Daniel Zeichner
MP for Cambridge · Labour · United Kingdom
“I recall, as a shadow Minister, visiting a major institution in the country and sending the management into panic when I asked them where the bus stop was to get back to the station.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the location of bus stops. I am so frustrated when I have taken the train to Cambridge, arrive at the station, see the bus, but have to walk 200 yards around the platform, come out of the station and walk 200 yards back to the bus stop, to find the bus has gone.”
“Devolution and local government reorganisation are different things. To be honest, they should probably be considered separately, but they have become so interlinked and intertwined in this debate that it is impossible to do so. If we are to have a stronger devolution settlement, it is right to spend more time getting it right.”
“I commend the Secretary of State and his team for their determination and resolve in the transfer to renewables. In the extraordinary and unprecedented weather that we are having at the moment I can assure the House that some shade would be really welcome in parts of the east of England.”
“I commend all the hard work that has gone into both the road map and the profitability review by the civil servants, the ministerial team and so many people across the sector, including Baroness Batters.”
“On that point about speculative building, I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is probably not a fan of big, bold projects of this kind, but does he agree that there is a very good example just down the road in Cambridge?”
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“If ARM becomes a subsidiary of the American company Nvidia, we will in effect be handing over control to the current US Government, as it could become subject to their foreign investment regulatory committee, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The Trump Administration will then ultimately hold the reins over which countries use the technology—which is used in almost all mobile phone chips in the world—and where it will be possible to export it. It is quite clear that Trump has no qualms about interfering in the operations of tech companies to pursue his own foreign policy goals. Chinese tech companies have already voiced concerns that American ownership of ARM could jeopardise access to ARM technologies for their businesses.”
“The deal will affect jobs not just now but in the future, and could have serious ramifications. ARM’s current business model has been highly successful. It is based on remaining neutral in the tech market and licensing chip designs to any chip maker that wants them. ARM’s co-founder Hermann Hauser has warned that although SoftBank was able to maintain ARM’s neutrality, Nvidia is different: it is a chip maker itself, so companies using ARM will now find themselves as competitors with its parent company. Some could start to seek alternatives. Nvidia has said that it will maintain ARM’s neutrality, but we have no legal assurances. Will the Government be seeking assurances that ARM’s unique business model—and so its success—will be secured? The sale has implications both internationally and diplomatically.”
“It could be a perfect match, or it could mean rationalisation and job cuts. There is little sign of much meaningful consultation with those who work for the company. Having followed the media commentary, it has struck me that those who work for ARM hardly seem to have a voice—a doleful consequence, I fear, of a largely non-unionised workforce. The money may be good, but when it comes to times such as this, the value of having professional negotiators acting on one’s behalf becomes apparent. I am grateful for the strong interventions from not only Unite but Prospect, which also has members at ARM. I have a further question: will the Minister confirm that Cambridge will continue to be the company HQ and explain how promises will be enforced? Anyone can make promises, but will they be kept? How will they be enforced?”
“Since the announcement, Nvidia has made promises to keep ARM based in Cambridge, to hire more staff and to retain ARM’s brand, but without any legal guarantees, I fear that those remain just promises—doubtless genuinely made—not guarantees. Will the Minister confirm whether the Government are seeking legal assurances in this deal to ensure that ARM’s headquarters remain in Cambridge and it retains the some 2,700 jobs it supports in my constituency and across the country? I am sure she will say that it is hardly likely that Nvidia would ditch highly sought-after engineers, but members of Unite have told me that many jobs, particularly in IT, are much more vulnerable. Similarly, I am told that some 300 people in Cambridge work on graphics processors, an area in which Nvidia works.”
“I do not think any other country in the world would allow such a jewel in the tech crown to be handed over in this way, so I urge the Government to scrutinise the deal carefully and to step in and use powers available to them to impose strict, legally binding conditions. The sale raises a range of questions and issues of local, national and international significance. I have been raising them for many weeks now, as have trade unions and the co-founders of ARM. We have received little substantial response from Government, although I was pleased to have a direct discussion with Nvidia today. I invite the Minister to provide some answers from the Government’s perspective.”
“I thank my hon. Friend the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. He makes an important point that I will come on to, but I return to the Government’s position, because I find their silence slightly ominous. It has been breached only by briefings to selected journalists and, frankly, that does not seem good enough to me. It would be astonishing if this Government, with all their talk of world-beating test systems and taking back control, considered allowing us to lose further control of one of the only areas of technology in which we are genuinely world-beating and world-leading. It is particularly astonishing that the Government might be prepared to throw away British influence when it represents such a key bargaining chip in trade talks in a post-Brexit era.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for taking a further intervention. I just want to clarify who the Government have been talking to. She said that there have been conversations with the company—is that ARM or Nvidia? It is a key difference. I understand the point she makes about the sensitivities, but the same was true in 2016, and it was possible then for the Government to secure guarantees. Why not now?”
“There are over 360,000 licensed taxi and private hire drivers in England, and the sector has been very hard hit. What assessment has the Secretary of State made of the impact on the sector, and will he tell us how he plans to measure the impact of his rather disappointingly weak statutory guidance issued back in July?”
“The Government will be aware of the significance of the sale of Cambridge-based Arm to American chip maker Nvidia. Will the Government intervene both to secure the headquartering and jobs in Cambridge and, perhaps more significantly, to get an exemption from the American CFIUS—Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States—rules, which give the American Government such leverage? Why on earth would we want to throw away such a bargaining chip in advance of trade negotiations?”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend. He was launching the report at the same time as DEFRA questions this morning, so will not have seen the Government Front-Bench response, which I thought was slightly disappointing in treating it as just another report. One of the top issues in terms of pure policy in the report is protecting and restoring the natural world, which is very timely given the Living Planet report. Does he agree that we will tackle that only with international co-operation, which is why it is so very important that we abide by international law and rules?”
“Signing an international treaty is not a game; it is a commitment. Catherine Barnard is professor of European law at the University of Cambridge, and she warns that we agreed to a dispute resolution mechanism that could lead to heavy fines or further sanctions. What legal advice have the Government taken? If Ministers choose to ignore that advice, can the Minister spell out the consequences for those Ministers?”
“One of our great trade and export success stories in the tech sector is Cambridge-based Arm, the tech giant that designs the chip that goes into almost every mobile phone in the world. During the covid crisis, it has been subject to the threat of sale to an aggressive American manufacturer. What is the Government’s response? What discussions is the Minister having with colleagues to ensure that this jewel in our tech crown is not dismembered?”
“That is all in the future, of course. I was talking to GPs in Cambridge last week, and they told me about the difficulty they have with getting tested before going into care homes. Indeed, one of them told me she had to pretend to be a care worker to get a test. That cannot be right after all this time, can it?”
“Over the next few weeks, hundreds of thousands of students will be returning to universities, which is very, very welcome, but what we are seeing at the moment is each institution having to make its own decisions. Universities UK tells us that most students will be getting in-person teaching, but what advice is the Secretary of State giving to those universities and what support is his Department giving?”
“I appreciate the recent announcements, but can the Minister reassure us that all universities will be able to access those loans, with freedom to invest in line with local priorities? Will she take a look at the proposals from the new Whittle laboratory in Cambridge, which needs to match the already secure £23.5 million in private sector funding to develop the first long-haul zero-carbon passenger aircraft?”
“The Secretary of State will be aware of the important financial contribution that Chinese students make to our universities and research sector in particular. What plans do the Government have should those numbers fall? Perhaps more importantly, what can he do to reassure Chinese students and those of Chinese origin in this country that they are safe and welcome here and what can he do to tackle Sinophobic racism?”
“People working in the criminal justice system in Cambridge tell me that because of the current measures there is limited court time available and backlogs are building up. However, when they suggest moving to available suitable premises—nearby arts premises and so on—they get very little response. Will the Secretary of State talk to the Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service to get some action on this and get justice moving in Cambridgeshire?”
“That certainly seems to be the case for regulation 2, in which regulation (EU) No. 1306/2013 is being further revised. Mr Robertson, you and the Minister will no doubt be glad to hear that I have no further substantive queries on the remaining amendments, although I cannot help wryly noting that one or two of the tidy-ups to regulation (EU) No. 639/2014 had to do with points that were raised when we discussed SI Nos. 91 and 90 earlier this year. It is good to know that our time here discussing these things is not wasted. We are content for the regulations before us to proceed, and we look forward to the next round.”
“576 mainly establishes the mechanism to be used for calculating the exchange rate to be used. It also tidies up some minor points that I suspect were left over from earlier changes. It is not controversial, although I am puzzled—I do not expect the Minister to have the answer today—as to why paragraph 6 of article 46 in regulation (EU) No. 1306/2013 needs to be taken out. Perhaps I am being over-suspicious, but the fact that it refers to intervention measures makes me wonder whether the Government are quietly removing one of the tools that may yet be needed if times get tougher ahead. Will the Minister clarify? I am also struck that this SI seems to be in some cases amending the amendments made in SI 2020 No. 90, which makes some of this quite hard to follow.”
“Perhaps the Minister can explain what thought was given to moving some funds from those very big payments into more environmentally and socially friendly schemes, and will she confirm that it could be done now? It is a political choice. I appreciate that modulation has long been unpopular with influential farmers in England, but I would also gently reflect that we will see something remarkably similar introduced under ELMS; based just on the information for next year, we can see that some of the larger payments will indeed be reduced substantially. I am bound to ask: why is that right for ELMS, but not for direct payments? And also the converse: will there be similar scope to ensure that payments under ELMS can be capped, as effectively happens now in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland? SI 2020 No.”
“The ceiling has been adjusted to reflect the outcomes from the Bew review, as the explanatory memorandum helpfully explains at paragraph 7.6. The Welsh Government have opted to pass money on to their farmers, but, as the Minister has explained, it appears that the Scottish Government are taking a different path. I noted her comments, but would be interested to hear her views on how the additional €60.43 million is to be further allocated. We also see from the helpful explanatory note, at paragraph 7.7, that although caps apply to basic payments in Scotland above €600,000, in Wales above €300,000 and in Northern Ireland above €150,000, there are no such caps in England, but merely the 5% over €150,000 required by the EU. Happy days continue for some.”
“But I am duty bound to note, as I have done before, that for all the Government’s claimed green zeal, the opportunity to divert funds from pillar one to pillar two in England has once again been passed over. Control may be taken back, only for us to carry on as before. The area payment system that the Government are so keen to dismantle in the Agriculture Bill carries on unchanged for another year in England. Meanwhile, the environmental and social schemes funded under pillar two, the stewardship-type schemes that the Government rightly wish to promote, get no additional funding. Labour Wales uses the maximum 15% allowed; Conservative England does not. Perhaps once again the Minister could explain why the Government continue not to take the opportunities on offer.”
“Be that as it may, today we have two fairly routine items to consider, which would formerly not have required decision and would have been handled in the normal structures of the European Union: a decision on the exchange rate to be used to calculate payments; and the distribution of those funds between the nations, and allocations between pillar one and pillar two, essentially to fund rural development programmes. As has been said, there is also an adjustment to take account of the recommendations of the Bew review. All this ties back to EU regulation 1307/2013, which we enjoyed back in January, and the Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Act 2020, which we also enjoyed discussing earlier this year. I am sure that hon. Members will be relieved to hear that these measures are not controversial and we will not oppose them.”
“Today’s statutory instruments are for scheme year 2020. As I recall, clause 10 of the Agriculture Bill outlines what happens for future years, and as I understand it, measures under that clause will also be subject to affirmative resolution. While we continue to struggle with applying what is now considered an out-of-date system, the EU of course has moved on—to an ambitious goal of 25% organic by 2030. I fear that while it is doing that, we will be in the slow lane, toiling away at those “oven-ready” basic payments.”
“That is relevant to today’s discussion, because of course it is the potential replacement system. However, I am slightly disappointed to see that the closing date remains the end of July, so the consultation period has effectively been halved. Could the Minister comment on that and explain the thinking? We are talking about a major change—as the Government says, the cornerstone of the system. I suspect that the reason for the closing date is probably that there is now some urgency because, as the Opposition warned earlier this year, things do not always go as smoothly as one hopes. My next question for the Minister follows from that. I want to check that my understanding is correct, and that we will indeed repeat this exercise each year until basic payments are completely removed from the system.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Mr Robertson, and a pleasure to continue this fascinating, if occasional, dialogue with the Minister about how we ensure a regular and healthy supply of food to our fellow citizens by helping our farmers financially. I am sure that the Minister enjoyed as much as I did going back to EU regulation 1307/2013 over the weekend, which is where we started the conversation some months ago. We are of course in a transitional phase, and it may be lengthy. It struck me, in preparing for this Committee, that we could be coming back year after year to discuss such statutory instruments—in 2021, ’22, ’23, ’24—who knows? But I am sure each iteration will prove yet more illuminating. May I say how pleased I was to see that the environment land management scheme consultation is back open?”
“The Minister has been hearing a strong message from the House this morning about animal cruelty, because, sadly, the lockdown has seen an increase in it, with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals reporting 47,000 incidents —the Daily Mail calculates that that is one case every two minutes. As we have heard, the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Bill has been constantly delayed. The Bill has cross-party support. The Government are supposed to be supporting it and they are supposed to be running this place, so will the Minister guarantee that Finn’s law will be on the statute book by the end of the year and available to the courts?”
“There are approximately 1 million 16 to 18-year-olds in England, and some 700,000 study in colleges. Astonishingly, this week’s education catch-up plan omitted those colleges, including many in my constituency of Cambridge. Can the Prime Minister explain the Government’s thinking behind this, and will he sort it out?”
“Now we have a Government who all too often seem indifferent to growing hunger. At least they have been shamed into doing one thing right today.”
“Since April, an additional 265 children have joined their ranks, I am told. We are fortunate to have the Food Poverty Alliance in Cambridge, backed with funding from the Labour city council. Volunteers cook and deliver meals, including to 70 families, at the kitchens at Cambridge Regional College. They cooked 2,000 meals last week. While we are talking football, although Cambridge United has sadly been forced off the pitch, its “Here for U’s” scheme was enough to get me cheering again. I understand that the bread and butter pudding has been a particular hit. The Government’s U-turn is welcome, but until we get through this crisis, have a real living wage and have job security, there will continue to be need. At one time, we had a Government who sought to Make Poverty History.”
“Schools are nervous, especially after Government encouragement to use Edenred meant that schools dumped better-functioning schemes for the Government’s preferred provider. There needs to be clarity about the financial support schools will receive if they choose not to use Edenred. The Government need to stop penalising well-managed schools. Some do have cash in the bank and in their reserves, but it is for a purpose—investing in buildings and books and computers. The Government guidance that schools with a budget surplus in the current financial year cannot reclaim the cost of providing vouchers needs to be rethought. Some will say that Cambridge is prosperous and, in many ways, it is, but even before the covid crisis, 1,741 children were already eligible for free school meals and that figure is going up.”
“To add insult to injury, the vouchers do not work in many city shops. My local food hub told me of the despair of a mum of four children from Chesterton. She put credit on her phone to receive the vouchers, then asked a friend to print them, as she does not have a printer at home. She then walked to her local shop with her children in tow, shopped, queued, and finally reached the checkout, only to be told that the national vouchers were not redeemable in the Co-op. She was inconsolable. All the food had to be put back; she had no way of paying for it. Think how that must feel. Why not use non-Edenred schemes? After all, stores such as the Co-op have alternative food voucher schemes ready to go.”
“For some, the free school meal voucher scheme roll-out has been nothing short of a disaster, and I know of 16 schools in my constituency that have reported problems with the system managed by the private company, Edenred. At a time when they had enough on their plate, head teachers were pulling their hair out. School after school told me that the system had crashed, with error messages appearing, some parents receiving vouchers but not others, and the impossibility of having a conversation with Edenred. At the height of the problems, staff at North Cambridge Academy were getting up at 6 o’clock in the morning to try to log on before the system was overwhelmed. At that point, they had been waiting two weeks for vouchers. If it takes the intervention of the local MP to make something happen, something has gone wrong.”
“At sixth-form and further education colleges in areas such as mine, many young people go to college by bus. Indeed, Mark Robertson, the principal of Cambridge Regional College, tells me that more than half of his pupils are in that position. Given that only one in four places on buses is now viable, the huge extra cost is a major obstacle to returning. What is the Department doing to help?”
“I conclude by observing that this all seems very slow; it takes many months to do simple things. That seems to be a problem that the Government have in other areas as well. We have a climate emergency; we do have extreme weather, and it is of course important to help where we can, which is why the Labour party supports the derogation today. However, we must also be careful to not undermine environmental measures that are designed to tackle that crisis.”
“Removing these rules would, for example, avoid the need for an SI next year to derogate for crop diversification rules should—I emphasise ‘should’—extreme weather occur again.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 2 June 2020; Vol. 803, c. 1310-11.] That is not all that terribly clear to me. It seems to suggest that a very complicated picture is emerging, in which there is a mixture of retained EU law, sustained by the continuity Act and related SIs, and the so-called burdensome environmental elements, possibly modified through clause 9 of the Agriculture Bill—but with that being dependent on extreme weather. Obviously, we all hope that we do not have extreme weather next year, but it seems unclear whether the short to medium-term approach to basic payments includes the three-crop rule. Perhaps the Minister can clarify that.”
“The Minister said clearly that this measure is for this year only, but when I listened to the Minister in the Lords winding up yesterday, it seemed a little more complicated than that. He said he had been asked “how any BPS changes will be made after 2020. We will of course use powers in the Agriculture Bill. The Government intend to bring forward SIs to continue the direct payment schemes for the 2021 scheme, to begin to phase these payments out and to simplify the schemes. I fear that this will require rather more than one SI, but I have sympathy with all noble Lords looking to minimise the number of separate statutory instruments, within reason. The Government have said that the simplifications for 2021 could include removing some or all of what I would describe as burdensome greening rules.”
“In the other place, the Minister—Lord Gardiner of Kimble—rightly said in his opening statement: “Having up to 30% of their payment at risk would be a significant financial burden for farmers to bear and cause considerable worry.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 2 June 2020; Vol. 803, c. 1297.] I totally agree with him, but I wonder whether the Minister before us could explain why those worries are different from the worries of those who face similar losses over the next couple of years during the move to a new system. I also note that a number of contributors yesterday picked up the point about extra costs caused by uncertainty—so much so that some called for clarity for next year, on the basis that decisions will need to be made very soon.”
“In a spirit of constructiveness, I suggest that a more regionalised approach in England could be helpful, or could even achieve the baseline environmental standards that Labour argued for in the Agriculture Bill. The greening intent of the greening measures was to tackle some of the very causes of the extreme weather we are suffering from. We have a climate crisis, and we should be careful that, in dealing with the immediate consequences, we do not undermine the very tools we are trying to put in place to minimise the risk of such occurrences in future. We are in the special position of benefiting from the excellent discussion that took place in the House of Lords yesterday. There were many excellent contributions, but one or two points from that discussion are worth teasing out.”
“I do not think she will be able to answer that—I expect she will say tell us that this is an iterative process—but I ask it to make it clear that designing interventions to achieve these ends is often harder than it looks. That raises a further question. As I say, the three-crop rule was a blunt instrument, but today we are approving a derogation that potentially undermines the greening intent in parts of the country that were perhaps not so badly affected by floods, with the purpose, absolutely rightly, of helping those who were badly impacted. Will the Minister tell us what plans there are to avoid this kind of situation cropping up in the future?”
“Some will say that we do not need it here, and others will say that we do, but I hope we all agree that we want to challenge those monocultures. In a sensible rotation system, that rotation would be part of good farming practice. I suspect that the Minister knew that I would come armed with my favourite document. Under the new system that we discussed at length a few months ago, is it possible to imagine an environmental land management scheme that does not encourage this kind of good farming practice? We certainly do not want to encourage a further move to monoculture. Furthermore, under that system, will there be a process for similar derogations in the event of extreme weather conditions?”
“Delayed decisions cost money, and there are those who did not know what the outcome of this discussion would be. Some bought seed—some, I am told, at higher prices than normal—so there are consequences to these delays. Has an assessment been made of the cost of that? If not, it would be interesting to understand why. I listened very closely to the Minister, as always, and I am well aware that the three-crop rule is unpopular with many farmers, but it was introduced for a purpose. The greening element of the direct payment system was an attempt to tackle the increase in monoculture that we see right across Europe. Many say that it is a blunt instrument, and I do not disagree, but it had a serious purpose.”
“We have the complexity of the Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Act 2020, its relationship with the retained EU legislation, and the need to remain World Trade Organisation compliant, so I can kind of understand why this is difficult, but there is a marked contrast with what we were told in December: “It’s all so easy—it’s oven-ready!”. Frankly, even just this little bit of the process looks like a dog’s dinner. A lot of time is going to be spent in Delegated Legislation Committees over the coming months discussing the complexity and cost of the scheme. The cost is another thing that I want to ask the Minister about. She may tell me that my analysis of why the change has taken so long is incorrect—if she has another explanation, I would like to hear it—but I would also like to hear about the cost to farmers.”
“Minette Batters, the president of the National Farmers Union, said at its conference that farmers were hugely frustrated: “We have left the EU, half the country’s under water and we are still going to abide by” the three-crop rule “and process thousands of force majeure claims. It just seems absolutely extraordinary.” My question to the Minister is: why has it all taken so long? Why so slow? In her answer that day, she hinted that there was a range of technical difficulties, and that things would happen soon. That was March, and here we are in June. I can offer some suggestions as to why it took so long. Of course, when the same thing occurred back in 2018, we were members of the EU, and we sought a derogation from the European Commission. Life is not so simple now; it is much more complicated.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I extend a warm welcome back to the many people who spent many happy hours in this room a few months ago, discussing the Agriculture Bill. As the Minister accurately explained, at the time, we were suffering a period of intense rain; now, of course, we are suffering from drought. It seems like quite a long time ago, but there is no doubt that the awful impact of the floods caused by Storms Ciara and Dennis was intense. You will be relieved to hear that we will support this instrument, and there will be no need for a Division, Mr Hosie. Let me take the Minister back to a happy discussion that we had in this place on 3 March, when we were debating clause 9 of the Agriculture Bill, and I quoted Farmers Weekly to her.”
“This is not just about tourism and business, important though they are; it is also about people. My constituent Professor Matthew Gaunt’s eight-year-old son Dylan lives in Germany. Professor Gaunt and his ex-wife have joint custody, and in former times he used to visit fortnightly to stay with Dylan for four days. The pandemic has torn apart families throughout the nation, but it is an international problem, too. Will the Home Secretary ensure that such difficult cases are prioritised?”
“The resilience of the food supply chains has been impressive, and we thank all those who work on our farms and in processing factories and the pickers, delivery drivers and, of course, shop workers who have kept the food flowing to our supermarkets. The foolish dismantling of the seasonal agricultural workers scheme, now made worse by the covid crisis, means that we face an alarming shortfall in the 70,000 experienced people needed to pick our crops. The laudable “Pick for Britain” campaign may help, but it was reported only a few weeks ago that of the 50,000 applicants, only 112 had made it into the field. Can the Secretary of State tell us what those figures are today and what is his plan B?”
“What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on the effectiveness of the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme.”
“Despite that, the uptake of the coronavirus business interruption loan has been disappointing, leading to the bounce-back loans. Could we have much more accurate reporting on this, much more like the health statistics and perhaps also by region, so we can see what is actually happening?”
“Of course, hydrogen-powered buses have a much longer range, making them more suitable for rural routes and rural areas, and we have some of the leading hydrogen-powered bus manufacturers in the world. The Government have introduced the all-electric bus town scheme. Where is the equivalent for hydrogen?”