of Defence land at RAF Wyton in my constituency has been designated as an MOD trailblazer site. The Housing Minister confirmed to me last week that no assessment has yet been made of the energy infrastructure currently in place. The Prime Minister recently confirmed to me here in the Chamber that my proposal to develop a defence technology cluster on the site would be supported. To that end, is the Minister prepared to look into the available energy infrastructure and substation connectivity at the site and write to me with his assessment?
I thank the Defence Secretary for his statement, but I think it asks a lot more questions than it answers. Will he outline exactly how the dataset came to be accidentally emailed? Will he confirm that it was indeed an accident? What was the security classification of that dataset? Who was the dataset emailed to, given that it is now feared to be in the hands of the Taliban? I appreciate that he might not be able to answer some of those questions, but given that this happened three years ago, what level of investigation has taken place? Can that be published?
I thank the hon. Gentleman, my constituency neighbour, for securing the debate. Many people in Chester South and Eddisbury rely on the west coast main line, but unless they have a car it is a real challenge for them to reach a station easily and join the line, because there is a lack of public transport options. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need not only to promote the west coast main line and improve capacity, but to recognise that plenty needs to be done locally to support transport and connectivity within Cheshire, so that our constituents can benefit from the national links that the west coast main line offers?
The British oil and gas industry is a resilient sector—it has had to be, given this Government’s actions over the past year—and it takes a lot to shock it, but shocked it was when, on 2 July, sadly the Energy Minister claimed to the Scottish Affairs Committee that there was no “material difference” between oil and gas imports and production from the North sea. Might the Secretary of State take this opportunity to apologise and clarify those remarks, because thousands of workers in the energy industry supply chain in Aberdeen and across the UK are very worried that the Department has such scant regard for them, their work and this world-leading industry?
The Secretary of State will not apologise. That is absolutely fine. The industry already knows that this is a Government who want nothing to do with it, and who take every opportunity to talk it down and make every effort to shut it down. In that same session last week, the Minister who is sitting to the Secretary of State’s left also claimed that “much of the gas that is extracted from the North sea is exported”. That is simply not true: 100% of all the gas extracted from the North sea is used in Britain. The Secretary of State knows that, so why is he so determined to talk down this industry, spout falsehoods and myths, drive investment out of the UK, rely more on imports and, crucially, cost people’s jobs and drive the skills we need out of this country? That is exactly what he and his colleagues are doing.
Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that if people are to contribute, the fundamental bedrock is having a job, and that the jobs tax is causing mass unemployment and business closures?
Hard-working families and business owners in Bognor Regis, Littlehampton and our villages are feeling the squeeze as never before. Labour stood on a manifesto promise not to raise taxes for hard-working people, yet at the very first opportunity, in the autumn Budget, they raised employers’ national insurance. This is a tax on job security and job creation. It is a tax on growth and a tax on ambition. The jobs tax—one of the Chancellor’s flagship failures—has wrecked business confidence. It has made it more expensive to hire workers, stagnated the jobs market and threatens countless job losses and business closures. It falls on top of the Employment Rights Bill, which signals the return of 1970s-style employment laws that will further stifle growth, as well as the family business tax, higher business rates and higher wage bills. In small coastal towns like Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, where over 90% of local businesses have fewer than 10 employees, every cost increase and every job loss is keenly felt. Across our constituency, families, small businesses, hospices such as St Wilfrid’s and charities at the heart of our communities face an impossible position. In their short time in government, Labour has become the party of taxation. The Chancellor has backed herself into a corner, and more tax hikes are undoubtedly on the horizon. That is why I thank the Leader of the Opposition for tabling this important motion. Working people in Bognor Regis and Littlehampton and the businesses, charities and hospices that employ them need to be defended from this Government’s tax raids, and that is what I intend to do—to stand up for the people of Bognor Regis and Littlehampton today, tomorrow and throughout this Parliament.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I welcome these orders, and I hope it will please the Committee to hear that I do not intend to detain us I do, however, want to raise a few issues. As the Minister said, a statutory review in 2021 conducted by Ofcom recommended that the Secretary of State should broaden the scope of public interest considerations beyond print newspapers and broadcasters to capture a broader range of news creators to reflect changes in consumption. As many colleagues will be aware, the 2024 news consumption report found that 71% of UK adults consume news via online sources. It is therefore right that action is taken to future-proof our media regimes. The Government admit that their measures are narrower than Ofcom’s recommendations. Will the Minister report on any issues Ofcom may have raised with her about this approach, given that it does not cover the full recommendations? The Government’s press release noted that they did not want to put any “undue pressure on businesses”. Is the Minister confident that the right balance has been struck? I accept that this is quite a narrow tightrope to walk, but it is important that we get this right. I also note that some respondents to the Government’s consultation shared the view that broadening the scope of the public interest consideration to apply to mergers involving enterprises involved in newspapers or broadcasting was unnecessary. The responses suggested that this could have a “chilling effect on investment and consolidation”. Will the Minister please reassure the Committee that this will not be the case, as we want to see as much investment as possible, especially given the current media landscape? Can the Minister update us on the secondary legislation to further bolster the foreign state influence regime, to prevent multiple states acquiring 15% of newspapers? When will it be laid? We had to alert the Government to this seemingly a significant oversight in the drafting of the legislation. There is clearly a lot of concern out there, and while we want to see investment, we must safeguard against any state ownership of our free media. More broadly, the Opposition will always support accurate news reporting, freedom of expression and the plurality of voices within the newspaper market, so I welcome the speech the Minister made and the action the Government have taken. None the less, I would be grateful for answers to those questions.
Marking its 150th anniversary in 2021, the Royal Albert Hall continues not only to host world-class performances but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) mentioned, to do a tremendous amount of outreach work and to do so, crucially, without drawing on public funding for its operational costs—other than in the covid situation, which of course was exceptional. That is something for which it should certainly be commended and celebrated. This Bill seems to have been going round and round for some time. I know that I was trying to deal with it when we were in government. It has been promoted by the hall, as we have heard, and seeks to provide legal clarity to an existing arrangement in which members, who own rights to approximately one quarter of the hall’s seats, forgo their right to attend events and, when not attending, make those seats available for sale. As we have heard, the hall argues that without statutory backing, this arrangement remains vulnerable to legal challenge, which could have acute impacts on its financial stability. During its consideration in the other place, the Bill attracted extensive scrutiny and was amended, as we heard. Concerns were raised by a number of Members, including Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, particularly in relation to the governance of the hall and the role of seat-holding trustees. He noted that although the hall has held charitable status since 1967, the current arrangements may allow some trustees to benefit financially from the reselling of tickets on the open market—sometimes at significant profits, as the hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) said. In response to the concerns, an amendment was passed that provides that any power to exclude members from the hall under the Bill’s provisions can only be exercised by a sub-committee with a majority of independent members. It also requires that tickets made available under those provisions be sold through the hall’s ticket return scheme, thereby seeking to address concerns over potential personal financial gains by trustees. I also note that Lord Harrington of Watford, a trustee of the hall, expressed the hall’s position, stating that the Bill’s primary objective is to formalise existing practices and mitigate legal uncertainty, rather than to reform governance structures. He also raised concerns that the amendment may place undue limitations on members, including financial disadvantages and restrictions on charitable donations of tickets. In the light of these developments, it is evident that the Bill faces significant challenges in its current form. It also raises a broader issue relevant to many historic charitable institutions: the difficulty of updating foundational documents and governance arrangements under existing legislative mechanisms, which often require the introduction of private Bills. It may also beg the wider question of how many of our great establishments, which were founded in the Victorian era, can operate in a more modern era, but I accept that these are not easy issues to address. In conclusion, although His Majesty’s Opposition absolutely support the aim of securing operational clarity for the Royal Albert Hall, the concerns raised about governance and potential conflicts of interest are of some significance. We will therefore be abstaining on Second Reading. I know that this will certainly be an interesting Bill in Committee. I look forward to following it with great interest, and I hope that some of the concerns that are legitimately being raised can be ironed out.
I have just been outside with a load of veterans who, like me, served on Op Banner. Is the hon. Lady saying that they are naive and misunderstand this?
The Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021, for which I sat on the Bill Committee, covered that. I also sat on the Bill Committee that considered the Northern Ireland legacy Act, and I saw the months of trying to agree something that we could get through the House to protect veterans. We mentioned naivety; people might be doing things for the right reason, but if we adjust and change that Act, our veterans will face prosecution. I defy anybody who thinks otherwise.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank all the residents of South Shropshire who signed the petition or came to see me, and all the veterans who have come down today. My dad was one of the first SAS troops to serve in Northern Ireland in the ’70s, and I served 18 months during the troubles on Op Banner, so I have first-hand experience of that. How do I share some of that experience to set out the reality of what it is like to be a soldier on operations? I was a teenager when I deployed on my first tour to Belfast. I had little understanding of the big political situation, but I knew everything I needed to do, what I could and could not do, and all the rules of engagement, and everybody on the tour followed those. Our pre-deployment training, which the hon. Member for Plymouth Moor View (Fred Thomas) mentioned, was extensive. For months we covered every possible scenario that we could face when in Northern Ireland on operations. I was a rifleman with the 2nd Battalion the Royal Green Jackets. They were tough soldiers, but professional and knew what they could and could not do. Let us throw a little context on what it can be like on operations in Northern Ireland. Let us imagine patrolling what could be a normal housing estate in the UK—some areas would be more rundown than others, but the structure is the same. When we walk past somebody, we do not know if that person is going to buy something from a shop, pick up their children, or plan to kill us. We do not know what their intentions are. When a car speeds around the corner, as we see every day on our streets, we do not know if that person is late to pick something up, going to an event, a joyrider, or somebody driving past to kill me and my colleagues in a drive-by shooting. We do not know that, but these things happen all the time. We never really knew anybody’s intention. In 1996, in the middle of my tour, there was a decision not to allow a march to go through Drumcree, and what was a semi-stable environment turned within a matter of hours into complete carnage, with rioting and people being burned out of houses up and down the whole area. All of a sudden, law and order—the whole rule of law—had completely broken down. In about four days, I believe some 750 RUC were injured, of whom four were shot on patrol with us in one night. So whatever people thought it was like, when discussing this many years later people have to add the extreme pressure, the mental pressure, that we faced as we looked under the vehicle every single day to see whether it was a car bomb. When we were in the riots and somebody goes to throw a brick or a stone, we have a split second to react: is that a grenade? Is it an improvised weapon? Every one of those is designed to cause harm and some are designed to kill. We have a split second to decide whether to open fire—or do me and my colleagues get killed? We do not know. There is pressure. We might have been out for many hours with very little sleep, but we knew what we had to do. Many soldiers who served in Northern Ireland spend every day remembering their colleagues who did not return, trying to forget what they saw and what they witnessed, and are woken at night by screams. That has not left many people. We asked them to do the most extreme things in the most difficult conditions. I was proud when the previous Government—too late, in my mind at least—introduced the legacy Act. I sat on the Bill Committee. The Act meant protection for our veterans, which is what I had campaigned for. I had spoken about that many times before, and I had seen new colleagues who were facing prosecution, or the threat of prosecution, for their time. I believe the whole veteran community at the moment sees the repealing of the legislation as a body blow. I do not think the Government realise the anger that the community will feel.
I thank the hon. Member’s son for his service. Mine joins in two months at the age of 16. I hope that 30 years down the line, when he has defended his country as the hon. Member’s son has, they do not go through this, because morale is at rock bottom. There is no naivety among veterans.
I think that all the veterans in this room believe that the Government’s current route is wrong—are they misguided, or are they naive? If we go down the route of changing the law in this way, I can guarantee that our veterans will face prosecution for the service that they gave their country for many years.
As I said, we asked our veterans to defend us and to do the hardest things while others slept soundly in their beds at night. I hope that we never face more conflicts in the future, but I believe we will, and we must have a moral compass that means we protect those who protect us. I demand that the Government set out that the route they are taking will ensure that no prosecution of our veterans happens. The Secretary of State has even heard from Members of his own party that they are not reassured about that. We need to see that no veterans are thrown to the wolves, and we need to protect those who have served their country with the utmost pride.
It is not just about the final prosecution, but about what people have had to go through over all these years. Will the hon. Member say how many people have actually had the knock at the door, or the call, or had to give evidence? That is the issue that is really hurting people?
The Government promised to increase housing delivery through grey-belt, not green-belt, development. Grey belt was described as “poor quality land, car parks and wasteland.” However, since the new guidance was published, Hertsmere has been inundated with applications that simply seek to rebrand green belt as grey belt. The lack of clarity and the inconsistent application of the rules mean that such applications are hard to resist. Will the Minister provide greater clarity and tighten the rules before large swathes of Radlett, Bushey, Shenley, Potters Bar and Borehamwood succumb to urban sprawl?
I am thankful to the hon. Lady for her service. She has not yet mentioned the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998, which precludes anybody who has been found guilty, even of murder, from serving more than two years in jail, whether they are a veteran or whether they are a terrorist. Does she accept that a degree of equality and of compromise have crept in, and will she bear that in mind when she talks about accountability for terrible crimes?
The only likelihood of ever finding out what happened to Captain Nairac’s body would be if somebody came forward to the truth and reconciliation body, which is part of the legacy Act, in return for immunity, and told people where it was. There will be no other way of finding out.
I share the dismay shown by the hon. and gallant Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Jones) and others, when decrying the fact that the legacy legislation gave—I use her own words—“immunity to terrorists”. What nobody has yet spelled out is why it gave immunity to terrorists. There is a simple answer to that: it could not give immunity to our armed forces without giving immunity to terrorists as well. Unless hon. and right hon. Members can come up with some brand new alternative—one that defeated the scrutiny and the inventiveness of successive Governments in trying to grapple with that problem—the question they have to ask themselves is, if the price of giving immunity to our veterans is that we have to give theoretical immunity to terrorists, most of whom have had practical immunity from prosecution for many years, and hardly any of whom are ever likely to be prosecuted, is that price worth paying? We cannot have it both ways. Something that was rightly said earlier in the debate is that people should be trying to work across party lines to come to a solution on this, and I think that I can honestly claim to have been trying to do that for rather a long time. In 2017, the Defence Committee, which I was then chairing, published a report entitled “Investigations into Fatalities in Northern Ireland involving British Military Personnel”—HC 1064, if anyone is interested. The purpose of that report was to examine in great detail what the legal options were to enable the Government of the day to protect our veterans. That report was published in April 2017 but, prior to that, on 7 March, we had a hearing—of which I have made the Secretary of State and the Veterans Minister aware—in which no fewer than four top professors of law took part, with a variety of views, preferences and personal attitudes towards what had happened in Northern Ireland and so forth. We were not asking them whether they approved of amnesties; we were asking them what was and was not legally possible. What they told us was this, and I am quite disappointed that no one has uttered these words, as far as I can tell, in the entire debate: it is possible to bring in a statute of limitation, and the requirement by law that something being investigated need not lead to somebody being prosecuted. Professor Philippe Sands, someone not unknown to the Government, stated in that hearing: “The obligation to investigate is not an obligation to prosecute. It is not an obligation to take any particular steps. It is simply an obligation to find out the facts of what has happened, and ascertain.” What was made clear in that discussion with the four professors of law was that if a Government were not to find themselves guilty of behaving with impunity, a statute of limitation had to apply to everyone. That is where people get upset, because the people who support our armed forces do not want it to apply to the terrorists, and the people from the republican movement do not want it to apply to our armed forces. But the fact is that if we are to protect anyone from prosecution in these circumstances, we have to protect everyone. Someone who just focuses on the group of which they disapprove being protected is ducking the hard choice that we have to face. Someone mentioned trying to follow the model of Nelson Mandela. That is a very good point, and it is precisely what the legislation was intended to do. We satisfied ourselves that a truth recovery process, coupled with a statute of limitation—in other words, immunity—for people who gave their evidence to the truth recovery process, similar to what Mandela did in South Africa, was a way in which this problem could be laid to rest. When the Government say that they plan to give our soldiers every support, it sounds to me that they accept the fact that cases are going to be brought, and they are going to try and support the soldiers. But the punishment is the process. It is true that probably hardly anyone will end up going through the process to the end. Let me insert something else that I referred to in an earlier intervention: people on both sides of the debate say we must not equate this and that, and I certainly do not equate soldiers with terrorists morally, but in applying the law, the law has to be equal for everybody. In fact, that has already been recognised in the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998, which limits the time that anybody can serve in jail, even for the most heinous murders, to two years. That is the only time someone can serve in jail. There may be people who have had relatives murdered who will derive great satisfaction from the fact that, after all this time, the murderer will go to jail for such a short period. But the reality is that the punishment does not fit the crime, and at first some of us thought that this was just a free pass for the IRA. I will not name the Minister concerned, but I and someone from the Labour Benches with a strong service background, who is now a Minister, went to meet the Sinn Féin MPs in Parliament—because they do have a presence here, even though they do not come to the Chamber. They said that they believed that the two-year limit applied to the soldiers as well as to their own allies. We looked into it and checked it with Ministers, and that was found to be correct. The fact is that we are already compromising. We are already treating both groups the same.
When we are talking about victims of terrorists, I would ask, first of all, how likely is it that terrorists who have not been prosecuted all these years are going to be prosecuted in the future? Secondly, how do people think the victims felt in South Africa when a line was drawn for the sake of enabling the society to move forward? What the legacy Act did was the least worst option. As we have heard, the reality is that there is no obligation to act on the finding of incompatibility with the ECHR. The Joint Committee on Human Rights published a report entitled “Proposal for a Draft Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 (Remedial) Order 2024”, which states in paragraph 20: “It is a discretionary remedy, meaning the courts do not have to issue such a declaration”— of incompatibility with the ECHR— “when they find a provision to be incompatible with Convention rights. A declaration of incompatibility has no legal effect and does not affect the ongoing validity of the incompatible legislation. It is merely a tool by which the courts can draw attention to an incompatibility; it is then for the Government and Parliament to decide what action, if any, to take.” Indeed, section 4 of the Human Rights Act 1998 states that a declaration of incompatibility “does not affect the validity, continuing operation or enforcement of the provision in respect of which it is given; and…is not binding on the parties to the proceedings in which it is made.” I accept that there are other legal problems, but the impression that I get from the Secretary of State, whom I have known for many years and much admire, is that he has set his face against this route of a statute of limitation, coupled with a truth recovery process, and is not really listening. That is why we are not fighting to keep in place the one thing that could give protection to our Northern Ireland military veterans.
I agree with the Secretary of state that it is very important that other countries follow our example. Of the five countries that are the worst emitters of greenhouse gases, emitting over 50% in total—the USA, Russia, Brazil, India and of course China—can he tell us how many have adopted similar legislation? What hope does he have that those five in particular will follow our example?
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. I am delighted to present this Bill on behalf of one of our great national institutions, the Corporation of the Hall of Arts and Sciences, known to most of us as the Royal Albert Hall. I do so as someone who has enjoyed many performances in the hall, ranging from artists like Muse and Eric Clapton to acts such as Cirque du Soleil, through to the Last Night—and many other nights—of the Proms concerts. I also speak as a previous trustee of the hall, a position I was appointed to between 2018 and 2020, having stepped down as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport; it was a great pleasure to take on the role of trustee, and I was disappointed that I then had to give it up because I was reappointed to the position now held by the hon. Member for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant), the Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism. Nevertheless, I have maintained a close interest in the affairs of the hall, and I strongly support the measures that are being brought forward tonight. As a trustee, I was able to see in detail how the hall operates and how it pursues its charitable purposes. It is worth saying a word about the hall, because it is a unique organisation. It was the brainchild of the late Prince consort, Prince Albert, before his death at just 42 years of age in 1861. The corporation was established by royal charter not long afterwards, in 1867, under the chairmanship of the Prince of Wales. The foundation stone of the hall was laid by Queen Victoria in 1867, when she apparently announced without any prior warning that it would not be called the Central Hall of Arts and Sciences, as had been proposed, but would instead be known as the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences. Since that time, for more than 150 years, the hall has been a beacon in the cultural life of our nation. It is a place of celebration, entertainment, enlightenment and indeed commemoration. It is one of the most recognisable and famous venues in the country, and attracts thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands, of visitors to the United Kingdom every year. I know that the Minister, who represents the interests of the creative industries and the arts, will also be aware of that fact in his capacity as the Minister responsible for tourism. The building of the hall was not without difficulty. Initial funding came from the commissioners of the Great Exhibition of 1851, who also provided the site, but the actual cost of construction still needed to be raised. The remaining balance was raised through public subscription, which worked by selling seats in the hall prior to it being built; the potential seat owners agreed to invest their money in the building of the hall and, in exchange, would own a seat in the hall for a lease of 999 years. I understand that over 1,000 seats were sold for roughly £100 each on that basis, 20 of them being taken up by Queen Victoria herself. That unique model has sustained the hall throughout the period since. It is a public-private partnership, which is unique to the hall, I think—I certainly do not know of any others—and it has worked remarkably well. During that time the hall has thrived, despite some extraordinary challenges, including obviously the covid pandemic. The way it works is that the seat holders, who are in many cases either descendants or those who have purchased the seats from the original people who invested their money, are an integral part of the support for the hall. They obviously enjoy access to the seats that they have purchased, but at the same time they hold the hall in trust and have shown remarkable generosity in continuing to promote it.
Of course, the hon. Lady is right. Essentially a seat in the hall is a property asset—in the same way, if one’s grandfather purchased a property and the descendants eventually decided to sell, it is highly likely that they would receive an amount of money way greater than the original investment. That is a very important point. These are essentially property assets, without which the hall could not have been built. It was built on that understanding and on a 999-year lease, and those who own that lease are entitled to do what they wish with it. As for those who buy seats in the hall, in my experience of talking to many of them during my time as a trustee, they did not regard it as a financial investment to obtain a huge return; they love the hall in the way that many people do. They wanted the pride of owning an asset while at the same time contributing to the upkeep of the hall. As I will come on to explain, I think that seat holders contribute far more towards the upkeep and maintenance of the hall than they might ever get in return for selling tickets, and they have their right to the use of that seat for events where they are able to do so.
I think the hon. Lady raises two separate points. There is the ticket return scheme, which the hall itself has put in place, but that operates on a basis where the sales are all pooled together and then distributed among the seat holders. A lot of seat holders prefer to use that, but they take a slight risk because it may be that not all the seats will be sold, and therefore they will not get the face value on their seat. Essentially there is a matter of principle involved. If someone owns a property, it is certainly my view that they are entitled to do with it as they wish. The hon. Lady has rightly championed the cause against the exploitation of consumers through secondary ticket sales. I share her concern about bots buying up all the tickets for an event and those tickets appearing on a secondary ticket site 10 seconds later, but that is not the same thing. What we are talking about in this instance is tickets that are already under ownership. They have not been bought up in a primary market; they are owned by the seat holders, and the seat holders can choose how they handle them. As I say, a large number will choose to use the ticket return scheme, but one should not require them to do so. First, that would fly in the face of the principle that these are property assets belonging to the individuals. Secondly, it undermines the operation of the way in which they support the hall. I want to continue setting out why the hall is such an invaluable institution to this country. It has about 500 employees. Some 400 events take place each year in the main auditorium and many more in other parts of the hall. As I said, there are something like 1.7 million visitors each year. The hall makes itself available on very favourable terms to a wide range of other organisations, such as Imperial College for graduation ceremonies, the Royal Navy for the Mountbatten Festival of Music, and the Teenage Cancer Trust for its fundraising concerts. It also has an engagement programme that reaches out to some 180,000 people of all ages in local communities and schools, giving them opportunities to learn about performing arts and experience live music. There are something like 5,500 seats in the hall. As of the end of last year, 1,256 of those—roughly a quarter—were privately owned by 315 seat holders. They are people who have either inherited the seats or purchased them from the original owners of the seats. Under the constitution that was drawn up at the time of Queen Victoria, those seat owners are the members of the hall’s corporation. Some may be private individuals, but there are also companies and charities. There is a strong and enduring bond between the hall and those members. Of the board of trustees, which governs the hall, some 18 out of the 23 are seat holders, as was originally set down. There are five external trustees, one of whom—I was fortunate to hold this position—is appointed by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Then there are the commissioners of the 1851 Exhibition, a representative of Imperial College, another from the Royal College of Music, and another from the Natural History Museum. As I sought to explain, those who hold seats actually do put a lot back into the hall. Even though they own the seat, they nevertheless contribute on top of it to the maintenance of the hall. The first way is by paying an annual contribution known as the seat rate. This is voluntary but is paid by members every year. An independent committee recommends the amount—I think I sat on the seat committee for a time—and it is roughly a pro-rata proportion of the hall’s maintenance costs. This year the seat rate, which members choose to pay, is £1,880 plus VAT per seat, amounting to about £2.3 million plus VAT. The second way in which members support the hall—this is the crux of the Bill—is by agreeing to forgo their tickets for events on over 100 days each year. Originally when they purchased their seats way back in 1871, members could attend any event in the hall by sitting in the seat they had purchased, but over time, in order to support the hall, members have agreed to give up that entitlement for a set number of days each year, and that currently stands at over 100 events each year. By giving up the right to use their seat, they give it back to the hall, and obviously those tickets can then be sold. It also helps the hall to attract high-quality artists. Each time, a negotiation takes place with somebody wishing to perform at the hall as to how many events will be held on what is called an exclusive basis, for which seat holders will not have the right to utilise their seats. That method of support for the hall, which has evolved over the years, has been extraordinarily successful. There is also a review of the constitution governing the hall. A working group has identified a range of potential reforms. The hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) referred in her intervention to the concerns expressed by the Charity Commission that there might be a conflict of interest because seat holders both own seats and sit on the council, but I think that is a misinterpretation of the position. As far as I am aware, there has never been any evidence of seat holders abusing their position. Indeed, there is a committee of the hall with a majority of independent members called the conflicts committee that considers whether there is any potential conflict. I was a member of that committee during my time as a trustee. The Bill contains reforms to the position, which can be achieved only by Act of Parliament. I would therefore like briefly to run through the Bill’s clauses. First, clause 3 removes the six-yearly cap on the amount that can be levied through the seat rate. In the interests of equivalence, it transfers the voting threshold of three quarters from the six-year cap to the annual seat rate. If anything, the six-year cap has sometimes prevented seat holders from contributing as much as they might—particularly during covid, when members were obviously unable to take up their rights because the hall was not available for public performance. None the less, members continued to pay the seat rate in support of the hall. Secondly, clause 4 provides a mechanism whereby members can agree to exclusives—performances where they will not take advantage of their ownership of seats—in excess or of a different kind to those originally permitted by the Royal Albert Hall Act 1966. There is already statutory provision to allow some performances to be exclusive where members have given over their rights, but the hall has gone beyond the 1966 Act such that now a number of events above and beyond those covered by that Act are agreed to by members through voting. That is a way in which they have increased their support for the hall. That has been agreed through the council and a majority of members—it is done by majority. The question as to whether that has a legal basis is what needs to be clarified through the Bill. Three members have commenced a challenge in the High Court, which, if it were to be successful, would prevent the hall from having as many exclusive events. That would obviously have a damaging effect on the income not of seat holders but of the hall itself. If the challenge were to be successful, the hall could either continue with its practice—potentially in breach of a legal challenge—or decide that it was no longer possible to continue the practice, and therefore then lose the benefit, or it would no longer be able to contract some of the most attractive and valuable events that are staged there at the moment. The purpose of the clause is therefore to resolve the issue in order to allow the hall to proceed—as is the current position—without the risk of legal challenge. The third clause that I want to address is clause 5, which was added to the Bill by amendment in the House of Lords. It was not part of the original Bill as agreed by the members and it was not sought by the hall. It is certainly the hall’s view that its provisions, which cover both a requirement that extensions to exclusive events need to be agreed by a committee not without a majority of seat holders, and a requirement use the ticket return scheme, which the hon. Lady identified in her intervention, demonstrate a lack of understanding of the way in which the hall works and would be detrimental to the hall. It could mean that seat holders will no longer be able to support the Bill, which is an essential requirement if it is to become law. I know that the hall is very happy to discuss potential ways of addressing the concerns identified through the passage of that amendment when the Bill gets to Committee, which, Madam Deputy Speaker, I think you will be involved with. At this stage, I ask that the House agrees to the Bill’s Second Reading. We can return to address any particular concerns once it has been through Committee.
The Minister and I will undoubtedly debate the Government’s proposals for secondary ticketing at a future date, but I want to make it clear that what we are talking about here is not touts or bots, but people who own a seat and the right to sit in that seat and who choose to sell it to somebody else, which is a very different prospect from the one that he outlines.
This is about principle and practice. The principle is that every country has the right and indeed the duty to secure its borders, and in practice ours have become porous. I agree with the Home Secretary that global instability continues to drive illegal migration, I agree with her that we need co-operation upstream and I agree with her that previous Governments have done far too little, but the scale of the problem requires more than she is offering today. The trend is up. If it continues, 85,000 people will cross, each one knowing that they are coming here illegally. This requires much more emphatic action. Everyone who comes should be incarcerated and all those who can be returned should be. We must recognise that the asylum system is being gamed on an industrial scale. Will she answer this very straightforward question: what evidence does she have that hostile states and organised criminals are using this as a route to get people to this country to do still more harm?
Does my right hon. Friend marvel at the remarkable restraint shown by British soldiers, no matter where these officers or personnel were from across the UK, in dealing with this and never once stepping over the mark in regard to these cases?
I want to make one thing very clear: the vexatious pursuit of veterans is the key here. Some never finally made it into court, but they were pursued; some died before they got to court. It is not a good comparison to say that only one was actually found guilty, when so many have been pursued vexatiously from start to finish. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman understands how it feels to be pursued—to have to go to Northern Ireland, to have to come back, to be arrested by the police and then taken away. That is what was wrong with the legislation that existed previously.
I am grateful for your tolerance, Mr Mundell. I start by saying to the hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster), and one or two others on the Government Benches, that to accuse people like myself who served in Northern Ireland of supporting the legacy Act and then demeaning ourselves by apparently attacking others is utter nonsense. We are after one purpose and one purpose only: to find a way to protect veterans who have been pursued through the courts in a vexatious manner and had their lives destroyed in their latter years. That was the sole purpose of my support for the legacy Act. Even though I had my doubts about it, I supported it for that reason. There was nothing else on the table to provide support for those veterans, so I really take it ill, and the hon. Member for South Ribble demeans himself by attacking people on that personal basis. [Emma Lewell in the Chair] This is an issue about inconsistency, and it covers all previous Governments. The problem is that we were originally involved in the law of armed conflict, which settled these issues, and we have had a collision with the Human Rights Act 1998, which has changed everything. The real point is that there is no moral equivalence between people who set out to kill, maim and destroy in a democracy, which happened in Northern Ireland, as the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) laid out, and the British servicemen who were ordered to go to Northern Ireland. They went out of their duty to protect the citizens of Northern Ireland against a violent and destructive insurrection. I have to tell anybody with the idea that there is some kind of equivalence here—that if we cannot proceed against IRA terrorists we have taken them out of the equation—to go back and find out about when we pursued IRA terrorists through the court. There is no evidence. There were no records kept. They know that very well. If anyone thinks they will get 400 witness statements from people who know they are protected by the lack of evidence, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) said, they must be living in a different world from the one that I am living in. The reality is that the only people who will be prosecuted, unless this Government do something to end that process, will be the veterans. Even if they are not prosecuted and eventually found guilty, the persecution and the chasing of people who served their country ruins their lives and makes them worry for the rest of their lives.
I agree with my hon. Friend: that is what is really hanging over us. If nothing is done and the existing Act is repealed, we are left with the single problem we started with: how do we protect veterans from the vexatious persecution that has been going on? I have lots of respect for many Government Members, particularly the Veterans Minister. He knows very well that that is their interest. I say to them simply that they cannot repeal the Act without replacing it with protection for the veterans who served their country. I served in Northern Ireland. I did not ask to go to Northern Ireland. I went out with my regiment, the Scots Guards, and we served, I think, pretty well in Northern Ireland, but we did not want to be there—to be spat at by people in the United Kingdom and wonder, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) said, what was coming around the corner next. We put up with all that in the United Kingdom. It is a unique experience—it is not like going abroad to fight a war. Being on the streets of the United Kingdom, carrying a rifle and trying to protect those who are also under attack from those who would will their destruction is something very peculiar, yet my soldiers and many others acted with the most phenomenal restraint. Provocation was there all the time, but they acted with the utmost restraint. I know of no other country whose soldiers would have ever done that, no matter what their background was. I am immensely proud to have been one of them. We should stop demeaning each other about politics in this. This is about protection, and we should be talking about that. I lost a very good friend in Northern Ireland. It is pretty awful, really, when I think back to what actually happened. Robert Nairac was kidnapped. He was tortured for a long time. We know not what happened to his body, although we may guess. He was executed after having escaped—that much we do know. No one from the IRA who committed that atrocity will ever, I suspect, be held to account in any court of law. That is the injustice of this process. His parents died never knowing where his body was, and his family today still do not know. Talk about injustice—that is injustice.
I was attacking equivalence. The reality is that if we get rid of the legacy Act right now, we will go back to a one-sided process where veterans will be pursued but nobody in the IRA will come in front of the courts. Many of them have these ridiculous letters of comfort given to them, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) said. That equivalence is a distraction. I want to see those people prosecuted, but are we going to get witness statements from people who have run to and hidden in other countries? I doubt it very much.
I was going to come to that point. My right hon. Friend guessed what was on my mind—not that it was that deep for him to get to it. That was the whole reason why, in the end, even though we had our doubts, we supported the legacy Act: because we thought that, on balance, there was at least the likelihood of getting to the bottom of many unexposed cases, and of the deaths and violence that took place, knowing full well that those from the IRA will never be prosecuted for it and we will never know otherwise. The Government cannot proceed unless they are able categorically to clarify that legislation will protect veterans from the vexatious pursuit that has been so much in their minds and worries throughout this period. If we cannot give them that—if the Government cannot legislate for that—then there is no purpose in getting rid of the existing Act. That has to be the point. The Government may not like it, but they must face this reality: there cannot be pursuit of veterans if previous inquiries, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington said, have cleared them of whatever the charge was before. This repeat process that has been taking place, on absolutely no evidence whatever, is what has caused all the worry for our veterans. If we care about our veterans, we should not rush to change the existing legislation until we can confirm protection for these brave men and women who served their country so loyally, on behalf of civilians in Northern Ireland. If we cannot find a solution, it is ours and the Government’s duty not to tamper with what exists, for fear of destroying the one protection we have given those veterans.