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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“Indeed—computers talking to computers, with us as the facilitators. The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I will conclude by repeating something I said much earlier in my remarks. We should always remember that, at whatever pace we, the education system or, certainly, Government can work, young people will work at a pace six times faster. I am, again, grateful to the Minister. Question put and agreed to . That this House has considered the use of generative artificial intelligence in schools.”
“Dr Rachamim shared with us various treatments, advocated for work-up and treatment plans to be put in place, along with trials and treatment options, and argued that to help this community, increasing professional awareness is key—key to preventing misdiagnosis and to ensuring that patients receive the right care and support. By increasing awareness of Down syndrome regression disorder, more support can be put in place both for the individuals affected and for the parents and carers who are so heavily impacted. This debate is part of that work. Again, I am grateful to the hon. Member for Thurrock, and I hope the Minister will take note.”
“As colleagues have said, Down syndrome regression disorder is a sudden loss of previously acquired and present social, motor and language skills. It is clearly a devastating development for any family, and it is often compounded by a lack of awareness and misdiagnosis. As the hon. Member for Thurrock said, it is taken for autism or early-onset dementia. We are all very grateful to the hon. Lady for securing this important debate, and to the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. I know that she intended to raise awareness of Down syndrome regression disorder in this debate, and she has certainly done so. Clearly, more research is needed.”
“I rise to speak briefly in support of the case put so comprehensively and powerfully by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft). The APPG on Down syndrome, of which the hon. Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper) and I are both members, was given a very striking presentation on Down syndrome regression disorder by Dr Ella Rachamim. We were told of the case of a young person with Down syndrome who went from being socially and physically active, able to get dressed, have a shower and enjoy swimming and playing basketball, to becoming stiff and catatonic, losing the ability to balance and walk upstairs, soiling and wetting himself frequently, and refusing food and drink to the extent that he became so dehydrated as to need hospitalisation.”
“As the Minister says, fraud is the largest volume category of crime; it was coming down under the last Government, but over the past full year it has gone back up again dramatically. The Online Safety Act 2023 is a landmark reform, but criminals will always seek new channels, so what will the Minister do in his new fraud plan to address that displaced fraud, including that delivered through advertising on websites not covered by the Act?”
“They also—this came as the greatest shock to people in general—had higher average job satisfaction than people not on zero-hours contracts.”
“Member for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd) talked about, and specifically zero-hours contracts. I am afraid that that type of contract has a totemic significance for Labour politicians, way beyond the number of people affected or involved. It dates back to the time when the last leader of the Labour party, who now sits as an independent, made bringing down the number of people on zero-hours contracts one of his great crusades. When I was at the Department for Work and Pensions, we looked a bit more deeply at how many people are on such contracts, and it turns out that fewer than 3% of people rely on a zero-hours contract for their primary job; on average, they worked not zero hours but 25 hours a week, and most were not seeking more hours.”
“The sector has just withstood two very big blows: first, the cut in business rates relief, which has a major effect on the fixed cost of businesses even before a pint has been poured, as a number of Members said; and, secondly, the enormous increase in national insurance contributions. We often talk about the rate going up from 13.8% to 15%, which does not sound very much, but the bringing down of the threshold has a huge effect. As I said, the sector employs a lot of part-time people, and it is with those people in particular, and of course with younger people coming into the workforce for the first time, that that is felt. There are many things that we could talk about, but time is short and colleagues are many, so I will concentrate on one issue: the Employment Rights Bill, which the hon.”
“As it happens, hospitality was my career before I came to this place. We used to define the term “hospitality” a bit more narrowly—it really used to mean hotels. That was the business that I worked in, and latterly I worked a little in the licensed trade. In my time as a Member of Parliament and a Minister, I have worked very strongly with the sector, particularly on employment opportunities, as it is foremost in getting young people into work. There is a debate going on in the main Chamber that is very relevant to this issue. Hospitality helps people who are furthest from the labour market to come back into work, and it also supports a lot of people in part-time work.”
“It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Butler, and a privilege to take part in these proceedings under your guidance. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) on setting out his case—our case—so comprehensively and compellingly. It is a shame that hospitality does not make the cut as a growth sector for the Government’s industrial strategy, for it is a huge part of this country’s economy and employment. We must never forget that there are relatively few power sectors in employment, and principal among them are hospitality, retail and personal care. In my constituency, hospitality accounts for about 200 outlets, and about 2,000 people are employed in the sector. As in retail, employment in that sector really does go throughout the entire country.”
“And the national health service—sorry, I am coming back to hospitality, Ms Butler. As it turns out, one of the biggest users of zero-hours contracts in the country is the national health service.”
“Secondly, they could change the requirement to make repeated offers of a guaranteed-hours contract, and instead state, as the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth rightly said—she may even be sort of nodding in agreement—that it should be up to the individual. If the individual wants to opt in, fine, but the Government should not create the additional bureaucracy, dead-weight and cost of having to make those repeated offers if that individual does not seek them.”
“Some people choose; supply teachers choose to be supply teachers rather than full-time employed teachers. I hear from businesses, pubs and restaurants in my constituency that students whose home is in the constituency work when they are at home and can stay on the books when they go away to university or college. They might want to reduce the amount of time that they give to work when their exams are on, but they stay on the books. I do not think that the proposals in the Employment Rights Bill are very helpful, but if the Government insist on keeping them, they could make two important changes. The first change is to the length of the 12-week reference period, which does not work in a hospitality business that has significant seasonality. It should be much longer.”
“I am coming on to that; the hon. Lady must give me space. These are forms of employment that have existed for a long time. At a certain point, I realised that my own first job in the hospitality sector was on a zero-hours contract; it is just that nobody had coined the term at that point. It is a very common type of employment. In my case, it was collecting glasses and washing dishes. Everybody who worked in that way did so on a zero-hours contract. These kinds of contracts can work in any sector where there is fluctuation in demand and in the need for labour, and principal among those is the hospitality sector. The thing that some people struggle with—I am not saying the hon. Lady does—is the idea that they also work for individuals. It is not necessarily something that people do only because there is nothing else available.”
“There were almost a million fewer workless households in 2024 than in 2010. One factor behind that was universal credit and reducing the barriers and perceived risks of going back into work if people were not sure how it would work out. Notwithstanding the right to try, if there are to be two different levels of health component outside the severe conditions criteria, will that not raise those barriers back up and do the exact opposite of the right hon. Lady’s stated intent?”
“I do not think there are many more things that can be taken out, but perhaps the Minister can tell us. In particular, I would like her to reassure us that the primary physical education and sport premium is safe. Will she please do that in winding up?”
“Presumably, it is not 5% of the entirety of the DFE’s budget, because the DFE is different from many other Departments in that so much of its spend goes directly to schools, colleges and early years settings providing for children. According to the estimates, the DFE’s admin spend is actually increasing. Part of that, of course—in line with so many other private and public sector organisations across the country—is the extra costs imposed by the increase in national insurance contributions, so what are those efficiencies? I hope the Minister will be able to tell us today. So many things have already been cut, including the discretionary spend that helps children to achieve their best, with everything from Latin to computer science and the cadets programme.”
“This debate is a very important opportunity to discuss the upcoming cuts in the Department for Education. We know from the estimates document that overall resource departmental expenditure limits are coming down. We are told that that is largely a technical change as a result of changes to the student loan book, but I have to say that these are rather large numbers to come from such technical changes. From the comprehensive spending review document, we know that like other Departments, the Department for Education has agreed to 5% in savings and efficiencies. What that document does not explain, however, is 5% of what.”
“Then, of course, there is the famous—or infamous—commitment to 6,500 additional teachers. Colleagues might remember that that commitment was going to be paid for by the receipts on VAT from private schools. The Government now say that VAT from private schools is going to pay for housing, not for teachers. It is not clear that that policy is going to raise much revenue to spend on anything, given that the most recent figures show a fall in the number of children at independent schools. Those are the Government’s own figures. [ Interruption. ] I beg your pardon?”
“The maths on breakfast clubs are something of a mystery to me, because I have heard Ministers repeatedly say that having a breakfast club is going to save parents £450 a year, but they are reimbursing schools £150 a year. Where is the rest of that money supposed to come from? It is also true that some schools—including some in my constituency—already have a breakfast club that is charged at a reasonable rate, so they will lose revenue from their existing breakfast club. Before anyone says, “You have to think about whether it should be charged for or not,” it is worth remembering that the breakfast club provision that already exists is typically reimbursable for families on universal credit at a rate of up to 85%, to the extent that it is childcare that is enabling parents to go to work.”
“My right hon. Friend makes powerful points, including about the additional unfunded cost pressures for nursery providers—of course, that argument also extends to regular state-funded schools. The one thing I might quibble with is his statement that this Labour Government came in promising to do so much for education. Actually, the Labour manifesto was rather light on commitments on education. The biggest ones were, first of all, the commitment to roll out mental health support teams to cover all schools in the country. On closer examination, that commitment turns out to be not just similar to, but identical to, the policy of the previous Government, which was to roll out mental health support teams to cover all schools in the country. The second high-profile commitment was about breakfast clubs.”
“Funnily enough, the target was then redefined so that it did not include primary school teachers; it would include only secondary school teachers. That brings us back to this question: if it is only secondary schools, where teachers have specialist subjects, what are the key subjects that will count towards this number? If the Government just meant any subject, the word “key” would not be there. What do they mean by expert teachers? If they mean simply teachers with qualified teacher status— [ Interruption. ] I think the Minister might be readying herself to intervene.”
“The most recent figures—the Government’s own figures—show a fall of 11,000 in the number of children at independent schools. Of course, the number of teachers in the state sector is not going up in this country; it is coming down. The Government have tried to have this every possible way. There is a line in their manifesto that is very clear—it comes up more than once. It says that Labour is going to recruit “6,500 new expert teachers in key subjects”. When asked repeatedly what key subjects they had in mind, they refused to say. Eventually they said that these teachers will be recruited—I think am I quoting this correctly, but if not absolutely accurately then pretty close—from schools and colleges across the country. Then some numbers came out showing that the number of teachers in primary schools had gone down.”
“That is a painful process to go through, and no MP wants to represent an area where schools close, but at least that way the numbers can be made to work over a wider area, and some of those schools can convert to nursery schools, I hope, or to special schools. A big secondary school might reduce, say, from an eight-form entry to a six-form entry and manage the numbers that way. For a rural primary school, neither of those things is an option. There are major indivisibilities. Right now, 92% of DFE funding for schools is driven by pupil numbers, and I just do not think that will work over the years ahead. What will Ministers do to reform funding so that it is fair and effective at a time of falling overall pupil numbers?”
“When pupil numbers are rising, if real-terms per pupil funding is held constant, that is a net increase in resourcing to the school. When numbers are falling, and even if real-terms per pupil funding is increased by a few per cent, that feels very much like a cut. Let us think about it in the following practical terms. If a primary school class of 27 goes up to 29, that is an increase in revenue to the school of something like £10,000, £11,000 or £12,000, but the vast majority of costs do not change. It works the same way in reverse. If a class moves from 29 pupils to 27, the school loses £10,000 to £12,000, but there are still the same costs, and the teacher is still being paid the same and so on. In an urban setting, some whole schools may close—some already have.”
“We have reached a point where I do not believe it is legitimate to use the measure of real-terms per pupil funding as the yardstick for whether effective school resourcing is increasing or decreasing. That is because the number of pupils will fall. We know already from TES , which used to be called The Times Educational Supplement , that surplus secondary places have increased by some 50% in just two years. Labour MPs may well argue—and I kind of hope they do—that when there is a smaller number of children there will obviously be less funding, and there is some logic to that argument, but in a sense it does not matter what arguments they make in this Chamber, because back in their constituencies, if they talk to headteachers, they will hear something different.”
“We know from reports from teachers and headteachers in the sector press that shortfalls in the range of 10% to 35% are being reported. School suppliers are also facing higher national insurance contributions, which will also have a knock-on effect on the cost of other services into those schools. Schools are also picking up the cost of breakfast clubs, and there is an extension in free school meals eligibility and so on. Overall, if we look at the detail in the estimates and the spending review, all these increases are front-loaded—that is to say, for 2024-25 the increase is 6.8%, but that then comes down to 5.2% the following year, and then 3.4%, then 2.1%, and then 1.6%. The main point I put to the Minister—constructively and co-operatively—is that things are changing significantly in schools because of demographic change.”
“No? If the Government simply mean teachers with qualified teacher status, then I gently remind the Minister of something we covered in Bill Committee, which some colleagues might recall. The number of teachers today who do not have qualified teacher status is 3.1%, which does not sound all that high. What do colleagues suppose it was in May 2010, the previous time that there was a change of Government? The answer is 3.2%. So the number of teachers without qualified teacher status has hardly changed, and to the extent that it has, it has slightly gone down. We know that other RDEL—revenue spending, effectively—is going up, but it has to cover an awful lot. There is £1 billion-plus in national insurance contribution costs.”
“A couple of colleagues have already mentioned the wine sector, which is a great growth opportunity for rural areas. Much more could also be done on tourism, both inbound and domestic, as well as agritourism. We need to ensure that young people growing up in our constituencies have the same opportunities as others, and that means a particular focus on T-level industrial placements for children from rural areas, as well as ensuring that they can get to work; I would love to see a national version of the wheels to work programme, renting scooters to young people.”
“Beyond specifically rural businesses such as farms, rural constituencies have all manner of other businesses that just happen to be in rural areas. As colleagues have said, those businesses face additional challenges, first among which is connectivity. I hope that the Government will do more on the shared rural network; it is going quite well in Scotland and Wales, but we need more of it in England. On the transition to VoIP—voice over internet protocol —we need to ensure that businesses have proper power back-up systems in place for power cuts. We need a rapid expansion of banking hubs, because the loss of banking infrastructure is felt particularly in rural areas, where banks are more spread out, and we need full utilisation of the national post office network. As well as dealing with problems, we must seize opportunities.”
“It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Western. The family farm tax was a hammer blow to our agricultural businesses. We understand that the Government seek to raise money, but there is an alternative on the table: the so-called clawback proposal. I hope that the Minister will update us on that and, if the Government do not think that the clawback proposal would work and raise potentially even more money than the current policy, I hope that he can explain that. More broadly, the Government have said that they will increase spending on environmental land management schemes, but they are cutting back in other areas. The overall budget for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is coming down in real terms. What will that mean for our agricultural businesses?”
“What are the principal differences between this Government’s groundbreaking plan to introduce mental health support teams to schools and the previous Government’s already in-progress programme to deliver mental health support teams to schools? As I like this Minister, Mr Speaker, let me give him a hint: this has been a rhetorical question.”
“Secondly, I am concerned about physical constraints such as national parks. Development in a constituency such as mine, where over half the land area is inside a national park, creates particular issues in the areas just outside the national park. The Minister and his officials have been listening and they have been very helpful; I hope that they will continue to give the issue full consideration and that there will be a change.”
“As we have heard, in some parts of London and Birmingham targets are being reduced, but there has been a 50% uplift in housing numbers nationally and a 100% uplift in my constituency. This is not a north-south issue; it is repeated in rural areas throughout the country, including in the far north-west and the far north-east. It does not correct what some people may think of as an historical imbalance, where all the developments are in towns and not in the country, because over the past couple of decades developments have been disproportionately in predominantly rural areas rather than predominantly urban areas. This is also bad for the Government’s growth agenda because, as the Resolution Foundation and others have pointed out, skewing development towards cities and towns is better for growth because of connectivity.”
“I will be brief as many colleagues are waiting to contribute. I will speak only to new clause 40, which calls for a review of the standard method of assessing local housing need. A couple of colleagues have already mentioned aspects of it, but I will talk about it for three reasons: it puts too many housing development requirements on rural areas, rather than cities; in areas like mine there are physical constraints, such as national parks, which can cause difficulties; and, as specified in the new clause, the system needs to take account of different types of housing and their affordability. First, the new formula means that too much housing is being put into rural areas, away from urban areas.”
“The figures were, of course, coming down, but the incidence of fraud—much of it online—is now back up to a new high. Many factors are involved, but will the Government look at taking further steps, including requiring enhanced intelligence sharing between platforms and banks, and better mandatory user identification on sites such as dating apps and online marketplaces?”
“The joint stock company was created to share risk among different people, and the way that organisations work within companies is a way of increasing efficiency and productivity, compared with everybody doing their own thing as a sole trader. So, because businesses are ultimately people, there is ultimately no such thing as a tax on a business. Taxes can only ever fall on people. A so-called business tax falls on one or more of three groups of people: the business’s customers, the business’s employees or the business’s owners.”
“Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher) said—he is no longer in his place but I know he will return—only business can create the wealth and jobs, make the livelihoods and generate the tax that, in turn, makes the high-quality and brilliant public services that we all so value and on which we rely. There is a second thing that we should always remember about business, and I encourage Ministers to remember it. Accountants talk about the entity principle and describe a business as an entity that is separate from the people who run it. That might be true in an accounting sense, but in a broader sense, businesses are people. They are collections of people coming together to achieve something.”
“It is a pleasure to join this lively debate. Small businesses are the backbone of the economy in my constituency. In fact, 99.9% of businesses in East Hampshire are small or medium-sized enterprises. We over-index in professional services, retail, information and communications, and, of course, agriculture. [ Interruption. ] I thought there were few Labour Members present before I stood to speak! The biggest sectors for employment are retail, health and care, and manufacturing. [ Interruption. ] I am starting to get a complex! I have heard from all those sectors, which are worried about the prospects for their businesses and the economy under this Government. We must always remember two things about business. First, contrary to what the hon.”
“If the owners are not affected, either the customers or the employees will be affected, and I am afraid the effect of the national insurance contributions rise will ultimately be felt by those two groups of people, and particularly by employees, through a mixture of wage suppression over time and possibly some job losses. The bigger effect will not be about job losses; it will be about jobs that are never created in the first place, particularly among the youngest people and those furthest from the labour market.”
“The hon. Lady makes a good point about small businesses, particularly rural small businesses, and I will talk about national insurance contributions and business rates, but let me come back to how taxes on businesses are ultimately taxes on people. Some Labour Members might say that they do not mind a tax on business owners, because they are the capitalists and they can afford it, but we need to remember that the owners of businesses are a mixture of institutional owners—which, by the way, includes your mum’s pension fund—small business owners, who are quite often sole traders, and family businesses.”
“The relief was created specifically to stop family firms having to be broken up; however, the net effect of the changes is that a substantial number of firms in this situation will be bought up, either in whole or in part, by foreign owners or private equity. Is that really what a new Labour Government had in mind?”
“Business property relief was put in place to level the playing field for family-owned businesses and others, so that people could invest in their family-owned businesses, confident that they could pass it on, within the family, without incurring a tax that applies to no other business ownership model. Typically, these businesses will not have large amounts of net cash or liquid assets that will allow them to settle the tax bill upon the demise of the owner, and there are no listed shares, so there is typically no market for those. There has to be a theoretical valuation, because the shares cannot be valued, and that figure is likely to be considerably higher than the amount that could be realised in the event of a sale.”
“There is an alternative proposal on the table, which we know has been put to the Treasury by representatives of the sector. As this brilliant Treasury Minister the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell) will be winding up, I am sure—at least I hope—he will find it possible to share with the House the Treasury’s critique of that alternative proposal, the so-called clawback proposal, which would be much fairer, and tell us why the Government are rejecting it. There has been quite a lot of debate in the House on the family farm tax, but somewhat less on the business property relief situation, which is not quite as acute in some ways, but there are a number of parallels and similarities.”
“It will, and I repeat that it can only be one of those three groups. There will be some price increases, and those costs will be felt by customers and consumers, but all the indications are that the big effects will be felt in wage suppression and in employment, which will ultimately mean slower economic growth. In the same way that taxes on business ultimately land on people, taxes that look like they are on people can sometimes have an effect on business. I want to talk briefly about two examples. The first is the family farm tax. This is clearly a desperately ill-conceived measure, although, to be fair to Labour Ministers, they probably did not realise at the time quite what they were doing. However, their Members of Parliament representing rural seats found out very quickly exactly what they were doing and the effect it would have.”
“I will not talk in detail about the national insurance contributions increase, because others have done so, but that will have an effect, particularly on part-time employees, and the Government ought also to acknowledge the gender differential effect of that, which we have heard little about. Today I have heard two Labour MPs say that business rates have gone down for retail and hospitality businesses. One was the Minister. Try telling that to those businesses—”
“For nurseries, for example, the issue is whether the unit rate per child per hour is sufficient. Many of my nurseries say that it is simply not sufficient to cover their costs, at a time when entitlement to nursery care is increasing. In the hair sector, there has long been an issue about those who have created a business that has employees, and their ability to compete with others who are below the VAT threshold. The confluence of four things that the new Government have done is creating a big headache. First of all, the national living wage going up to £12.21 is a good thing in and of itself. We absolutely support a rise in wages for people on lower wages; it is the fact that it is happening at the same time as all the other things that is causing the problem.”
“Forgive me, but I do not have the history at my fingertips. The relief has been recognised over the years, and has been looked at in the past by Treasury officials. I have been a Treasury Minister, and I know that they get presented with various things that could be done, but generally speaking, when many Ministers before you have found good reasons to keep a measure, it is a good idea to wonder what those reasons might be. Overall, this Government’s changes to the business taxation regime will affect many sectors, but particularly those that are labour intensive. We can all name hospitality, retail and care as the three really big-volume employers in the country. In my constituency, I would also mention nurseries, pubs and hair and beauty businesses. Of course, there are sector-specific pressures.”
“I shall suitably dampen. At a time when the Government are changing the relief from 75% to 40%, try telling those businesses already facing the national insurance contributions increase and all the other cost increases that their bill is being reduced. Clearly, it is going up.”
“The Minister is a labour—and a Labour—economist, so I would be interested to hear his comments on the shift that we are likely to see from permanent to temporary contracts, and the shift that we are already starting to see in companies that are moving from relying on contracted, salaried employees to relying on agency workers.”