David Davis
MP for Goole and Pocklington · Conservative · United Kingdom
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) on putting a Bill in front of the House that has support from literally everybody in the Chamber?”
“The Post Office Horizon scandal highlighted the institutional instinct to find a convenient scapegoat. Innocent people paid the price, while the institution sought to protect itself. If the Thirlwall inquiry asks too narrow a set of questions, systemic NHS failures will go unexamined.”
“Last month’s sentencing of Nicola Sturgeon’s husband exposed the real reasons behind the Scottish Government’s persecution of Alex Salmond. From 2010 to 2022, Peter Murrell abused his position to embezzle almost £500,000 from the SNP to buy luxury items. He used SNP money to buy a £33,000 Volkswagen Golf.”
“The consultants also reported that in the two months since the change infants have been sick but recovered as expected.” The report highlighted deficiencies in staffing levels, leadership and communication, but, in the trial, it was not shown to the jury—they knew nothing of it.”
“One of the nurses let go later described it as “the decimation of the Nursing and Midwifery service”, adding that “eight registered nurses...were replaced with nursery nurses...unqualified staff are replacing qualified staff”.”
“There was little space, cots and incubators were stored in corridors, and mothers struggled to find somewhere to breastfeed their babies. Susan Gilby, the hospital’s chief executive between 2018 and 2022, later described the unit as “dark, dingy and cramped”, providing a “less than ideal” environment to work in.”
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“Mr Speaker, I would have thought that, after the ridiculous and mean-spirited attempt to get rid of you at the end of the last Parliament, the Government would have learned a lesson about taking punishment attitudes to appointments. The PACE is not simply a representation for the Government in Europe; it is a representation for the House. The Assembly will become progressively more important as Europe becomes more unstable, and as matters such as the European convention on human rights become important to this Parliament. Will the Deputy Leader of the House therefore return to the House at a future date with a procedure for ratifying the proposal, so that the whole House can decide who represents it?”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I think we all agree with the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) on this, and indeed with the Leader of the House’s comments. However, the simple fact is that there have been many rumours that the Chilcot inquiry has been delayed by Whitehall not clearing things quickly enough, by not providing enough information and by challenging the ability to release information. It would be extremely helpful to the House if we could have a statement on this issue, and I ask you to encourage that to happen, Mr Speaker. Frankly, this is an insult and compounds the grief of the many families who lost loved ones in that war.”
“I can call him my right hon. Friend, because we have known each other for 40 years. On the data the Government provide, because this is an incredibly complicated area, there are elements of data that are important but that would not normally be provided. One of them is the marginal withdrawal rate of any scheme that the Government put into effect. Government spokesmen have previously said that people can work their way out of poverty, but it looks as though some of the effects of the national living wage will result in a 93% withdrawal rate, which will mean that people cannot work their way out of poverty. Will he add that to his list of data for the Government to provide?”
“Does that point not reinforce the requirement for the changes to be made not with another yes/no measure such as a statutory instrument, but through primary legislation?”
“It is a privilege to speak in this debate. I am one of its co-sponsors, but the entire credit for the idea belongs to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field). He rightly identified the need for a cross-party, less partisan and, as it turns out, non-binding debate to allow everyone properly to explore these issues in the national interest without being fettered by feelings of joining one side or the other in the playground of politics. The result has, I think, been good. I think this has been the best debate so far of a number on this subject. It falls on us all to be honest about it. This policy was a mistake. One can only think that, because I am sure that nobody in any party would intend deliberately to impoverish the working poor with dependent families—I am afraid I do differentiate in this context.”
“If the family were eligible for mitigation, in particular housing benefit, the sum could be reduced to roughly £700—the fine detail is unreliable—but, again, it would be lost in virtually every one of the next four or five years, The great battle over the 10% rate when Labour was in power involved sums that were a quarter of that amount. The great battles over the poll tax, which I remember only too well, involved sums of that size. The impact on a family who are already on the poverty line, by definition, is unspeakable and unthinkable. I grew up in a rather poorer era, and I remember children being hungry on Fridays when the bills were just a bit too big, or it was cold and the heating costs were too high.”
“The question is, how do we identify what this policy does? I wanted to find some examples that would enable us to assess both sides of the argument—not just the attack, but the Government’s line as well—and I thank the Chancellor’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), for being so helpful in that regard. I put some of the points that he made in defence of the policy to the House of Commons Library, and I shall now give a couple of examples that the Library supplied to illustrate its impact. The worst-case example that I could find was that of a working single parent with two children, who, without the mitigating effects, could be £2,000 a year worse off in virtually every year until 2020. That is an unbelievable sum to take from a family who are already poor.”
“Not for the moment. The problem was compounded by the method employed—the measure was introduced by statutory instrument, and is therefore unamendable—and by a lack of sufficient information. As four or five Members have already pointed out today, there was no proper impact statement. Had the measure been introduced in primary legislation and thus been amendable, and had the Government provided proper information, the measure would not have gone to the House of Lords in its current form; it would have been reformed in this House, and that is what should have happened. I subscribe to the Government’s wish to balance the books by 2020, which I consider to be an eminently sensible and responsible aim. However, I also subscribe to the view that we need to protect the poor at all costs.”
“Member for Birkenhead, who almost encouraged the Chancellor to go hunting for the pensioner pound. It will not be today’s pensioner pound; it will be tomorrow’s. I think it would be very unwise to remove the tax benefits of investing in pensions and undermine what we have left of our private pension scheme. I am protected, because virtually all my pension is paid for now; it is the next generation that will have to worry.”
“Exactly—and before anyone suggests that a person who owns his or her house is better off, let me say that many people in that category have fallen into it and got out of it later. The idea that someone earning less than £20,000 a year, and with two children to support, should lose £2,000 is simply untenable. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead suggested that there were four possible strategies, but in my view there are three. The first possibility is that we shift the burden elsewhere. The right hon. Gentleman proposed that we should shift it up the income scale, and Lord Lawson said the same during the debate in the House of Lords. I shall not elaborate on that possibility, because I think that there are better ways. The second strategy is to find savings elsewhere. Here I strongly disagreed with the right hon.”
“My argument, therefore, is that we should cut the tax credits in step with the minimum wage and the living wage. The criterion is what is important here. The criterion that the Government must meet is that there should be no losses for the least well off in any of the three intervening years. The poorest, the working poor and their dependants cannot afford to lose one pound. I was never a great fan of the minimum wage, but I was persuaded that it was worthwhile.”
“We shall have to work through the mitigation carefully, and that is where the impact statement comes in. Those figures do two things. They protect the working poor, but they also achieve the deficit reduction, which is vital. If we hit the deficit reduction target by 2020—this point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland)—each saving of £4 billion a year is not critical. It represents less than 1% of the economy. The really critical issue is how the financial markets see the position. The financial markets do not care about the trajectory from here to 2020; the fact that we get there is good enough. We do not need to worry about the £4 billion a year in between, but we do need to worry about the final outcome.”
“I shall not go too far down that road. Let me simply say that middle-class pensioners are now paying one of the highest effective income tax rates in the country. People who have saved a lot for their pensions and gone above the lifetime allowance must pay 55%. I think we ought to be a bit careful, because if we let the Treasury get at that deferred income, it will take as much as it can. The third option, which I think is probably the winner—although not by itself; it would have to be modified—is to stage the cuts. I believe that the right hon. Member for Birkenhead lit upon this strategy as well. The cuts would be staged to match movements in the minimum wage and the living wage so that people would not lose. The Government’s figures for 2020 seem broadly to balance, although they are not perfect.”
“We can achieve the fiscal target, while still remaining faithful to Conservative “one nation” aims. That, after all, has been the leitmotiv of the last few months for us. If we do that, the Chancellor will have good reason to be proud of his achievement.”
“I am afraid not. I have already taken two interventions, and if I take another, I shall lose time. One of the things that persuaded me that the minimum wage was worth while was the information in social data that it cut crime. We must not lose sight of the social impact of changes such as this: the distress caused to families, the breaking up of families, and the pushing of families towards food banks and, worse, towards loan sharks and petty crime. We have to think about those things, because there is a cost to them as well. The Institute for Fiscal Studies told the Work and Pensions Committee, which is chaired by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead, that the Government could hit the 2020 target on a staged route. That is what we should aim for.”
“The shadow Leader of the House is telegraphing that the Opposition will support an amendment to the upcoming legislation to provide that protection of privilege. He should be aware that the revelations on the Wilson doctrine were preceded by serious breaches of the legal privilege protection, and—this has changed in the past decade, because I spoke to the previous Home Secretary about the matter—that intercepted communications between the legal representative and the suspect, as it were, are now recorded and given to lawyers who may prosecute that suspect. That is a serious breach of what is known as equality of arms in natural justice.”
“He spent the best part of two days in incredibly convoluted argument. The only inference that I can draw from the incredible effort he put into getting this outcome is that they had something to hide and that what was happening in secret was a statement that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion or one of the other two complainants had been intercepted. In the course of the exchanges with the judges, James Eadie was very illuminating on the attitude to this matter. He said, in effect, that if the Prime Minister had come to the House and explained the truth of the matter, post-RIPA, he would have been committing an “act of political hara-kiri, or something quite close to it.” That was the attitude of the tribunal to the Wilson doctrine.”
“It means that the inquiry that was brought by Baroness Jones, George Galloway and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) is very unlikely to receive an answer because if something is not illegal, they will not be told about it. That is the rule. The hon. Lady will not be told whether something has happened. She will be told only if something illegal has been done. One of the outcomes of this situation is that it will prevent her or any of the complainants getting an answer. James Eadie, the very skilful lawyer who argued on behalf of the Government, made the point that the Wilson doctrine has no legal basis whatever, is not practical—that is why the tribunal’s lack of understanding was very important—and, therefore, is not binding on the agencies. That is a really serious finding.”
“Before I start on the substantive argument, which is fairly simple, I will say one thing to the House. Those who are interested in this matter should look not just at the judgment that was handed down by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, but at the transcript of the hearing. I attended part of the public session. It was an illuminating process and did not necessarily give one much confidence. As the House will know, I have been involved in this subject for many years and am loth to criticise courts, but I was not impressed by the IPT’s understanding of the technology that is available to the agencies to enable them to sift and limit the damage that is done by their intrusion of privacy. To me, that seemed rather important. Secondly, it is apparent that the ruling means something very specific.”
“Over the past week or so, the newspapers have been very derogatory about this case and the argument that we are putting. They say, “Why should MPs be treated any differently from anybody else?” Those, by the way, are the very same newspapers that were in an uproar of anger about the fact that somebody had checked out the metadata of one of their journalist’s telephones. Perhaps they were right in that, but it is an odd dichotomy.”
“I take my right hon. Friend’s point, but that is why I urged Members to read the transcript. What I said is very apparent from the transcript. He is, of course, right that there has been a huge transformation. Metadata, which I will come back to later, simply did not exist in their current form in Wilson’s day. Many of the things that are now available, including email, did not exist in his day. A whole series of things that we all assumed had been swept up in the Wilson doctrine have not been swept up in the Wilson doctrine. That is why the Home Secretary’s case that it is the same as what was enunciated by Harold Wilson all those years ago is simply not tenable. I will come back to that point, too. Members will notice that the Press Gallery is nearly empty.”
“My hon. Friend tempts me, but the inwardness of the Labour party is far above my pay grade. I will stick to the substance of the issue before us.”
“I cannot find the first reference—I think it was Gordon Brown, but it might have been earlier—but one Prime Minister limited such protection to cases with a warrant from a Secretary of State. Before then it was not limited in such terms. Let us understand what a limitation that is. The report on surveillance by David Anderson, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, points out that there are more than 65 different statutory mechanisms for initiating intercepts and other sorts of communication surveillance. Very few of those require a warrant from the Secretary of State. It is a very narrow protection.”
“Imagine an official from the Ministry of Defence telling an MP about the mistreatment of a prisoner by the British Army, or an immigration officer telling a shadow Home Secretary about Government deceiving Parliament—that case led to the arrest of one of our colleagues, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), some time ago. The absence, failure or demise of the Wilson doctrine would undermine or deter all those cases. The Home Secretary has a difficult task, because technology is changing under our feet and has been doing so for decades. The difficulty today is that the Wilson doctrine that most people believed was in place is not. The idea that all our communications are protected is untrue for a number of reasons.”
“We must not forget that whistleblowers are incredibly important and they would, or will, be supressed by what is seen as the demise of the Wilson doctrine. Let us consider the possible cases. A police officer calls an MP about corruption, but he might be intercepted by other police officers. A prisoner calls his MP about ill treatment in prison, but he might be intercepted and recorded by other prison officers. A tax official calls the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee about sweetheart deals on tax with big companies and Parliament being lied to—hon. Members might begin to realise that these are real cases—but that person might have his life destroyed because of activities under RIPA.”
“The text of the judgment states that the only protected component is our constituents, and although they are incredibly important, in some ways they are the least salient of the components that we deal with. The Home Secretary, quite properly, reminds the House of the demands of national security. She is right to do that because 58 people have died owing to terrorism within the United Kingdom since 2000, and the figure is about 90 if we include those in Tunisia and elsewhere. Security is a serious issue, but so are matters that are brought to our attention by whistleblowers. Mid Staffs occurred because whistleblowers were supressed or ignored—the same effect that we get by diluting the Wilson doctrine. How many people died unnecessarily at Mid Staffs? It was 1,200.”
“I will return to the subject of the debate. The answer to those journalists, commentators and editors who think that this is about the House getting above itself, or that in some sense it is not important, is simple: we should not tolerate the Government intercepting or interfering in any way with any of our communications—there is one tiny exception that I shall return to—because MPs are the people who are charged with holding the Government to account. We forget this line from time to time in the sort of schoolboy antics that pass for the reporting of Parliament in this day and age, but we are the ones who hold the Government to account. In doing so, we deal with campaigners, journalists, whistleblowers, other MPs and, of course, our constituents.”
“The Government have in place the process they use for terrorism prevention and investigation measures, where the individual cannot know what the evidence is and so will have a special advocate. Those are the measures that should be in any Act. I give notice now that if they are put in the Bill by the Home Secretary, I will support it. If they are put in the Bill by the Opposition, I will support it. If neither put it in, I will propose it myself, because that is the only way to put right what is now in effect a major breach of our democratic traditions.”
“Let us understand what it should do. We all know there will be times when the police and the agencies are properly allowed to intercept or put Members of Parliament under surveillance when there is a strong suspicion of a known crime. Frankly, however, that should not be on the Prime Minister’s say-so. It should not be, with respect to her, on the Home Secretary’s say-so. I mean no insult to either of them, but if ever these powers are misused it will almost certainly be by a politician, because they are the people subject to most temptation. It should be on the say-so of a senior judge, or even a court, after presentation of compelling evidence, subject to challenge.”
“It is extraordinary how this matter is being pushed. I side with the Home Secretary in one respect: the Wilson doctrine was always a bit slippery. Harold Wilson was a very clever man, but he was not, shall we say, known for his linear thinking. It has always been to some extent deceitful and misleading, but the truth now is that the doctrine is dead. Whether or not it is legally dead, it is in practice dead. It is dead in the eyes of the people—whistleblowers, campaigners and so on—who might come to us, and we have to do something to replace it. I am glad to hear a commonality of view from those on all Front Benches that we need to put this in statute. That is the only way forward. When the next Bill on this subject goes through the House, I hope it brings together all 65 statutory mechanisms for allowing intercepts and surveillance.”
“That serious breach will, at some point, lead to a killer being put back on the streets of Britain because they can claim in the European Court, or somewhere like that, that they have not received natural justice because of a breach in equality of arms. That serious and stupid change of policy was made clear by the IPT a little while ago. The shadow Leader of the House listed MPs who have been affected by intercept. Looking at my list of 10, all I say is that I think they are pretty harmless—that is probably the biggest insult I could give them. Look at who they are. It demonstrates the mindset that leads people to misuse intercept. What on earth were people doing? Of course Jack Straw and Peter Hain had colourful early lives, but what about when they were in Parliament and became Cabinet Ministers?”
“Indeed, it is arguably more serious than House of Commons intercepts. In the past when some criminal—by that I mean a terrorist, paedophile or whatever category we are looking at—had their telephone calls intercepted, that intercept would stop when their lawyer came on the line. I went through that in some detail with our erstwhile colleague, Jack Straw, as that was the case when he was Home Secretary although it is no longer true. Now, not only is the intercept not stopped, but it can continue and be recorded. The intercept used to be put in a protected file and was specifically not shown to prosecution lawyers who might be bringing that criminal to justice, but now that is not true.”
“If I am charged with the security of the state, of individuals and of safety, that will be what I am concerned about, but that is precisely why we must be careful about controlling what people do. The tendency is to stretch the limits or for those limits gradually to move. The IPT judgment is not the first to have shown agencies moving the goalposts. The most obvious example of breaches by police and agencies concerns journalists, but because journalists are a sensitive group the Government moved very rapidly to provide protection for them—they moved so fast it was rather undignified. Breaches also involve innocent non-governmental organisations—not long ago Amnesty International was intercepted, although the Government did not move on that—and, of course, lawyers. Intercepting lawyers is serious.”
“They told another colleague who is no longer with us—Nick de Bois—that metadata were not included, but when I challenged them it took them nine months to come to a conclusion. The collection of metadata cripples whistleblowers, because it tells us precisely who has talked to whom, when and where. Metadata tracking led to the arrest of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford. That area is material to the operation of our holding the Government to account. The House should be unsurprised that agencies use their powers to the limit. If I were working for MI5, MI6 or GCHQ, I would use every power that I was given to the limit, just as I would if I were a policeman.”
“My hon. Friend is exactly right and that leads me to a case that the previous Justice Secretary brought before the House when it was plain that there had been interception and recording of telephone communications between prisoners and their Members of Parliament as a matter of course. As I have said, that could lead to serious outcomes for those prisoners. The Justice Secretary was able to tell the House that the matter was not subject to the Wilson doctrine because it was not subject to a Secretary of State’s warrant. Many of those parliamentary questions were also about the wider ramifications of the doctrine, particularly with respect to metadata. It took the Government approximately nine months to answer my question about whether metadata were involved.”
“Had my hon. Friend not confined the question to telephone calls, it might have been that the Home Secretary did not know the answer. For example, the Tempora programme, widely reported in The Guardian and other newspapers, involves the harvesting of vast quantities of data travelling out through Bude. These data are kept for 30 days and made accessible to the United States, among others. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) ran for several years a campaign on rendition that might have made him of interest to the United States. Liberal party Members ran campaigns on the Iraq war that would have made them of interest to the US. It might well be that the Wilson doctrine is being broken by proxy, as it were, simply by the behaviour of our agencies, without explicit approval being granted in each case.”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. You are, of course, quite right in what you said at the beginning. This is principally a matter for the Government, but it is also a matter that addresses directly parliamentary privilege. This morning’s judgment ruled, first, that the Wilson doctrine, as we interpret it in its narrowest sense, has no legal basis, but beyond that it has no basis whatever if we are communicating with whistleblowers, campaigners, lawyers, journalists or each other. It seems to me that the original aim of the Wilson doctrine was to protect all those things and to protect Members of this House either from intimidation or from oversight by the Government. Therefore, there is a role for the House. I look to you, Mr Speaker, for guidance on what that might be.”
“In about two weeks’ time we are expecting the return of the last British resident, Shaker Aamer, from Guantanamo Bay, and I thank the Government for their actions in support of that measure. However, the last 16 residents of Guantanamo Bay who returned to Britain had been subject to torture and were paid compensation by the Government. Can the Home Secretary tell us how many of those 16 were subject to gagging orders as a result of the settlement?”
“I will be a lot brisker than the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson). I hope I will be able to get through what I want to say in three or four minutes. If I do it briskly enough I will irritate everybody in this debate, because there are fallacies on all sides. I was not going to declare an interest, but the contribution by the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) has provoked me. I do not have a financial interest, but my grandfather was blacklisted.”
“I have been very helpful to the Labour party in some of the comments I have made, but I will say this: there is an issue when a monopoly—it does not matter whether it is a private or public sector monopoly—goes on strike. The victim is then the public. It is not the workforce, because they tend to get their money back in overtime, and it is certainly not the owners, because their market share does not go away and they do not lose anything. The public, however, have nowhere else to go. I have some sympathy with much of Labour Members’ criticisms of the Bill, but they have to address this issue: how do we deal with a problem where action by a trade union, without proper and sufficient support from its membership, discomforts the public very badly?”
“The reason those comments resonate with me is that my grandfather, who brought me up, was as a young man blacklisted and unemployed for 17 years because he was an organiser in the coalfields in the north-east. The House will understand that I am a little sensitive to some of the impingements on civil liberties that can come out of industrial relations. It is a particular pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle. I keep calling him my right hon. Friend. He was a fabulously good trade union leader. As we just heard, he is a great debater, but he and I have also served occasionally on the same side in negotiations. Every single time, we managed to get an outcome that was helpful to the workforce and to the companies we were dealing with. That does not mean, however, that he has everything right here.”
“I will vote for the Bill today, but I am afraid that if it still contains those measures on Third Reading, I will vote against it. I say again to him that I doubt I will be alone.”
“I also want to raise the issue—it is in consultation at the moment, but because the consultation has been fast it may turn up as a Government amendment later—of restricting the actions of unions on social media. This proposal strikes me as both impractical—how on earth would it be done?—and asking for judicial trouble. There will be judicial review if this line is pursued. It has been argued that the measure is there to stop bullying. Well, fine—then pass a law to stop bullying and intimidation, but make it affect everybody, not just trade unions. We already have quite a lot of laws to prevent intimidation. They are two critical elements and weaknesses in the Bill. I say to the Minister that I will seek to prevent both of them making it through to Third Reading.”
“There is all the difference in the world between 500,000 people clogging up London and half a dozen pickets shivering around a brazier while trying to maintain a strike. This issue is incredibly important, and we do not want to get on to a slippery slope. I say to the Minister that I will be seeking—and I am not alone—to alter the measure during the Bill’s progress. Doing that will improve the Bill; it will not make it worse or take away anything fundamental. It will, however, remove the suggestion, made time and again by the Opposition, that this is somehow a vindictive anti-union Bill. It is not. This should be a Bill for the people, not against the unions. That is what fits with our approach.”
“No, I am going to be very brisk. The word “discomfort” is a very soft word to use. Not being able to go to work, to hospital or to school is more than a discomfort. I would like to come on to my primary criticisms of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman referred to the proposals relating to picketing. I am particularly offended by the idea that a picket organiser needs to give his name to the police force. I have discussed this with the Minister and know that this provision has been included in previous legislation. I am ashamed to say that I missed it last time, otherwise I would have voted against it. This is a serious restriction of freedom of association. It is not the same as getting the organiser of a big demonstration to give his name to the police.”
“My hon. Friend makes a good point, but my simple question is: why not deal with that through a general anti-intimidation law rather than a specific union law?”
“In 2011, the Prime Minister quite rightly confirmed to the House that the Wilson doctrine, the prohibition on the electronic monitoring of Members of Parliament, was still in force. Unfortunately, on 24 July this year, the Government’s own lawyer, Mr James Eadie, QC, stated in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, in answer to a complaint from the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), that the Wilson doctrine is not legally binding, cannot work properly and accordingly places no obligations on the intelligence agencies. This is clearly inconsistent with the Prime Minister’s previous statement. Can he clarify the status of the doctrine for the House today and confirm that it has real meaning?”
“Ordered, That Mr David Davis, supported by Chris Heaton-Harris, Tom Pursglove, John Mann and Jim Shannon, present the Bill Mr David Davis accordingly presented the Bill Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 11 September, and to be presented (Bill 62).”
“This would ensure that citizens could reasonably sue when they suffer damage, but, just as importantly, it would be a strong incentive for the companies to operate wind farms in such a way as to avoid public nuisance, which is causing great distress in some cases, and would mean that when the turbines are decommissioned there is money or insurance to cover the cost of clearing the wind farm, avoiding a situation whereby the local council has to pick up the bill. Whatever our stance on onshore wind, companies in receipt of public subsidy should be required to meet their public responsibilities. This measure seeks to ensure that the big wind farm companies can truly be held liable when they are at fault and gives families the protection they deserve. Question put and agreed to.”
“It is not only the noise that is a nuisance, of course. When the sun is low in the sky behind a turbine it creates a “strobe effect” which can be harmful to health and wellbeing, and there are also now concerns that some wind farms could be abandoned at the end of their operational lifespan, creating another sort of visual blight, this time in perpetuity. The simple solution that I propose in this Bill is to require wind farm-operating companies to hold enough cash in hand to manage a legal case at any time, and in addition a financial bond—a guarantee, or insurance policy—as a security against potential liabilities, including all public nuisance and final decommissioning costs. Any wind farm that fails to do that should lose its right to subsidy—which, as I said, amounted to £797 million in one year for the industry.”