Jesse Norman
MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“In view of the new Prime Minister’s spending priorities, it now seems highly unlikely that the ruinously expensive current plans will be put to the House before the end of this year. Seven months have already passed with no action.”
“10 North have real spending powers of its own? If the answer is yes, then this will be a new kind of cross-departmental Ministry—perhaps a territorial Ministry, like a regional Government but with no defined scope or mandate. We will need to see the legal instruments delegating Treasury authority and functions to it.”
“I rather fear that, given our longevity and at least the level of banter on the Government side of the Dispatch Box, we will be seen over time as the Morecambe and Wise, or perhaps the two Ronnies, of British politics.”
“The past few weeks have brought news of the deaths of Dolly Parton, Tim Curry and Wendell Berry. I am sure that many colleagues will share my sense of shock and sadness at the loss of those extraordinary figures, but also give great thanks for their lives. Truly, we live in a world of change.”
“10 North will not have spending power of its own, then ultimately the Treasury and the Chancellor will continue to sign off on its public spending and on any taxing matters. Decentralisation is really important, but No. 10 North will not be a means of decentralisation in this scenario; it will be just another layer of Government.”
“But we are not going to cast nasturtiums, in the words of a friend of mine, on any of this nonsense—not even on Baroness Lloyd and the hopeless Building Digital UK, who have entirely failed to address the issue of fibre broadband in neglected parts of my constituency and simply repeated the same language of incompetence and failure to me…”
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“I am so sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker; I apologise for my colleagues. Given that the Government are in caretaker mode, may I ask your advice on whether that extends to their interaction with Parliament? A series of potentially contentious pieces of legislation could be laid in the next few days, and I suggest that this may fall outside the remit of strictly attending to business in terms of the Government’s relationships with the House. I seek your clarification and guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have in mind particularly the broadcasting or media Bill that covers the potential privatisation of Channel 4, which is a matter of great interest and some political controversy across the House.”
“My hon. Friend will recall that the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) raised the issue of the necessity standard applying in a context where a state has not contributed to that state of necessity. Does he feel that that provision has been activated or in some sense triggered by the present situation?”
“Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), is the concession by the Government that “urgent does not mean immediate” not a plain acknowledgement of the fact that necessity does not apply, because it means there is no grave and immediate peril, which is one of the tests for necessity?”
“However, another kind of integrity is at stake here: the integrity of our overall British patriotic desire to project ourselves as a nation with a historic willingness to lead in matters of reputation and international law. That integrity is being put at risk by this piece of legislation. I am not going to support amendment 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, not because it is not a perfectly fine piece of drafting, but because this Bill is unamendably bad, in my judgment. I very much hope that this House will not see it through, and that if it does, the Bill will be rejected on Second Reading by the other Chamber.”
“The EU’s concern is that the UK has been untrustworthy, and far from allaying that concern, the Bill actively reinforces it. If the EU made a concession in response—if by chance it struck a new agreement with the UK on the basis of the pressure supposedly conferred by this legislation—why should it believe that the UK would then abide by such an agreement? That whole rationale would already have been destroyed. Of course, for reasons already discussed today, this is merely the beginning of the potential trouble involved. The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) properly talked about the integrity of the United Kingdom, and he was absolutely right to flag that up.”
“Of course, it appears to breach article 5 of the withdrawal agreement, in which both the UK and EU state that they will faithfully enact the measures to fulfil their obligations arising from the new agreement. Finally, as has been pointed out, the wide powers contemplated under clause 4 are themselves are in clear conflict with the rule of law in the ministerial discretion that they confer. In principle, this Bill is extremely unwise to say the least, but it is also, just in pragmatic terms, misguided and likely to be counterproductive. As my right hon. and learned Friend mentioned, there is no long-term solution to be reached by a unilateral attempt to impose one side’s will on a shared international treaty. Of course, there is no reason to think that this will change the EU’s behaviour in relation of Northern Ireland. Why should it?”
“Unfortunately, however, for reasons contemplated and discussed today, and which I will briefly summarise, this Bill is not the answer. It has been properly pointed out that the doctrine of necessity does not apply in anything like the way the Government describe it. I am not a lawyer, but even I can see that when the Minister concedes at the Dispatch Box that immediacy is not at stake and is not implied by the conception of urgency that the Government wish to deploy. In breaching international law, for the reasons that my right hon. and learned Friend the former Attorney General set out, the Bill breaks the general principle that promises must be kept. However, that is itself an unwritten principle of the British constitution, so this Bill is also a contravention of our constitution.”
“It has been a splendid debate, and it is my happy privilege to stand as the thorn between two legal roses in my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), the acuity of whose interventions has been noted by the House, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox), the former Attorney General, with his soaring rhetoric and legal genius. I will be brief. Everyone in this House recognises, I am sure, that it is vital to make the Northern Ireland protocol work better; that the EU, as described and discussed today, has been intransigent and could do with more direct input from our friends and allied member states, France, Germany, Holland and the rest; and that we need an improved and supported political settlement and situation in Northern Ireland.”
“On the consultation, my right hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that the Government should not be ducking difficult decisions. I would completely understand if they do not wish to publish the 38 Degrees consultation responses, but will she publish the industry organisation responses and the individual responses, because they will help to dispel a concern that the programme and the process has not been properly run?”
“I am enormously grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments, but does he have any evidence that the calcification he talks of is actually happening to Channel 4? There is obviously inflation in the sector. Does he think that Channel 4 is markedly less innovative than other players in the sector? Could he say a bit more about why he thinks privatisation would make a positive difference, given that Channel 4 has managed to flourish over 40 years of state ownership? There are other state organisations, such as the Bank of England, that we would not consider privatising because they have shown their value over many years.”
“Let me remind the House that the intellectual property does not go anywhere. The fact that it is not trapped in Channel 4 does not mean that it does not reside within independent production companies, and that creates the dynamic tension and energy that has always sustained the sector. I am afraid that I regard this as an unnecessary attempt to address a non-problem at a time of much wider concern. I refer hon. Members and the Government to the ancient Conservative principle: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.””
“It is not just that Channel 4 is in rude health—although, as has been pointed out, revenues can go up and down over time—and has been sustained by its huge growth in digital advertising and its remarkable ability to reach interesting younger audiences; it is also that it is a highly dynamic organisation and a highly managerially innovative organisation. Therefore, for the Government to start to panic now about what its future advertising revenues may be is to rule out the possibility that diverse, interesting, engaging and innovative responses may be undertaken by this innovative team. It is also strange for a Conservative Government to wish to sell off a business in the face of competition, rather than embracing and welcoming that competition and expecting the business to fight its corner.”
“Members on both sides of the House and as I think it is fair to say the Government have said, it is important that there should be an options paper to show which options have been considered. I was sad to see that the option of mutualisation has not been considered, because it has been effective in other areas. Welsh Water, which is in many ways the best of the water companies, is a mutual company limited by guarantee. I still hope that mutualisation will be considered. The truth is that, notwithstanding some of the concerns that have been raised, Channel 4 is not a problem, and this measure comes at a time of severe and rising concern among people of this country about the cost of living, inflation and slow growth, and, in policy circles, about the loss of productivity.”
“It has been a good debate, but I must say that I am not persuaded by many of the arguments that have been put forward, even by my distinguished colleagues, the former Chairs of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) and my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins). It is a pity that the consultation was carried out in the way that it was. For a subject as vexed and contentious as this, it would have been more appropriate for at least the individual and organisational contributions to have been if not published, then at least digested in more detail and reflected. If the Government are committed to exploring all the options, as has been recognised by many hon.”
“What matters in this case is the quality of the ownership. Channel 4 has an independent ownership structure; it happens to be owned by the state, but its ownership structure has made it resilient to political pressure and able to commission highly innovative, risky and interesting forms of programming, for which we celebrate it.”
“Even if the constraints were relaxed in the way that has been described, the revenue to be derived would be only, on a net basis, in the order of £500 million to £1 billion. My successor, the present Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), has pointed out that that is a drop in the ocean compared with the wider problem. At a 4% interest rate, £500 million amounts to £20 million a year. Are we really going to give up all the control, energy, drive and impetus that exists in Channel 4 now, and the £200 million of directed programming into independent production companies that comes from that, in return for the equivalent of a £20 million annuity? I do not think that makes any economic sense at all. Overall, this is not a Conservative proposal.”
“The hon. Member makes an interesting and fair point. Of course, if advertising revenue were so unattractive, the rest of the market would not be piling into it. At the same time, no matter who the owner of the enterprise will be, they will not be immune from wider inflation in programming costs. That is the nature of the business, and the question is what innovative and constructive responses will be undertaken by the management team to address that. The plan is also bad economics from a public standpoint. The House will know that I spent a couple of years as a Treasury Minister, including during the period the Secretary of State talked about when all the support was given to the cultural sector, and I think it is bad economics.”
“I have no doubt that Channel 4 can be further improved and enhanced, and I see its Next Episode as a down payment on the next generation of its own thinking about how its model could be further leveraged and enhanced, but at the moment it is doing a superb job. We should not sell it; we should proceed and support it in any way we can in the future.”
“I cannot, as I do not have much time, but I may take my hon. Friend’s intervention later. It is not a Conservative proposal to sell Channel 4, and even if it was sold now does anyone really think the value generated would not itself be a reflection of the proposed doom scenario in advertising revenues because of the way in which future cash flow works? The key issue here is that we should support an enterprise that itself supports independent production companies, many of them in our nations and regions, that proactively supports disabled people, that supports the Union, and that supports levelling up. That is what Channel 4 does.”
“I am delighted to support the Government amendment and withdraw my new clause 1 as a result.”
“I thank her and other Ministers for the very constructive attitude that she and they have taken in relation to this important issue. I will make a couple of small points in passing because this is still a live matter and officials will wish to think about the implementing regulations. The first is about the enlarged role for the Office for Students and the need for it to be given a role that it can dispatch rapidly and effectively as well as impartially. More widely, I note the essential importance of the higher education sector and of our universities being zealous in themselves, as institutions, in preserving freedom of speech and the culture of a deeper freedom of speech that, as so many Members have said, they have sought to defend in their treatment of students and colleagues. That remains vital.”
“Instead of this panoply of different approaches and different thresholds, and this lack of transparency and culture of non-disclosure, it is important that the Bill addresses those matters and brings some order to the situation. That is what my new clause and the other new clauses, which I am delighted to see have been tabled in a similar spirit, are designed to address. In my case, the measure is aimed not at any specific country or individuals, but generally so that there should be a wide understanding of the lack of transparency and a wider solution to it. I take my hat off, metaphorically, to the Minister, her Secretary of State and her officials, because the Government have substantially accepted my new clause, and indeed—dare I say?—arguably even improved it in relation, for example, to politically exposed persons.”
“It is often misunderstood or underappreciated in the higher education sector how important the issue of undue influence and non-transparency is to the reputation of that sector, which is one of the crown jewels of our country both economically and culturally. Universities exercise a wider influence not only over the young people whom they educate, but more widely in our public life, yet no standard approach has existed to date for handling foreign donations. No single standard has been created to allow donations to be made transparent, to be made public and to be properly tracked, and, therefore, for students and other donors and the public at large to understand whether there are pressures of a financial nature, and if so what pressures there may be, on the institutions with which they may have to deal.”
“I rise to speak to new clause 1, which stands in my name and in the names of my colleagues, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) and my right hon. Friends the Members for Harlow (Robert Halfon) and for Ashford (Damian Green). I thank Professor John Heathershaw and his colleagues at the University of Exeter for their input. This Bill is a very serious one, and the issue I raise of transparency in our universities is a very serious one. It has been much publicised of late in the newspapers in relation to some very distinguished and famous universities that have been alluded to already in this House, and rightly so.”
“I thought the Environmental Audit Committee’s report was a model of its kind. I noted in particular that it created this context of identifying a “chemical cocktail” of sewage, slurry and plastic. Does my right hon. Friend feel that the Government’s response adequately addressed that issue—both on the sewage side and on the wider phosphates issue?”
“Sewage discharges, at least in the River Wye, on which my right hon. Friend’s report brilliantly focused, are only 25% of the problem. Phosphate leaching from fields is more like 65%. Does he feel that the Government have set an adequately ambitious target in saying that 80% of this phosphate should be reduced by 2037? I wonder whether we should go faster than that.”
“Does the hon. Lady share my view that one of the things the Government should closely consider is the idea of a national rivers recovery fund so that fines that have been paid can be used to remedy all of the pollution that has created them? At the moment, small fines go back into redress for pollution, but large ones go to the Treasury. My former colleagues will not thank me for it, but there is a case for a wider national recovery fund for rivers.”
“My hon. Friend is so familiar with Herefordshire and the angling there that he needs no encouragement from me, but may I remind him that part of the problem with the Wye is that it crosses the border so there is an impunity in that Wales can avoid having regulatory involvement and leave the muck to come down to Herefordshire? Does my hon. Friend agree that an all-river strategy with some commissioners, as there have been since the 18th century on the Tweed, might be a solution to the problem?”
“Indeed, they may in some sense require reinsurance, because that is a serious concern. Of course, this greatly affects the question of levelling up, with which the Government are widely and properly concerned.”
“They did not fall under the Department for Transport funding for local road restoration, and as Herefordshire is a county of 190,000 people—fewer than even small London boroughs—it was entirely struggling to pay for the costs of those roads. Nor were the costs paid for by the Bellwin funding, which extends only to surface impediments and other disturbances to the use of a road, and is quite narrowly interpreted even for that. May I ask the Minister to take back to her Department the question of whether there is a gap in the legislation and in the provision, and whether counties such as Herefordshire, which are completely dependent on their roads because they are so rural and have very small populations, should be asked to bear the extremely large costs of such floods?”
“I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for her comments, as well as for the work she has done on this legislation and on the related area of the cleanliness of the River Wye, which is itself a function, in part, of flooding and the sweep of phosphates into the river. I thank her and her Department very much for the work that they have done on that. In relation to flooding, the Minister may recall that in early 2020 there was some serious flooding in Herefordshire that resulted in the sweeping away of an entire causeway, and the undermining of the road down to Fownhope. For various different reasons, no support—or very little support—was forthcoming from central Government for the restitution of the causeway and that road.”
“I perfectly understand that the Minister will write to me, including in relation to DFT, and I am of course happy with that. This bears on DEFRA because there is a hole in the Bellwin approach that has the effect of not providing funding to address the catastrophic destruction of roads, and that cannot be remedied by small authorities that simply do not have the funds to address such large-scale devastation. That is the problem. I would be grateful if the Minister could look at that in her response.”
“My right hon. Friend knows that I have real concerns about the noisy protest legislation. How often does he expect it to be applied and how many past protests have been subject to something like that kind of police discretion?”
“I think it would help me, and it might help others in the Chamber, if the Minister would consider putting in place a review, perhaps a year or two years into the use of this power, if the House chooses to grant it.”
“I understand the motivations, and I understand that this has been lightly and sparingly applied, but an increase in discretion to qualify rights of protest that have been fundamental to our society and democratic traditions for hundreds of years is, I think, highly regrettable.”
“The police, as has been conceded, already have significant legal powers in relation to protests, and I regret to say that, worse, in some quarters they are the subject of a degree of public mistrust, which may be increased by our adding to their discretionary powers. Furthermore, I suspect that the measure will be extremely difficult for the courts to handle and adjudicate, even it proves to be compliant with article 11 of the Human Rights Act. All those are conservative—with a small and a large “c”—concerns that people might have about the operation of the rule of law in this country. When people in Kyiv are dying for their beliefs and for the rights of freedom of speech and of association, the timing is unfortunate.”
“I thank the Minister for engaging with me on this issue and for his clarifications this evening, both on the number of protests that this measure would be likely to affect and on the possibility of a review over a suitable but, I hope, not too long period, but—in my view at least—the measure should not be on the statute book. No serious case has been made that noise is a genuine problem. The Minister has conceded, and one understands why, that the measure is not likely to be used except in the tiniest minority of cases. We therefore have to ask whether the justification for it is adequate and proportionate. The offence is still vague and poorly defined, which is never a good thing in law.”
“I want to speak in particular about the issue of noisy protest, but I should begin by saying that, as the Minister outlined very well, there is a great deal of good in the Bill, covering many different areas. There are facts on which I think everyone in the House would agree from the off. No one can doubt that in recent years the capacity for effective protest has been dramatically enhanced by technology, and enhanced a second time through the use of social media. No one can doubt, I think, that there are irresponsible and aggressive individuals and organisations who seek to inflict the maximum interruption and difficulty on the lives of others in the causes that they promote. And no one can doubt that the public have a right to go about their business without undue impediment. I do not think that any Member would contest those points.”
“We should massively welcome it across the Chamber. I also hugely welcome the combination of HE and FE. Skills-based higher education is absolutely vital. As for this conception among the Opposition that there is some lack of ambition, nothing could be further—”
“I must say that I particularly welcome the Secretary of State’s opening statement about Ukraine. If this country has one institution that speaks for liberality, openness of vision, and conversation across cultures and across parts of our nation, it is the university. His statement at the beginning was absolutely right, and I welcome it. I hugely welcome the measures that the Secretary of State set out. I congratulate him and the Minister for Higher and Further Education on their work, particularly its focus on quality and inclusiveness together. I can tell them both from a Herefordshire perspective that if someone is coming out of a career serving Her Majesty in the Army or the special forces, the chance to go back and learn as a mature student and pick up a lifelong loan entitlement is of inestimable value.”
“Of course, Mr Deputy Speaker—in my exuberance, I was enjoying that. Could I ask the Secretary of State to talk just a little more about how the package will work and how it will meet the twin goals of quality and inclusiveness, which are so central to our future development as a nation?”
“The whole House will welcome the enhanced package of sanctions that the Prime Minister has announced today, but may I raise the question of football, much beloved of Russian hearts, and in particular issues of ownership, property and shareholdings, and the future participation of Russian clubs in international matches?”
“The Secretary of State will know that Herefordshire has one of the smallest and sparsest populations and some of the lowest gross value added in this country. He will also know of my passion for the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering, which promises to offer entirely new forms of learning and teaching, lower drop-out rates, lower levels of mental ill health, and much greater inclusiveness for young people in skills-based higher education—it is the small modular nuclear reactor of higher education. Will the Secretary of State encourage this model, and will he consider, call for and initiate a review of higher education in order to regenerate cities and towns across the UK?”
“6. As the Prime Minister will know from personal experience, the River Wye is one of the most beautiful rivers in Europe, yet its fragile ecosystem is being destroyed by phosphate and other pollution. The river crosses the border between England and Wales, but so far it is has proven impossible to get the Environment Agency, Natural England and Natural Resources Wales even to begin planning a single, integrated, long-term strategy to clean up the river. Will the Prime Minister now press those agencies, and the Welsh Government, at last to come to the table? Will he ask Ministers to look at the idea of a new, ringfenced national rivers recovery fund, using fines paid by the water companies, so that we can clean the Wye and other rivers up properly, once and for all?”
“The hon. Gentleman is speaking eloquently about taxation. Could he just clarify whether, as a result of the firmly held views of the Scottish National party, the Scottish Government will be reducing taxes in the areas where they have tax control?”
“Will the hon. Gentleman remind the House what the national debt as a percentage of GDP was in 1997 and then what it was when the financial crisis—to which Labour had allowed the country to become enormously overexposed through increased debt in the banking sector—had struck? I will tell him: it went from 46% to 84% while Labour was in government.”
“At relatively little cost—through a degree of investment in measuring and enforcement; through a degree of constructive thinking about the long-term regulatory environment in which water discharges are to be managed along the Wye valley basin; and, of course, through the recruitment of citizen energies, which are already active and vigorous up and down the Wye—a great opportunity exists to bring these different resources together in a single, co-ordinated plan that is led by the Government, with the support of the Welsh Government, which I am afraid has been conspicuously lacking on the issue so far. That gives us a national opportunity to bring an end to this scourge of pollution and to restore this priceless, gorgeous, wonderful natural asset to its pristine glory.”
“One point that has struck me most clearly when campaigning on this issue over the last year and a half has been in the way in which the agencies —Natural Resources Wales, Natural England and the Environment Agency—have not been adequately talking to each other. We therefore put to the Chief Secretary, and ultimately to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the idea of a cross-border, cross-agency, single strategy that is focused on a long-term approach to addressing the issue of phosphate pollution in the Wye. The idea is a priceless opportunity for this country and the Government.”
“We must be perfectly clear that it is being undermined by sewage discharges, which have been discussed in the House, but also by significant levels of embedded phosphate—that is, animal waste on fields that has run off. We do not know the full scale of the issue. The best estimates appear to be that about 65% of the problem is embedded phosphate, 25% is discharge, and there is a further component because of the recent impact of chicken litter. We need to know the answers to those issues and have a plan that addresses them, and that plan—uniquely, I think, for major rivers in this country—needs to operate across the border, because a large chunk of the River Wye is in Wales.”
“It is easily forgotten that the idea of the picturesque—indeed, the idea of domestic tourism in this country—comes from visits to the Wye valley taken at the end of the 18th century, most notably by Admiral Nelson. That was what put the idea of tourism and the picturesque on the map, and that is the historic reason why the Wye is so central to the way in which we understand ourselves as regards the natural environment and our countryside. As the Wye winds its way through Hay to the west of my constituency, through Hereford—which is right at the centre of it, of course, economically and culturally—and down to Ross-on-Wye, this priceless asset is being undermined by dreadful phosphate pollution.”