Pat McFadden
MP for Wolverhampton South East · Labour · United Kingdom
“In his review Alan Milburn considered that issue and said that, “the UK’s NEET crisis is much more long-term and deep-seated than any decisions taken in the last few years.” As I said earlier, 400,000 more people are in work this year than last year, and the number of young people in employment is up since the election.”
“Since our last DWP questions, both Alan Milburn and the Pensions Commission have published their respective interim reports on young people and on the current state of saving for retirement. I look forward to receiving their final reports later in the year.”
“As Alan Milburn pointed out in his recent report, the UK’s NEET crisis is much more long-term and deep-seated than any decisions taken in the last few years. There are 400,000 more people in work than last year. The number of young people in employment is up by 74,000 since the election.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman and send him commiserations for whatever has left him reliant on his crutches today. I am happy to congratulate the businesses he mentioned in his constituency. He raises a serious point: it is important not only to come up with the right policy, but to make it simple for businesses to use.”
“My hon. Friend is right, and I thank Cardiff football club for being a partner. We are supporting nearly 1 million young people and creating up to half a million opportunities for jobs and training.”
“We are making strong progress on expanding youth hubs, with around 130 already in operation across Great Britain. In March, I announced the locations that we want to open in this year, and I have just announced a further 180 locations for the following two years.”
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“Thank you for your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I also thank the Minister for his explanation of the statutory instruments. As he said, this is about the customs regime and our tariff schedules following our departure from the European Union. The tariff rates were first announced by the Government in May last year as the UK global tariff, which succeeds the EU’s common external tariff. The changes will see a large proportion of tariff lines undergoing some degree of change. The Minister mentioned a couple of them—pistachios and cotton thread, I think. The explanatory notes state that the effects of all that are quite varied.”
“Can I just ask a question on that final point about the legal basis? The reason I ask is that we are now seven weeks on, and we are debating a set of SIs that are designed to ensure continuity after the end of the transition period. From a legislative point of view, how long can this go on for? In theory, could we come here after six or nine months and say that we need the statutory instrument to ensure continuity after the end of the transition period? In other words, how long after the fact can Parliament debate laws that have effectively come into force—in this case, seven weeks before we have debated them? Is this endlessly elastic, or is there a cut-off point at which the process—the mountain of secondary legislation needed to adapt to this—has to be done and dusted?”
“Today, when child refugees are still trying to reach our shores, we should remember how precious that chance of a new life can be, and what an amazing contribution to our country can be made by those who are given a chance. The lessons of Holocaust Memorial Day are not only those from history; they live with us every day. The greatest of all is that we share much more through our common humanity than anything that could drive us apart.”
“I am glad and relieved that, under new leadership, we have firmly turned a page on that era. To do so fully and completely, we must not only reject antisemitism but the worldview that gives rise to it, the conspiracy theories that go along with it and the hierarchy of victimhood that is blind to it. The experience of remembering the holocaust should also inform the ways that we think about refugees today. The UK can be proud of the role we played not only during the war, in liberating the world from tyranny, but before the war, in making a new home for around 10,000 children through the Kindertransport programme. Each one of those children was given a new life and a new chance.”
“We should never engage in the conferring of collective guilt, we should openly reject conspiracy theories about dual loyalties or international cabals influencing world events, and we should reject the world view that results in a hierarchy of victimhood where some cannot accept that Jewish people could really be the victims of racism. It is sadly the case that antisemitism still exists in our society, and indeed became more prominent in recent years, including in my own party. It never represented the Labour tradition, which at its best is a politics open to people of all faiths and none and which seeks to break down barriers, not reinforce them, yet still antisemitic views found a home in some of the darker corners of the left, as well as the far right.”
“I thank everyone who made this debate possible. Holocaust Memorial Day stands as a reminder of where racism and the dehumanisation of others can lead. Many years ago, I travelled to Auschwitz-Birkenau with children from my constituency, on a visit organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust. No one who has made that visit will ever forget the experience. The industrial mass killing, the meticulous gathering of clothing and goods—not random acts of chaotic violence but the most organised programme of killing in history. We recoil and say “Never again”, but since the holocaust there have been further atrocities in the world fuelled by racial hatred and the desire to demonise people because of their faith or because they are a minority of one kind or another. The lessons for today still matter.”
“The Brexit deal was, in effect, a no-deal outcome for financial services. Already some trade has moved, and there is big uncertainty hanging over access to European markets for this vital UK sector. Can the Minister confirm that it is in fact a Government negotiating aim to secure equivalence recognition for UK financial services in the memorandum of understanding being discussed between now and the end of March?”
“In a debate that is about regulation we should not forget the most human side of all this, and the impact that the past year in particular has had on grieving families.”
“She spoke of the difficulties imposed by the inability to have face-to-face contact with grieving families, of the pain imposed on families by the restrictions on numbers, with families having to make terrible decisions about who can come to the funeral and who cannot, of the financial pressures that people are under trying to pay for funerals when they might have lost their jobs or had their hours cut, and of the broader effects on the country of so many people not being able to say goodbye properly and, in a way, having grief and the normal displays of grief delayed. I conclude by thanking Susan, and all companies like hers that have had to cope with those awful consequences of the pandemic.”
“We should record our thanks to funeral directors throughout the country who have tried to deal with this in the most sensitive way, trying not only to look after the dead but to help families under the severe restrictions. Of course, funeral directors have also had to do what they could to protect their own staff, with personal protective equipment and other measures, when handling funerals. I spoke to one funeral director in my constituency yesterday, Susan Ellsmore. She runs a relatively new company; it is only three years old.”
“There are many ways of having a funeral, but what they all have in common normally is that family and friends come together to bid a final farewell to a loved one they have lost. With covid, that has not been possible over the past year, at least not in anything like the normal way. We have had around 90,000 covid deaths, but the funeral rules have applied to everybody, regardless of the cause of death. Nobody in the past year has been able to have a proper funeral. The numbers are severely restricted. Wakes cannot happen. People cannot visit somebody’s home to pay their respects in the usual way. That has caused an awful lot of heartbreak to grieving relatives, and is a very painful consequence of the pandemic. Perhaps we have not talked enough about what the country is going through.”
“Is the Minister confident that the fees raised will allow the FCA to devote the proper resources to the task? Its role is expanding in a number of other ways, such as through the onshoring of lots of European Union regulation. Finally, given that we are debating this matter this morning, perhaps we should say a word about the difficult circumstances that people have been in with funerals over the past year. Every faith and tradition has its own way of saying goodbye to loved ones. In my family, it is an Irish funeral tradition, which usually involves a full wake, an open coffin in someone’s house, a full funeral mass and some kind of gathering afterwards. It is a big occasion. The ability to say goodbye properly is so important to grieving families, whatever people’s faith or tradition.”
“The Minister and I debate such things frequently and he knows that I often say that with innovation and change in financial products there must also be innovation and change in the regulatory boundary. Plans of the kind we are discussing have been around for some time, but if we look at the 10-year horizon we can see there has been quite big growth. In 2017, when the process began, there were about 200,000 policyholders. I think it has tailed off a bit in the last couple of years, but there is still a substantial number of people who hold such plans. Of course, the Minister would also expect me to say that as the role of the FCA changes the question of how it is resourced also comes up. The principle in such matters is usually that the fees for the regulation are raised through registration, and so on.”
“Where would it leave someone who had bought such a plan? The customer has not done anything wrong and has bought a plan in good faith. The FPA points out that offers of a refund in those circumstances are not really what customers want. They want a plan that covers the cost of their funeral—not to be told to start again. It estimates that there could be up to 40,000 people in that position. I would like the Minister’s response about people in those circumstances. The FPA also disputes the Treasury’s estimates of the costs to the sector in the impact assessment provided to the Committee this morning. Having asked those questions I should make it clear that the Opposition will not oppose the order.”
“That organisation is not in favour of what the Government are doing, and it made a couple of points that I would like the Minister to respond to. First, it believes that the allegations of mis-selling have been exaggerated, and that the proposed regulation will add costs to what are in many cases small, family-owned businesses. On the plans themselves, the FPA points out that if not all current providers are approved by the FCA under the new regime that could leave some customers with unapproved plans, or plans that they took out with unapproved providers. What will happen in those circumstances? The Government might hope that an approved provider—and there are some quite big operators in the market—would take over the plans. I am sure that in some cases that would happen. However, what if it did not?”
“The calls for regulation were further spurred by reports of high-pressure selling and a lack of understanding, in some cases, of what the plans covered compared with what people expected them to cover. Obviously, at the time of a funeral, such disparities and, perhaps, surprise extra costs, are particularly upsetting to people. The Government carried out their consultation and most respondents, such as Age UK and the Law Society of Scotland, favoured regulation. However, it should perhaps be pointed out that there were only about 30 responses. That is not a huge number for a Government consultation. Most were in favour. The Minister mentioned the FPA, and I held a call with it last month, when it was originally thought that the order would be debated before Christmas.”
“I am grateful for your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I am also grateful to the Minister for his explanation of the order before us. Like many such proposals, this legislation is the culmination of a process that began, I think, about three years ago. As the Minister said, at that time reports by Citizens Advice Scotland and Fairer Finance outlined problems in the marketing of funeral plans, and called for more regulation of the providers. The Fairer Finance report pointed out that a funeral plan looks and feels like a financial services product but is not regulated like one. It also found that 75% of the people it surveyed who had one thought that it already was regulated like a financial services product, and did not realise that it was not.”
“Just two weeks ago, the House approved the post-Brexit trade and co-operation agreement, but for financial services this is basically a no-deal agreement. The references within it do no more than repeat standard pledges of co-operation in every free trade agreement. The Prime Minister himself acknowledged that, for this sector, he did not achieve as much as he hoped. Indeed, within a few days of the agreement, £6 billion-worth of euro-denominated share trading shifted from London to European exchanges—an immediate response to the new situation.”
“This will take both the private sector and the public sector working together and pulling in the same direction. It is in that spirit that we put forward the amendment. We ask for something that has bipartisan support, is in line with the post-Brexit goal for the sector as set out by the Chancellor himself and will make it easier for the country to achieve its commitments. Further to that, we are asking for something that the Minister said in recent minutes that the Government would do at some point anyway. We very much hope that, between now and six o’clock, the Government will reconsider and accept the amendment, which they have said they agree with and will bring forward in some way themselves at some point.”
“As I said, our amendment does not seek to add to the commitments on net zero that the UK has already made, which are already set out in legislation and enjoy the support of all sides of the House, but to make these part of the remit of the regulators that shape our financial services industry. There is already a move towards greater environmental investing from investment funds and from consumers who want to invest in this way, and there is a desire for these products, so why do the Government not back that up by making it part of the regulators’ remit? We know that these commitments cannot be met without large-scale investment. To anyone who says to just leave it to the market if there is an investor desire, we also know that it cannot be done by the private sector alone.”
“What is the point of waiting until the future to do this, as he has indicated he will, when there is an amendment that does not seek to add any new commitments but simply seeks to make this part of the remit of our financial services regulators? There are many reasons, as my newly ennobled—if that is the correct word; newly honoured, perhaps—hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle) said, to say no to amendments, but “not invented here” is one of the worst if the Government have indicated they are going to accept an amendment. The Government say they want the UK to be the centre for green finance globally, but their first legislative outing on this sector since we left the European Union says nothing about mandating the regulators of the industry to make that part of their mission.”
“This is not just my view—the Chancellor himself has said as much. In his statement on the future of financial services, given two months ago from the Government Dispatch Box, he not only announced the first green gilts, but said he wanted to see “the full weight of…capital behind the critical global effort to tackle climate change”. —[ Official Report , 9 November 2020; Vol. 683, c. 621.] Yet this Bill, which empowers the regulators in so many other ways, is totally silent on that issue. The Minister says we might do it in the future. [ Interruption. ] He says from a sedentary position that we will do it in the future. He has an opportunity to do it today—he could just accept the amendment.”
“On energy, we need to find replacements for fossil fuels, we have to invest in the shift to hydrogen and we are still trying to make carbon capture and storage a practical reality. On transport, the transition to battery power will have to proceed at an ever-increasing pace. On housing, we need not only to build new zero-carbon homes, but to retrofit millions of existing homes with zero-carbon heating systems. Agriculture, food production and even the clothes we wear—all these things will undergo big change, and all of them will require significant financial investment. The UK financial services sector has a huge role to play. In seeking a post-Brexit role, what better long-term mission could there be than empowering the change that we need to make to preserve the planet for future generations?”
“In this place, we have rows and arguments about all manner of issues, but sometimes the things that generate the most heat, if the Minister will pardon me the pun, are not always the biggest or most important issues. Conversely, just because an issue has bipartisan support does not make it less significant, and there is no doubt that the Climate Change Act 2008, as amended by the Climate Change Act (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019, is one of the most significant pieces of economic legislation to pass in this country for many years. To achieve our net zero goals will require wholesale change in many walks of life. The briefest of looks at the Committee on Climate Change’s report on how this should be done shows what the main areas will be.”
“Some of it is a necessary consequence of our withdrawal from the European Union, and other parts look as though they have been sitting in the Treasury waiting for a legislative home, like policies hoping for a passing bus. I want to focus on the amendments tabled in the name of the Leader of the Opposition and then turn to some of those tabled by my right hon. and hon. Friends. The first amendment I want to speak to is our amendment 1 on the UK’s net zero commitments. The Bill sets out, in schedules 2 and 3, a list of things that the regulators have to have regard to in the exercise of their new and expanded functions under the Bill. It talks of international standards and competitiveness, yet nowhere is there a mention of the overarching goal that will shape so much of our economy in the decades to come.”
“Madam Deputy Speaker, may I wish you, the Minister and the House a happy new year? The Bill returns to the House at a very important moment for the country’s economy and our financial services industry. We have just come to the end of the transition period with the European Union, and we are of course in the teeth of the battle against the virus. Against a background like that, the business of legislating can seem even more prosaic than usual, and perhaps that is even more the case with a Bill such as this one. It is a mixed bag of measures dealing with everything from onshoring various EU directives to the length of the term of office for the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority.”
“On equivalence regimes, it said: “These regimes are not sufficient to deal with a third country whose financial markets are as deeply interconnected with the EU’s as those of the UK are. In particular, the existing regimes”— that is, the equivalence regimes— “do not provide for…institutional dialogue…a mediated solution where equivalence is threatened by a divergence of rules or supervisory practices”. That which was deemed insufficient by the Government two and a half years ago has now become the height of their ambitions, and even that has not yet been achieved. With each step back from what they aimed for before, the incentives to shift funds and people become bigger.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right that this throws into sharp relief the claim that we hold all the cards. It also throws into sharp relief the debate about divergence, as that remains undecided. The fact that the agreement approved by this House two weeks ago did not cover financial services in any meaningful way was not an accident; it was a choice that the Government made. Step by step, the Government abandoned any attempt to prioritise the market access that the financial services sector, and indeed services in general, had until the end of last year. I remind Conservative Members of the Chequers paper published in 2018, of which they may have more or less fond memories. It acknowledged that on this issue, “there will be more barriers to the UK’s access to the EU market” than there are today.”
“We want it to be innovative and successful, but we also want to ensure the public are properly protected against risks if things go wrong. That is the spirit in which we tabled these amendments, and it is the spirit in which we have approached the Bill throughout. I hope the Minister will consider that when it comes to the votes in a couple of hours’ time.”
“These are people who are stuck on very high standard variable rates and have no ability to switch. All I would ask is, if the Minister cannot accept these amendments, will he continue to work on this issue to try to help these people who are trapped, through no fault of their own, on very uncompetitive rates? He mentioned 3% or 4%, which is much higher than is available in a mortgage environment where the base rate is 0.1%. That can mean paying thousands of pounds more per year, depending on the size of the mortgage, so this is a real material difference for people. We have a global financial sector in this country that, if properly regulated and paying its way, is a huge asset to the people of this country.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes a very strong point, and it is why we believe these are strong amendments. We should do this because it is right in itself, and it is an important signal to send about financial services in this post-Brexit world. We do not want to send a signal that we are going for relative weakness in anti-fraud and anti-money laundering laws. Instead, the signal should be that we insist on the strongest possible measures. New clause 21 seeks to establish a duty of care. This is a long-running debate, and we tabled a similar amendment in Committee. The new clause is intended to make companies ask not just whether their products are legal, but whether they are right and are in the consumer’s interest. New clauses 25 and 26 seek to address the plight of mortgage prisoners.”
“As I said earlier, we want this sector to be successful, to be innovative, and also to be responsible. We want to ensure that the sector does well, but also that the public is properly protected against the risks inherent in an economy like ours, having such a globally significant financial services sector, and the risks if things go wrong, which we saw in our recent history. We certainly do not want to see a slash-and-burn approach to regulation in order to compensate for the decision—I stress the word “decision”— to lose at least a proportion of the market on our doorstep. It is in that spirit that we have approached the Bill, that we have tabled the amendments, and that we have chosen the amendments that we have put to the vote. Thank you.”
“The Government made a big decision—a big choice—particularly in their reincarnation, or incarnation, since December 2019: to place the issue of sovereignty above considerations of market access. We might go further and say that they chose to place the issue of sovereignty above considerations of economic prosperity, although perhaps Ministers and Members abroad would contest that. None the less, a choice like that was certainly made and it has big implications, potentially, for a sector that contributes a significant proportion of our GDP, employs around one in 14 people in the country, earns a lot of export revenues for the country, and is a very significant contributor to tax revenues that pay for public services. We all have a great deal of interest in how this sector will be run as we have come to the end of the transition period.”
“With the exception of the FinTech and financial crime amendment, the Minister has been, for the most part, resistant to these amendments, but a number of key issues have been raised. I hope that he and the Treasury will consider the broad sweep of issues raised around things such as: crime and money laundering because there is a real desire in this Parliament not to see our financial sector being regarded as an easy place for those things to happen; consumer debt and protection, as Members have voiced quite passionate concerns, particularly given the year that we have just been through and the impact on household finances, that consumers are given help with what for many is a growing debt burden, and protection against mis-selling or inappropriate treatment by financial services providers or companies; mortgage prisoners, whom we have heard about tonight, and many of whom are locked into very difficult and disadvantageous mortgage products; and the broader issues that we have raised about post-Brexit financial services, equivalence, green finance and so on.”
“Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq), and all the Members who have taken part in the debates, tabled amendments or spoken in any way. I make particular mention of my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), whom I congratulate on her recently awarded damehood. Finally, Mr Deputy Speaker, I thank you and your colleagues in the Chair. We have not opposed the principle of the Bill, and we will not vote against Third Reading tonight, because we recognise the need for post-Brexit stability in regulation. We also recognise that this is possibly the first of a number of pieces of legislation of this type. We have sought to improve the Bill in various ways, either in Committee or today on Report.”
“I will not detain the House for very long. As this is my last contribution to the debate on this Bill, I begin by thanking the Minister and his Bill team for their patience and forbearance throughout our proceedings—it feels like we have been dealing with this for a few months now. I also thank the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who has gone through the Bill assiduously and tabled many amendments. I thank the Clerks in the Public Bill Office, Kevin and Nick, for helping us. They play a particularly important role in helping Opposition Members to draft and discuss amendments. The ideas are our responsibility, but they give us very good and important technical advice. I thank the Committee Chairs, the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and my hon.”
“When I moved a similar amendment in Committee last week, the Minister said that guidance had been published in October, but that is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about the details of the regulations enabled by this Bill, which was published only last week. The Minister cannot seriously be telling the House that everything covered by the Bill was dealt with in October, and there is nothing more to add. If that was the case, it would prompt the question as to why it was published only last week. The answer, of course, is that the Government wanted to use it to hold the threat of the kind of provisions that the hon. Member for Stone has just been talking about over the trade negotiations—a damaging and self-defeating tactic.”
“Of course, they could have spent all that time and effort doing what they were set up to do, which is to provide goods and services to their customers, but the process of Brexit and the specific circumstances of Northern Ireland, which are now enshrined in the Brexit withdrawal deal, have meant that a great deal of effort has had to go into trying to understand the trading and taxation rules that will kick in after the end of this year. So here we are with this Bill, with just over two weeks to go. With the best will in the world, how do the Government expect them to do all this on this kind of timescale? The purpose behind the amendments is very simple: it is, even at this late stage, to encourage the Government to get a move on.”
“And they are doing that at the end of a year in which the very same businesses have already faced unprecedented turbulence in the wake of a global pandemic. The businesses concerned do not want to fall foul of regulations. They want to comply. They want to be able to get this right. Businesses in Northern Ireland and the trade bodies that represent them have put in enormous efforts over the past few years to try to prepare for this moment.”
“Very similar language is used in clauses 2 and 5 and a number of the schedules—that the “Treasury may by regulations” provide. To be fair to the Minister and to the authors of the Bill, there is nothing unusual about a Bill taking enabling powers that are then to be set out in further detail in regulations that come after the Bill has passed its parliamentary proceedings, but what is unusual is the context and the timescale involved. The end of the transition period is in just 16 days, and in the middle of those 16 days come the Christmas holidays, so the Government are asking businesses to absorb, prepare for and comply with a new series of taxation regulations that those businesses have not yet seen, and to do so over a two-week period coinciding with the biggest holiday of the year.”
“There may be those in the Conservative party—in fact, there almost certainly are—who do not like the obligations that the protocol entails, but we believe that the Government should stick by the commitments they have made. The changes in the Bill are largely, though not entirely, a consequence of that agreement. However, many of the clauses in the Bill are enabling in their nature. They confer on the Treasury powers that are to be filled in at a later date. For example, clause 1 says that the Treasury may by regulations provide a definition of goods being imported into Northern Ireland that “are at risk of subsequently being moved into the European Union.” It goes on to talk about which duties shall apply in the case of these so-called at-risk goods.”
“In a recent evidence session for the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, HMRC was asked how many new declarations there would be under the kind of system set out in the Bill. The official giving evidence said, to be fair, that it was a new system, so they could not be sure, but that there could be about 11 million new declarations a year. That is a sizeable additional amount of information that businesses have to publish. The amendments we are putting forward this afternoon try to help those businesses to cope with the changes set out in the Bill. I should stress that nothing in these amendments alters the terms of the changes set out in the clauses or the purpose of the Bill. The Government have signed up to the protocol and we want to see them abide by the agreement they have made.”
“It is a pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash). I rise to speak to new clause 3 in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, and, with it, amendments 1 and 2, which are also in his name and the names of my right hon. and hon. Friends. These amendments are pro-business and pro-compliance. They are motivated by trying to get as much information as possible to the businesses affected by the changes in this Bill in as short a timescale as possible. The Bill that we are discussing sets out a number of taxation changes, many of them as a result of the Northern Ireland protocol. These measures will have an impact on businesses throughout the United Kingdom, but in particular, on businesses in Northern Ireland and those who trade with them.”
“There may be competing visions as to how best that should happen in the future, and what a blessed debate that would be in our politics, rather than some of the issues that have coloured it over recent years. I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and all the Members who have contributed to debates on this Bill.”
“There has been some rumour and social media chatter over the past hour or so that we are heading in that direction. Time will tell and wisdom would counsel us and wait to see what happens before making any predictions. These measures in the Bill are largely a result of the commitments that the Government have made. I hope they are not too burdensome on businesses, because at the end of all this—both the Brexit process and the covid period, which we hope to see come to an end through the use of the vaccine—we will have to gather around a process of business getting back to what it does: trading, serving its customers, providing goods and services, and helping economic growth to come back to the country.”
“Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch), who joined him last week, are correct when they say that everything will be in place by 1 January, but I cannot but reflect at this time of year that perhaps in the minds of many it did not always need to be like this. Perhaps the Prime Minister’s Christmas wish—all he wanted—was for the German car manufacturers to come riding over the hill and influence the negotiations. I hope that Santa visits all good boys and girls over the Christmas period, but I do not think that that particular Christmas wish of the Prime Minister and many of his colleagues is going to come true. This week, just as last week, one gets the impression that the action is elsewhere. I do not know whether an agreement will be reached in the next couple of days.”
“I also reiterate my party’s strong support for the Good Friday agreement, and for policies and practices that uphold the spirit and letter of the agreement into the future. We have set out our views on the timing of the Bill and the difficulties that the changes it outlines pose for businesses trying to comply with them. The Minister has said it is always last minute with the EU and that it was always going to be like this. I am not sure I fully agree with that. We are asking a lot of businesses with just a couple of weeks of the year left, in the midst of the pandemic and as we are about to enter the Christmas holiday period. I hope that the Minister and the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, the hon.”
“I do not propose to detain the House for very long. I thank the Minister for the typically courteous way in which he has led these short debates on the Bill. He has outlined the changes that the it makes through its various clauses on customs, VAT, insurance liability and so on, and I do not propose to repeat all that. As I have made clear all along, we do not oppose the passage of this Bill, because we understand that these changes have to be put in place. The Government reached agreement on the Northern Ireland protocol. We want them to stick to and abide by their agreements, just as we want the EU to stick to and abide by its agreements. Many of the changes in the Bill stem from those agreements.”
“They are a graphic example of the mess that the Government have found themselves in.”
“What extra capacity is being put in place at HMRC from 1 January to process this uplift in pre-departure declarations, thereby helping to reduce the likelihood of the security and safety requirements creating border disruption? It is often said in this House that keeping our country safe and secure is the first duty of any Government. It is often said because it is true. It is an indictment of the party that used to call itself the party of law and order that in government it has laid regulations that Ministers openly admit will compromise our border security. What an indictment of the handling of this situation. The powers, if exercised, would have that effect. That is the admission that the Government made today. I therefore have to disagree with the Minister’s view that the regulations are just technical measures.”