Damian Hinds
MP for East Hampshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“There are moments in debates like the one we have had today that are difficult to sit through and listen to, but it is the most immense privilege to be a Member of Parliament and to hear some of these testimonies.”
“Today is once again a day of heavy responsibility for all of us to decide on what we in this House call “conscience issues”. Many of the people who we represent hold strong and immutable views, and we hear from them. However, we represent many others who hold much more nuanced views and we are less likely to hear from them.”
“Members who support the Bill should not have their motives questioned, Members who oppose the Bill should not have their motives questioned, and Members who have reached a different conclusion from one they reached at an earlier stage should not have their judgment questioned either.”
“We have heard from royal colleges and other professional bodies, many of whom have a neutral stance on the principle but raise significant questions about particular aspects. We know from Ministers that there would need to be some reprioritisation of NHS resources, but we do not know the extent.”
“If there is the prospect of the Parliament Acts being used, that would increase the importance and the salience of the text as it is now. Today, it is reasonable and entirely in order for hon. Members to consider information that is available now that was not available in those previous parliamentary deliberation.”
“The Government have said, rightly, that the time taken to implement other schemes is not directly comparable, because none are as in this Bill. This is a free vote on a matter of conscience—there is no party line on either side of the Chamber. No one, I suggest, finds this issue easy.”
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“Absolutely; my hon. Friend is quite right. The programme is currently developing its supply chain plans to help to ensure that the benefits of the programme are felt across the country. There is also an innovative loan scheme for apprentices to be employed by the programme and then loaned to businesses working on the restoration, and dozens of young people from more disadvantaged areas will be offered paid internships and placements in a partnership with the Social Mobility Foundation.”
“Is the hon. Lady suggesting that that figure she has just given for the US relates solely to catch-up funding and therefore is comparable? Does she need to add up a number of figures from the British Government for English schools? Is she suggesting that that is what that figure refers to?”
“We look forward to hearing more in due course and at the spending review.”
“Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), I would like to see us move to a rational, long-term, predictable system of funding that works both for when pupil numbers are shrinking as well as for when they are expanding, and perhaps this is the moment when that might be possible. It is important that we look at extra time to make up for lost time, and the tutor programme is of course part of that, as is moving back public exams a bit, but it is right to look at the question of a longer school day. Not everybody is excited about that prospect, but there is clearly a role for some of these important, enriching and broadening activities. It is right that the Government are taking an evidence-led approach, and I was delighted to hear what my right hon. Friend the Minister said.”
“For example, every year teachers volunteer to be exam markers, and many teachers will want to be involved in this programme, but we also need to think about recent retirees and PGCE returners. As my right hon Friend the Minister knows, many thousands of people in this country have a postgraduate certificate in education but are not currently teaching. It would be wonderful to get some of them to come back to the profession, either full time or part time— [ Laughter. ] I am not trying to shame anyone here. We also need to redouble our efforts on teacher workload to free up their time to be able to do these incredibly important things. Like my right hon.”
“People who have spoken to schools recently—I guess that is most colleagues here in the Chamber today—will know that the No. 1 thing that people are talking about is often not a lack of money for tutors but a lack of tutors, because obviously there were not 100,000 tutors hanging around who were not already busy when this thing hit, and that is a difficult thing to scale up for. It is right that schools should have the flexibility to source tutors locally—I was pleased to see that in the package—because it is they who will know their schools’ situation best. I also welcome the involvement of Teach First in the programme, but I would ask the DFE to redouble its efforts in its search for where talented professionals can be found to support this effort. Of course, teachers themselves are a big part of the effort.”
“However, it is the case, of course, that many countries around the world are looking at the extra support that is now needed, and here we have just recently had the £14.4 billion uplift over three years and since the pandemic £3 billion in three different funding packages over the past 12 months. The last tranche of that will cover 6 million 15-hour tutoring courses in an unprecedented and unparalleled programme of individual and small group tuition. It is right that my right hon. Friend the Schools Minister and his colleagues in the DFE have focused on the programmes with the best evidence, and we know that there is very strong evidence for one-to-one and small group tutoring. It is also true that we cannot just dial these things up infinitely.”
“A higher proportion of national income—Government money—is spent on British state schools than in many other countries, but clearly additional resourcing has been needed during the pandemic to support schools, and clearly it is needed now to support schools and children in its wake. Some of the figures bandied around about what other countries are doing are entirely misleading; they are not comparing, as it were, apples with apples or apples with pears, but comparing apples with pomegranates. I am a little surprised that the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston speaking for the Opposition just repeated them without doing some basic fact checking, and I could say the same for her boss, the Leader of the Opposition.”
“We need established broadcasters and new media to step up on early literacy programmes, and sports clubs and governing bodies have a key role to play, as do cultural organisations and the voluntary sector. In fact, everybody has a part to play in supporting this generation. For the Government of course it is about many things, too: it is about a bolstered school sports and activity plan, the holiday activities programme, the mental health services support reforms, working with local authority children’s services, innovations in early language and literacy, and the major upgrade to technical and vocational education which has at its heart T-levels. And of course it is about money.”
“We also know that the effect has been felt very unevenly: some children have progressed entirely as they would have done in a regular year, but many have not, and we know that the attainment gaps that had been closing since 2010 will have started to widen again. We also know that this is not just about academic attainment; far from it, it is about the whole of children’s development—their extra-curricular activities, their socialising and their development as people. This calls for a whole-of-society response including expanding mentoring programmes, having more volunteer readers, firms working more closely with schools, and having more STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—ambassadors, accelerated careers programmes and work experience.”
“The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who speaks for the Opposition, was quite right when she said that children are our most precious assets, and, as parents, we share with our brilliant teachers; we rely on them for the education and preparation for adult life of our children, and I want to join with colleagues across the House in paying tribute to them and thanking them for all they do. This is a moral imperative: we all know that there is a whole-cohort effect from this pandemic and a risk of lasting effects on this generation of children and young people, and we cannot let this generation be put at a disadvantage because of covid.”
“I welcome the priority put on young people’s mental health, which is perhaps more important now than ever. Will the Minister give an update on progress on implementing the proposals in the children and young people’s mental health Green Paper, particularly on mental health support teams in Hampshire and nationwide?”
“The most cost-effective thing to do is to act, and now is the time we must ensure that it is done at the best possible value.”
“Friend the Member for Blyth Valley (Ian Levy) also sits on the board; he apologises for being unable to be here, as he is sitting on a Bill Committee. We are keen to hear from all colleagues on their views. In the main, it will not be us who will see the end results of restoration and renewal, but many colleagues here today will operate in a time of significant change and disruption, and we need to ensure that MPs are still able properly and fully to serve their constituents and scrutinise Government throughout that time. We need to ensure that this centre of our nation’s democracy and symbol of democracy for the world is restored for future generations. A decision has been dodged repeatedly over the years, and that has made this more expensive today than it would have been. If we dodge it again, it will become more costly again.”
“There are many things that we may want to see for the future of the seat of our democracy, but we have to consider their cost, what is essential and what can be done without. It is too easy to say, “We want X, Y and Z, and we want the thing to come in at the lowest possible cost.” Ultimately, this comes down to specifics, not generalities, and making physical trade-offs. Debates such as this are one way—and an important way—for Members to make their points, and there will be a range of other channels over the next few months for engagement with colleagues on these important questions. Four of us in the House sit on the Sponsor Body board. We will hear shortly from the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) and the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami). My hon.”
“As my right hon. Friend said, it is a question of priorities. This project is called restoration and renewal, and clearly there is a balance between those two things. We must restore, but how much renewal is right for taxpayer value in aspects such as visitor access or the education function? In the approach towards the full business case, the programme will be working up a bare minimum option—what is essential to arrest the decay of the buildings—but also conducting value analysis in 14 categories, from logistics operations to environmental and net zero aims to visitor facilities, to see where it may make sense from a value perspective to go beyond that minimum. Again, it is vital to hear from colleagues on these matters and for us all to consider that they do involve trade-offs.”
“But it is clearly not without risk or challenge, given some of the safety considerations, with the flow of large numbers of people, particularly when there is a Division, and as MPs, we must never forget that we are a relatively small minority of the people who work in these buildings. There are also all the other functions that today go with the operation of the Chamber, such as the Table Office, the Vote Office and so on. It is not guaranteed to be possible, but it is important to investigate thoroughly any possibility. We will have to look at the relative cost of it and the timings, as against a full decant and all the practicalities. The cost of the decant is one thing. A much bigger consideration is the cost of the project itself—the thing we are decanting for. Here, again, there are choices, trade-offs and compromises.”
“Notwithstanding the need to vacate, in the next phase, towards the full plan and business case, the programme will also examine the possibility of some continued presence —I think my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House referred to it as a maintained presence. Essentially, it is the question: could we keep this Chamber operating here during the works, even with other Commons functions being relocated elsewhere within the secure perimeter? If that were possible, my personal view is that it would be very valuable, because it would minimise the disruption to our liberal democratic institutions.”
“Probably the three biggest compromises that could be made to reduce costs are, first, accepting having a slightly smaller Chamber and/or reconfiguring the voting Lobby, because although the Chamber may be a small fraction of the overall space requirement, its dimensions as a single room are a big constraining factor in the relocation; secondly, a willingness, to a degree, to rearrange our Committee business and other business to reduce the amount of space requirement; and thirdly, having fewer MPs’ staff having to be accommodated on the estate itself. Each of those three things—by the way, there will be others—would give more flexibility to the decant and so could make the temporary siting less costly. It will be vital over the coming months to hear further from colleagues on such compromises that could be made to reduce cost.”
“All told, on my rough calculation—colleagues are welcome to check this—the total space used by the Commons in the Palace of Westminster is 47 times the space of this Chamber. It is the combination of the need for a lot of space with the huge premium there is on being within the existing secure perimeter, for all sorts of clear reasons, that points to Richmond House, possibly in combination with other parts of what is known as the Northern Estate, which is better known to colleagues as Norman Shaw North and South and the other buildings in that part of the estate. There are trade-offs and compromises that could be made to make the decant phase cost less and, in the time to come, we have to focus sharply on those. I stress that we are talking here about a temporary period during the works.”
“The recent strategic review concluded that vacating the building while works take place remains the best approach in terms of both time and cost, but that we can reduce the length of time away, with more done before MPs and peers leave through a more phased approach and possibly through the use of a cofferdam for access to the works from the river. On the question of where to relocate during the works, that review looked at—or, in many cases, relooked at—41 different options in 20 different locations. When we talk about relocating, we tend to think first about this debating Chamber, but the footprint just of the Committee rooms, for example, is about four times the size of this debating Chamber and these two Lobbies, let alone the displaced office space.”
“None the less, as the shadow Leader of the House said, it falls to this generation of parliamentarians to ensure that the necessary work gets done and that we secure the future of our Parliament, and the building that houses it, one of the free world’s most iconic. As MPs, we are answerable to our constituents. This is their Parliament; we are just passing through. Especially at this time of enormous economic and fiscal strain, we are acutely conscious of the need for best value. Given all that had changed since the publication of the independent options appraisal in 2014 and the Joint Committee report in 2016, to which the Leader of the House referred, it was right to look again at the plans.”
“It is also a duty—a legal duty for us, but a moral duty too, to protect this heritage asset and our liberal democratic institutions. What it is not is something that will benefit Members here today. We do not yet know quite how long the project will take—that will come in the full plan that will come before the House in early 2023—but we do know that it will be a substantial period of time, completing sometime in the 2030s. MPs average 13 or 14 years’ service, and the average current MP has already done six of those, so the sobering truth is that, though many colleagues here will be around during the most disruptive times of the restoration, most of us will not be here when it is finished.”
“These Houses of Parliament are falling apart faster than they can be fixed. All the old fire, heating, drainage, mechanical and electrical systems need replacing, ditto the sewerage system, which dates back to 1888, and there is asbestos throughout. The cost of maintenance projects and ongoing work has doubled in three years to £127 million a year. The fire at Notre-Dame in 2019 reminds us of the importance of protecting the world’s most treasured and symbolic historic buildings. Our 150-year-old building has a floor plan the size of 16 football pitches, with 1,100 rooms, 100 staircases, three miles of passageways, four floors and 65 different levels. It houses 11,000 historic artefacts. Restoring this place is an enormous undertaking.”
“My right hon. Friend is right, of course, about the historical sequence, but I hope that it is of some reassurance if I tell him that, since I have been involved in the Sponsor Body, I can honestly say that I have not met a single person, either in this House or on the restoration and renewal programme, who now believes that it is desirable to make the full demolition of Richmond House that he alludes to. We have to cut our cloth and, as I said in my remarks—and indeed, as the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) just said—we have to work within what we have, and we need to work out what compromises we need in order to do that.”
“We clearly need to go further and build on all of this, and although we are of course focused on young people we must not forget older people: whenever there is a slowdown, there is always the danger that people leave the labour market earlier than they would otherwise have done. We can do more on returnships and helping people get back into the labour market. Sometimes a short, intensive type of training is all that is required, and I would finally just reflect from my time as an Employment Minister and also when we were doing the national retraining scheme that what we heard most in terms of the things that hold people back was not some specific skill but confidence, and helping people through that journey has to be at the heart of what we do.”
“Quality standards and intensiveness of courses were already being addressed through steps like apprenticeship reform, the creation of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and the institution of T-levels, and I am pleased that that is going to be taken further with a statutory role for employers in the design of qualifications and in the skills accelerators. I also very much welcome the bold plan to significantly reform student finance, which up until now has been very much centred on traditional three-year, away-from-home undergraduate degrees, by making it much more flexible and enabling people to do things in manageable chunks so as to work with their careers and to do more learning from where they live.”
“There is so much change going on in the world, with, for instance, robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and voice computing. Any one of these things on their own could constitute an industrial revolution, but right now they are all happening together, and on top of that we have the opportunities and changes that come from leaving the European Union, what we have to do around the net-zero ambition and then of course the new challenges that we face as a result of this pandemic. I am therefore pleased that skills and investment in human capital are at the heart of this approach.”
“We need to break that cycle, and I am confident, with the momentum from this programme, that that can be done. There have been important reforms such as universal credit, with progression at its heart and removing things like the 16-hour rule, as well as the national living wage, the apprenticeship levy and the growth of high value-added industries, and the plan for growth can help in that, but we need to ensure that growth and opportunity are evenly spread. We have significant challenges to address. Some 11 million adults in England have missed out on A-levels or their equivalent, and a much lower proportion of people reach what is called in the technical jargon levels 4 and 5, which are the higher-level technical qualifications—people not going on to do a degree, but doing those qualifications that can be worth so much.”
“We are rightly especially focused on youth unemployment because of its potential scarring effect, and I very much welcome programmes such as kickstart. However, as we look beyond the very short term, we should reflect that the one problem we never cracked in the jobs miracle, despite the great growth, was productivity. The productivity problem did not just exist in the 2010s, or under Tony Blair, or under Margaret Thatcher; we have had a yawning productivity gap with the United States, Germany and France since before I was born. Academics used to talk about a low skills, low wage equilibrium, although we do not hear so much about that now: firms design jobs around the skills that they think are available, and then there is little incentive for individuals to upskill because there are not the jobs available for them to upskill into.”
“All the support that has had to be put in place to make that possible has obviously been very expensive, but it looks as though the record will come to show that that investment will have paid off fiscally as well as in reducing the human cost on individuals, families and firms. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), I hope that we will soon be able to return to our 0.7 % commitment, not only for the reasons he rightly set out, but also in terms of our shared prosperity as a world because of the effect that co-ordinated ODA can have on areas such as improving health outcomes, reducing conflict and general economic development. Despite the good projections we have seen, we are not out of this yet.”
“I strongly welcome the focus in the Gracious Speech on jobs, skills, progression and careers. Since 2012, at the peak of unemployment, we had something of a jobs miracle before the start of the pandemic as a result of the creativity of British business, the favourable investment conditions, our flexible labour markets and our effective labour market policies. Now our focus, quite rightly, is on keeping people in jobs, as far as possible, and helping those out of work to return as soon as possible. To call the most recent projections from the Monetary Policy Committee encouraging would be something of an understatement: they are really quite dramatic if they can be realised.”
“The restoration and renewal programme will create investment nationwide through a supply chain involving hundreds of businesses. Building materials will be sourced domestically wherever possible, including high-quality UK steel.”
“I concur with the hon. Lady, who has consistently championed the UK’s high-quality steel sector. We do not yet know the exact steel requirements for the project, but there clearly will be a requirement. The project will obviously comply with public sector procurement rules but within those, as I said in my previous answer, we will seek to source materials domestically wherever possible. I confirm to her today that the programme is planning to sign the UK steel charter, an initiative from the sector that aims to maximise opportunities for the UK economy and UK steel producers.”
“It is important work and this is an important phase, and I am keen to welcome the hon. Member for Aberdeen North to the Sponsor Body board.”
“We do not yet know exactly how long this project is going to take in total—that will come in the full plan, which will be presented to this House—but we do know it will be a substantial period of time. In recent history, MPs have averaged 13 or 14 years of service, and the average current MP has already done six. So even on a rather optimistic view of our own electoral future fortunes, most of us are not going to be here when this is finished. But it is to this generation of parliamentarians that it falls to ensure that the necessary work gets done and that we secure the future of our Parliament and the building that houses it. There has just been a strategic review of the project and the approach, and work progresses now towards the full costed plan that will come before this House in early 2023.”
“I strongly welcome the appointment of the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) to the Sponsor Body board, and note and appreciate the work of the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard). On the Sponsor Body board, we work as parliamentarians on a cross-party and both Houses basis, joining outside experts in overseeing and scrutinising the work of the Sponsor Body, which in turn is there to act on Parliament’s behalf to ensure that the project is done in the public interest and, crucially, at the best value for taxpayer money. As parliamentary members, we can also act as a channel between colleagues here and the restoration and renewal programme. Of course, we are Parliament’s representatives on the restoration and renewal Sponsor Body, not the Sponsor Body’s representatives in Parliament.”
“Being a top premiership club is not a franchise; it is to be part of the contestable apex of the whole sport. In turn, that whole sport is part of our culture, part of our heritage and part of who we are. So I strongly welcome my right hon. Friend’s robustness in his statement and in bringing forward the fan-led review. Can he assure me that both his immediate response and the fan-led review will be far-ranging, with nothing off the table?”
“Social media platforms deny that responsibility, so anonymity could also make it easier for those foreign powers and others who want deliberately to confuse and divide us. It can be hard to know whether you are interacting with a person, a machine or something in between. There are many possible permutations; there are also many pitfalls, and this warrants proper debate and deliberation. My proposal, like that of my hon. Friend, is a pretty mild one, and a safe one—that if you are on general-usage, mass-market social media using your real identity, you should have the right, if you choose, to hear only from other people using their real identity.”
“I am also concerned about lower-level effects—the impact on the general tone of public discourse, and the consequences for our social cohesion and mutual understanding. I am concerned not only, or even mainly, about public figures, but also about everybody else—about moderate, normal people of all views who fear to put their head above the parapet, and those deterred from entering public life in future for fear of what their children might see written about them on Twitter. Free speech is at the heart of our traditions, but we have another long tradition that pamphlets declare who they are from—the imprint. Writers might write under pseudonyms, but someone—the publisher—is ultimately accountable.”
“It is also important, of course, for activists in oppressive regimes, or for people seeking advice on sensitive issues, to discover a community out there, to know that they are not alone. But while in one context anonymity can give voice to the voiceless and empower the oppressed, in another it can coarsen public discourse and facilitate abuse. Surely it is possible for us to have the one without having to have the other. In this debate we will hear, indeed have already heard, about some really nasty abuses—in many cases, criminal abuses, where the issue with anonymity is really one about registration; it is about the impediments to enforcement action. Many of those cases will be about people in the public eye.”
“I think we all recognise that there are many people who would say things to someone on the phone that they would not say in person, who would put things in email that they would not say on the phone, would put things on Twitter that they would not write in an email, and yes, will post anonymously something they would never want to see their name written next to. I do not want to ban anonymity, any more than my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud would. People have long sought its sense of freedom, its disinhibiting effect, its privacy and occasionally its hilarity and enjoyment, and there is nothing wrong with any of that. As long as there is no harm to anybody else, it is no business of the state.”
“How deeply upsetting for everybody to hear that very powerful speech by the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge). It is humbling to follow it. I congratulate her on what she said and the bravery she has shown. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) on securing this debate and thank the Committee for granting it. Of course plenty of people are anonymous without ever being abusive and, God knows, plenty of abuse comes from people who are perfectly open about who they are, but there is something of a media hierarchy in human nature.”
“I strongly welcome my hon. Friend’s statement and the strategy, including what he outlined on the deepened working with industry and academia. Can he say how the strategy can help build the UK’s skills base in key STEM subjects, which is obviously very important for defence industries, but also for important parts of the wider civil economy?”
“What happens immediately upon release is fundamental. What progress has been made on ensuring that prison leavers have access to benefits and accommodation and can get on the road towards sustainable employment?”
“I therefore urge the Government to think further and think bigger about how they can invest in the growth of this powerhouse sector.”
“I very much welcome the success of the GREAT campaign, which has given a consistent message that we project across the world, but there is an issue about the volume of marketing. In a recent Select Committee meeting, we heard from VisitBritain that Australia spends more in China than we do internationally. We are outspent massively in key volume markets and we are not represented at all in some important developing markets. As we start to come out of this pandemic, source markets are going to be more competitive than ever. The term “investment” gets a bit over-used these days, but this really is about investment, with tangible, bankable and quite speedy returns to create jobs and support building back better.”
“Secondly, on skills and productivity, I very much welcome the focus in the sector deal on productivity and in particular the development of two T-levels—that central reform of technical and vocational education—in catering and in cultural, heritage and visitor attractions. But today I want to talk mostly about marketing. I was so pleased to hear of the independent destination management organisation review. Many DMOs have been very hard hit by the pandemic, and those immediate problems must be addressed in this review, but I hope it goes much further. DMOs are, in the best cases, co-operating. They are also generally overlapping and sometimes actually competing with one another. We need to streamline the DMO network and the interaction of all parts of the public sector that have a role in promoting and facilitating tourism.”
“I welcome all the support that has been set out by others, but now is the time to think boldly about the future and how we build back better. We have been gifted a beautiful country, incredible cultural assets, and of course the English language, but we need to do more with them. There are multiple aspects to that work. There is a long tradition of building too much capacity at the top of the cycle and too little at the bottom. I would love to hear an update from the Government on plans for 130,000 more hotel rooms, as well as the plans for aviation capacity as markets recover. I would love to hear a national yield management plan that brings together leisure travel and travel for education purposes, business conferences and events, getting more from our cultural assets, extending the season and building shoulder periods.”
“There are many important aspects to cover in this debate, including sport, the creative and performing arts, events, heritage and more, as the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), said, but in the four minutes I have available, I will talk about one: tourism. Tourism is very important for my constituency, two thirds of which lies within the South Downs national park and which contains important heritage sites including Jane Austen’s house, the Watercress line and Gilbert White’s house, but it matters to all of us nationally, accounting for close to a tenth of the economy and jobs and being an important driver of export earnings. It is also one of the sectors that has been hit hardest by covid.”