That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:
“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which was addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.
My Lords, on behalf of all noble Lords, I thank Her Majesty for her gracious Speech. I am grateful for the privilege of opening today’s debate on the Motion for an humble Address. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Her Majesty for the outstanding service and dedication to our country over these last 70 years. Her Majesty is deservedly held in the highest regard and deepest affection across the country and around the world, and it is an honour to serve in her Government.
Today, I will outline the Government’s plans regarding education, welfare, health and public services. These are at the heart of our mission to level up: to spread opportunity right across the country so that no matter where someone lives, where they were born or who their parents are, no matter what their background, health condition or circumstance, they can access excellent public services to improve their quality of life and realise their potential.
To deliver this levelling-up agenda, our public services and the Civil Service need to be set up in the right way so that we can deliver in an efficient and timely way for all parts of the UK, while we also focus on delivering front-line reforms that will improve lives: such as the Schools Bill that will level up standards in schools so they deliver for every child; by strengthening the academy trust system and supporting more schools to become academies; reforming attendance measures; and delivering the long-standing commitment of a direct national funding formula. Alongside this, it will improve the protection of children across a range of educational settings, making sure that the most vulnerable are not falling through the cracks.
The Government will also introduce a Bill to ensure our post-18 education system promotes real social mobility, is financially sustainable and will support young people to get the skills they need to meet their career aspirations and help grow the economy. In addition, the Government are fulfilling our 2019 manifesto commitment by taking steps to strengthen academic freedom and free speech in universities in England. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill will strengthen existing freedom of speech duties and directly address gaps within the existing law, including the lack of a clear enforcement mechanism. This will help ensure that, as a country, we have the skills our economy and employers need for the future while providing young people with the very best start in life, so they can pave a solid path towards their future. Developing the right skills is key to unlocking greater prospects and prosperity for young people and adults alike. That is why the Prime Minister introduced the lifetime skills guarantee, so adults have the opportunity to gain new qualifications for free to help them to gain in-demand skills and secure great jobs.
We understand that there are some people in this country who, for a variety of reasons, cannot work and we are committed to providing the support these people need. That is why we are spending £242 billion overall on welfare and £64 billion on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions in Great Britain this year. Understanding people’s personal circumstances is an integral part of the universal credit system. Each claimant signs a claimant commitment, which is a mutually agreed contract between the claimant and the department. Sanctions are at very low levels and will be administered only when a claimant fails to comply with a requirement in the commitment, which is tailored to each claimant’s circumstances.
My Lords, today’s debate covers some of the most important issues to a well-functioning society. I am delighted to be speaking to them on behalf of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition.
Arguably, education, welfare, health and social care and public services are critical and central to the Government’s latest populist phrase, levelling up. That is why it is so regrettable that the measures announced in the Queen’s Speech do precious little to make a real difference—if any—in these areas.
Schools and universities across the UK have been profoundly impacted by the pandemic. It is well documented that there is a disparity in this impact between schools in deprived areas and in the most affluent, yet despite the scale of the challenges schools are facing—indeed, the Sutton Trust found that one in three headteachers are using pupil premium funds to plug general budget gaps—this Government’s response is a desperately sparse Schools Bill.
It is a gaping hole of a Bill and consists mostly of one-size-fits-all academisation—we do not have it in Wales, that is why I cannot say it—on which the data is lacking or mixed at best, and formal naming and shaming of truant children through imposing compulsory attendance registers for schools. It is narrow in scope with little ambition and sparse policy, with 32 clauses on the governance of academies and 15 clauses on funding arrangements. It gives it an ideological approach rather than looking at the evidence.
How many more times are the Government going to rearrange the classroom desks, hoping for a better outcome? Where is the wide-ranging, substantiated plan to support children’s pandemic recovery? Where are the proposals to improve teaching standards or tackle the absolute exodus of burnt-out school staff? Where is the vision to equip our students with the skills they will need in the industries of the future, in an ever more globalised and technologically advanced economy?
My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as a vice-chair on the All-Party Group on Adult Social Care. I start by echoing the Minister’s tribute to Her Majesty the Queen and will add how good it was to see her using her Oyster card today on the new Elizabeth line.
A Queen’s Speech is obviously about legislation, the economy and finances, and the priorities of a Government. But it is also an indicator of the attitude and approach of a Government to how they are going to govern. The last five years have meant that they have had to face some extreme challenges; some of this Government’s own making—Brexit—and some external ones—Covid and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—to which our Government have had to respond. The cost of living crisis, energy costs, food costs: millions of people are struggling to pay their bills, and with inflation currently at 7%, a 30-year high, this is likely to increase. Public services become even more critical when individuals and families are struggling, and they, too, are finding it difficult.
The Minister referred to the managed migration to universal credit, which has caused real problems for claimants. The Government’s own documents say that of the 2.6 million households still on legacy benefits,
“we estimate around 1.4 million (55%) would have a higher entitlement on UC, 300,000 would see no change and approximately 900,000 households (35%) would have a lower entitlement.”
But the poorest in our society already face impossible pressures on their costs, and for nearly 1 million households to face a lower entitlement because of a migration to a new benefit is a disgrace.
The Government say they understand the problem, but unfortunately there is no real offer of help for the people who are already having to choose between heating and eating, and who are not in a position to take on extra work, as one MP suggested yesterday, or to cook better. Instead, this Government will raise an additional £13.8 billion through personal taxes this year. That is why from the Liberal Democrat Benches we say that VAT should be reduced immediately, saving the average family £600 a year, and there should be an emergency Budget: these families need action right now.
My Lords, I declare an interest as an unpaid ambassador for UNAIDS. I would like to concentrate upon health, particularly public health.
I remember intervening on a Question on HIV/AIDS three or four years ago. As I sat down, the Member next to me on those Benches said, “Of course, no one dies from AIDS any more”. The campaign of the 1980s was a distant memory, and AIDS no longer dominated the headlines—but, of course, his statement was not true then, and it is not true today. AIDS has been a deadly scourge, which has lasted for at least 40 years. Over 33 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the epidemic. Even today, 700,000 people a year die from AIDS—men, women and children, particularly young girls. It is an appalling toll, and one which this country must make every available effort to reduce and eliminate. We are now relatively fortunate in the UK but, even so, there are still well over 100,000 people living with HIV and all the problems that it brings: ill health, isolation and, above all, discrimination.
Other countries have not been so fortunate. If you take Ukraine—which I visited a few years ago to study its position—before the Russian invasion, it faced one of the worst and most serious HIV problems of any country in Europe, mainly from injecting drugs. Russia itself was much worse. However, in the last years the position in Ukraine had improved—thanks to the work of local and international organisations, including some from this country—but is now dramatically under challenge. The conflict has put the improvement at risk. Ukraine now faces formidable difficulties, including the dangers involved in getting drugs through and the risk to life that this entails, and the plight of those who are displaced and have become refugees.
The basic point I wish to make in this very short contribution is that although public attention may have drained away from HIV and AIDS, they still pose an enormous challenge to this country and the world—one that can increase because of new events such as war. In these circumstances, the question is: what can Britain do to help in this challenge?
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in the debate on the Motion for the humble Address. I declare my interests as outlined in the register. There is much in Her Majesty’s gracious Speech to commend it to your Lordships’ House. However, it is unfortunate that it did not include any detailed remarks on the relationship between health disparities and the levelling-up agenda. While there was a valid emphasis on restoring the strength of the economy, it was a shame to hear so little detail on the circumstances that will enable us to economically bounce back: namely, our health.
Thankfully, the actual levelling-up report highlighted health as one of its mission areas, stating:
“By 2030, the gap in Healthy Life Expectancy … between local areas where it is highest and lowest will have narrowed”,
and that, by 2035, healthy life expectancy will rise by five years. The measurement of these missions, along with an independent body to ensure that they are seen through, will be vital to their success and essential in the wider context of health inequalities which we are facing post pandemic. Without these metrics and this accountability, we may well miss the goal of levelling up entirely.
The Health Foundation’s analysis shows that it will take 200 years to meet the goals named in the levelling-up White Paper, meaning that we are at least two generations away from a more equitable society. This is if we maintain what we are currently doing—and we are not. We are losing our healthcare workforce faster than we are replacing it. With a falling number of GPs, dentists and nurses and increasing pressure on the NHS, we are overlooking prevention of ill health and, by not investing sufficiently now in health coverage, we are storing up increased expenditure in the NHS in future. We need a comprehensive and integrated approach to restoring our collective well-being. To achieve the ambitious and worthwhile health missions of the levelling-up White Paper, we must be direct, pragmatic and specifically work them into legislation.
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak about health again in this debate.
One of the many things that transpired from the Covid epidemic was the many acts of kindness, thoughtfulness and active help that the people of this country gave to each other. Lonely people were sadly deprived of company, but they received from kindly neighbours food and encouragement within the restrictive social distancing measures.
The country is now facing a number of huge crises, including the obesity epidemic, inflation and huge increases in the cost of heating our homes. More than ever, huge swathes of the public need help, encouragement, compassion and love. What is needed is an even greater increase in the already many acts of kindness and love shown to those who need it most. We cannot expect central and local government to supply all the answers, but we know that the vast majority of people in this country are willing to help one another in this great time of need.
There are so many practical ways in which help can be delivered, such as visiting lonely people, helping them with their food shopping, generally befriending and comforting them, and being cheerful friends. There are other activities, such as babysitting, childminding and transporting people to and fro, especially to GP surgeries and hospitals. Then there is encouraging families in wise shopping and cooking at home, and helping them to discover cheap sources of food that are more nutritious and healthier than a lot of the junk food presently on the market. My friend the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, reminds us of the Zulu exhortation, “Vuk’uzenzele”. In case any of your Lordships are not familiar with the Zulu language, it means, “Just get on and do it”.
One of the impacts of these crises is that some people are having to skip one meal every day. This may be all right for some of us, but it is a very difficult situation to be in when it is forced on hard-working people with few resources. We really need to work together to show compassion and practical help for the many who need it.
My Lords, we had a small issue with the timer that has now been resolved, so perhaps this is a good opportunity to remind noble Lords that the advisory Back-Bench speaking time is five minutes.
My Lords, I draw attention to my entries in the register—in this case especially as master of Fitzwilliam College and a trustee of the Education Policy Institute, because I will talk briefly about the Government’s priorities in education in the Queen’s Speech.
Many noble Lords all around this House have served in government, as Ministers or in No. 10. I suspect that many of us have the same view: that in government, the overwhelming priority should be to work to meet the needs of the whole country and not to govern with the party in power’s electoral interests as the paramount concern. I suspect that, at least privately, many share my real anxiety, and indeed distress, for the functioning of our democracy that that approach seems to be no longer functioning. Instead we have a sort of permanent campaign, dividing lines, political games and token gestures to appeal to elements of the electorate or the media, not serious programmes of government.
I am not naive—I was in No. 10 for eight years—but I maintain that for many Members across this House, of whatever party or none, the broad approach to government, if not necessarily the policies, is the same. But that priority—that governing principle, if you like —does not now seem to be paramount. By the way, that is not to say that individual Ministers do not work in that way, but everyone knows that the overall direction, priorities, purpose and principles come from the top.
We are told that the flagship policy is the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, and it sounds utterly laudable and much needed to improve productivity, boost economic growth, encourage innovation, create good jobs and enhance educational attainment. What is not to like? Unfortunately, the devil is in the detail: a combination of inadequate, small measures and a few political pieces of gesture politics.
My Lords, I declare that I receive disability living allowance. I shall make just one point, but it is an important one for disabled people and must be looked at in the light of the cost-of-living crisis. It is the unacceptable delay in the waiting time for PIP—the personal independence payment—which helps people with long-term conditions manage their day-to-day living costs and get around. The delay I am talking about in the whole application process is now about six months and is particularly tough with the cost of living rising so fast.
PIP is a most welcome benefit as it is not means-tested and not taxed. It is an in-work as well as out-of-work benefit. Put simply, it helps to enable thousands of disabled people to keep going. To apply for PIP, either by phone or online, an extensive form must be filled in. An assessment is then undertaken by one of the DWP’s outsourced companies, usually either face to face or by phone. A DWP decision-maker then reviews the claim and either awards the benefit for a certain time or turns it down. At the height of the pandemic, there were understandable delays in this whole process, but it is not acceptable that the delays seem to be getting worse rather than better.
Making an assessment is not always straightforward, and this is especially true for those with fluctuating conditions, who must be affected more than 50% of the time to qualify for the benefit. At this point, I welcome the new Bill, which extends the right of those at the end of life to apply for disability benefits in a fast-track procedure. But for those who have a progressive long-term condition, such as a muscle-wasting disease, this is not a fluctuating condition but one that will progressively get worse. However, even those with progressive conditions are having to wait a very long time to receive an award.
Being disabled is very expensive. As well as perhaps needing extra heating or special food, many disabled people have appliances such as a hoist, an electric bed, a stairlift or a through-floor lift, all of which need power. As for help getting around, a Motability vehicle would be available if a claimant received the enhanced rate mobility element of PIP. Yet thousands of PIP claimants are waiting six months for a decision and cannot lease a Motability vehicle until the award is given.
20 of 92 shown
We know, however, that for those who are able to, work is the best and most sustainable route to raising living standards and lifting people out of poverty, and we want as many people as possible to take advantage of this and stand on their own two feet. The evidence shows that working-age adults in a job are around six times less likely to be in absolute poverty after housing costs than those not working. The latest data from 2019-20 shows there were 100,000 fewer children in absolute poverty before housing costs compared to 2010, with nearly 1 million fewer workless households and almost 540,000 fewer children living in workless households than in 2010. During this time, we have placed a sustained focus on making work pay—for example, through universal credit, and we entered the pandemic with the highest levels of employment this country has ever seen.
Since then, our plan for jobs, together with the great work of our jobcentre work coaches across the country, has been hugely successful in supporting, creating and protecting jobs and helping people get the skills and experience they need to move into, or back into, work. For example, sector-based work academies have supported people to move from struggling to surging sectors such as social care and engineering. Our job entry targeted support programme, which we have extended to September, supports the recently unemployed with specialist advice on how people can move into growing sectors, as well as with CV and interview coaching. Restart is providing intensive support for claimants unemployed for more than nine months and we aim to help 1 million people by June 2024. Kickstart has enabled over 162,000 jobs to be started by young people. Unemployment is now back to low levels, as we saw before Covid. In fact, today’s labour market stats show that the unemployment rate fell to 3.7% in the first three months of the year, which is the lowest since 1974.
In 2017, the Government set a goal to see 1 million more disabled people in employment between 2017 and 2027. The latest figures show that between this quarter and the same quarter in 2017 the number of disabled people in employment increased by 1.3 million, meaning that the goal has been met in half the time set and demonstrating just how much progress has been made. Through our disability and health White Paper, which we will publish later this year, we will set out our plans to help even more disabled people to start, stay and succeed in work where possible, and to live independently through a more effective health and disability benefits system.
We are committed to improving the nation’s mental health by modernising the Mental Health Act and will shortly publish a draft mental health Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny. It will contain draft measures that will allow for greater patient choice and autonomy, help us address racial disparities that currently exist within the Act and make it easier for people with learning disabilities or autism to be discharged from hospital.
We also need to focus on education. The special educational needs and disabilities—SEND—Green Paper, for example, aims to deliver a more inclusive education system with excellent local mainstream provision providing targeted support at the right time for those with special educational needs.
Through the Conversion Therapy Bill, we will continue our commitment to ensuring the safety of individuals by bringing forward a ban that protects everyone from attempts to change their sexual orientation. Recognising the complexity of issues, we will progress work to consider the issue of transgender conversion therapy further. Our actions to protect people from conversion therapy extend beyond legislating. We will deliver a support service for victims via a contracted helpline and website, which will provide initial pastoral support and signpost to services such as counselling and advice about emergency housing. This support service will be open to everyone who has been through, or is going through, conversion therapy, regardless of their background or identity.
Although it is a huge achievement to have the lowest unemployment since 1974, after the last two years we have been through, we know that many people up and down the country face huge pressures at the moment with the rising cost of living. We are keeping measures under review and doing all we can to help people, while maintaining a responsible fiscal position to ensure that we can continue to provide support in the longer term.
As we heard from the Bank of England, there is absolutely no room for complacency about unemployment and the wider economy. Alongside this, we are taking action to cushion the impact of price rises on people’s pockets, providing £22 billion of support. The Chancellor’s £9 billion energy package provides a £150 discount on council tax for those living in properties in bands A to D and the £144 million discretionary fund is available through local councils. The £200 rebate on energy bills this year will help spread the costs of the expected increase over the next few years. We have also extended the household support fund, providing a further £500 million to help households most in need with the cost of essentials: £421 million is being made available to households in England, as well as £79 million for the devolved authorities.
With more than a million vacancies available in the labour market right now, filling these posts means fulfilling potential and providing help with a pay packet. That is why the DWP is pulling out all the stops to get more people, including disabled people, moving into jobs and, importantly, progressing in them so that they can boost their pay, prospects and prosperity. For example, through our Way to Work scheme, we are getting people into jobs more quickly, with the aim to get 500,000 claimants into work by June. Way to Work is helping people move into any job now, to get a better job tomorrow and build a longer-term career.
To help people progress at work when they land a job, we are rolling out a new national in-work progression offer to provide extra support for claimants to build the skills, confidence and contacts they need to get on at work and move up the career ladder. This is underpinned by the stronger work incentives we have introduced as a result of lowering the universal credit taper rate from 63% to 55% and increasing the work allowance by £500 a year, which means people can keep more of what they earn.
As well helping people progress in the labour market, DWP also helps some of the most vulnerable people in society. That important work is about helping improve people’s quality of life, including those going through the most challenging of times. To improve their lives, we need to continually look at how we can improve the system.
The Social Security (Special Rules for End of Life) Bill will ensure that thousands more people nearing the end of life can access benefits sooner, without needing a face-to-face assessment or waiting period. The Bill extends eligibility so that those expected to live for 12 months or less, rather than six, will get fast-tracked access to three disability benefits: personal independence payment, attendance allowance and disability living allowance. It builds on changes we have already made to universal credit and employment support allowance. It will ensure a consistent end-of-life definition across the NHS, and health and welfare services more broadly, and introduces easily understood criteria which support implementation. The changes will ensure that we have a system that works—a system that gives those affected the support they need when they need it, and one that clinicians and charities can engage in with confidence. Above all, it is the right thing to do to help those facing the end of their lives with earlier and faster access to financial support.
At the heart of policies, processes and procedures are people. If we are to deliver on levelling up and break down the barriers people face, we must make sure that the government services on which people rely meet their needs.
That is why I am proud of the landmark British Sign Language Act. It legally recognises British Sign Language and requires the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to report regularly on what each relevant government department has done to promote or facilitate the use of British Sign Language in its communications with the public. This will give us a much better understanding of how British Sign Language is being used across the Government, and how we can continue to improve communication for British Sign Language users.
More widely, the Government are bringing forward Bills to improve the way services are delivered and accessed by the public. The pandemic has shown how important it is that people are able to access government services online. Noble Lords will remember that, as a modern, digital and dynamic system, universal credit successfully stood up at the start of the pandemic when it faced a case load that almost doubled in the first year. Through the OneLogin programme, we will make it easier for more people to use a range of government services online. This will provide a single account for any member of the public in the UK to log in, prove their identity and access all central government services.
Through the procurement reform Bill, we will replace the bureaucratic EU regime for contracting services with a simpler, more flexible commercial system that is better and meets the needs of our country, while also complying with our international obligations.
That is in conjunction with various government initiatives to improve IT systems, such as the modernisation of the Child Maintenance Service. This feeds into the overall reform Bill and underlines the Government’s commitment to continually improve how they operate.
A key part of that is addressing the regional imbalance in where public sector roles are and where government operates from. Through our network of jobcentres, DWP has long forged deep and wide connections to communities across the country. Since the pandemic, we have increased our presence in even more towns and high streets, having opened 194 new jobcentre sites, 160 youth hubs and recruited 13,500 new work coaches. This is helping us to help more people in all corners of the country. Across government, we know we need to do more. That is why we are committed to moving 15,000 civil servants who design and make decisions about public services out of Greater London by 2025 and rooting them in more of the local communities they serve across the country.
Her Majesty’s gracious Speech reflects this Government’s commitment to levelling up across the United Kingdom, underpinned by our focus on changing the way public services are designed and delivered—looking beyond London to all parts of the UK. The reforms to education will spread opportunities and level up standards, ensuring that everyone can get the best from, and out of, school and higher education so that people can thrive in work and have the talent and skills our economy needs for the future.
Together with DWP’s expert support and focus on improving people’s quality of life, we want every person and every community to have hope, pride, opportunities and the satisfaction and dignity of knowing they achieved their potential and are not forgotten. My noble friend Lady Barran and I look forward to hearing all noble Lords’ valuable reflections on the measures I have outlined.
In stark contrast, Labour is ambitious for every single child and every single precious teacher. Our children’s recovery plan would train up to 6,500 new teachers and give them ongoing professional development. We should not settle for less than world-class standards of teaching. We would introduce breakfast clubs, as we have in Wales, so every child starts the day with a proper meal. We would have afterschool activities, so every child gets to learn and experience art, music, drama and sport, as enjoyed by pupils in the private sector on Wednesday afternoons. We would introduce mental health support in our schools, because every report tells us that children’s development has fallen behind in the pandemic.
There would be targeted and funded continued professional development for teachers, which is absolutely vital for the workforce. There would be extra investment, right from early years through to further education, to support those children at risk of falling behind, because attainment gaps open up early and they need tackling early. Gains made in the early part of this century imploded during the savage cuts to public services imposed by this Government over 12 long years. In order to address this appalling deficit, we would go further to lock in the gains of a recovery programme for the long term. To ensure that education readies pupils for a rapidly advancing world of work, we would provide professional careers advice and work experience for all.
In the Government’s plans, higher education fares no better than schools. Instead of introducing measures to alleviate universities’ challenging financial contexts or reduce the record high number of student complaints in 2021 about their courses to the OIA, the Government have seen fit to give struggling universities two baffling, and in places troubling, Bills.
The higher education Bill will consider minimum qualification requirements for student finance and a cap on student numbers. Both are vehemently opposed by universities. As well as its huge adverse impact on social mobility, which expert bodies such as the IFS have pointed to, it is coupled with a worse still carryover—the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill. Your Lordships may remember that my party in the other place voted against this Bill at Second Reading, such was our concern about its enabling of hate speech and the potential financial implications for universities. Culture-warmongering and wedge-issue politics, again unsupported by any evidence, simply do not deserve a place in any Queen’s Speech—not when so many real problems for higher education remain.
The Government’s approach on social care goes alongside their failure on childcare. It is not fair and is unworkable, because the least able will pay the most. If your house is worth £150,000, you will lose almost everything while the wealthiest in society are protected. As for social care, on which the Government have not planned for any new legislation, I can assume only that they think the measures contained in the recent Health and Care Act are sufficient to deal with soaring care costs and a staggering staffing crisis. There is no mention of dentists, so critical to people’s quality of life, who are leaving the NHS in droves. This week is the Alzheimer’s Society’s Dementia Action Week, and the focus is on the theme of diagnosis. An acute diagnosis is the current state of our social care. Do the Government even mention the forgotten and undervalued millions of unpaid carers?
When it comes to welfare, Labour is on the side of working people. That is why we have set out our plans to reduce the taper rate when we replace universal credit, to allow those on low incomes to keep more of what they earn.
I regret having to give such a pessimistic speech, but I am afraid I have little positive to say about the Speech’s health Bills or, I should say, its solitary Bill. We do, however, welcome the long-overdue overhaul of the Mental Health Act.
After 12 years of Conservative underfunding, the NHS went into the pandemic with record waiting lists, 100,000 staff vacancies and 6 million people waiting for treatment. For any of this to work, the commitments are dependent on a sustainable workforce—our fantastic front-line staff, of whom there are simply too few right now. My dear late mother suffered greatly with mental health issues and we were entirely dependent on the wonderful NHS service we had available to us to support her in-patient and out-patient recovery; I dread to think what would be available to us now. Crucially, Labour wants to guarantee mental health treatment within a month for all who need it, and to place specialist mental health support in every school, resulting in over 1 million more people receiving support each year.
There is also the lack of a women’s health strategy, which was promised by the Government at the end of last year but has yet to appear. This is coupled with the latest announcement of the Government’s delay to restricting advertising on foods high in fat, salt or sugar. The department’s own impact assessment shows that these promotions result in additional spending for an average household—in an acute cost of living crisis.
I hope I have begun to shine a light on where the Government are falling far short on our public services. I must point out that, if their party had the last Labour Government’s record on the growth of the economy, there would be £40 billion more to spend on them, without having to resort to punishing tax rises.
In conclusion, I have spent my life as a public servant—as a teacher, a councillor and the leader of a council. I genuinely despair of the Government’s legislative plans for health and social care, education, welfare and public services. They are lacking in ambition and vision, and I would have hoped that, out of a total of nearly 40 Bills, we might have seen one Bill of true substance in at least one of these critical areas that are so crucial to a well-functioning society. As it is, it will fall to us parliamentarians to probe and push and negotiate our way to legislation that delivers real outcomes and some hope for the public. If that means sitting here in this House until the early hours of the morning to defend the indefensible, so be it. After too many years of a Conservative Government, it is our duty, and we will willingly fight for what is right and proper for the people of Britain. We will continue to seek Labour’s vision that this is the best place in which to grow up and to grow old.
The Social Security (Special Rules for End of Life) Bill, extending the period of terminal illness from six to 12 months to be eligible for special provisions, is also very welcome, but I hope that Ministers will also guarantee a speedy decision within a few days of notification, rather than using the extra time to delay implementation.
I am looking forward to my noble friend Lord Storey’s contribution on the Schools Bill, but I want to make a brief point on Part 3, to do with the register of children out of school. While it is absolutely vital that there is a record of where school-age children are, the Secretary of State announcing the naming and shaming of children not in school and their parents, as well as increasing the criminal penalties for parents, is very worrying, including for those parents who wish to home school.
Criminalising parents and naming and shaming children is completely inappropriate when a child, for example, has been so severely bullied that they are traumatised and waiting for a CAMHS appointment to start therapy, which currently can take 18 months to two years. It is also completely inappropriate that children who are immunocompromised, for example on chemotherapy, are currently forced to go into school without special measures and ventilation, even though their consultants say that these children cannot live with Covid. Parents of some of these children are currently being taken to court and fined.
Any register must record why a child is absent, and specialist advice, such as that of a hospital consultant, should be followed. This means alternative provision online may be needed and should be both provided and fully funded. Covid has also laid bare the inadequacies of too many school buildings, whether in terms of ventilation, appropriate space to learn in, or safety features, so we need an urgent investment in our school estate.
I have talked already about the increase in living costs, but many disabled people need much more heating than most families, and there are some who need to run life-saving equipment, such as ventilators and heart monitors, overnight. I have had family experience of this with my granddaughter. People in this particular group are very easy to help, because they are registered with their local energy supplier for emergency help in the event of a sustained power cut—so why cannot these disabled people be given grants to cover the extra costs that they face through no fault of their own?
More generally, disabled children cannot access the healthcare and other services that they have a right to. Forty-three per cent of families with disabled children have waited more than a year to get respite care, and more than four in 10 disabled children have waited more than a year for an operation.
The lack of funding available in local councils means that more parents of disabled children have had to take their local authority to tribunal to get the support they are entitled to. Lest you do not believe me, in 96% of hearings, the tribunal supports the parents. These children deserve that support, and frankly our local authorities deserve the funding that they need to deliver it.
Disabled people still face problems with transport and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, who in his speech last week reminded us that when the Disability Discrimination Bill of 1995 was in Committee, the Minister said that
“taxis newly licensed must, as a condition of licence, be accessible to all disabled people, including those who use wheelchairs.”—[Official Report, 15/6/1995; col. 2035.]
In addition to that, we heard only two days ago of BBC correspondent Frank Gardner being stuck yet again on a plane because Heathrow’s disabled service had failed. There are many other problems. Nearly three decades after the Disability Discrimination Bill was passed, our taxi service can still opt out of carrying wheelchair users, and people can still just sit and wait on aeroplanes.
I turn now to working disabled people. NHS England has just reported that, even in the NHS, disabled staff are nearly twice as likely to face formal capability questions about whether they can do their job properly. NHS England is now asking trusts to look at whether they are doing that unfairly.
From these Benches, we have concerns about the Bill of Rights. We believe that it will further take away the rights of those with protected characteristics, including disabled people, who can currently rely on the positive obligations placed on public authorities by the European Convention on Human Rights. The Bill of Rights will cut those positive obligations and severely weaken people’s ability to access their rights under the convention.
Banning conversion therapy is absolutely the right thing to do. However, it is not right to exclude trans and non-binary people from the ban, thereby allowing conversion abuse to continue to take place against two groups of people with protected characteristics.
I am pleased that the mental health reform Bill is coming into the process this year. It is a very important Bill and the Minister was right to say that. People definitely need a stronger say in their treatment. However, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Local Government Association and many other stakeholders make the vital point that mental health reform must also include fully resourced funding for mental health services on the front line, training mental health professionals, workforce planning and community services. It is also vital that those with learning disabilities are not kept in secure accommodation. This is a scandal of which we should all be ashamed and which I hope will be ended by the Bill.
Mental health is part of a wider health crisis. This is undoubtedly partly as a result of Covid, but many of the current problems are long-standing and point to a lack of investment over the last 10 years and an unwillingness in Ministers to tackle them honestly. The NHS is undoubtedly in crisis and doing the best that it can, as it always does, while its staff is exhausted, understaffed and demoralised. The most visible points are the ambulance crisis leading to an A&E crisis, the lack of clinical staff and the cuts in capital spend, resulting in too many NHS trusts delivering services in poor buildings.
Today, a paramedic noted that her first patient of the day in her ambulance was now in a queue at the local A&E department. She commented that if today was like her last shift, she would spend the entire shift with this one patient in this one car park. This is not a one-off; it is happening all over the country every day. A&E departments are stuck because beds cannot be freed up, since patients cannot be sent from other wards into residential or nursing care—or even to their own homes—if there are no carers to look after them. The social care sector continues to see staff leaving for better paid jobs, including in the NHS, without being in a position to charge more for their services. Instead of real help, Ministers and the press continue to attack the NHS and the care sector. They attack the NHS for having too many managers, but the NHS’s 2% compares well to the German and French healthcare systems, which have more than double that figure.
From these Benches, we hoped to see more about tackling the inequalities in our health system. Whether they are based on deprivation, ethnicity or disability, we need to address the social determinants of health. Instead of cutting public health budgets, as happened to the UKHSA last month, we should be investing in food reformulation, tobacco bans and social prescribing. Until this happens, the focus will be on those already ill, rather than preventing them becoming ill.
Above all, everyone involved in the health and social care sector is looking to the Government to plan and invest in the workforce. The NHS staff survey published as recently as March found that 52% of staff said that they cannot do their jobs properly because of staff shortages. Vacancies across the NHS are now back to their pre-pandemic levels, with over 110,000 full-time-equivalent empty posts. Some 48% of advertised consultant posts are unfilled; this needs to be addressed urgently.
Finally, I ask the Minister why unpaid carers’ leave is once again not in the Queen’s Speech, despite it being a Conservative Party manifesto commitment. Over half of working carers say that they needed unpaid carers’ leave to help them juggle work and care. Despite commitments to help carers at the end of the passage of the Health and Care Bill, the Government have once again let carers down. Ministers talk of levelling up, but I fear that the Government are not listening to the evidence of how the current cost-of-living crisis and the cuts to our public services are affecting the most vulnerable in our country.
Prejudice is a very serious issue. Perhaps we should say that although there have been Acts of Parliament that do away with the outright persecution of people such as Alan Turing—they are behind us—that does not deal with the whole problem. Changing law does not mean that all attitudes have changed, and individual examples become more important. At this point, may I say that I think the footballer Jake Daniels of Blackpool, who has taken a lead by coming out as gay only a day or so ago, is a magnificent example to this country?
However, we as a country need to be generous not only inside but outside. I remind the House again of my interest in the UN. In my view, our record over the past few years has been deficient. Frankly, it was a hell of a time to cut back on overseas aid. Yesterday, the Foreign Secretary published a new strategy. One part of that will be to make aid delivered more directly—we assume, by the Foreign Office—and a large slice will be taken away from organisations such as the United Nations and, I assume, UNAIDS that have undoubted experience, expertise and commitment. “Aid for trade” may make a convenient political slogan, but it is not, I suspect, a banner under which the small army of volunteers that we have in this country march. Let us be absolutely clear: if it was not for that contribution, this country would be in serious difficulties.
I am sceptical about what the Foreign Secretary is announcing. The banner that young people would march under would be one concerned with saving lives and preventing illness rather than some connection with trade. I say to the Government that I need to be convinced that the strategy set out by the Foreign Secretary at this stage is the right one to take this country forward.
Last year, I launched a Health Inequalities Action Group, bringing together parliamentarians, interfaith leaders, health specialists and civil society leaders to explore how we can improve health outcomes across London and the social circumstances that surround them. In 2022, we hosted a series of community consultations to capture the different experiences. Through this work, we have found that faith groups, if sustainably supported, can continue to improve the work of statutory and civil society organisations to action complex health and social interventions. The action group is drawing out case studies of public health interventions that are modelled on relationships, trust and the mobilisation of resources.
One case study was the visionary community health worker pilot initiated by Westminster City Council. These public health professionals are trusted, permanent and regular visitors who are integrated in the community and connected to the local primary care teams and other relevant bodies necessary for community flourishing. This pilot was modelled after the Brazilian family health strategy, which began in 1994 and is now the primary care system in Brazil.
Brazil shares many of our disparities; research in this area by British GPs who have worked in Brazil laid out a rationale for why we should use this system in the UK. A national study in Brazil, featured in the British Medical Journal, showed that residents in areas with a long-standing coverage of community healthcare workers had a 34% lower cardiovascular disease mortality rate compared to areas without them. The benefits of such an approach to community care, and arguably the entire levelling-up programme, are clear.
I have said before that the vision we should be striving for is one of mutual flourishing, generosity and abundance. This is also known as the Jewish and biblical concept of shalom, which can be summarised as experiencing wholeness or a state of being without gaps. Together with those working for a more whole and healthy society, I would like this Government to act in line with the NHS long-term plan, which focuses on prevention and early intervention to reduce healthcare costs and the burden of disease. I would like this Government to adopt models and practices that embody efforts to design a more holistic health service—this is in effect aimed at achieving shalom—not just the absence of disease. It is an approach that needs to happen if we are to take the levelling-up agenda seriously.
We need to avoid blaming one another for these disasters and problems. Being angry and blaming other people does not harm those so attacked, but it does a great deal of damage to those who indulge in the blame game, the anger game, the paying-off-old-scores game and revenge. These emotions tend to wreck the immune system and lead to more illness, more hospitalisations and greater strains on an already stressed health service.
We have a long tradition of Christian service and the service given by many of different faiths or no faith. The Church has a very important role in setting an example in these areas. After all, it is from our Christian foundations that this country’s hospitals and schools were set up in the first place and its welfare system developed. It is to be hoped that the bishops will support a unified vision to encourage us all. Of course, this may require putting aside personal party politics for the sake of being of one in spirit and of one mind.
When a politician was being badly treated and repeatedly interrupted on a television programme, he said, “Excuse me, sir. When you entered this BBC building at Langham Place, did you notice the advice inscribed in stone on the wall of the entrance?” The interviewer shook his head; he had not seen the exhortation, which had been there since 1922. It reads, from the New Testament,
“that the people, inclining their ear to whatsoever things are beautiful and honest and of good report, may tread the path of wisdom and uprightness.”
What the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, said in Zulu bears repetition: “Vuk’uzenzele”—just get on and do it.
Other days will have covered the vote on verandas, so let me talk about education. First, early years education: where is it? We have known for the past several decades that high-quality early years provision is essential. It is why many of our competitors are flying educationally. Sustained quality investment gives a strong grounding for school and beyond. We also know that the gap widened during Covid and is likely to get worse as a result of the cost-of-living crisis. So far as I can see, the only conversation at the moment confuses early years education with childcare and the only measure relates to the cost of childcare provision per child.
If you look at schools, we all know what the problem is. We all understand that there is a widening gap between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils. There is the effect of Covid, low aspiration, poor results, and poorer teaching and leadership in the poorest parts of the country. We all know that. What has to be done is not rocket science—we saw it in London Challenge and in other areas: a very clear dedicated team, sustained delivery, a focus on performance and leadership, and tackling teachers to make sure that we get the best to the poorest schools.
I agree with new governance where it is helpful—and I was certainly involved in city academies—but not for the sake of it. It should genuinely bring new skills and energy, a mixture of carrot and stick. We know that that leads to better outcomes, so we know that there is a blueprint. The Government’s response in the Queen’s Speech, frankly, is pretty pathetic. There is no proper recovery plan. There is no coherent levelling-up agenda; bits of little measures are scattered around the place but there is no real long-term interest or investment to make change happen. There are just little initiatives such as joining a MAT by 2030. That is about structures, not quality. We have got to have sustained progress, not headlines.
To be clear, I never excuse failure and poor outcomes but the deal has to be proper, practical support, sustained policy and investment. Frankly, for many years there has been a level of consensus across the parties about the priorities, and that is now being or has been broken.
On HE—that potential engine of economic growth and levelling up, a massive route to push productivity and improve skill levels, regionally and sub-regionally—at the moment, we have the leftover Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill. I will not go there because I know we will spend time on that on other occasions. I look forward to the promised HE Bill that the Government have still to bring through. I hope they are serious about promoting practical policies.
Finally, I wait with real interest to see what advice will now be given to the Office for Students after the Secretary of State’s interview in the Times. Are we really saying that investment does not matter? Are we really saying that we are going to stop encouraging poorer applicants? I do not doubt the need for a sophisticated approach to admissions to good universities. That, frankly, would be very welcome. But a simplistic exams grade only approach will not be fair, will break well-established focuses on realising potential and especially will not encourage disadvantaged students, those with huge ambition and potential, and will not be good for the UK economy. Please let us together stop the campaigning and talk about governing.
I urge the Government to take immediate action to address the delays in the system. Why is it getting worse? Has the DWP recruited enough staff to deal with PIP assessments? Are there any plans to deploy DWP staff instead of using outsourced companies? We know that the population is getting older, so more people are likely to need disability benefits in the future. But we need to be sure that the whole process is working properly, which it clearly is not at the moment. I look forward to the Minister’s reply or a letter if that is more appropriate.