UKPOL.CO.UK

Tag: Speeches

  • Rebecca Pow – 2023 Speech at the International Cooperation on Air Pollution

    Rebecca Pow – 2023 Speech at the International Cooperation on Air Pollution

    The speech made by Rebecca Pow, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for Environmental Quality and Resilience), in Gothenburg, Sweden on 16 March 2023.

    It’s a real pleasure to be here today and an absolute honour to be asked to open this event, which is the first meeting of the Forum for International Cooperation on Air Pollution, here in Gothenburg.

    For those of you who do not know me, my name is Rebecca Pow. I’m a Minister of the UK Parliament – my actual constituency is in the west of England, called Taunton Deane. I am the Minister for Environmental Quality and Resilience. Under that – I say to people, I’ve got all the difficult stuff – everything to do with water and flooding, everything to do with waste and recycling. I’m really excited that here in Sweden, we’re going to go on to look at the deposit return scheme that they run for recycling here in Sweden. I’ve got my team up there – we’re going to go and have a look and see how you do it, because we’re probably going to copy it in some shape or form.

    I also have under my hat: chemicals and regulation, and of course air quality, which is a huge part of my portfolio. I would say it is a growing area because we’re more and more becoming aware of what we need to do on air. Action on all of the areas I’m responsible for – not just in the UK, but across the globe – are so important because we need to ensure the health of our people, the protection of the environment, and the sustainability of our economies. There is a big link between air pollution and our economies.

    This Forum for International Cooperation on Air Pollution – made up of officials, researchers, and international organisations from around the world – is charged with a very great challenge to make sure we get this right on air pollution.

    We do know that air pollution continues to be the biggest environmental risk to human health. I was talking to somebody just now; the tricky thing with air of course is you can’t see it. So, it makes it, I think, more difficult to get that message across to the public.

    We know that poor air quality disproportionately affects the vulnerable. We know that it causes a range of life-shortening diseases, drives down productivity, and harms the natural environment.

    And whilst a lot of actions are being taken to deal with this, we know there is a great deal more to do. Hence, this forum I believe will be so helpful. Through our collaboration and scientific innovation, we have achieved huge successes in driving down emissions over recent decades. But the action that has got us this far simply will not get us where we need to be now and in the future.

    If we are to go further, we really do need to be bold by sharing experience and expertise, supporting innovative policymaking, and by working alongside people and the private sector to drive behavioural change. This is how we will achieve what we know is necessary to protect our citizens and our environment from the harmful effects of pollution. We should not let the complexity of the challenge stop us from taking decisive action.

    Governments across the world are working hard to clean up the air, to tackle climate change, net zero and restore our biodiversity. The UK is no different. We have a clear commitment and we’re taking ambitious action on each of these global challenges. For instance, we were proud to host COP26 in Glasgow – I expect many of the people here today or joining us on video attended that. All 197 Parties agreed to the Glasgow Climate Pact.

    We recently led the way in securing an incredibly stretching package for protecting nature globally – which includes a new international fund to tackle the nature crisis; and an expectation that $30 billion a year of international nature finance will flow into developing countries by 2030.

    Our recently published Environmental Improvement Plan is the blueprint to maintain our trajectory and outlines a range of actions, including our two new legal targets for fine particulate matter concentrations. Also, by reducing emissions in our homes by managing domestic burning – so, that’s open fires and log burners. We know that we have got to control these emissions but that’s the difficult one because that’s the one that people are very closely associated with. And also, we’ve got actions supporting farmers to reduce the impact of ammonia emissions from agriculture.

    Building on the progress we made during our COP and G7 presidencies, we will continue to display strong global leadership on air quality, climate change and nature. To keep our promises, and deliver to the highest standards, we must work with our partners across the world to maintain momentum.

    International co-operation continues to be as important now as it was back in 1979 – you all look a bit young here but 1979, some people will remember that – when the Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution was signed. This was following acid rain damage right here in Scandinavia during the 1970s and 1980s. I remember seeing those really devastating accounts of the effect of acid rain – and of course, that was air pollution. 32 countries came together then, and they’ve since gone on to achieve a remarkable decline in emissions across the region. It does show what can be done.

    This Convention is an example of what we can achieve through our cooperation. Air pollution – as we all know – knows no borders and it’s only by working together that we can address the interlinked threats of pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss. In that vein, it’s important we look beyond the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe region and continue to strengthen collaboration and cooperation with Parties right across the globe. It’s great to have our UN representative here today, who I met earlier.

    Our new Forum for International Cooperation on Air Pollution has an important role to play in continuing to support the emissions reductions we know are needed on a global scale.

    By exchanging information, mutual learning and enhancing cooperation, I know that we can improve the air we all breathe. This, of course, starts with learning lessons from the past. There is much we can learn from the Air Convention’s action to control and reduce transboundary air pollution over the last 44 years.

    This morning’s session on pathways to air pollution action will discuss the building blocks needed for regional cooperation, including some of the challenges and how the Convention overcame them.

    This afternoon’s session on ‘no regret’ actions will discuss different measures that countries can implement to improve air quality, even if they don’t necessarily have an expansive monitoring network. By sharing exactly this kind of science and policy expertise internationally, we can help more regions to take the necessary steps to tackle this pollution.

    The United Kingdom are incredibly proud to be co-chair of this international forum with Sweden. I think it’s already showing that it’s going to be a great working partnership. I would really like to offer my thanks to our Swedish co-chairs who have been instrumental in the development, design, and delivery of this forum. Thank you very much for that.

    I would also like to thank the Task Force, whose engagement and contributions in Bristol in October 2022 helped shape the programme we have lined up today and will continue to play a central role in the forum going forward.

    And finally, I’m grateful to all of you for travelling from around the world to be here today but also all of those joining virtually. It’s great that if you can’t get here in person, that you can still be a part of it and I hope those people will still be engaging with the different events going on. It is only with the valued input of all of these people that we will be able to work together to find new solutions that can be implemented across the international community.

    With your commitment and engagement, this Forum for International Cooperation will serve to pull together representatives from a very wide and inclusive sphere from right around the world to tackle the challenges of air pollution – potentially on a holistic scale, because this links in to so many parts of our lives. I’m absolutely sure this forum will be a force for good. I can feel it already, so I’m expecting great things. I really look forward to having a report back from my team who are here about how this goes but also what’s going to happen next – because I think that’s the really important thing. So, let’s carry on and push this up the global agenda, together.

    Thank you.

  • Jeremy Hunt – 2023 Spring Budget Speech

    Jeremy Hunt – 2023 Spring Budget Speech

    The speech made by Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the House of Commons on 15 March 2023.

    Madam Deputy Speaker, in the face of enormous challenges I report today on a British economy which is proving the doubters wrong.

    In the autumn we took difficult decisions to deliver stability and sound money.

    Since mid-October, 10-year gilt rates have fallen, debt servicing costs are down, mortgage rates are lower and inflation has peaked.

    The International Monetary Fund says our approach means the UK economy is on the right track.

    But we remain vigilant, and will not hesitate to take whatever steps are necessary for economic stability.

    Today the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast that because of changing international factors and the measures I take, the UK will not now enter a technical recession this year.

    They forecast we will meet the Prime Minister’s priorities to halve inflation, reduce debt and get the economy growing.

    We are following the plan and the plan is working.

    But that’s not all we’ve done.

    In the face of a cost-of-living crisis we have demonstrated our values by protecting struggling families with a £2,500 Energy Price Guarantee, one-off support and the uprating of benefits with inflation.

    Taken together, these measures are worth £94 bn over this year and next – one of the largest support packages in Europe.

    That averages over £3,300 of cost-of-living help for every household in the country.

    Today, we deliver the next part of our plan.

    A budget for growth.

    Not just the growth that comes when you emerge from a downturn.

    But long term, sustainable, healthy growth that pays for our NHS and schools, finds jobs for young people, and provides a safety net for older people all whilst making our country one of the most prosperous in the world.

    Prosperity with a purpose.

    That’s why growth is one of the Prime Minister’s five priorities for our country.

    I deliver that today …

    …by removing obstacles that stop businesses investing;

    …by tackling labour shortages that stop them recruiting;

    …by breaking down barriers that stop people working;

    …and by harnessing British ingenuity to make us a science and technology superpower.

    Meeting the Prime Minister’s priorities

    I start with the forecasts produced by Richard Hughes and his team at the independent Office for Budget Responsibility whom I thank for their diligent work.

    They have looked in detail at the Prime Minister’s economic priorities.

    Halving inflation

    The first of those is to halve inflation.

    Inflation destroys the value of hard-earned pay, deters investment and foments industrial strife.

    This government remains steadfast in its support for the independent Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England as it takes action to return inflation to the 2% target.

    Despite continuing global instability, the OBR report today that inflation in the UK will fall from 10.7% in the final quarter of last year to 2.9% by the end of 2023.

    That is more than halving inflation.

    High inflation is the root cause of the strikes we have seen in recent months.

    We will continue to work hard to settle these disputes but only in a way that does not fuel inflation.

    Part of the fall in inflation predicted by the OBR happens because of additional measures I take today.

    Firstly, I recognise that even though wholesale energy prices have been falling, there is still enormous pressure on family finances.

    Some people remain in real distress and we should always stand ready to help where we can.

    So after listening to representations from Martin Lewis and other experts, I today confirm that the Energy Price Guarantee will remain at £2,500 for the next three months.

    This means the £2,500 cap for the typical household will remain in place when energy prices remain high, ahead of an expected fall in prices from July.

    This measure will save the average family a further £160 on top of the energy support measures already announced.

    The second measure concerns over four million households on prepayment meters.

    They are often the poorest households, but they currently pay more than comparable customers on direct debit. Ofgem has already agreed with suppliers a temporary suspension to forced installations of prepayment meters.

    But today I go further, and confirm we will bring their charges in line with comparable direct debit charges. The energy premium paid by our poorest households is coming to an end.

    Next I have listened to representations from the hon members for East Devon, North Cornwall, Colne Valley and Central Suffolk and North Ipswich about the risk to community facilities, especially swimming pools, caused by high costs. When times are tough, such facilities matter even more.

    So today I am providing a £63m fund to keep our public leisure centres and pools afloat.

    I have also heard from my RHF the charities minister and his Secretary of State about the brilliant work third sector organisations are doing to help people struggling in tough times.

    They can often reach people in need that central or local government cannot, so I will give his department £100m to support thousands of local charities and community organisations do their fantastic work.

    I also note the personal courage of one of my predecessors, my RHF from Bromsgrove, in talking about the tragedy of suicide and the importance of preventing it.

    We already invest a lot in this area, but I will assign an extra £10m over the next two years to help the voluntary sector play an even bigger role in stopping more families experiencing such intolerable heartache.

    My penultimate cost of living measure concerns one of our other most treasured community institutions, the great British pub.

    In December, I extended the alcohol duty freeze until 1 August, after which duties will go up in line with inflation in the usual way.

    But today, I will do something that was not possible when we were in the EU and significantly increase the generosity of Draught Relief, so that from 1 August the duty on draught products in pubs will be up to 11p lower than the duty in supermarkets, a differential we will maintain as part of a new Brexit pubs guarantee.

    Madam Deputy Speaker, British ale may be warm, but the duty on a pint is frozen.

    And even better, thanks to the Windsor Framework negotiated by my RHF the Prime Minister, that change will now also apply to every pub in Northern Ireland.

    Finally, I have heard the representations from the Honourable Member from Stoke on Trent North, my Rt Hon Friend for Witham and my Rt Hon Friend from South Thanet and the Sun newspaper about the impact on motorists of the planned 11p rise in fuel duty.

    Because inflation remains high, I have decided now is not the right time to uprate fuel duty with inflation or increase the duty.

    So here’s what I am going to do: for a further 12 months I’m going to maintain the 5p cut … and I’m going to freeze fuel duty too.

    That saves the average driver £100 next year and around £200 since the 5p cut was introduced.

    Our Energy Price Guarantee, fuel duty and duty on a pint – all frozen in today’s budget.

    Something that doesn’t just help families, it helps the economy too because their combined impact reduces CPI inflation by nearly ¾% this year, lowering inflation when it is particularly high.

    Reducing debt

    I now turn to the Prime Minister’s second priority, which is to reduce debt.

    Here too our plan is on track.

    Underlying debt is forecast to be 92.4% of GDP next year, 93.7% in 2024-25; 94.6% in 2025-26, and 94.8% in 2026-27, before falling to 94.6% in 2027-28.

    We are meeting the debt priority.

    And with a buffer of £6.5bn, it means we are meeting our fiscal rule to have debt falling as a percentage of GDP by the fifth year of the forecast.

    As a proportion of GDP our debt remains lower than the USA, Canada, France, Italy and Japan.

    And because of the decisions I take today, and the improved outlook for the public finances, underlying debt in five years’ time is now forecast to be nearly three percentage points lower than it was in the Autumn.

    That means more money for our public services and a lower burden on future generations – deeply-held values which we put into practice today.

    At the Autumn Statement I also announced that public sector net borrowing must be below 3% of GDP over the same period.

    The OBR confirm today that we are meeting that rule with a buffer of £39.2 bn.

    In fact our deficit falls in every single year of the forecast, with borrowing falling from 5.1% of GDP in 2023-24, to 3.2% in 2024-25, 2.8% in 2025-26, 2.2% in 2026-27 and 1.7% in 2027-28.

    Even better in the final two years of the forecast our current budget is in surplus, meaning we only borrow for investment and not for day-to-day spending.

    Day to day departmental spending will grow at 1% a year on average in real terms after 2024-25 until the end of the forecast period, and capital plans are maintained at the same level set at Autumn Statement.

    We will uprate tobacco duty, and we will freeze the gross gaming duty yield bands. We are also maintaining the starting rate for savings and the ISA subscription limits, and we will bring forward a range of measures to tackle promoters of tax avoidance schemes.

    But Madam Deputy Speaker, taken together today’s measures lead to a slightly lower overall tax burden for the rest of the parliament compared to the OBR’s Autumn forecast.

    We are reducing borrowing and improving our public finances.

    By doing so we make sure we are on track to…

    … halve inflation

    … get debt falling

    …and grow our economy, which I turn to next.

    Growth

    Growth is the Prime Minister’s third priority and the focus of today’s budget.

    13 years ago, we inherited an economy that had crashed.

    But since 2010 we’ve grown more than major countries like France, Italy or Japan and about the same as Europe’s largest economy Germany.

    We’ve halved unemployment…

    … cut inequality

    …and reduced the number of workless households by one million.

    For the first time ever, because of the rises in tax thresholds made by successive Chancellors people in our country can earn £1,000 a month without paying a penny of tax or national insurance.

    Those tax reductions have helped lift 2 million people out of absolute poverty, after housing costs, including 400,000 pensioners and 500,000 children.

    That averages 80 pensioners and 100 children lifted out of poverty for every single day we’ve been in office.

    Today we face the future with extraordinary potential.

    The World Bank said that out of all big European countries, we are the best place to do business.

    Global chief executives say that apart from America and China, we are the best country to invest in.

    We became the second country in the world to have a stock of foreign direct investment worth 2 trillion dollars.

    And London has just pipped New York and 53 other global cities to be the best place in the world for female entrepreneurs.

    Declinists are wrong about our country for another reason, which is our newfound strength in the innovation industries that will shape this century.

    Over the last 13 years we have become the world’s third trillion-dollar tech economy after the US and China.

    We have built the largest life sciences sector in Europe, producing a Covid vaccine that saved six million lives and a treatment that saved a million more.

    Our film and TV industry has become Europe’s largest, with our creative industries growing at twice the rate of the economy.

    Our advanced manufacturing industries produce around half the world’s large civil aircraft wings.

    And thanks to a clean energy miracle we have become a world leader in offshore wind.

    Other parties talk about a green energy revolution, so I gently remind them that nearly 90% of our solar power was installed in the last 13 years – showing it’s this Government who fix the roof while the sun is shining.

    Let’s turn now to what the OBR say about our growth prospects.

    In November, they expected that the UK economy would enter recession in 2022 and contract by 1.4% in 2023.

    That left many families feeling concerned about the future.

    But today, the OBR forecast we will not enter a recession at all this year with a contraction of just 0.2%.

    And after this year the UK economy will grow in every single year of the forecast period: by 1.8% in 2024; 2.5% in 2025; 2.1% in 2026; and 1.9% in 2027.

    They also expect the unemployment rate to rise by less than one percentage point to 4.4%, with 170,000 fewer people out of work compared to their Autumn forecast.

    Defence

    Madam Deputy Speaker, that return to growth has direct consequences for our role on the global stage.

    I am proud we are giving the brave people of Ukraine more military support than anyone else in Europe.

    On Monday we were able to go further with my RHF the Prime Minister announcing a £5bn package of funding for the Ministry of Defence, an additional £2bn next year and £3bn the year after.

    Today, following representations from our persuasive Defence Secretary, I confirm that we will add a total of £11 bn to our defence budget over the next five years and it will be nearly 2.25% of GDP by 2025.

    We were the first large European country to commit to 2% of GDP for defence and will raise that to 2.5% as soon as fiscal and economic circumstances allow.

    Following representations from my RHF the Minister for Veterans Affairs, I am today also increasing support for our brave ex-servicemen and women.

    We will provide a package worth over £30m to increase the capacity of the Office for Veterans’ Affairs, support veterans with injuries returning from their service and increase the availability of veteran housing.

    But to be Europe’s biggest defender of democracy, we must build Europe’s most dynamic economy.

    That means tackling our longstanding productivity issues including two in particular which I address today: lower business investment and higher economic inactivity than other similar countries.

    Too often companies struggle to recruit and even when they do, output per employee is lower.

    So today I set out the four pillars of our industrial strategy to address these issues.

    Colleagues will know from my Bloomberg speech, they all start with the letter ‘E’: Enterprise, Employment, Education and Everywhere.

    I start with ‘Everywhere’, our measures to level up growth across the UK.

    Everywhere

    This government was elected on a mandate to level up.

    We have already allocated nearly £4bn in over 200 projects across the country through the first two rounds of the Levelling Up Fund. A third round will follow.

    Since we started focusing on levelling up, 70% of the growth in salaried jobs has come from outside London and the South-East.

    Today we take further steps.

    Investment Zones

    Canary Wharf and the Liverpool Docks were two outstanding regeneration projects.

    I pay tribute to Lord Heseltine for making them happen because they transformed the lives of thousands of people. They showed what’s possible when entrepreneurs, government and local communities come together.

    So today I announce that we will deliver 12 new Investment Zones, 12 potential Canary Wharfs.

    In England we have identified the following areas as having the potential to host one: West Midlands, Greater Manchester, the North-East, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, East Midlands, Teesside and, once again, Liverpool. There will also be at least one in each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

    To be chosen, each area must identify a location where they can offer a bold and imaginative partnership between local government and a university or research institute in a way that catalyses new innovation clusters.

    If the application is successful, they will have access to £80m of support for a range of interventions including skills, infrastructure, tax reliefs and business rates retention.

    Local investment

    Working together with our formidable Levelling Up Secretary, I also want to give some further support to levelling up areas under the ‘E’ of everywhere.

    First, I will invest over £200m in high quality local regeneration projects across England including the regeneration of Tipton town centre and the Marsden New Mills Redevelopment Scheme.

    I am also announcing a further £161m for regeneration projects in Mayoral Combined Authorities and the Greater London Authority.

    And I will make over £400m available for new Levelling Up Partnerships in areas that include Redcar and Cleveland, Blackburn, Oldham, Rochdale, Mansfield, South Tyneside, and Bassetlaw.

    Having listened to the case for better local transport infrastructure from many hon members, I can announce a second round of the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements, allocating £8.8 billion over the next five-year funding period.

    And following a wet and then cold winter, I also received particularly strong representations from my hon friends from North Devon, South-West Devon and Newton Abbot as well as councillor Peter Martin from my own constituency about the curse of potholes.

    The Spending Review allocated £500m every year to the Potholes Fund but today I have decided to increase that fund by a further £200m next year to help local communities tackle this problem.

    For Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland this Budget delivers not only a new Investment Zone but an additional £320m for the Scottish Government, £180m for the Welsh Government and £130m for the Northern Ireland Executive as a result of Barnett consequentials.

    On top of which in Scotland, I can announce up to £8.6m of targeted funding for the Edinburgh Festivals as well as £1.5m funding to repair the Cloddach Bridge.

    I will provide £20m of funding for the Welsh Government to restore the Holyhead Breakwater and, in Northern Ireland, I am allocating up to £3m to extend the Tackling Paramilitarism Programme and up to £40m to extend further and higher education participation.

    Local leadership

    But Madam Deputy Speaker, for levelling up to truly succeed we need to unleash the civic entrepreneurship that is only possible when elected local leaders are able to fund and deliver solutions to their own challenges.

    That means giving them responsibility for local economic growth and the benefit from the upside when it happens.

    So the government will consult on transferring responsibilities for local economic development currently delivered by Local Enterprise Partnerships to support local economic development to local authorities from April 2024.

    I will also boost Mayors’ financial autonomy by agreeing multi-year single settlements for the West Midlands and the Greater Combined Manchester Authority at the next spending review, something I intend to roll out for all Mayoral areas over time.

    I have also agreed a new long-term commitment so that they can retain 100% of their business rates, something I also hope to expand to other areas over time.

    Investment zones, regeneration projects, levelling up partnerships, local transport infrastructure and business rates retention…more control for local communities over their economic destiny so we will level up wealth generation and opportunity everywhere.

    Enterprise

    Today’s budget is about the Prime Minister’s promise to grow the economy.

    We’ve talked about making that growth happen everywhere, so I now move on to my second ‘e’. Enterprise.

    We need to be Europe’s most dynamic enterprise economy.

    And under this government that is exactly what’s been happening.

    Since 2010 we have one million more businesses in the UK, a bigger increase than in Germany, France or Italy.

    But I want another million and another million after that.

    So today I bring forward enterprise measures in these threeareas: to lower business taxes, reduce energy costs and support our growth industries.

    Business taxes

    Let’s start with business taxation.

    We know the importance of a competitive tax regime. We already have lower levels of business taxation than France, Germany, Italy or Japan.

    But I want us to have the most pro-business pro-enterprise tax regime anywhere.

    Even after the corporation tax rise this April, we will have the lowest headline rate in the G7.

    Only 10% of companies will pay the full 25% rate.

    But even at 19% our corporation tax regime did not incentivise investment as effectively as countries with higher headline rates.

    The result is less capital investment and lower productivity than countries like France and Germany.

    We have already taken measures to address this.

    For larger businesses we have had the super deduction, introduced by my RHF the Prime Minister, which ends this month.

    For smaller businesses we have increased the Annual Investment Allowance to £1m, meaning 99% of all businesses can deduct the full value of all their investment from that year’s taxable profits.

    If the super deduction was allowed to end without a replacement, we would have fallen down the international league tables for tax competitiveness and damaged growth.

    I could not allow that to happen.

    So today, I can announce that we will introduce a new policy of “full expensing” for the next three years, with an intention to make it permanent as soon as we can responsibly do so.

    That means that every single pound a company invests in IT equipment, plant or machinery can be deducted in full and immediately from taxable profits.

    It is a corporation tax cut worth an average of £9 bn a year for every year it is in place.

    And its impact on our economy will be huge. The OBR says it will increase business investment by 3% for every year it is in place.

    This decision makes us the only major European country with full expensing…

    …and gives us the joint most generous capital allowance regime of any advanced economy.

    Madam Deputy Speaker, I also want to make our taxes more competitive in our life science and creative industry sectors.

    In the Autumn, I said I would return with a more robust R & D tax credit scheme for smaller research-intensive companies.

    So today, I am introducing an enhanced credit which means that if a qualifying small or medium-sized business spends 40% or more of their total expenditure on R & D, they will be able to claim a credit worth £27 for every £100 they spend.

    That means an eligible cancer drug company spending £2 million on research and development will receive over £500,000 to help them develop breakthrough treatments.

    It is a £1.8 billion package of support helping 20,000 cutting edge companies who day by day are turning Britain into a science superpower.

    This government’s audio-visual tax reliefs have helped make our film and TV industry the biggest in Europe. Only last month, Pinewood announced an expansion which will bring another 8,000 jobs to the UK.

    To give even more momentum to this critical sector I will introduce an expenditure credit with a rate of 34% for film, high end television and video games and 39% for the animation and children’s TV sectors. I will maintain the qualifying threshold for high-end television at £1 million.

    And because our theatres, orchestras and museums do such a brilliant job at attracting tourists to London and the UK, I will also extend for another two years their current 45% and 50% reliefs.

    Energy

    Madam Deputy Speaker, an enterprise economy needs low taxes. But it also needs cheap and reliable energy.

    We have already announced billions of support to help businesses reduce their energy bills through the Energy Bills Relief Scheme and the Energy Bills Discount Scheme.

    We have appointed Dame Alison Rose, Chief Executive of NatWest, to co-Chair our national energy efficiency taskforce and help deliver our national ambition to reduce energy use by 15%.

    To support her efforts, I will extend the Climate Change Agreement scheme for two years to allow eligible businesses £600 million of tax relief on energy efficiency measures.

    But the long-term solution is not subsidy but security.

    That means investing in domestic sources of energy that fall outside Putin or any autocrat’s control.

    We are world leaders in renewable energy so today I want to develop another plank of our green economy, Carbon Capture Usage and Storage.

    I am allocating up to £20 billion of support for the early development of CCUS, starting with projects from our East Coast to Merseyside to North Wales – paving the way for CCUS everywhere across the UK as we approach 2050.

    This will support up to 50,000 jobs, attract private sector investment and help capture 20-30 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030.

    We have increased the proportion of electricity generated from renewables from under 10% to nearly 40%.

    But because the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine, we will need another critical source of cheap and reliable energy.

    And that is nuclear.

    There have been no more powerful advocates for this than the hon members for Ynys Mon, Copeland, Hartlepool and Workington.

    They rightly say that increasing nuclear capacity is vital to meet our Net Zero obligations.

    So to encourage the private sector investment into our nuclear programme, I today confirm that subject to consultation nuclear power will be classed as “environmentally sustainable” in our green taxonomy, giving it access to the same investment incentives as renewable energy.

    Alongside that will come more public investment.

    In the Autumn Statement, I announced the first state-financed investment in nuclear for a generation, a £700 million investment in Sizewell C.

    Today I can announce two further commitments to deliver our nuclear ambitions.

    Firstly, following representations from our energetic Energy Security Secretary I am announcing the launch of Great British Nuclear which will bring down costs and provide opportunities across the nuclear supply chain to help provide up to one quarter of our electricity by 2050.

    And secondly, I am launching the first competition for Small Modular Reactors. It will be completed by the end of this year and if demonstrated as viable we will co-fund this exciting new technology.

    Boosting innovation

    Finally under the ‘e’ of Enterprise I come to our innovation economy, a central area of national competitive advantage for the United Kingdom.

    Over the weekend, I worked night and day with the Prime Minister and the Governor of the Bank of England to protect the deposits of thousands of our most cutting-edge companies.

    We successfully secured the sale of the UK arm of Silicon Valley Bank to HSBC, so the future of those companies is now safe in the hands of one of Europe’s biggest and most creditworthy banks.

    But those events show that we need to build a larger, more diverse financing system, where the benefits of investment in high growth firms are available to more investors.

    So I will return in the Autumn Statement with a plan to deliver that. It will include measures to unlock productive investment from defined contribution pension funds and other sources, make the London Stock Exchange a more attractive place to list, and complete our response to the challenges created by the US Inflation Reduction Act.

    However when it comes to our innovation industries, there are two areas I want to make progress on today.

    Nigel Lawson made the City of London one of the world’s top financial centres by competitive deregulation.

    With our Brexit autonomy, we can do the same for our high growth sectors.

    So today I want to reform the regulations around medicines and medical technologies.

    We are lucky with the MHRA to have one of the most respected drugs regulators in the world, indeed the very first to licence a Covid vaccine.

    From 2024, they will move to a different model which will allow rapid, often near automatic sign-off for medicines and technologies already approved by trusted regulators in other parts of the world such as the United States, Europe or Japan.

    At the same time from next year they will set up a swift new approval process for the most cutting-edge medicines and devices to ensure the UK becomes a global centre for their development.

    And with an extra £10m of funding over the next two years they will put in place the quickest, simplest, regulatory approval in the world for companies seeking rapid market access.

    We are proud of our life sciences sector which received more inward investment than any in Europe last year.

    Today’s change will make the UK an even more exciting place to invest – as well as speeding up access for NHS patients to the very newest drugs.

    Today together with our talented Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary, I also take measures to strengthen our position in artificial intelligence, where the UK hosts one third of all European companies.

    I am accepting all nine of the digital technology recommendations made by Sir Patrick Vallance in the review I asked him to do in the Autumn Statement.

    That means I can report to the House that we will:

    …launch an AI sandbox to trial new, faster approaches to help innovators get cutting edge products to market;

    …work at pace with the Intellectual Property Office to provide clarity on IP rules so Generative AI companies can access the material they need;

    ……and ask Sir Patrick’s successor, Dame Professor Angela McLean, to report before the summer on options around the Growth Duty for regulators.

    Because AI needs computing horsepower, I today commit around £900m of funding to implement the recommendations in the independent Future of Compute Review for an Exascale supercomputer.

    The power that AI’s complex algorithms need can also be provided by quantum computing.

    So today we publish a quantum strategy which will set our vision to be a world leading quantum enabled economy by 2033 with a research and innovation programme totalling £2.5 billion.

    I also want to encourage the best AI research to happen in the UK so will award a prize of £1m every year, for the next ten years, to the person or team that does the most ground-breaking British AI research.

    The world’s first stored-programme computer was built at the University of Manchester in 1948, and was known as the “Manchester baby”.

    75 years on, the baby has grown up, so I will call this new national AI award “the Manchester Prize” in its honour.

    Madam Deputy Speaker we want the UK to be the best place in Europe for companies to locate, invest and grow so today’s enterprise measures strengthen our technology and life science sectors, invest in energy security and for three years – but I hope permanently – cut corporation tax by £9 bn a year to give us the best investment incentives of any advanced economy.

    Employment

    An enterprise economy can only grow if it can hire the people it needs, which brings me to my third pillar after ‘Everywhere’ and ‘Enterprise’, the ‘E’ of Employment.

    Brexit was a decision by the British people to change our economic model.

    In that historic vote, our country decided to move from a model based on unlimited low skill migration to one based on high wages and high skills.

    Today we show how we will deliver that with a major set of reforms. The OBR say it is the biggest positive supply side intervention they have ever recognised in their forecast.

    We have around one million vacancies in the economy…

    … but excluding students there are over seven million adults of working age who are not in work.

    That is a potential pool of seven people for every vacancy. We believe work is a virtue.

    We agree with the road haulage king Eddie Stobart who said: ‘the only place success comes before work is the dictionary.’

    So today, I bring forward reforms to remove the barriers that stop people who want to from working. I start with over 2 million people who are inactive due to a disability or long-term sickness.

    Long term sick and disabled

    Thanks to the reforms courageously introduced by the Rt Hon Member for Chingford and Woodford Green, the number of disabled people in work has risen by two million since 2013.

    But even after that we could fill half the vacancies in the economy with people who say they would like to work despite being inactive due to sickness or disability.

    With Zoom, Teams and new working models that make it easier to work from home this is more possible than ever before.

    So for that reason, the ever-diligent Work and Pensions Secretary, today takes the next step in his ground-breaking work on tackling economic inactivity.

    I thank him for that, and today we publish a White Paper on disability benefits reform.

    It is the biggest change to our welfare system in a decade.

    His plans will abolish the Work Capability Assessment in Great Britain and separate benefit entitlement from an individual’s ability to work. As a result, disabled benefit claimants will always be able to seek work without fear of losing financial support.

    Today I am going further by announcing that in England and Wales, after listening to representations from the Centre for Social Justice and others, we will fund a new programme called Universal Support.

    This is a new, voluntary employment scheme for disabled people where the government will spend up to £4,000 per person to help them find appropriate jobs and put in place the support they need. It will fund 50,000 places every single year.

    We also want to help those who are forced to leave work because of a health condition such as back pain or a mental health issue.

    We should give them support before they end up leaving their job, so I am also announcing a £400m plan to increase the availability of mental health and musculoskeletal resources and expand the Individual Placement and Support scheme.

    And because occupational health provided by employers has a key role to play, I will also bring forward two new consultations on how to improve its availability and double the funding for the small company subsidy pilot.

    Young people in care

    There is another group that deserves particular attention, which is children in care. They too should be given all possible help to make a normal working life possible when they reach adulthood.

    Often, they depend on foster families who do a brilliant job, so I am today nearly doubling the Qualifying Care Relief threshold to £18,140 which will give a tax cut to a qualifying carer worth an average of £450 a year.

    I will also increase the funding we provide to the Staying Close programme by 50% to help more care leavers into employment.

    And I will support young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities with a £3m pilot expansion of the Department for Education’s Supported Internship programme to help them transition from education into the workplace.

    Madam Deputy Speaker, no civilised society can ignore the contribution that can be made by those with challenging family circumstances, a long-term illness or a disability.

    So today we remove the barriers we can with reforms that strengthen our society as well as strengthening our economy.

    Welfare recipients

    The next set of employment reforms affects those on Universal Credit without a health condition who are looking for work or on low earnings.

    There are more than 2 million jobseekers in this group, more than enough to fill every single vacancy in the economy.

    Independence is always better than dependence, which is why we believe those who can work, should.

    So sanctions will be applied more rigorously to those who fail to meet strict work-search requirements or choose not to take up a reasonable job offer.

    And for those working low hours, we will increase the Administrative Earnings Threshold from the equivalent of 15 hours to 18 hours at National Living Wage for an individual claimant, meaning that anyone working below this level will receive more work coach support alongside a more intensive conditionality regime.

    Older workers including doctors

    The next group of workers I want to support are those aged over 50.

    My younger officials have termed these people “older workers”, although as a 56-year-old myself I prefer the term “experienced.”

    Fully 3.5 million of pre-retirement age over 50 are not part of the labour force, an increase of 320,000 since before the pandemic.

    We now have the 23rd highest inactivity rate for over 55s in the OECD.

    If we matched the rate of Sweden, we would add more than one million people to our national labour force.

    Madam Deputy Speaker, I say this not to flatter you, but older people are the most skilled and experienced people we have.

    No country can thrive if it turns its back on such a wealth of talent and ability.

    But for too many, turning 50 is a moment of anxiety about the cliff edge of retirement rather than a moment of anticipation about another two decades of fulfilment.

    I know this myself from personal experience. After I turned 50, I was relegated to the backbenches and planned for a quiet life. But instead I decided to set an example by embarking on a new career in finance.

    So today I take three steps to make it easier for those who wish to work longer to do so.

    First, we will increase the number of people who get the best possible financial, health and career guidance ahead of retirement by enhancing the DWP’s excellent “Mid-life MOT” Strategy.

    They will also increase by fivefold the number of 50+ Universal Credit claimants who receive mid-life MOTs from 8,000 to 40,000 a year.

    Second with my RHF the Education Secretary, we will introduce a new kind of apprenticeship targeted at the over 50s who want to return to work.

    They will be called Returnerships, and operate alongside skills boot camps and sector-based work academies.

    They will bring together our existing skills programmes to make them more appealing for older workers, focussing on flexibility and previous experience to reduce training length.

    Finally, I have listened to the concerns of many senior NHS clinicians who say unpredictable pension tax charges are making them leave the NHS just when they are needed most.

    The NHS is our biggest employer, and we will shortly publish the long-term workforce plan I promised in the Autumn Statement.

    But ahead of that I do not want any doctor to retire early because of the way pension taxes work.

    As Chancellor I have realised the issue goes wider than doctors.

    No one should be pushed out of the workforce for tax reasons.

    So today I will increase the pensions annual tax-free allowance by 50% from £40,000 to £60,000.

    Some have also asked me to increase the Lifetime Allowance from its £1 million limit.

    But I have decided not to do that.

    Instead I will go further and abolish the Lifetime Allowance altogether.

    It’s a pension tax reform that will…

    … stop over 80% of NHS doctors from receiving a tax charge.

    … incentivise our most experienced and productive workers to stay in work for longer.

    … and simplify our tax system, taking thousands of people out of the complexity of pension tax.

    Madam Deputy Speaker, a comprehensive plan to remove the barriers to work facing those on benefits, those with health conditions and older workers. That is the ‘e’ of the employment pillar of today’s growth budget.

    Education

    Which brings me to the final pillar of our growth plan. After Employment, Enterprise and Everywhere I turn to the ‘e’ of Education.

    Over more than a decade, this government has driven improvement in our education system.

    We have risen by nearly 10 places in the international league tables for English and maths since 2015 alone.

    In the Autumn Statement, I built on this progress with an extra £2.3bn annual investment to our schools.

    We are reviewing our approach to skills with Sir Michael Barber.

    We have set out our plans to transform lifelong learning with a new Lifelong Loan Entitlement…

    …and My RHF the PM announced plans to make maths compulsory till 18.

    But today I want to address an issue in our education system that is bad for children and damaging for the economy.

    It’s an issue that starts even before a child enters the gates of a school.

    Today I want to reform our childcare system.

    We have the one of the most expensive systems in the world.

    Almost half of non-working mothers said they would prefer to work if they could arrange suitable childcare.

    For many women, a career break becomes a career end.

    Our female participation rate is higher than average for OECD economies, but we trail top performers like Denmark and the Netherlands.

    If we matched Dutch levels of participation, there would be more than one million additional women working.

    So today I announce a series of reforms to start that journey.

    Supply

    I begin with the supply of childcare. We have seen a significant decline in childminders over recent years – down 9% in England in just one year.

    But childminders are a vital way to deliver affordable and flexible care and we need more of them.

    I have listened to representations from my hon friend from Stroud and decided to address this by piloting incentive payments of £600 for childminders who sign up to the profession, rising to £1,200 for those who join through an agency.

    I have also heard many concerns about cost pressures facing the sector.

    We know this is making it hard to hire staff and raising prices for parents, with around two thirds of childcare providers increasing fees last year alone.

    So we will increase the funding paid to nurseries providing free childcare under the hours offer by £204m from this September rising to £288m next year.

    This is an average of a 30% increase in the two-year-old rate this year, just as the sector has requested.

    I will also offer providers more flexibility in how they operate in line with other parts of the UK. So alongside that additional funding, we will change minimum staff-to-child ratios from 1:4 to 1:5 for two-year-olds in England as happens in Scotland, although the new ratios will remain optional with no obligation on either childminders or parents to adopt them.

    UC claimants

    I want to help the 700,000 parents on universal credit who, until the reforms I announced today had limited requirements to look for work. Many remain out of work because they cannot afford the upfront payment necessary to access subsidised childcare.

    So for any parents who are moving into work or wants to increase their hours, we will pay their childcare costs upfront.

    And we will increase the maximum they can claim to £951 for one child and £1,630 for two children, an increase of almost 50%.

    School age children

    I turn now to parents of school age children, who often face barriers to working because of the limited availability of wraparound care.

    One third of primary schools do not offer childcare at both ends of the school day, even though for many people a job requires availability throughout the working day.

    To address this, we will fund schools and local authorities to increase supply of wraparound care so all school-age parents can drop their children off between 8 am and 6 pm.

    Our ambition is that all schools will start to offer a wraparound offer, either on their own or in partnership with other schools, by September 2026.

    Pre-school children

    Madam Deputy Speaker, today’s childcare reforms will increase the availability of childcare, reduce costs and increase the number of parents able to use it.

    Taken together with earlier reforms, they amount to the most significant improvements to childcare provision in a decade.

    But if we really want to remove the barriers to work we need to go further for parents who have a child under 3.

    For them childcare remains just too expensive.

    In 2010 there was barely any free childcare for under 5s.

    The government changed that with free childcare for 3- and 4-year-olds in England.

    It was a landmark reform.

    But not a complete one.

    I don’t want any parent with a child under 5 to be prevented from working, if they want to, because it is damaging to our economy and unfair, mainly to women.

    So today I announce that in eligible households where all adults are working at least 16 hours, we will introduce 30 hours of free childcare not just for 3-and-4 year-olds, but for every single child over the age of 9 months.

    The 30 hours offer will now start from the moment maternity or paternity leave ends.

    It’s a package worth on average £6,500 every year for a family with a two-year-old child using 35 hours of childcare every week…

    … and reduces their childcare costs by nearly 60%.

    Because it is such a large reform, we will introduce it in stages to ensure there is enough supply in the market.

    Working parents of two-year-olds will be able to access 15 hours of free care from April 2024, helping around half a million parents.

    From September 2024, that 15 hours will be extended to all children from 9 months up, meaning a total of nearly one million parents will be eligible.

    And from September 2025 every single working parent of under 5s will have access to 30 hours free childcare per week.

    Today we complete a landmark reform…

    …we help the economy

    …transform the lives of thousands of women

    …and build a childcare system comparable to the best.

    A major early years reform for our education system, the ‘E’ of education alongside the three other pillars of our growth plan, enterprise, employment and everywhere.

    Madam Deputy Speaker in November we delivered stability.

    Today it’s growth.

    We tackle the two biggest barriers that stop businesses growing – investment incentives and labour supply.

    The best investment incentives in Europe.

    The biggest ever employment package.

    For disabled people, more help.

    For older people, barriers removed.

    For families feeling the pinch…

    …fuel duty frozen.

    …beer duty cut.

    …energy bills capped.

    And for parents, 30 hours of free childcare for all under 5s.

    Today we build for the future with…

    …inflation down

    …debt falling

    …and growth up.

    The declinists are wrong, and the optimists are right.

    We stick to the plan because the plan is working.

    And I commend this statement to the House.

  • Clive Betts – 2023 Speech on Building Safety

    Clive Betts – 2023 Speech on Building Safety

    The speech made by Clive Betts, the Labour MP for Sheffield South East, in the House of Commons on 14 March 2023.

    Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)

    I call the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee.

    Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)

    I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. Clearly, any progress in this matter is welcome for the leaseholders who are still sat there, wondering when something is going to happen to their unsafe homes. The Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), is coming to the Select Committee next Monday. I apologise in advance that, for personal reasons, I cannot be there, but I am sure the scrutiny will be just as effective under the oversight of the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman).

    A number of issues have been raised with the Select Committee. First, in terms of the agreement that developers are signing, it was said to us that the remediation standards developers will have to work to will not be as strict as those under the Building Safety Act. Can the Secretary of State confirm whether that is true? Secondly, the Committee spoke to product manufacturers the other week, who said that they had had no contact with the Department for the last 12 months. Is that true, and if so, when will that contact be renewed, so that they can be held to account?

    Finally, the Minister says, “I’m going to look at this” every time I ask him. Kate Henderson of the National Housing Federation told the Committee on Monday that the cost of remediating these matters will be £6 billion for social housing providers. They have only had a tiny bit of money under the ACM cladding measures. Will the Secretary of State look at that again? Otherwise, there will be cutbacks to the house building programme that they all want to engage in.

    Michael Gove

    I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee for his questions. I note his apology for not being able to be there to cross examine my hon. Friend the Minister for local government and building safety next Monday. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) will do a brilliant job. They are the Morse and Lewis of—

    Mr Betts

    Which one’s which?

    Michael Gove

    Well, quite. I know that they will show endeavour in asking the right questions.

    On remediation standards, I do not believe it is the case that the developers are being held to any less high a standard than that which exists in the Building Safety Act, but I look forward to working with the hon. Gentleman and others to identify any gap between what the Act makes provision for and anything that developers have committed to do.

    It is the case that I have not been in touch with the Construction Products Association as a corporate body for a while. We have been pursuing individual construction product companies, but of course, our actions have to take account of the actions of others who may be pursuing them for criminal activity and liability.

    On the hon. Gentleman’s point about the National Housing Federation, I have been in conversations with the Chancellor of the Exchequer about what more we can do to support the social housing sector. How richly those conversations bear fruit, we will have to see.

  • Chris Stephens – 2023 Speech on Building Safety

    Chris Stephens – 2023 Speech on Building Safety

    The speech made by Chris Stephens, the SNP spokesperson on Levelling Up, in the House of Commons on 14 March 2023.

    I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. I have a couple of quick questions.

    On the developers who have not signed, the Secretary of State is obviously talking about the situation in England. Does he intend to share that information with the devolved Administrations? Those companies may have interests in devolved areas.

    What happens if a non-compliant building has defects that extend beyond fire performance matters? Further defects are often discovered only after the opening works have commenced and cladding has been removed—I am thinking particularly of acoustic and thermal non-compliance. Could the Secretary of State tell us which independent bodies will manage the work to identify such defects, and how will developers be held to account for them?

    Finally, what is the Secretary of State’s plan when owners and/or developers of non-compliant buildings cannot be traced?

    Michael Gove

    We will certainly share information with the devolved Administrations. As I mentioned briefly, we want to work with the Welsh Government, and indeed with the Scottish Government, to ensure that everyone is in a safe building and that businesses that are not operating in accordance with their responsibilities cannot wriggle out of their responsibilities. I look forward to working with the new First Minister—whoever she is—in due course to achieve progress.

    On non-compliant buildings, the hon. Gentleman is certainly right that, as we replace cladding, new faults are sometimes identified. Developers have a responsibility to deal with those if they were the original responsible actor. That brings me to his third question. Where it is not a developer who takes responsibility but a freeholder, our recovery strategy unit is working to identify all the freeholders responsible. It is only in the very last instance that leaseholders may be liable for costs, and even then, they are firmly capped under legislation that this House passed.

  • Lisa Nandy – 2023 Speech on Building Safety

    Lisa Nandy – 2023 Speech on Building Safety

    The speech made by Lisa Nandy, the Shadow Levelling Up Secretary, in the House of Commons on 14 March 2023.

    I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. We want to see every developer sign the remediation contract and urgently move to fix the unsafe buildings and free leaseholders who have been trapped for too long. Throughout this process, we have supported steps to speed that up and provide support to leaseholders. In that spirit, I welcome the statement and I do not doubt the Secretary of State’s sincerity in dealing with this problem, nor the deeply held convictions on all sides of the House.

    However, I fear that the collective will of this House to see that done is being damaged by what appears to be an increasingly dysfunctional approach from the Government. Last week the Secretary of State was on social media threatening major house builders with a nationwide ban if they failed to sign up to the contract within a matter of days. He is 100% right to say the developers should pay, but it undermines his case when his own Department had not even managed to send the contract to them.

    That really matters, because until builders sign, leaseholder groups remain in limbo. They need more than tough talk; they need clarity and competence. For the 10 developers who signed the initial pledge but not the contract, which as the Secretary of State rightly says includes Galliard Homes, Ballymore and—shamefully, given its role in Grenfell—Rydon Homes, will he be using the powers at his disposal to designate the developers who cannot be granted planning permission? Crucially, can he tell us from when?

    The Secretary of State is right to say this is a step forward, but there are many more steps to go. Leaseholders need not another deadline, but real action and hope on the horizon. Can he spell out exactly what this action will mean for developments that have already begun under those developers and that have already received planning consent? Will he be using the powers at his disposal to issue remediation orders to force them to fix their buildings in the meantime? Can he also tell us whether the 39 who have signed the contract will be obliged to fix all critical fire safety defects, as defined by the Building Safety Act 2022, and what will happen if they do not? There is a gap between the contract and the Act, and we need to make sure that the cost of that gap is not borne by leaseholders.

    The contract, the Secretary of State says, will cover over 1,000 buildings. Given that his own Department has estimated that there are between 6,000 and 9,000 unsafe 11 to 18-metre buildings alone, it clearly only deals with a fraction of the problem. How does he plan to assist leaseholders in buildings with defects that are outside the scope of the contract in getting them remediated? Remediation remains painfully slow—something he knows and has rightly acknowledged—but the contract stipulates only that repairs and remediation must be carried out

    “as soon as reasonably practicable”.

    Again, I push him for hard timescales and deadlines.

    On the issue of who is responsible, may I again ask the Secretary of State why British house builders are being asked to pay, while foreign developers and the companies that made the materials used in affected buildings are still not? That is a basic question of justice.

    We should all be moving heaven and earth to right this wrong, yet the House of Lords Committee that scrutinised amendments to the Building Safety (Leaseholder Protections) (England) Regulations 2022 found that that instrument contained an unintentional drafting error that excluded parent and sister companies from being considered as associated with the landlord. That meant that landlords could avoid the £2 million net worth threshold above which they must not pass on to leaseholders costs for repairing historical defects. Despite that error as a result of a mistake at the Secretary of State’s Department, no compensation has been forthcoming for leaseholders who have had to pay remediation costs, and no plans are in place to alert those leaseholders to the possibility of applying to a tribunal to seek cost recovery. What is the Department doing to identify affected leaseholders and inform them that an appeal route to recover costs is available to them?

    Finally, I say to the Secretary of State that there is, I think, cross-party agreement now that this is not the only issue for leaseholders. Leasehold is a feudal system that has no place in a modern society. It is time that we ended—abolished—the scandal of leasehold once and for all, and ended the misery for the far too many people who are trapped in that feudal system. Labour appreciates what he has done to move this desperate situation forward, but it remains in his gift to fix it once and for all, and we would fail in our duty if we did not take every opportunity to urge him to do so.

    Michael Gove

    I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the thoughtful and detailed way in which she has responded to the announcement, and for the support from her and colleagues across the House for the work that we have undertaken.

    The hon. Lady asks about contracts and the speed with which they have been signed. Again, just to inform her and the House, we ensured that developers were given a copy of the contract on 30 January, when it was published. A final version was sent to developers with minor alterations on 21 February. The execution version of the contract depended on the developers themselves providing the Department with a list of affected buildings, so it was the work of developers, not of the Department, that led to the late signing of contracts, but I am grateful to all who have now signed.

    The hon. Lady asks about the responsible actors scheme, when it will be implemented and the effect it will have. We will lay details of the responsible actors scheme next week. I want to allow some of the 11 who have not yet signed a little leeway to ensure that they live up to their responsibilities. The letters that I have written to the directors of the companies concerned will, I think, help to concentrate their minds to ensure that they have a chance to sign before we lay the responsible actors scheme details next week.

    The hon. Lady asks if the powers in the 2022 Act will be used for those who will not have signed by that time. They absolutely will. She asks if we will fix all critical features. All life-critical features in medium and high-rise buildings will be addressed by developers. It is the case that with buildings under 11 metres, there are some fire safety issues, but we have to look at them case by case—some will be life-critical; some will not. Our cladding safety scheme, which addresses mid-rise buildings specifically—those between 11 and 18 metres—should, I hope, deal with the delay, which she rightly points out, in dealing with the fire safety issue for that crucial section of our housing sector.

    The hon. Lady makes the point about foreign developers and the need to tackle them, and I quite agree with her. It is important that we use all the tools in our power, and we are exploring sanctions, criminal options and others. The one thing that I would say is that there is one jurisdiction—not a foreign jurisdiction but an adjacent one—where action has not been taken to deal with some of those responsible, and that, of course, is Wales. I ask her to work with me to ensure that the Welsh Labour Government take appropriate steps to deal with the situation in Wales. We stand ready to work with them and with all parties in that regard.

    The hon. Lady also asks about the need to abolish the invidious and feudal system of leasehold. As someone who was born in Scotland—mercifully, a country free from that system—I can say only that this is one area where I hope that England at last catches up with one part of the United Kingdom that is, in that respect at least, more progressive.

  • Michael Gove – 2023 Statement on Building Safety

    Michael Gove – 2023 Statement on Building Safety

    The statement made by Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, on 14 March 2023.

    With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to update the House on the progress the Government have made in securing commitments from developers to remediate properties with building safety defects. Last year, the major house builders signed a pledge to fix all the medium or high-rise buildings that they had built or refurbished that were unsafe. The developers also promised to reimburse the taxpayer for work already undertaken at Government expense.

    This Parliament has always been clear that those with ultimate responsibility for those buildings should bear the cost of remediation. Innocent leaseholders, who are neither responsible for safety defects nor equipped with the resources to fix the problem, should not be on the hook. Those who are responsible must pay. We have worked with developers to draw up a contract that gives direct effect to the pledge that they made. I was and remain grateful to those developers who have been so keen to live up to those obligations, and I am particularly grateful to Stewart Baseley of the Home Builders Federation for his skilful work in supporting the commitments made.

    We published the legal contract on 30 January this year, and I gave an initial cohort of developers six weeks to confirm that they accepted the list of buildings for which they take responsibility and then to sign the contract. That deadline expired yesterday. I can confirm that 39 developers have signed the contract. We have published a list of those developers on gov.uk and hard copies of the list have been shared with the Vote Office. By signing the contracts, those developers have committed to fixing at least 1,100 buildings. They will invest more than £2 billion in that work—money saved for the taxpayer and invested in giving leaseholders a brighter future. I thank those developers for their hard work and co-operation in helping us to right the wrongs of the past. They are making significant financial commitments and I am grateful to them.

    Leaseholders who have been waiting for work to be done to make their building safe will quite rightly want that work to start without delay. I know that those responsible developers who have signed the contract understand that expectation and will be in touch with leaseholders to set out the programme of expected works as soon as possible. I take the opportunity once again to apologise to those leaseholders and others who have waited so long for this work to be done. While there is still much to do, I hope today shows that their campaigning and that of so many hon. Members has not been in vain. While the overwhelming majority of major developers have signed, some regrettably have not. Parliament has made clear what that means, and so have I. Those companies will be out of the house building business in England entirely unless and until they change their course. Next week I will publish key features of our new responsible actors scheme, a means of ensuring that only those committed to building safety will be allowed to build in future.

    Those developers who have been invited to sign the remediation contract, but who have not agreed to live up to their responsibilities, will not be eligible to join the responsible actors scheme. They will not be able to commence new developments in England or receive building control approval for work already under way. The House should note that the companies invited to sign the remediation contract who have not yet lived up to their responsibilities are Abbey Developments, Avant, Ballymore, Dandara, Emerson Group (Jones Homes), Galliard Homes, Inland Homes, Lendlease, London Square, Rydon Homes and Telford Homes.

    While my officials remain in discussions with several who are making progress towards signing, I am concerned that some companies do not appreciate the grave nature of the responsibility they bear. I hope the directors of those firms will now exercise the same level of responsibility as the leaders of the building industry. The reluctance so far of some companies to sign up only underlines the need for the responsible actors scheme. It will ensure that there are consequences for developers who wish to be, at the moment, neither answerable nor accountable.

    I will take other steps to ensure that companies live up to their responsibilities. I will be writing to major investors in those firms to explain the commercial implications of their directors’ current decisions. I will write to local authorities and building inspectors to explain that those developers’ projects may not be started or signed off. I will notify public bodies to be prepared to reopen tender award processes or rerun competitions. House buyers will want to know what that means for them, and we will formally set out the risks involved in purchasing homes from companies that have chosen to ignore the prospect of prohibitions.

    I accept that the course of action that I have set out today is a significant intervention in the market for any Government, but the magnitude of the crisis that we faced and the depth of the suffering for all those affected clearly justified a radical approach. To their credit, the leaders of the development industry have willingly accepted the need for action. The vast majority of developers, as we should all appreciate, have made undertakings to the British public to put right the wrongs of the past. I am glad we can now work together with leaders in the industry on making sure that we deliver more safe, affordable, decent homes for the country.

    As those developers have rightly argued, we in Government will also do more to pursue freeholders who have yet to live up to their responsibilities and construction product manufacturers, who also bear heavy responsibility for unsafe buildings. I will have more to say on that in the days and weeks to come. For the many thousands of people whose lives have been blighted by the failure properly to address building safety in the past, today’s update brings us one more step closer to at last resolving the issue, and for that reason I commend the statement to the House.

  • Lucy Powell – 2023 Speech on BBC and the Government Role in Impartiality

    Lucy Powell – 2023 Speech on BBC and the Government Role in Impartiality

    The speech made by Lucy Powell, the Shadow Culture Secretary, in the House of Commons on 14 March 2023.

    This week’s whole sorry saga has raised serious questions about the Government’s role in upholding BBC impartiality. They have their fingerprints all over it. It is no wonder the Secretary of State has gone AWOL. First, it exposed how susceptible the BBC leadership is to Government pressure. After days of holding off, the BBC capitulated to a Tory cancel campaign, orchestrated by Ministers and Conservative Members with their friends in the press, and took Mr Lineker off air. These are the same voices, by the way, who claim to be the champions of free speech. What changed? Can the Minister tell us what contact she or any member of the Government had with any BBC executives or board members during this time? What does she think it looks like to the outside world when a much-loved sports presenter is taken off air for tweeting something that the Government do not like? It sounds more like Putin’s Russia to me.

    Secondly, the Government have seriously damaged the BBC’s reputation by appointing a chair who is embroiled in the personal finances of the Prime Minister who gave him the job. No doubt the Minister will tell the House that that is under investigation, but it is an investigation that I instigated, not her. Her boss is the only person with any power to fire the BBC chair. Does she agree that he is now completely unable to carry out his role of providing confidence, credibility and independence? What is she doing to put this right?

    Finally, the Government have pursued a deliberate strategy of undermining the BBC in order to keep it over a barrel to get themselves more favourable coverage. That was on full display overnight and I am sure it will be on full display here today. They threaten the licence fee, cut the BBC’s funding and undermine its credibility, all in pursuit of keeping their foot on the BBC’s throat. Will the Minister today finally call off the dogs behind her and stand up for the BBC’s independence from the Government?

    Julia Lopez

    I thank the hon. Lady for her spirited questions. I have watched her valiant attempts to kick this political football across the weekend and into this week. As Politico notes, we are now on Lineker day 8. She shouts about a political campaign to undermine the BBC that is akin to Putin’s Russia. She professes that she is the shield trying to protect the BBC from political interference, but all the while demanding that the PM gets more stuck in and telling the BBC that it is in the wrong. Forgive the bewildered licence fee payer for wondering why W1A and SW1A are still focusing on this individual case—one that the Government have consistently made clear is for the BBC to resolve internally, which we note it has now done.

    As the hon. Lady knows full well from the Secretary of State’s reply to her correspondence over the weekend, our Department regularly engages with the BBC on a range of issues. At no time have any of us as Ministers sought to influence the BBC’s decision on this case in any way. The events of last week are rightly a matter for the corporation’s determination, and we as a Government do not seek to interfere. I have not added, and do not intend to add, my views on this specific case in response to this urgent question. In response to assertions yesterday that he bowed to political pressure from the Government, the BBC director-general, Tim Davie, said:

    “That is a convenient narrative. It’s not true.”

    The hon. Lady has sought to make the BBC chairman, Richard Sharp, the ultimate arbiter of such matters. In fact, the BBC charter is clear that it is the director- general, as editor-in-chief of the BBC, not the chairman of the board, who has final responsibility for individual decisions on the BBC’s editorial matters. On the issue of Mr Sharp, she will be aware that previous Governments have appointed people to senior positions in the BBC who have declared political activity. That is not prohibited under the rules. Once appointed, however, all board members are required to adhere to the code of conduct for public body board members. She will know that there are separate independent inquiries into Mr Sharp’s appointment process, and they must be left to conclude. When it comes to the timetable of that, the Government are also awaiting the outcome, and it is right for the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments and the investigator that it has appointed to determine the timetable for that process, not the Government.

    The hon. Lady said that the Tory Government had long wanted to undermine the BBC. Not true. This is an organisation with a near-guaranteed licence fee income of £3.8 billion per annum until the next charter review in 2027. We back the BBC. We want it to survive as a thriving cultural, creative and democratic engine for many years to come. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office announced just this week that it is giving an extra £20 million to support the BBC World Service over two years, building on the additional support that we gave it for its Ukraine and Russia reporting operations.

    The social compact that underpins the BBC’s funding arrangement depends fundamentally on the broadcaster maintaining the trust and confidence of viewers. The BBC’s currency in a world of misinformation and “shout the loudest” public discourse is truth, impartiality, accuracy and editorial integrity. It remains our priority as a Government to work with the regulator, Ofcom, to deliver an effective and proportionate framework that holds the BBC to account in its duties, including to impartiality. In May 2020 we launched the mid-term review, a key focus of which was impartiality, and we will assess Ofcom’s regulation in ensuring that the BBC meets the high standards that licence fee payers expect of it.

  • Julia Lopez – 2023 Statement on BBC and the Government Role in Impartiality

    Julia Lopez – 2023 Statement on BBC and the Government Role in Impartiality

    The statement made by Julia Lopez, the Minister of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on 14 March 2023.

    The BBC is a world-class broadcaster, a creative engine and a cultural institution producing some of the best television and radio in the world. The impartiality of the BBC, as a publicly funded broadcaster, goes to the heart of the contract between the corporation and all the licence fee payers whom it serves. That is why the royal charter, which is the constitutional basis of the BBC—along with the underpinning framework agreement—enshrines the need for the BBC to be impartial in both its mission and its public purposes.

    The BBC’s mission and public purposes, as set out in the charter, require it to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain, helping people to understand and engage with the world around them. The BBC’s first public purpose is to provide duly accurate and impartial news and information to help people to understand and engage with the world around them. It must also represent and serve the diverse communities of all the United Kingdom’s nations and regions. Both the charter and the framework agreement also explicitly guarantee the independence of the BBC. As such, the Government have no say in the BBC’s operational or editorial day-to-day decisions or staffing matters, including as they relate to the application of the requirement for impartiality.

    The Government stand fully behind the requirements of the royal charter. We are clear that the BBC must truly reflect the nation and guard its impartiality in all of its output. The BBC’s director-general has repeatedly said that the corporation’s impartiality is a priority for him and must be protected. We welcome that the BBC accepted the findings and recommendations of the Serota review and is committed to reform through its 10-point impartiality and editorial standards action plan. It is Ofcom, established by the Government as the independent regulator of the BBC in 2017, that is responsible for holding broadcasters including the BBC to account on the impartiality of their news and current affairs coverage, against the broadcasting code under the Communications Act 2003.

    In November last year, Ofcom published its annual review of the BBC. It found the BBC’s impartiality to be a key area of concern among audiences and one where they consistently rate BBC news less favourably for trust and accuracy. Ofcom stated that addressing audience perceptions on this matter is challenging, and the regulator recognises that this is a complex area. It will continue to monitor the performance of the BBC and has urged the BBC not to lose momentum in its efforts to address this issue. It remains a priority for the Government to ensure that Ofcom delivers an effective and proportionate regulatory framework that holds the BBC to account while maintaining its creative freedom and operational independence.

    In May 2022, the Government launched the mid-term review. This is a new mechanism established by the current charter, focusing on the governance and regulatory arrangements for the BBC, given the reforms that were introduced when the charter was granted. One area of focus in the MTR is impartiality, and it will assess the efficacy of the governance mechanisms and Ofcom’s regulation in ensuring that the BBC meets the high standards that licence fee payers expect of it. It is also an important milestone in our road map for BBC reform, and work is well under way. The charter specifies that the review must take place between 2022 and 2024, and we will publish our findings and conclusions in due course.

    The BBC is respected globally. It reaches hundreds of millions of people across the world every week. No other country in the world has anything quite like it. We have been clear that the BBC must place a firm emphasis on accuracy, impartiality and diversity of opinion. It can never be the BBC’s role to judge, or appear to judge, the diverse values of the people from across the country it serves. In the era of fake news, public service broadcasting and a free press have never been more important, and the BBC has been and should be a beacon that sets standards to which others can aspire.

  • Gavin Newlands – 2023 Speech on the Revised Timetable for HS2

    Gavin Newlands – 2023 Speech on the Revised Timetable for HS2

    The speech made by Gavin Newlands, the SNP MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, in the House of Commons on 14 March 2023.

    I almost feel sorry for the Minister—almost. Mr Speaker, you will know that the north of England has seen cut after cut not just to HS2, but to any real modernisation of its rail network, with HS2 to Leeds cancelled and Northern Powerhouse Rail cut to the bone. We on the SNP Benches have supported HS2 because we believe increased sustainable connectivity is to all our benefit. However, what we have now is a gold-plated commuter line of just over 100 miles for two cities in the south of this island, costing nearly £50 billion, while the rest of the country is expected to fight for scraps from the table.

    Combined with the announcement of slashed funding for active travel, which leaves England, outside of Greater London, receiving less than £1 per person per year—30 times less than Scotland—that makes it clear that the Government regard transport funding outside the M25 as nothing more than a rounding error. Thankfully, we in Scotland have a Parliament and a Government investing in our rail network, investing in active travel and taking transport decarbonisation seriously, so can the Minister tell me in which decade high-speed rail will reach the Scottish border?

    Huw Merriman

    The Government are plainly not committed only to delivery between London and Birmingham, because the entire plan is predicated on a two-year rephasing of the parts going up towards Crewe from the midlands. Beyond that, up to Manchester, the indicative timeline does not change at all. The Bill Select Committee remains in place, as does its brief, so that commitment is there. It is not a commitment just to the south-east, and the hon. Member has certainly got that wrong. The £96 billion integrated rail plan is based solely on the midlands and the north, and that shows this Government’s desire to level up across the midlands and the north, as opposed to spending money in the south-east.

    Active travel is not part of this urgent question, but £3 billion will be spent by this Government on active travel during this Parliament. There are levelling-up fund bids that go toward active travel. We are absolutely passionate and committed to the delivery of active travel, and that will continue, as will our delivery of HS2.

  • Louise Haigh – 2023 Speech on the Revised Timetable for HS2

    Louise Haigh – 2023 Speech on the Revised Timetable for HS2

    The speech made by Louise Haigh, the Shadow Secretary of State for Transport, in the House of Commons on 14 March 2023.

    Eighteen months ago, the Government slashed Northern Powerhouse Rail, binned HS2 to Leeds and sold out the north of England. Here we are again: huge changes affecting billions in investment and jobs announced at 5 pm on Thursday—minutes before the House rose.

    We now know why the Secretary of State was desperate to dodge scrutiny: I have a leaked document written by his most senior officials that blows apart his claims and lays bare the consequences of the decisions he has hidden from. His chief justification for the delays to HS2 was to “balance the nation’s books”, but his Department admits what he will not—that the delays themselves will increase costs. It admits that they will cost jobs and that construction firms could go bust; it cannot rule out slashing high-speed trains that serve Stoke, Macclesfield and Stafford altogether; and it suggests that HS2 could terminate on the outskirts of London until 2041.

    Is it not time that the Minister came clean that this absurd plan will hit jobs, hurt growth and cost taxpayers even more? As his own officials ask,

    “you have already changed the design once, which wasted money. What will be different this time?”

    Even the Government have lost faith in this Government, and little wonder. Is there anything more emblematic of this failed Government than their flagship levelling-up project that makes it neither to the north nor to central London? Last year they crashed the economy, and once again they are asking the country to pay the price. Does this announcement not prove once and for all that the Conservatives cannot fix the problem because the Conservatives are the problem.

    Huw Merriman

    I thank the hon. Lady, but we obviously do not comment on leaked documents, certainly not documents that I have not been given. I say to the hon. Lady that it is an entirely responsible Government approach to balance the commitments we make—as I have stated, the transport commitments that have been set out to the House total £40 billion—and, indeed, to reflect on how the delivery of HS2 had been designed. It is also well within a responsible Government’s remit to consider the public spending pressures that there are right now, due to the help that this Government have given to those facing increased energy costs and the continued costs from the pandemic, and therefore the impact on the amount of borrowing. Over £100 billion is required each year, or it was last year, to service the overdraft, which is greater than the amount we spend on defence. It would be entirely irresponsible for any Government to look at all of its portfolio without those figures in mind.

    However, I am very proud of what we are doing on delivering HS2. The construction of the Curzon Street station in Birmingham, which remains, as I have stated, is expected to create 36,000 new jobs. On the hon. Lady’s point about not levelling up across the country, the redevelopment of Piccadilly station in Manchester is expected to create 13,000 new homes. In London, the regeneration of Old Oak Common will contribute £15 billion over the next 30 years. Those are figures to be proud of, and we will deliver them.

    I found it very helpful, at the end of last week, to discuss this with stakeholders from across the country—businesses, regional organisations, council leaders and Mayors on the route—who were all very supportive about what the Government are doing. They also have to run budgets—unlike the Opposition—so they understood the pressures that the country faces, and were absolutely delighted that this project will continue to be built.