The below Parliamentary question was asked by Angela Rayner on 2015-11-19.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many open access contracts operate on the railway; and how many such contracts are currently under consideration.
Claire Perry
There are now three open access operators running passenger services on the national rail network, with a fourth planning to start in 2018. Applications from two further operators are currently under consideration by the Office of Rail and Road.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Angela Rayner on 2016-01-04.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps (a) his Department and (b) NHS England is taking to ensure that mental health diagnostic and other services are (i) accessible and (ii) meet the needs of (A) children and (B) adults on the autism spectrum.
Alistair Burt
We know that people with autism can experience common mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety, as well as other mental illnesses. Over £400 million has been invested in Improving Access to Psychological Therapies to ensure access to talking therapies for those who need them, including those with autism.
An additional investment of £1.4 billion has been allocated to children and young people’s mental health services over the course of this Parliament. The Department is working closely with NHS England to invest in clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to deliver Local Transformation Plans, which must address the full spectrum of need including children with autism and learning disabilities. Roll-out of the Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programmes by 2018 will extend access to training for staff working with children with autism.
With support from the Department, NHS England and the Association of Directors of Social Services will undertake a series of visits to (CCGs) where there is good practice in meeting the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence Quality Standard 51 Autism, and to those that do not, with the aim of identifying best practice on diagnosis and support.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Angela Rayner on 2016-03-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to enforce section 54 of the Pensions Act 2008.
Justin Tomlinson
Section 54 of the Pensions Act 2008 prohibits employers from taking any action for the sole or main purpose of inducing a worker to leave a workplace pension scheme.
The Government takes potential inducement by employers very seriously. The Pensions Regulator (TPR) is responsible for all matters relating to employers’ compliance with their enrolment duties, including investigations into individual cases of potential inducement by employers.
Through automatic enrolment we are delivering a fundamental shift in workplace pension saving that is changing the way that people are enabled to save for retirement. Already 100,668 employers have completed their declaration of compliance with the Regulator, resulting in more than 6 million eligible jobholders being automatically enrolled into a qualifying pension scheme.
The law relating to inducements is an important safeguard for workers and the Regulator has statutory powers of investigation and enforcement it can use in appropriate circumstances. We are working with the Regulator to monitor the number and nature of possible inducement cases as the roll-out of automatic enrolment continues. That will enable us to judge whether the current legislation covering inducement, and the guidance and messaging provided by the Regulator, are operating effectively to protect employees, and whether change may be appropriate.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Angela Rayner on 2015-11-19.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many sexual assaults on trains there have been in the last 12 months.
Claire Perry
In the period 1 November 2014 to 31 October 2015 there were a total of 754 reported sexual assaults on trains, and 3 reported rapes. It is likely that the levels reported are at least in part a result of various initiatives by the British Transport Police (BTP) to raise awareness and encourage more reporting of sexual offences, including various specific campaigns such as Project Guardian which encourages victims to report inappropriate sexual behaviour. Further detail on the range of actions being taken by the BTP to reduce sexual offences can be found at http://www.btp.police.uk/advice_and_info/how_we_tackle_crime/sexual_offences.aspx.
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Angela Rayner on 2016-01-04.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that best practice on autism diagnosis and post-diagnostic support is shared between clinical commissioning groups.
Alistair Burt
We know that people with autism can experience common mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety, as well as other mental illnesses. Over £400 million has been invested in Improving Access to Psychological Therapies to ensure access to talking therapies for those who need them, including those with autism.
An additional investment of £1.4 billion has been allocated to children and young people’s mental health services over the course of this Parliament. The Department is working closely with NHS England to invest in clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to deliver Local Transformation Plans, which must address the full spectrum of need including children with autism and learning disabilities. Roll-out of the Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programmes by 2018 will extend access to training for staff working with children with autism.
With support from the Department, NHS England and the Association of Directors of Social Services will undertake a series of visits to (CCGs) where there is good practice in meeting the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence Quality Standard 51 Autism, and to those that do not, with the aim of identifying best practice on diagnosis and support.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Angela Rayner on 2016-03-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what his policy is on employers offering higher salaries to employees who opt of occupational pension schemes.
Justin Tomlinson
Section 54 of the Pensions Act 2008 prohibits employers from taking any action for the sole or main purpose of inducing a worker to leave a workplace pension scheme.
The Government takes potential inducement by employers very seriously. The Pensions Regulator (TPR) is responsible for all matters relating to employers’ compliance with their enrolment duties, including investigations into individual cases of potential inducement by employers.
Through automatic enrolment we are delivering a fundamental shift in workplace pension saving that is changing the way that people are enabled to save for retirement. Already 100,668 employers have completed their declaration of compliance with the Regulator, resulting in more than 6 million eligible jobholders being automatically enrolled into a qualifying pension scheme.
The law relating to inducements is an important safeguard for workers and the Regulator has statutory powers of investigation and enforcement it can use in appropriate circumstances. We are working with the Regulator to monitor the number and nature of possible inducement cases as the roll-out of automatic enrolment continues. That will enable us to judge whether the current legislation covering inducement, and the guidance and messaging provided by the Regulator, are operating effectively to protect employees, and whether change may be appropriate.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Angela Rayner on 2015-11-19.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, which passenger rail contracts let by (a) his Department, (b) the Scottish Government, (c) the Welsh Government, (d) Transport for London and (e) Merseyrail are (i) franchises, (ii) concessions, (iii) management contracts and (iv) other types of passenger rail contract.
Claire Perry
Under the terms of the Railways Act 1993 (as amended), all operational contracts for the supply of passenger rail services are franchises.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Angela Rayner on 2016-01-26.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what data his Department holds on the distribution of deemed contributions to defined-benefit pension schemes for each (a) income level and (b) age.
Justin Tomlinson
Distributions of deemed contributions to defined-benefit (DB) schemes broken down by income level or age, are not readily available, and have not been previously published as official statistics.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Angela Rayner on 2016-04-15.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate his Department has made of the proportion of members of master trust pension schemes who are enrolled in schemes subject to the master trust assurance framework.
Justin Tomlinson
Over 90% of the total memberships within master trust schemes are in master trusts that are signed up to the master trust assurance framework.
This is a performance indicator for the Pensions Regulator and the result will be published in their next annual report and accounts.
The speech made by Angela Rayner, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, in the House of Commons on 12 December 2022.
I would like to say that it is a pleasure to speak in this debate, but frankly, I am sad that we have reached this point. It is a stain on Britain’s democratic history that, if the Government have their way with these regulations, we will take a historic step away from making our democracy more open and accessible and towards closing it down, shutting people out and making it harder to vote.
Opposition Members have been clear from the start that this legislation is a wasted opportunity. It is a step backwards at a time when so many improvements are needed to widen participation in our democracy and to make it fit for the 21st century. The regulations arise from a slapdash, short-sighted and politically motivated act that turns the clock back on democratic progress. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) for his work throughout the stages of the Elections Act 2022, highlighting the dangers of mandatory photo ID, which we are debating today. I thank him for helping to secure this debate on the Floor of the House when Ministers would no doubt have preferred to sneak it through upstairs.
The basic fact is that voter ID is not only a backwards step for democracy, but completely pointless. It is a solution in search of a problem. Ministers claim it will combat voter fraud, but voter personation—the voter fraud which voter ID apparently targets—is vanishingly rare. Over the last 10 years, there have been about 243 million votes cast in elections, and how many people have been convicted of voter fraud? Four. That is 0.00000005%. I am under no illusion that the Government are in the slightest bit interested in genuinely tackling fraud. The Tories’ Minister responsible for fraud summarised it when he resigned at the Dispatch Box, saying that the Government had
“no knowledge of, or little interest in, the consequences of fraud to our economy or society.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 January 2022; Vol. 818, c. 20.]
While the Government focus on measures like these regulations, serious fraud, where criminals target vulnerable people with scams to steal bank details, is running rife under this Government. Our economy loses around £190 billion every year to fraud—more than the UK spends on health and defence combined. People are being left terrorised by scammers pretending to be their banks, mobile networks or family members, but instead of actually tackling that, the Government are using parliamentary time to tackle the virtually non-existent crime of voter personation, costing millions of pounds in taxpayers’ money to boot.
Justin Tomlinson
Will the right hon. Member explain why, if the system is so bad, it is used in Labour selections?
Angela Rayner
I have just explained why this is such a tiny, not even significant, minuscule issue that the Government are trying to make hay over, when, in fact, we have fraud that results in people being terrorised by scammers pretending to be their banks. Millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being wasted on this Bill instead of dealing with the fraud that the hon. Member’s constituents have to face every single day, which is not being tackled. He needs to tackle that.
Perhaps the Minister lives in a bizarre alternative reality where, across the country, people are attempting to impersonate their neighbours to steal their votes, but meanwhile, in this universe, you are more likely to be hit by lightning 54 times than fall victim to voter personation fraud. So let us get back to the reality that we face. The British public face a cost of living crisis, freezing temperatures, with people too scared to put their heating on, and cancelled Christmases, with working parents unable to afford festive treats. And this Conservative Government are planning to spend £180 million of taxpayers’ money to introduce a completely pointless and eye-wateringly expensive change.
Aaron Bell
We heard evidence from the police in the Bill Committee. They thought that the measures on voter ID and the extra measures that we are taking to avoid intimidation would make the Act really useful for them on polling day, so that they can get on with the job that we want them to do—that is, to keep our communities safe—and not have to spend as much time dealing with cases of personation at polling stations.
Angela Rayner
I say to the hon. Member: show us the evidence. Where is the evidence of that? We have not seen the evidence, but we do know that people are choosing between heating and eating this winter. We do know that crime is on the rise and that people just do not see the police on the beat any more. We do know that people are targeted by online fraud every single day of the week, with no protection and no action by their Government.
I ask the Minister: why will he not spend his time and energy tackling the huge array of issues that face the British people instead of flushing away yet more hard-earned taxpayers’ cash on this pointless measure? I might be able to hazard a guess. I notice that the regulations allow 60-plus, but not 18-plus, Oyster cards—why is that? I notice that OAP bus passes will be valid, yet students IDs will not—why is that? I notice that some 4.2 million voters do not have a photo ID allowed by these regulations, yet the Government demand that we plough on—why is that?
The Minister said that voter ID does not discriminate, but I am afraid that the evidence does not quite stack up. When the Minister’s colleague, a former Cabinet Office Minister—the right hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith)—said that
“the evidence of our pilots shows that there is no impact on any particular demographic group from this policy.”—[Official Report, 11 June 2020; Vol. 677, c. 394.]—
the answer was based on the Electoral Commission’s evaluations of the 2018 and 2019 voter ID pilots. However, in its most recent report, the commission said that it had no way of measuring the effect of voter ID on minority communities. It said:
“Polling station staff were not asked to collect demographic data about the people who did not come back, owing to the practical challenges involved in carrying out that data collection exercise”.
Let us take a look into the pilots more closely. Pilots for voter ID took place in just 10 local authority areas in England. In all elections that took place in 2019, there was one conviction and one police caution for using someone else’s vote at a polling station, but during the pilots, 2,000 people were turned away because they did not come to the polling station with ID. More than 750 of those did not return with ID to cast their vote. How can the Minister stand there and tell us that these measures will not make it harder for people to vote? Perhaps they are less keen on having the Government chosen by the voters than having the voters chosen by the Government.
I come on to the Government’s so-called “free elector IDs”. Not only are they unworkable, they are hugely expensive for already overstretched local authorities. Council leaders have warned the Government that voter ID risks damaging access to democracy and must be delayed. They say that there is simply not enough time to deal with all the risks that will be created by the new system. I wonder what the Minister has to say to the Conservative chair of the Local Government Association, James Jamieson, who said that voter ID must be delayed because:
“It is a fundamental part of the democratic process that elections can run smoothly and effectively where every citizen is able to exercise their right to vote.”
What does the Minister have to say to the leader of his party’s councillors?
The language and politics around voter ID used by this Government is frankly dangerous. Does the Minister not trust the voters of this country to continue to cast their ballots securely, as they have done for generations? Does he really believe that voting is not safe and secure in Britain? Ministers should be promoting confidence in our elections, not spreading baseless scare stories that threaten our democracy.
Finally, the Minister will be aware of an amendment tabled in the other place by my noble Friends on the Labour Front Bench to establish a Select Committee to conduct an assessment of the impact of the voter ID regulations on turnout in the local elections next May. If the Minister is so confident that the regulations will not create barriers to people voting, surely he cannot object to that pragmatic, common-sense proposal. Surely he has absolutely nothing to be afraid of.
I urge Members across the House, when they enter the voting Lobbies this evening, to think about our constituents who have the right to vote and may have done so for decades, but will be turned away for the first time in May. It is for that fundamental reason that these backward, unworkable and anti-democratic regulations must be stopped in their tracks.