Steve Barclay
MP for North East Cambridgeshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I speak to my brief exchange earlier with the Minister. As the previous speaker, the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted, said, the draft regulations are fairly benign and very welcome to help people who are struggling with their bills.”
“The issue is not the lack of will; the issue is the alignment between procurement, regulation and clinical leadership, particularly in the colleges, as well as the ability to scale innovation—it is not about having more ministerial pilots.”
“Just to localise it to my own constituency, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB alone paid out £14 million in redundancies last year. It merged with a number of other ICBs to form the Central East ICB, yet we know hear from the Government that it should align with metro mayors, which means going back to exactly what it was before: the…”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: the Government are spending millions of pounds and there is no plan. The measure was announced without working that out, it came as a surprise to many within the system, and it has had a chilling effect on many decisions. That is not isolated.”
“I rise to speak to clause 1 on the abolition of NHS England and clause 6 on promoting innovation. What characterises the first of those is an announcement without any clear plan. That is what has driven the cost and confusion that a number of Members across the House have spoken about.”
“All this is around 18 months on from the actual announcement. The confusion seems to extend to the Government themselves, because they seem unable to answer pretty straightforward written parliamentary questions. Given the time limit, I will give just a few examples.”
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“Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) would point out, in areas of the best food production. We are seeing a gaming of the system, where the developers bring in consultants to grade the land in ways that sit at odds with historic knowledge of the value of that land.”
“When I warned at the election about Labour’s farm tax, the now DEFRA Secretary of State said that it was complete nonsense. Well, we have seen the Government introduce that tax and watched while the Treasury rode roughshod over the Department. We have a Department that is completely sidelined in the Government and failing to speak up not just for food security and farming, but for the very commitments that were made in the Labour manifesto. We see a theme running across a whole range of policy announcements that shows the instinct, the values and the priorities of this Government, who always believe that top-down knows best. They do not believe in localism. The implication for solar farms can be seen in how the delivery of the policy is happening on the ground. We are seeing clusters in the east of England, as my right hon.”
“We see the Prime Minister announce things such as the compulsory purchase of farmland in order to support infrastructure schemes; we see the former Labour leader, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, make a whole raft of decisions in his first few weeks of office on massive solar farms, overriding DEFRA; we see the Deputy Prime Minister riding roughshod over the DEFRA Secretary of State on housing schemes; and we see the Chancellor phoning officials at DEFRA the night before to say that the sustainable farming incentive had been reduced so quickly that the Government have now had to concede in a legal case that their approach was wrong and allow a further 3,000 farm applications to proceed—and that is without any clear commitments in this area.”
“Indeed, the Government are creating an incentive to do the exact opposite of own manifesto pledge, which is why I started with that point. Let me come on to the second place where we can see Labour’s approach—in the Cabinet. Of course, we cannot witness the Cabinet in action at first hand, but it is very clear—certainly to someone who has had the good fortune to sit in Cabinet—how marginalised the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has become.”
“This matters because it is related to wider trust in our politics. A clear commitment was given to rural communities by Labour in its manifesto that is being broken. I will close, conscious that many colleagues want to participate in this debate, with this comment for Labour Back Benchers. It may be that Nos. 10 and 11 have simply decided that, with their majority, they can afford to sacrifice a number of their rural MPs who had not been expected to win the election, and it may by that they decided that those MPs were not essential, but it is baffling that there is so much silence. These MPs are voting for measures that are having such a harmful effect in rural constituencies, and those measures are so short term that they are putting our food security, which does indeed matter to our national security, at risk.”
“My right hon. Friend is completely right; the issue is hiding in plain sight. When I was in the Government and sought to strengthen the protections for farmland, changes to the guidance were made, including bringing forward independent certification for agricultural land classification in soil surveys. We know at a constituency level that malpractice is going on and is not being challenged. The point is that that is not by accident. This is not an error of delivery. This is by design, and we can see that design in the raft of decisions made by the Energy Secretary in his very first weeks in office. Indeed, close to our constituencies, just near to Cambridge, there was an important announcement on a mega farm, which was made by the new Secretary of State against official advice.”
“One reason for getting the Bill through, one would hope, is to deliver on things like content credentials, which firms like Adobe have championed, to show who has produced a file, where the ownership sits and whether artificial intelligence has been used to edit it. Can the Minister confirm whether the Bill will deliver on that commitment on content credentials, and if not, why not?”
“My point is about AI being used to change photographs, and having the ability to see that through content credentials or the digital fingerprint. The point I am raising is that the Government themselves have still not adopted that, in terms of their official communications. Will the Bill deliver on that, and if not, why will the Government not adopt that best practice?”
“Does my hon. Friend recognise that there is an issue of democracy here? Successive Governments and Ministers have said that they want to toughen up the regime, but that is undermined by activist judges. That is a further reason to support the new clauses that he mentions.”
“The Minister has just set out once again, as the Prime Minister did earlier today, her steadfast commitment to the ECHR. Does she not accept that that means that the legislation is not watertight and that those who have committed serious criminality will continue to be able to stay in the United Kingdom, because of the ECHR?”
“I join colleagues in welcoming this debate. The hon. Member is making some constructive suggestions, but a simple thing that the Government could do, because they have sole control of it, is look at the British Business Bank, which is sector-agnostic. That would be persuasive to international partners and would fit with the arguments he makes. Why are Ministers not willing to give a steer to the British Business Bank?”
“In other words, our existing capacity, at over 20 megatonnes, is more than we will need in just nine years’ time. My first question to the Minister is whether DEFRA will commit to publishing analysis assessing the environmental damage of building incinerators, such as the huge incinerator at Wisbech, against the fact that they will be surplus to requirements in as little as nine years’ time. In other words, it will three years to build the incinerator, and after six years of operation it will be additional capacity to what we will need. We therefore need to assess how those two things compare.”
“One can understand why so many people share my concern with the proposal. I do not want to repeat the very good points that colleagues have made. I want to highlight two new points that the debate has not highlighted so far, which I hope will help Opposition and Government Members and support my own case in empowering the Minister. First, I will cite the Government’s own figures. On 30 December —quite recently—the Government’s own analysis showed that as of 2024 there was already 20.6 megatonnes of residual waste infrastructure capacity in England, of which 14.3 megatonnes was incineration. To put that in plain language, we already have enough incinerator capacity today to deal with the amount of waste that was projected in 2023 to arise by 2035—19.4 megatonnes of residual municipal waste.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I welcome the debate called by the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker); it highlights the cross-party consensus in opposing further incinerators. In terms of the Wisbech incinerator, it is remarkable that an application to build an incinerator half the size was rejected in the local authority next door, so the response of developers was to double the size in order to make it a nationally significant infrastructure project, to get out of the local planning rules; to put it next to the biggest school in the district—only 700 metres away; to take waste from six different counties, all on small roads in a rural market town; and to have a chimney bigger than Ely cathedral in the flat landscape of the Fens.”
“Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) pointed out, the predominant waste now going to incineration is plastics. It is the burning of plastics that drives the environmental damage, and that is why the hon. Member for Derby South correctly pointed out that it is the dirtiest way that the UK generates power. My second question is whether the Minister will commit to publishing a composition analysis study of the residual waste treated at energy recovery facilities, as I asked for in a written question on 16 October. DEFRA has confirmed that it is undertaking a composition analysis study, but it was not published with the December analysis. Will the Minister commit to publishing that, so that we can see where the waste is going? Again, that fundamentally changes the environmental case around incineration.”
“We need to look at the respective merits of building huge incinerators and the damage that they will do compared with the short-term bridging options. The second point is that the waste mix has changed. That was a feature of the BBC report that the hon. Member for Derby South highlighted. Burning food waste produces less CO 2 than putting it in landfill, but burning plastics produces 175 times more carbon dioxide than burying it. The reason that that matters—to my first point about bridging—is that the mix going into incineration has fundamentally changed from when the planning rules were initially put in place. What we have seen, and what the BBC highlighted, is an increase in food waste being dealt with through anaerobic digestion. As the right hon.”
“That is a fair point, which is addressed in DEFRA’s December paper. But as my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) highlighted, there are two at Huntingdon, another at Peterborough and two at Boston. There is already a concentration, so I do not accept the point about the east of England in that paper. My point is that we need to see analysis from DEFRA around the bridging issue for the next few years as the Government meet their legal target to reduce the amount of waste by 50% between 2019 and 2042. The amount of residual waste is coming down and we already have sufficient capacity, but there is a bridging issue. There will be short-term options around landfill refuse-derived fuel exports.”
“Just to follow the logic of the Minister’s point, if more recycling is being promoted by the Government, which is what she has set out, self-evidently both the composition of waste and the existing capacity for incineration will be sufficient. In their December paper, the Government said: “While there are a number of waste incineration facilities that are consented, but not yet under construction, it is highly unlikely that these will be brought forward.” If that is the Government’s expectation, and if the Minister is increasing recycling and the capacity is sufficient, why not give clarity to the public and her own Back Benchers by saying, “No more incinerators”?”
“The Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Waugh) are both right to praise the important work that rugby league and indeed rugby union clubs do in their communities. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to better balance that with the Public Accounts Committee’s cross-party criticism of how her Department is managing its covid loan book?”
“The Active Learning Trust is closing the sixth-form Neale-Wade Academy, which will be harmful to social mobility in Fenland. Given that the hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) raised a similar point, may we have a statement on what action Education Ministers and the regional schools director can take to ensure that the Active Learning Trust, about which there are serious questions, puts in place a recovery plan and is much more transparent about how its decisions are reached?”
“What was missing from the Secretary of State’s statement, and from his reply to both Opposition Front-Bench spokespeople, was the Government’s estimate of the cost of the tariffs, particularly in the context of the Chancellor’s fiscal headroom. Will the Secretary of State update the House on that specifically?”
“The Minister seemed to be saying that, having stamped his foot and intervened, he has fixed the data issue, but colleagues have been saying that they are concerned about data. Could he clarify—is he still concerned about gaps in data, or is he saying that the gaps in data have now been addressed? Could he also write to the Members attending the debate to confirm the data issue?”
“The Minister did say that. I welcome the fact that he has just corrected what he said. I think this is a debate in which everyone has a common purpose—particularly relating to the vulnerable and those with medical devices when there are storms and other crises—which is how we can arrive at a solution. Hopefully, we can work on that together. What came out of many of the interventions we have heard was a concern about gaps in data. For those of us who, as Ministers, have attended Cobra, one of the first things that is almost always found is a concern over the quality of data. In covid, we had to get the Information Commissioner to change the rules for the clinically extremely vulnerable because we did not have enough data.”
“The Minister said a moment ago that all the money will stay in the sector. I assume he means the farming sector, but is that correct if some of the money goes to nature schemes or well-respected nature charities, which by nature are not part of the farming sector? Will he confirm that he is assuring the Committee that all that money will remain within the farming sector?”
“My hon. Friend is, as ever, making an excellent speech. One of the uncertainties is that there is no sense of when the scheme will open and what the budget will be. Briefings from Government insiders—particularly in the Treasury—say that non-protected Departments will be subject to significant cuts in the forthcoming spending review. Does he share my concern that it is very difficult for farmers to plan when the Government’s approach gives them 30 minutes’ notice and no clear information on these issues?”
“It sounds like in one week my hon. Friend has seen more farms than the Secretary of State has since the general election. I draw his attention to the story in the Farmers Guardian that suggests the Secretary of State has been to only four farms since the general election. On a more serious point, that story also draws attention to the 84% of farmers who feel that their mental health has been affected by the autumn Budget. My hon. Friend is correctly setting out the financial implications of the changes, but does he share my concern about the mental health issues as well?”
“The Bill is a missed opportunity on things like incinerators, as it will make it easier to get planning permission to burn plastic, which is damaging for the environment and damaging for nature. And yet the farmers, who are the people we need on side, will have their land confiscated by an undemocratic quango that is being given more control, and there is nothing in the Bill to address that. Given the shortage of time, it would be helpful if, in closing, the Minister could clarify some of those points.”
“When the Secretary of State was challenged on that, she said that the democratic controls were being maintained but streamlined. I do not think that is how Natural England will interpret it. Let me give the House a practical example. In the David Fursdon review of Dartmoor, there was conflict in interpretation regarding sites of special scientific interest between Natural England and farmers who had farmed the common for many years. There was huge tension, which David Fursdon skilfully managed to resolve, but that will not happen if the powers in the Bill are enacted. Finally, there is a paradox. The people we need on side to support nature restoration are the farmers, who are the ones who care most about nature.”
“Either the power is needed—in that case, what is the impact of clause 72 on farmland and farm security?—or not much land will be taken as a result, in which case why do we need this power now? In the shadow Secretary of State’s opening remarks, he pointed to the number of Cabinet Ministers who have objected to development schemes in their own constituencies. That is a challenge that we all face, as Members of Parliament, when constituents raise concerns. Certainly, my experience of dealing with Natural England —not least as Secretary of State for DEFRA—was that once things were in primary legislation, it would often take a gold-plated interpretation. It may just be that Ministers are being bold, but it would be helpful to understand why they think that granting further powers to seize land will not weaken democratic control.”
“The Secretary of State talked in her opening remarks about the Bill unlocking land for nature and energy schemes, so we have one part of the Government consulting on the land use strategy while another part is legislating to seize land that is in the scope of that ongoing consultation to use for its schemes. It would be helpful if the Minister told us why he is ignoring the consultation that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is conducting. Perhaps we will just have a slew of Government amendments. If the new powers for Natural England are indeed necessary, that suggests that a significant amount of land will be taken for nature restoration schemes. We know from the land use strategy that about 12,000 farms will be lost over a generation.”
“Last week, they said that they were scrapping a big quango, NHS England, because they wanted to ensure more democratic oversight, yet this week they are giving huge new powers to another quango, Natural England, so that they can seize land at below market value with little democratic oversight. Indeed, the hon. Member just mentioned the bat tunnel. It is a strange paradox to criticise that while supporting giving Natural England more powers to make similar decisions. There is not just a lack of consistency, but a lack of co-ordination across Government. The Government are currently consulting on the land use framework—the consultation is open and does not close until 25 April—but Ministers seem to be ignoring that.”
“To pick up the comments made by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis) on reservoirs, I also have a reservoir proposed for my constituency. I noted that the Secretary of State refused to be drawn on specific schemes, including when challenged by her own Front Bench. Perhaps the Minister can tell us in winding up how much more quickly a typical reservoir will be constructed as a result of this Bill and what the percentage of savings will be from that. That sort of detail is currently lacking from claims such as those made by the hon. Member. [ Interruption. ] I note the Minister’s wry smile. Let me start by picking up what the Government said last week and what they are saying this week.”
“The Home Office reimburses councils for their spending on children under 18, at a rate of between £114 and £143 a day. On 15 February this year, councils reported that the payments from central Government do not cover all the costs. The risk is that rural communities, which have been hammered by this Government on farming and in so many other areas, will have to pick up the police costs, the health service impacts and the other impacts on public services that come from more distant regional commissioners, which is exactly what clause 9 risks doing. It would be helpful if the Minister could say a little bit more about that when he comes to close the debate.”
“An example of that are the requirements on the police when a child goes missing, which is rightly an issue of significant concern. Of course that is something for which the police should prioritise time, but having a concentration of care homes in rural communities can require significant additional resource. Clause 9 fails to address supply and demand. What will be done about the fact that it is further divorced from the rural communities where commissioning is often placed? Given that the Government are hammering rural communities in so many areas—not least farming—how will they reassure my constituents in Fenland that the failure of the money to follow looked-after children sufficiently is going to be addressed? I will finish with one example from the recent data coming from councils.”
“Because Cambridgeshire has had significant population growth but the police funding is based on the population in 2012—that is how the police grant is calculated—commissioning does not pick up the additional pressures that the Cambridgeshire force is facing, particularly in its rural communities. Those pressures are exacerbated where we have looked-after children with a troubled history interacting with the criminal justice system, and where there are challenges around unaccompanied child migrants. Nothing in this Bill says how regional commissioning interplays with the formula for police funding, even though the data I have from Cambridgeshire police is very clear that a significant proportion of their time is spent as a consequence of this policy.”
“That is further stoking demand, and it is very regrettable that the Government are not taking action and, indeed, are reversing some of the safeguards put in place by the previous Government to reduce demand. Again, clause 9 is silent on those issues. Given that I represent a rural community, my third and main concern is that regional commissioning risks being further detached from local communities where there is cheap housing, and where there is therefore a temptation to further concentrate looked-after children, in a way that does not join across the Government’s silos with areas such as police funding and housing. I will give the House a specific example.”
“I accept that is not a panacea for all the issues affecting looked-after children, particularly those needing secure accommodation, but one would have expected the Bill to go further in that regard. It is also the case that what the Government are doing about unaccompanied child migrants is further exacerbating demand. I draw the Minister’s attention to the 2023 Home Office research, which shows a massive increase not only in the number of unaccompanied child migrants, but in the number of disputed cases where people claimed to be children when there was concern that they were adults. In half of those cases—49%—the individual was found to be an adult.”
“My concern about the profit clawback is that when the Minister comes to claw back the money, he will find that it has long since moved. It would perhaps be helpful if the Minister could clarify the estimate that has been given to the Treasury for how much the Department expects to recover in clawback, because the Opposition suspect that it will not be particularly effective. Likewise, there are missed opportunities in the Bill for reducing demand, and I very much echo the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien) in Committee about boosting foster carers—an issue that is frequently debated in this House.”
“I rise to speak to clause 9 and the important issue of looked-after children, which I think Members from across the House care about greatly. It is for that reason that the Bill is so disappointing, because there are missed opportunities on supply and demand, and particularly on my concern—I represent a rural constituency with cheaper housing—about the concentration of looked-after children in particular communities, which the Bill’s regional commissioning fails to address sufficiently. I will take those issues in order, starting with supply. In Committee there was a lot of discussion about profiteering, and I am sure the Minister will respond to my pointing out that the Bill is silent on addressing the real and probably shared issue of how we boost supply by pivoting to talk of the profit clawback.”
“My right hon. Friend, who has detailed experience in the Department, is speaking as eloquently as ever on this topic. Before we move on from the Government Members’ interventions, is he, like me, enjoying the slight irony of hearing them argue for consistency, when, on inheritance tax for farmers, the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign, winter fuel, national insurance and so many other issues, consistency does not seem to be a priority?”
“I put on record my apologies, Dr Murrison—I was giving evidence to the covid public inquiry, which I hope colleagues will realise was the reason for my late arrival. I have a quick question for the Minister: could he clarify when he was first told of the Government’s decision to close SFI for new applications?”
“Where there are bad behaviours, that often results in significant legal costs to the local authority and settlement payments. The Government are giving more powers to combined authorities. Does the Minister agree that where a combined authority incurs significant legal costs and settlement payments relating to staff who have left, whether employed or interim, that information should be shared in a timely fashion with board members? If so, will he write to me to confirm that that is the Government’s position?”
“Can I press the Minister on that point? Does that transparency include sharing those settlement payments and legal costs with the authority’s board members? It strikes me as remarkable if those costs are not even shared with board members. He has very helpfully clarified that he expects transparency. I would like that transparency to be with the public—perhaps he can say something on public disclosure—but can he at least confirm that the information should be shared with board members?”
“Does my hon. Friend think it is notable that current chief medical officer, who remains in post under this Government, in his 2023 annual report, cited specifically the concern that cold homes were a driver of hospital admissions? My hon. Friend will also note that delayed discharge from hospital is often a cause of pressure in urgent and emergency care departments, yet the Government have again delayed any changes to social care. While we all recognise that there are often challenges—indeed, as a Minister, I faced them myself—the hypocrisy of those who suggested before the election that there were simple solutions, and yet are now taking decisions that are actively leading to elderly, frail patients being admitted to hospital, at the same time as other decisions are deliberately delayed, is striking.”
“On choices, the Government have chosen to fund not just the Chagos deal, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) said, but the above-inflation pay rises to trade union workforces such as train drivers. The hardship cases set out by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and others show that this issue is not about a wider debate on the economy, the mistakes made in the Budget or their effect on our growth projections, but about choice. The Government have chosen to give money to their other priorities—but before the election, they told pensioners that they would choose to prioritise them.”
“Not only standing, but I recall that in the debate on Monday, the hon. Gentleman was sitting next to the Minister, such was the pressure on seats. Given that none of the Minister’s colleagues have bothered to come to the debate, perhaps he might consider sitting over there again and giving the Minister a little company. As other hon. Members did, the hon. Gentleman is talking quite rightly about the speed and the targeting of the policy. The point is that it was a choice. There is a debate to be had about universal benefits and targeted benefits, but the speed with which it was done meant that some of the targeting, such as for pension credit, was not addressed. That has caused the cliff edge that hon. Members on both sides of the House have spoken about, so that if someone is just over the threshold, they lose out entirely.”
“The central justification that the Government give for taking away winter fuel payments is the fiscal position, but then they say that they want people to take up pension credit, which comes at a cost. Could the Minister say how many people would need to take up pension credit to cancel out the fiscal benefit? If that were to happen, it would undermine the central premise on which he is putting forward the policy.”
“With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I am confused by his argument. He is talking about the crux of the issue: what is the scope of this tax? He voted in favour of it. He was quoted in the Eastern Daily Press as saying that it would not hit “proper farming families”. Is it his position that this tax does not hit proper farming families, or should the scope of the tax be changed? That is the crux of the issue, and with respect to the argument he has set out, I do not know what his position is, other than that he voted not to change the scope.”
“The Minister quite rightly raised the important issue of patient safety. In October, the Government appointed a new boss of the CQC. The Minister will be aware that, in January, following a BBC investigation and whistleblower evidence, families alleged serious wrongdoing regarding a number of baby deaths at the hospital of which the new CQC boss had been chief executive for the past 10 years. Can the Minister say how that has been factored into the appointment of the new CQC boss or whether the families, in the view of the Minister, were wrong in the concerns they raised?”
“He was appointed in October. Whistleblowers, the BBC investigation and families have raised concerns regarding maternity services at Leeds. The Minister will be aware that there is renewed scrutiny of maternity safety and rightly so. That is a key issue for the CQC. Were the families wrong in their concerns? What has the Minister done to investigate them? Quite rightly, she highlighted the point of patient safety.”