Dame Meg Hillier
MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have huge respect for the Minister, but she has said that she will not take any interventions. She is a very good Minister, and I trust that she will answer in detail the points that have been raised in the House today; having discussions with her and the Government after the debate is too late…”
“My hon. Friend talks about who makes our laws, and she has talked in articles that she has written about the primacy of this place. If the Bill goes forward, is she willing to accept amendments?”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend to her place and thank her for that response, which demonstrates the complications of these schemes. I asked the National Audit Office to look into this, and yesterday the Public Accounts Committee published its report on compensation schemes, suggesting that a central body be established.”
“I am pleased by my right hon. Friend’s answer, but she is in a unique position across Government to ensure that we are protecting not only women, but those who are blind or have visual impairments, who really value this technology.”
“I welcome the Chancellor’s clampdown on speculation and leaks ahead of the Budget; it is certainly an important step he has taken. On the issue of certainty, the National Wealth Fund is a critical investor in crowding in private investment around the UK. I noted that he has changed the remit.”
“Further to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes), it is important that we talk here and that we have diplomacy, but what practical actions are the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence taking to ensure that there is a review of physical defence and security, so that we send a clear message to t…”
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“It is all very well passing the law, but unless it works in practice it will all be for nothing. I hope that the Minister can give us some information on how he is spreading the word and making sure that there is proper training.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I have a simple question for the Minister. MPs were put into the same category as prescribed persons, but I suspect that a straw poll of colleagues would show that many do not understand that. Crucially, staff would find it hard to recognise a true whistleblower. Like the Minister, we in the Public Accounts Committee have done some work on the subject and we know the importance of having a proper pathway when someone has shown the courage to whistleblow. As MPs, like MSPs, we also get other types of complaint that would not reach the threshold of whistleblowing. Has he had any conversations about how to support Members of the Scottish Parliament as well as others in the category who might need stronger guidance?”
“There has been some talk about business rates. I appreciate what the Minister says about needing a proper plan. Businesses in my constituency tell me that business rates are their big bête noire and that reforming and replacing them would make their lives a lot easier and their survival more certain. Will he give some indication of the Government’s thinking, and of the timescale in which they might be looking at the matter? Labour is proposing a radical reform.”
“I welcome the Secretary of State and her team to their new positions, or back to their old ones. From her work on the Public Accounts Committee, among other things, she will know of the desperate need in this country for digital and cyber skills. At the recent Silicon Milkroundabout, a special day called Next Gen was set up to encourage companies to take on new graduates or people with lower qualifications, but companies said that they would only really take people with three years’ postgraduate experience. Does she think that there is an opportunity in the sector to boost apprenticeships? Would she be willing to work with businesses in Shoreditch to promote them?”
“This important ruling settles the question for now—certainly on the legal matter. Does the Secretary of State think that it gives us ample time to investigate what else the Scottish Government are doing? The debate about the referendum has thrown up a lot of sand, but the Scottish Government are underachieving in so many areas of public service, and that needs to be shown.”
“Added to the chaos, we now see a bidding war where local authorities find themselves competing against Home Office procurement for temporary accommodation. That is not new. The Public Accounts Committee highlighted those very issues in its report in November 2020 and made a recommendation to the Home Office, which the Government accepted, that: “The Department should, as a matter of urgency, communicate with NHS bodies, MPs and other key stakeholders such as police, setting out how it will consult and engage with them in future.” We also asked the Department to write to us further about that approach. So this failure was on the desk—everybody knew that it was happening—and it is still a failure now. Why?”
“I find myself in agreement with the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), whose Government, of course, have been in power for 12 years. The court delays are a real problem for victims. One of my constituents was violently attacked and given a court date three years later. Her seven-year-old witnessed the attack, and the perpetrator keeps pestering her, breaking non-molestation orders, leaving the police pretty powerless, because he knows there is no traction. The Public Accounts Committee has looked into this. The backlog is not going down and will not be lower than pre-pandemic—it is not about covid. What is the Secretary of State doing to get a grip on his Department and make sure the courts deliver justice for victims?”
“The Chancellor has unveiled large numbers —or numbers that seem large—but let us be clear: that £3.3 billion a year is not even Osbornesque funding for the NHS. It is not enough to keep the NHS standing still. Will he level with us and tell us what percentage of the NHS budget that is?”
“My local authority of Hackney has suffered cuts of nearly 50% over the last decade or so, but it nevertheless delivers efficient public services. Money given to good local authorities can be more cost-effective and better value for money for the taxpayer, so will the Minister consider that as the Chancellor approaches Thursday?”
“I have had letters from upset civil servants who have seen colleagues make lesser misdemeanours and lose their jobs, yet seen the Home Secretary, the woman in charge of national security, hold on to hers. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this shows that there is one rule for the Home Secretary and one rule for everybody else?”
“The backlog is a hugely significant issue. Among my heavy case load, I have a surgeon who cannot move hospitals because he cannot get his visa turned around, families who are separated and spouses who cannot live together. That is the real human impact. We are turning our back on good people who want to work and live in this country because they are caught in the backlog as a result of the Home Secretary’s actions.”
“Once again, the Government have put out the man who defends anything, however bad it is, to speak for them. This is not just a matter of a security leak; it is a fundamental matter of the judgment of the woman who is responsible for our national security—the Minister cannot just brush it under the carpet as a six-day matter. The Home Secretary’s judgment is at stake, and there is no evidence that that judgment is any better today than it was when she made these leaks.”
“The Prime Minister promised integrity, professionalism and accountability in Government. His Home Secretary has leaked information, is overseeing chaos in the Home Office and has broken the law. What will she actually have to do to get the sack?”
“We have recommended introducing a national communications campaign on air quality to provide a strong national message about how we can all change our behaviour and the purpose of those measures to support us all in staying healthy and keeping the air clean in our areas. We have also recommended ensuring that councils have sufficient flexibility to determine the approach in their area. In summary, we have seen some progress, but there is a lot to do. If the Government take their foot off the pedal, we would very concerned. The impact of not tackling air quality is not something we can contemplate The bones of action are there but there needs to better working together. That is the summary of our report.”
“The Committee is clear that local authorities have a key role to play. As I said, they have the freedom to set different exemption criteria and different charging levels for clean air zones and so forth, but the joint air quality unit at Government level has been a bit inflexible and lacks understanding of local politics, with too much emphasis often placed on clean air zones as the default option, instead of measures that may be more suited to the area. I am a great believer in local communities deciding as much as possible for themselves, while Government have an overarching view and challenge where there is a failure at local level. There is a will in local government to deal with this and we need to see a better way of working between local and national government. I hope that is landing with the Minister.”
“They use that information to direct councils to take action, but the national model does not directly use the results of monitoring by local authorities. Instead, there is a national network of monitoring stations, which is a good thing, but there are obviously gaps—they are not everywhere—and the Government have to use that for the national model. Some local authorities have raised with the Committee their concerns that this may result in an unfair situation, whereby councils with high levels of nitrogen dioxide pollution are not required to take action because the national model did not predict a breach. It sounds quite technical, but it is actually about local government and the national Government working closely together, having a good look at the model, and making sure that the uncertainty in the model is highlighted.”
“It needs to be looked at again, and I hope that the Minister hears this and will feed it back to the Department. We really believe in transparency—not just the Public Accounts Committee, but all Members of the House—and it needs to be pushed through, because the best group of people to help us tackle air pollution can be local people, who have a real interest in the issue and who need to be able to see what is going on. They can also adapt their behaviour, perhaps by travelling less and thinking about not using cars on short journeys, in order to tackle pollution in their area. One of the other issues is the national model that the Government use to identify areas that are likely to breach air quality limits.”
“We know it is difficult to get a precise figure, but we think it important that DEFRA takes a lead and nudges or pushes other Departments to identify in their budget what they are spending, so that we can all see that, DEFRA will be able to see that and, crucially, Departments can be held to account to make sure that they are doing their bit to tackle air pollution in the UK. I will not go through every recommendation in detail, but the issue of information is worth highlighting. The Government’s main source of public information on air quality is the UK AIR website, but this is impenetrable for the average user if they want to find out information about their local area, and it does not present very clear information on the legal limits for each pollutant.”
“Often, it is about the Government saying, “You need to take measures in order to reduce emissions,” but when measures are taken, they are not always backed up by the national message. National messaging can also help to make sure that people know how they can be affected by air quality breaches and how they can take mitigating action, especially if they have respiratory problems, because that obviously has a very big impact on their health. Of course, as the Public Accounts Committee, we are very concerned about value for money, and we would like the Government to look at how money is being spent across Whitehall on air pollution issues.”
“One of the main conclusions of our report is that the public find it hard to find information about air quality in their area, and it is difficult to know what has been done by either central Government or local government to address illegal levels of pollution. We conclude—I do not think it is rocket science—that air quality issues require local government and the national Government to work very closely together, yet we do not think that the Government have quite got the balance right. The lack of a co-ordinated central communications campaign means that activities by local councils are not always supported by a strong national message about the need for air quality measures. For example, low emission zones can be unpopular locally but are vital.”
“Progress to address illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide pollution in the 64 authorities and 31 sections of the strategic road network, which I mentioned, has been slower than was expected in 2017. Central Government had expected that there would be a change within three years, but as of 1 April this year, 17 local authorities were still in the process of implementing measures. It has been four and a half years since the target was set, and most of those 17 authorities do not have a firm completion date, although eventual compliance is expected because of the Government’s moves to introduce electric vehicles and other upgrades to vehicles. However, we have separately looked at the electric vehicle programme, and there are challenges there too.”
“As of May this year, a lifetime budget of £883 million has been committed to the programme to support local councils, and the Government separately spent £39 million to improve air quality on the strategic road network between 2015-16 and 2019-20. The Government published a clean air strategy in January 2019, outlining their approach to air quality much more broadly. At the time, we took evidence from the Government, and they have since published their air pollution control programme to make sure that the 2030 targets are met. However, the Committee concludes that current policy measures are insufficient to meet four of the five 2030 emission ceiling targets set for the UK as a whole. There has been progress, but there is still a lot to do.”
“Through their nitrogen dioxide programme, the Government have directed 64 local authorities to take action to improve air quality. They have also commissioned National Highways to examine breaches on the strategic road network in England. I should say that across that network, only a total of about 51 miles has actually breached that limit across 31 local areas. Air pollution is often very localised, and only about 250 homes are directly affected by that air pollution, because it dissipates. However, one of the challenges is how to measure it, and I will touch on that challenge in a moment, because the Committee is concerned that the Government need to look at the model for measurement as we go forward.”
“Between 2010 and 2019, the UK complied with most of its legal air quality limits for major pollutants at local and national levels, with the exception of the nitrogen dioxide annual mean concentration limit, of which there have been long-standing breaches. The Committee was particularly concerned about those breaches, and the report reflects that concern. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Transport helpfully established the Joint Air Quality Unit in 2016 to oversee delivery of the Government’s plans to achieve compliance with air quality targets. Measures to tackle nitrogen dioxide pollution include bus retrofit and traffic management schemes and, in some areas, clean air zones where vehicle owners are required to pay a charge if their vehicle does not meet a certain emissions standard.”
“Of course, there was the very tragic case of a young girl who died, where the coroner concluded that her asthma had been exacerbated by the pollution around the south circular in south London. There are two types of air quality target in the UK: national emissions ceilings, which are breached if too much of one pollutant is emitted across the UK within a year, and local concentration limits—about which I think most Members get the most letters—which are breached if the average level of a pollutant in a specific area is too high. Current national targets cover pollution from ammonia, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, non-methane volatile organic compounds and sulphur dioxide, as well as others.”
“The Committee was particularly keen that we make a statement on this report in the House because of the vital importance of the issue. Quite simply, poor air quality can cause significant damage to people’s health, as well as harming the environment. There is some good news: emissions of most air pollutants have been falling in recent decades in the UK. However, poor air quality continues to cause damage to people’s health and the natural environment. As we highlight in our report, the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants estimated that human-made air pollution in the UK has an effect equivalent to between 28,000 and 36,000 deaths each year.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray. I record my thanks to the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee for this report. As many Members will know, the National Audit Office does great work to support us, analysing the numbers from Government and making sure that we are working on the basis of the facts in front of us. I record a special thanks to my deputy Chair, the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), who chaired this particular session of the Committee’s work. We also took evidence from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—it is good to see the Minister in her place—the Department for Transport, and National Highways on their work to tackle air quality in England. Our report covers the nitrogen dioxide programme and work to address other air pollutants.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. The National Audit Office has looked into that in detail. I do not have a figure to hand, but he is right. All these measures have an important role in health prevention, which plays a hugely important role in the cost. NHS spending was just over 40% of the resource spending of all Whitehall Departments. When we think of it like that, there is a clear incentive for Government to work together to tackle things such as air pollution to try and reduce health problems and health inequalities, which will also have an impact on an already massively overstretched NHS budget.”
“If we could meet before the outcome of the review so that we can feed into it, that would be very helpful. I am grateful that the Speaker’s Office granted me this debate, because it is very timely. It is really important that we get this right so that we support dogs and dog owners as much as we can.”
“We could thoughtfully discuss the options and how they could be codified in regulations so that they are manageable, understandable for businesses, understandable for the consumer—the dog owner putting their dog into the right environment—and, crucially, understandable for local authorities and other inspection regimes that may take an interest in ensuring that provision is safe, properly managed and good for the dogs concerned. If we have a good discussion, I think we can come up with a good regime in which urban daycares can operate in a viable way and dogs in the city can enjoy the benefits of local daycare. Many dogs already do, but not enough, because not enough daycare is available. I hope that the Minister will consider that genuine and open offer to meet him or his officials.”
“Some people have suggested 4 square metres of space for urban daycare. I think a less prescriptive approach might be better. I know that it will be quite challenging for officials to write the rules. I am not suggesting a free-for-all with no regulation; I think it is vital to have the right regulation. At the moment, some areas can license premises and others go through planning permission. There are some areas that could be worked on. If the Minister or his officials—I know Ministers are always very busy—have time, I know that Edita, Daniel and others would be willing to meet. We could make it a very quick meeting; I entice officials on that basis.”
“My first ask is for a recognition of the difference between dog daycare in the inner city and in a rural area where land is more available. It also needs to be recognised that many people want their dog to be looked after close to home. That is not an unreasonable request. We are not asking for cramped space. In some ways, the situation is equivalent to that of nurseries in London, many of which do not even have outdoor space, whereas outside London that is much easier to achieve. As I have mentioned, many owners took on dogs during lockdown for company and for support with mental and physical health. It would be a tragedy if those dogs were then stuck in cramped flats. Unfortunately, many people are having to let their dogs go or give them away because they cannot look after them any more.”
“With the ultra-low emission zone and congestion charging, it can be very expensive for daycare owners as well as for those who are paying for their dogs to go to daycare. There are unnecessary add-on costs that do not contribute anything beneficial for the dog concerned. Hairy Hounds is a good example of how a neglected public space has become useful. This might sound odd to the Minister, but Hairy Hounds is on a former scrapyard right by the railway line. That land is hard to let to other people, but it has been turned into a wonderful haven for dogs. I have some asks of the Minister. A review of the 2018 regulations is due to be published in 2023, five years after they came into force. It offers the Minister an opportunity to re-examine the standards and the associated guidance and consider whether any changes are necessary.”
“With good training and support, however, those dogs behave well and when they meet in the park at weekends, when they are not in dog daycare, they know one another. There is no snappiness and the behaviour is much better, which is also better for the environment generally. Urban daycares, including Hairy Hounds, use outdoor space, and when they do not have the outdoor space, there are frequent, controlled exercise walks in local parks. Again, that allows for opportunities for training and development. There are other benefits, such as the creation of local jobs—it is important that we maintain jobs across all sectors—and there is no requirement for vans to travel in and out of London, adding to pollution.”
“When I went to Hairy Hounds, unbelievably, given the number of dogs that were there, there was not a single bark or any snappiness. The dogs were incredibly well behaved. Edita has done an amazing job. She has converted shipping containers, so when someone looks in, it looks like a lovely front room, with dogs sleeping on cushions, sitting on sofas and behaving as a dog would in a home environment. If I had a dog, that is what I would want them to do. There is an outside space with a course so that they can be trained and exercised, as well as having walks in local parks. Walks in local parks are important. With the increase in dog numbers, there are issues because some dog owners do not manage their dogs well.”
“If that person is unlucky and their dog is picked up early, and the van still has to pick up other dogs from the area, that can take an hour and there is often at least an hour’s drive, depending on the traffic, to the beautiful rural setting to which some dogs may go. I would not call it good animal welfare to have vans come in to pick up and drop off dogs. At its worst, that means that there are hot dogs in cramped conditions, shut in cages. That is not good for them and it does not help their socialisation and behaviour. There are real animal welfare benefits to having urban dog daycare. Dogs are not travelling for hours in vans. It can be more natural for many dogs to be in smaller, well-socialised groups.”
“Some people want their dogs to go into dog daycare, which, let me be clear, is not always about daycare; it is often about the training and socialisation of dogs to help them with their behaviour. Given the explosion of dog ownership during the pandemic, it is particularly important that new dog owners know that their dogs, and they as owners, can get support to ensure that their dogs are well behaved in public settings. Some of my constituents are forced, because of the lack of dog daycare, to send their dogs to rural daycare. That sounds lovely and idyllic, but if we look at Hackney South and Shoreditch, which is in zones 1 and 2 in central London, we see that that means, in practical terms, that a van with cages in it arrives from outside London to pick up someone’s dog.”
“It is important to look at animal welfare, but if we compare and contrast, the balance does not seem right. It is a fact of inner-city living that dogs need support, but it can be very difficult to find the space. Animal welfare is at the heart of this issue. It may sound counterintuitive to be arguing for flexibility on space standards to ensure that we can have a thriving dog daycare and training sector in the inner city, but it is important that people have options. The key point is that if dogs do not go to daycare, the other options are a dog walker and being left at home for a lot of the day. I am not at all trying to diminish the important work of many dog walkers, but there are not the places to go locally.”
“It is often impossible for those businesses to be viable, given high rents and overheads, yet dog owners need somewhere for their dogs to go. Yes, they can have dogwalkers, but many of my constituents live in small flats where their dog, left home alone for much of the day, would not be in a great setting anyway. So actually dog daycare, sometimes with smaller space standards, could be a better option than the alternatives. The required space—six square metres per dog—can often be difficult to find in the first place. In the past couple of weeks, I have done three surgeries—two were in people’s homes, visiting them where they are—and I saw, as I have over the years, children in Hackney who do not have six square metres in their home.”
“The big challenge is then what to do about the dog they love very much but are no longer able to support during the day. The regulations on dog daycare are under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018 and guidance. Section 4 of the specific statutory guidance on dog daycare licensing states: “each dog must have 6 square metres of space available to them within the premises - this can include inside and outside space.” That is great—we are all very concerned about animal welfare and I would not want dogs to be crammed into unnecessarily small spaces—but in the inner city, in Hackney South and Shoreditch, that is just too large for many urban daycares, where space is often at a premium.”
“The pet charity PDSA—People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals —estimates that there are 10.2 million dogs in the UK in 2022, with approximately 27% of households owning a dog. There has been a steady rise in dog ownership, as I am sure the Minister is aware. In 2013, 23% of households owned a dog. It is difficult to pin down figures, but anecdotally—certainly in London and I think across the country—we saw a rise in dog ownership during the pandemic. Dogs, which are often called man’s best friend—let us say man and woman’s best friend—have been a very welcome addition to many households and a great support for both physical and mental health. From that we can infer—and what, locally, we know—there has been an increasing demand for dog daycare, particularly as people get back into offices and the number of people working from home decreases.”
“It gives me great pleasure to rise to raise the important issue of daycare for dogs, particularly in the inner city. I appreciate the Minister having a quick word with me ahead of the debate. I hope that in the spirit of collaboration, despite differences in recent weeks that have arisen across Parliament, we can work together to resolve this issue. Before I get into my main comments, I want to shout out my thanks to Edita Sykora of Hairy Hounds in Hackney, which is a dog daycare and training centre in Homerton in my constituency, and to Daniel Conn of Great and Small Dog Care, which has premises in my neighbouring constituencies of Islington North, and Islington South and Finsbury. I met Edita and Daniel when I visited Hairy Hounds last month. Dog ownership has been growing considerably.”
“One of the anomalies in the system is the fact that some local authorities use a licensing scheme while others use planning permission. There are other parts of the regulations, which I did not go into in detail this evening, which is a further reason why it would be helpful if we could have a meeting.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I have a couple of simple questions for the Minister. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge has highlighted, this measure is quite late in coming. When the scheme was being put together, there must have been some thought somewhere in the Government’s system that there would be a need for this new measure. When were the Minister’s Department and the Home Office first aware that there might need to be a change in the legislation? If there were any delays in bringing it forward from that date to now, can she explain why?”
“On that point, the Minister says that it was a bespoke scheme. The Public Accounts Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing, looked at the Syrian resettlement scheme, which we gave quite a big tick. There are always issues with big projects, but it worked very well, so there was an example of a scheme that went before. It was not domestic hosting, so the safeguarding was slightly different, but there were still issues there. Did she look back to that scheme? I am still puzzled why the Government drew up a whole new scheme when there was a fairly good model on the stocks.”
“We all know that mistakes happen, but the Minister talks as if it were a junior member of staff who had made an inadvertent clerical error. This is a Home Secretary who released secret information through a personal email address. This suggests a pattern of behaviour, and that she thinks it is okay to snap on her phone at 4 o’clock in the morning and make this atrocious mistake. This is much more serious than the Minister is trying to paint it. I had the privilege of serving in the Home Office, and it would never have happened under previous Governments. Will the Minister not demean himself any further and honestly recognise to the House that this is of a different scale than he is trying to present it?”
“Businesses in my constituency, including some of the fabulous small breweries, are struggling with the extra paperwork they now have to fill in in order to export to the European Union. The Business Secretary was a great exponent of Brexit, but even he must acknowledge that it is causing a huge burden to businesses and seriously affecting their profitability.”
“Disadvantage knows no boundaries and, likewise, we have huge challenges in our schools in Hackney. The Government promised that the starting salary for teachers would be £30,000. How close are the Government to reaching that manifesto commitment?”
“Q11. We understand that this afternoon’s vote on fracking is deemed a confidence vote in the Prime Minister. Can she give us any reason why her own Back Benchers or anyone in this country can have confidence in her after her policies have caused chaos in the markets and wrecked the economy?”
“The Minister has a strong track record of being knowledgeable about finance in the private sector, so will he acknowledge that the mini-Budget caused huge chaos in the markets? Notwithstanding the international issues which are a backdrop to this, this Government have scored an own goal by making the position a hell of a lot worse. Surely the Minister, with his financial background, will acknowledge that.”