Mr James Frith
MP for Bury North · Labour · United Kingdom
“Our AI skills boost programme is already delivering results. In an answer given to the House last week, I referred to the early careers funding and work on curriculum reforms to come, such as an AI-inclusive GCSE in computing.”
“The Government are committed to supporting the worker experience through the AI transition, and have a proud record of advancing workers’ rights.”
“We are doing so with the data and AI ethics framework, the AI playbook, and transparency standards that ensure the public can understand how systems are used. We are also supporting UK firms that provide third-party AI-assurance ecosystems, demonstrating that AI systems are safe and reliable as well as creating new jobs.”
“We see the potential of AI in everything from scientific discovery to better public services and stronger economic growth. The Government have a clear responsibility to make sure that the change at the heart of this debate reinforces rather than weakens the fabric of our society.”
“Programmes such as TechLocal are creating new jobs, traineeships and professional training, while scholarships and fellowships are supporting the next generation of researchers and innovators. Nobody is waiting 25 years to tackle the threats, however. AI harms are very real, and we do not sit idly by when it comes to tackling them.”
“The Government’s principle is to regulate at the time of deployment or at use. I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s argument, but it is important that we strike the right balance between innovation and regulation.”
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“Governors and Headteachers can no longer guarantee that such cuts will not impact on our children.” Their letter goes on to warn of the consequences of this funding shortfall—larger class sizes, fewer teachers and senior staff, decrepit school buildings, loss of teaching assistants, fewer GCSE options on offer, difficulty in recruiting teachers and so on. One Bury head told me: “It is quite simple—there is less money in schools. Government rhetoric says that schools’ funding has been maintained but does not mention the additional costs (NI payments, paying for services which were previously free, pay increases, pension increases etc.)” Most alarmingly, this impacts on children with special educational needs and disability.”
“I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Improving education chances for all young people in my constituency is one of my top priorities, as it will be for many across the House but, sadly, for too many the reality does not match the Government’s rhetoric. So I want to record the reality shared with me by the 67 head teachers from primary, secondary and special schools across the borough of Bury in their letter to The Bury Times in April this year, in which they said: “Ministers repeatedly claim that education funding is protected and seem to be in denial about the realities of school funding and its impact on children. They talk about there being more money in education than ever before, when there are half a million more children in schools than in 2010. Tough decisions will have to be taken.”
“If he responds to me in this debate, I will update the school when I am proudly its prize-giving speaker on Thursday night.”
“In response to my recent request for Lord Agnew and the Secretary of State to consider rebuilding Tottington High in Bury in my constituency, I received a letter acknowledging that the cost of a new school is on average between £9 million and £12 million in current money. Lord Agnew referred us to the £2 million pot given to Bury to look after all its schools. Since the ambitious days of Building Schools for the Future, capital funding has all but disappeared. Tottington High has been overlooked. It was booted off the BSF when the new Government came into power in 2010 and then pushed off their list for new builds. School governors expect more contact from the HSE than the DFE. As I asked the Secretary of State last week, will he send officials from his Department to visit the school to see for themselves the case to rebuild?”
“With respect, the Minister will have a chance to address these points when he sums up. I have heard of Government intervention, but I am unsure how this Government can take credit for an increase in the birth rate—and anyway, the birth rate increase happened on Labour’s watch. Another quarter of pupils are in schools rated good or outstanding that have not been rated by Ofsted for at least eight years, and 300,000 pupils are in schools not inspected since 2010 because they are in converter academies. I know there is much agreement across the House on these issues, so I say to Ministers: take note of the forensic attention that our heads and your colleagues are paying to performance and ensure that, come the Budget, that is reflected in the allocation. I will conclude with a brief word on capital spending.”
“I appreciate such sharpened focus and attention in the Minister’s remarks. He feels strongly supported by that information. Would he care to respond to my request for additional SEND funding to be maintained in line with the increase in the number of SEND pupils? Does he believe it acceptable that 77% of excluded pupils have special educational needs and disabilities?”
“I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. What is the Government’s plan for mandatory work placements as part of their new T-level when the number of learners exceeds the placements available from local employers? Answers that include “remote learning” or “online” will not be accepted.”
“So they have already paid the deposit and committed without having seen the contract. We think that is far too late for those things to be made clear to them. Rhea Newman: It is also potentially very difficult to identify charges in a contract, depending on how they are written in, and it is very difficult to negotiate. That is a really good point about when you receive the contract, but even if you received it earlier, if you want a particular property and you know that queues of tenants are trying to get it, you are in a very weak bargaining position.”
“By the end of the tenancy, one of the cabinets had got water damage, so the landlord tried to claim for that. The tenant successfully argued that that was the landlord’s fault because of the extractor fan, and he was awarded his deposit back. But the point a lot of our supporters made was that in these cases they knew their rights and knew that they were in the right, but they felt that a lot of tenants in a similar situation would not have the confidence to take on the landlord, or perhaps could not have a deposit just held in escrow for months on end while that gets resolved. Katie Martin: In terms of transparency, it is required that any of these incidental fees default fields are written into the contract, but we know from our research that a quarter of tenants receive their contract on the day they are moving.”
“If they are charged at, say, £60 a time and there is no limit on how often a landlord or agent can send those letters or emails, that might be considered an unfair term in the Consumer Rights Act, but as we have said, it is actually quite difficult for a tenant to challenge that. That is why we think there need to be clear provisions up front about what is chargeable and what is reasonable. Dan Wilson Craw: We have a couple of examples. We asked our supporters for examples like this and someone was required by their landlord to have their chimney swept once a year even though their fireplace was completely out of action. There was another whose landlord would not fix a broken extractor fan in the bathroom, so the bathroom got very damp.”
“Not all of them—many landlords are totally fair and reasonable, but some are not, and we think that the legislation should prevent those unscrupulous landlords from being able to take advantage of tenants. I do not have examples off the top of my head. Rhea Newman: I was going to pick up on a point that was made earlier. Garden maintenance could be quite a good example: what is expected of a tenant in terms of maintaining a garden? If you give landlords and agents the potential to do so, some—it is only some—might attempt to write in quite creative things that put unfair expectations on a tenant, and then charge them for not meeting them. The existing examples we see that we are particularly worried about are the letters to chase late rent as well as emails, phone calls and so on.”
“Q This has slightly been touched on, but does Citizens Advice, or anyone else who wants to answer this, have an example of landlords taking the mick when it comes to default fees and incidental fees? We have discussed the loss of keys, but there is some concern about incidental fees, as well as the range of fees that are applied, being increased as an opportunity to recoup some of the earnings that agents or landlords might be losing. Are there any examples of that? Katie Martin: I am sure our advisers see examples of that every day. I am afraid I do not have any off the top of my head—I do not know whether other panellists do. We know that many tenants are being exploited by landlords.”
“Q My other question is about whether holding deposits are needed. You raise an interesting point, Katie, that essentially the landlord and agents feel assured that the tenant is moving in because they have paid a holding deposit, but then they do not follow up with their own obligations and issue a contract on time. Is that what you are saying? Katie Martin: I am saying that they do not see the contract. I am not sure about the exact requirement for when they are supposed to see it, but we know that in reality they do not see it until the point when, as I say, it is too late to challenge. We do think there is a role for holding deposits, but we think they should be limited. We also think that the terms on which they should be refunded should be really clear. It should only be in the case of misinformation—”
“Q So the holding deposit coming off or being the first month’s rent is the scenario for getting it back. Katie Martin: The holding deposit is separate from the deposit that you keep for the course of the tenancy. I think the holding deposit would be capped at a certain amount. It is not something that we have looked at closely.”
“The 2015 Boxing day floods devastated the Redvales and Radcliffe areas of Bury. The Environment Agency has drawn up a £37 million flood defence scheme for the area but, after raising £30 million between the EA, Greater Manchester and Bury Council, there is a £7 million shortfall. That shortfall would be covered if the bid with the Minister were successful. After being unsuccessful in the first round, we are to be considered again for funding from the £40 million pot for deprived areas. Can he update me on the progress of the bid? Successful bids to date have protected fewer than 100 homes, but ours would protect 1,200.”
“What we think we can do is put those things in place in a very systematic way and provide access to those services to the entire market, so that basically every landlord and tenant has access to a professional tenancy creation service. By having the holding deposit placed in a sensible way, having money held in a client money account and having a professionally drafted tenancy agreement, we provide a huge consumer benefit across the industry—on both sides, actually.”
“We believe the only reason they do not use a high street letting agent is cost. We think that, by doing that for £50 rather than the average fee of over £1,000 a year, we provide huge accessibility. In terms of our high-level growth, those landlords are coming from the DIY sector and obviously we are taking share from the high street as well. In terms of actual gross employment, I do not really like the word “disruption” to describe what we are doing. There is a lot of good practice in the industry already. A lot of our processes layer technology on to that, but we are not trying to tear up the rule book and pretend that we can do something better than what is already in the Housing Act or, say, the property ombudsman code. Those are ways of working that are really important to protect consumer rights.”
“David is not quite correct about the service that we provide. We do not provide a fully managed service—25% of landlords use a fully managed service, in which they do not want to meet the tenants and they want a professional to handle the interaction. We do not serve that 25% of the market. We do serve the 75%, which is the 25% of people who use an agent for tenant finding and the 50% of people who effectively do everything themselves. What we try to do is to make that accessible, so for £50 we will do everything from taking that holding deposit to referencing, contracts, deposit protection, first month’s rent collection and things like that. What we are actually doing is professionalising the 50% of the industry who do not currently use a high street letting agent.”
“Q This is very interesting. In the contributions we have the new and future economic model in this industry, and the old economic model. One is protecting the status quo and one is saying, “This direction will be fine.” Adam, will you just talk us through—whatever you feel comfortable with—your growth as a business in recent years, including any employment opportunity growth that you have provided by virtue of these 70,000 properties last year, please? Adam Hyslop: Sure. At a high level, those are the numbers, so we are taking significant market share. What is really interesting is that I do not see our business pitched against the status quo of the high street. Actually, 50% of landlords do not use an estate agent. What we try to do is to provide—our watchword—accessibility, which is in terms of not only ease of use but cost.”
“Q And to answer the question? Adam Hyslop: Sorry, I meant to loop back to the question. We are not really disrupting in the sense of eliminating employment or anything like that—that is one of the myths here. Actually, most of the suppliers that we use are those used by high street agents anyway. We have a large contract with a referencing company, which does all our tenant referencing. We contract gas engineers, inventory clerks, photographers—all those different services—across the industry.”
“Q Has that grown significantly in recent times, or is that a core rump of people you have kept? Adam Hyslop: The idea—this is no secret in the industry—is that it is possible to have good practice in the industry in terms of following a professional tenancy creation process, but to use technology to make that something that does not need lots of phone calls and interaction in between. That is one of the main insights that keeps our core headcount low. Yes, we have far fewer people working on administering holding deposits and administering contract drafting, for instance, simply because we have the technological systems and processes in place to manage those.”
“Someone has bought the house, and they move on to the next property. In a lettings transaction, once you hand over the keys that is just the start of your relationship with the tenant. If the letting agent is managing the property they are there to help landlord and tenant throughout the entire process of the tenancy. It is a much longer term.”
“That is not the case with the traditional agencies, where the landlord always pays significantly more—around £1,000, as Adam points out. You asked specifically about the number of people employed for those 70,000 tenancies. I can think of only one large corporate agency off the top of my head for which I know the statistics, but I know that one of the three large corporate agencies manages 60,000 properties and employs 7,000 people to do that. That is about much greater interaction on the ground on a day-to-day basis during the tenancy. I suppose the question is what we want a letting agent to do in the future. Are the Government saying that a letting agent is like a sales agent, to a certain extent? Once you hand over the keys in a sales transaction, the estate agent’s role is finished.”
“We have to factor in the fact that the places most tenants, buyers, sellers and landlords go to look for their properties are Rightmove and Zoopla—the big properly portals. An individual landlord renting out a property on their own cannot access Rightmove and Zoopla. Therefore, services like Adam’s, which are entirely necessary in the market, act as the entry point into Rightmove and Zoopla so that those landlords who want to self-manage and want to be able to advertise their properties on Rightmove and Zoopla can do so. That is why Adam is able to charge much lower fees. The middle service is £29 to a landlord and £20 to a tenant. A couple renting a one-bedroom property, if they reference through Adam, will actually end up paying more than the landlord.”
“Q Mr Cox and Ms Thomson, I take it on board that Adam is saying his business is not actually hugely disruptive. It sounds pretty disruptive in terms of some of its transformative impact and the market share he is taking from the high street, but I am assured that he uses existing networks, contractors and professionals in the sector. How are you catching up with that way of working to improve accessibility? It feels like there is an equalising quality to Adam—he is saving money for the landlord and for the tenants. Are you just behind the curve on this? David Cox: I am afraid I would disagree. I would not characterise it in the same way at all. It is a different type of service.”
“It is the letting agent who mediates between the tenant and the landlord, so when the tenant fails the reference and something comes out of the woodwork the agent sits down with the tenant and often says, “Okay, well look, I understand you had that five years ago; I will have a word with the landlord.” It is that interface and activity that the agent is offering. Also, for example, for housing benefit tenants, a mechanical, online technological system is not necessarily going to give that type of tenant access to the private rented sector, whereas the agent who sits down with the tenant, talks it through and presents the case to the landlord often facilitates that. It is not old-fashioned; it is a need.”
“Q In your opening contribution you talked about serving two masters. I would say that the premise of that is inaccurate. The tenant has no choice as to who the agent of their property is. The landlord instructs as the client. That relationship does not change ever, at all. The decision maker remains the landlord. A relationship might be involved; you may well have more involvement with the tenants than the landlord, but the landlord is the decision maker here, and therefore I would challenge the very premise by which you are protecting this status quo. I do not believe that the tenants hold an equal relationship. Isobel Thomson: I do not think we are comparing like with like. I think Adam Hyslop’s service, which is obviously really good, is meeting a need for a certain part of the market; but I feel that lettings is a people business.”
“We need a transformation agenda to bring back to Labour the wards and communities in which people voted to leave because they felt left behind; and we need a modern vision for a country dealing with the world. The Government must stop wilfully adhering to threats made by a tiny rump of ideologues and do what is right by this country.”
“Giving them such information will better prepare us all, because away from here, the prism through which Brexit is seen is that of communities, families, homes, jobs and prospects. That must also be our approach to Brexit: not deals in the dark, but information brought to light. Sharing the information from these Cabinet discussions is part of doing so. A customs union is an economically literate plan that is supported by the CBI, as well as employers providing local jobs in Bury and elsewhere. It accepts the result of the referendum, allows us to move away from the stalled state of things as they are and lets us quickly get plans for a post-Brexit Britain.”
“It is said that the hard-Brexit ideologues are prepared to sacrifice themselves to get what they want on this point, but there is no heroism here. It is not heroic to put a company out of business from the comfort of their places on the Green Benches. It is not heroic to put jobs at risk as they nod with their accomplices across the table at the latest Brexit dinner. No hero takes risks with others’ lives when only they will live without the consequences of failure. In Bury, we have businesses of all persuasions, ambitions and origins. Each of them tells me about their careful consideration of the implications, threats and, possibly, opportunities posed by leaving the EU, but they all want a customs union. As they weigh up their next moves, they should be enabled to do so with the best information—good and bad—that is available.”
“Releasing this information is part of the job: this is about scrutiny, not mutiny. As I have said in the House and in my constituency, I want a Brexit that is the best for Bury and Britain, not the confines and machinations of hard-liners among Government Members sitting on their protected bit of green-belt land, not a stand-off in Government two years in, and not a Prime Minister in a spin, announcing ideas, but admitting that they all still need work. And we have not even left yet. The serious point is that current jobs, our future prospects and just-in-time manufacturing rely on getting this right, and peace in Northern Ireland relies on us getting this right. This is detail on which millions of jobs, lives and livelihoods depend, and detail that our real economic growers need sight of.”
“In Bury, a small business and its supply chain are still owed £4.1 million by Carillion for their work on the Royal Liverpool Hospital. Will the Chancellor agree to meet me and them to hear their ideas about how we can prevent the likes of the Carillion collapse from happening again and protect our small employers from the changes in the construction industry?”
“Seventy MPs from across the House in yesterday’s Westminster Hall debate all agreed that we need Orkambi on the NHS now. Can the Minister tell me what he will be doing differently for sufferers of cystic fibrosis and when we will hear news of a breakthrough? Sufferers of cystic fibrosis are slowly drowning in their disease without access to Orkambi.”
“It is not right that the judgment criteria used to determine funding on globally common diseases are universally applied when the uncommon traits of a rare disease bring untypical symptoms and a different economic argument. We risk overlooking the incredible efficacy of the drugs now available. The power in numbers is not much solace to a cancer sufferer, but such is the profile of cancer treatment that we are all assured of the progress being made there. The same cannot be said for the rare diseases argument, however. We have a job to do in making the case for rare diseases. I hope the Minister will listen to the case being made for a medicine and treatment decision-making body for rare diseases, as well as consider how we bring NICE into the modern age, 20 years after it was established.”
“Our country has the largest number of cystic fibrosis patients anywhere in the world, so we ask the Government what they are going to do for our cystic fibrosis sufferers. If they will not make Orkambi available, what are they going to do? The transformative, life-prolonging impact of the drug is tantamount to life-saving. Used early enough, it can ensure that people fulfil their potential. It can prolong life and lung capacity, enabling those with the disease to contribute to the economy and wider society, as well as providing extra decades with family and loved ones. The Government should consider the case for a commissioning body for rare diseases.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. My constituent Graham Little got in touch with me. His wife Claire has cystic fibrosis. Until that moment, I was not aware of the potential life-changing drug available to sufferers of cystic fibrosis. Graham and his father-in-law Brad raised with me the status of the precision medicine Orkambi. The result of today’s debate could make the difference and give them decades more with their wife and daughter, Claire, and give her decades more with her children. I cannot imagine how that must feel. We can either observe the steady death caused by cystic fibrosis—it has been compared to drowning—or reach for the life jacket, which is primed, ready for use and in all sizes.”
“Treatment for cystic fibrosis has moved from science fiction to science fact, so the Minister is required to act and step in. The Government have a choice to make. They can ignore our arguments, or, having heard them, choose to change their mind. In changing their mind, they can change lives and lifetimes. I urge the Minister to do that and make real-life change for cystic fibrosis sufferers a reality. He would have support from Members across the House, as has been demonstrated by the magnificent strength of feeling in the contributions and arguments made today.”
“A price somewhere between what it was offering in its recent pipeline deal and a single purchase deal is where we are now. I ask Vertex to please stay at the table. We keep in mind its proposal of having Orkambi readily available, swiftly and easily, for all. We urge focus on enabling that. The rest will surely follow. At the table, there is a ministerial chair that needs filling by a Minister who is willing to lean in to the debate and signal their support for prescribing Orkambi on the NHS; willing to lead and lean in to the deal-making part of the job to transform lives; willing to look at the costs and to help with the price; and willing to align the political will to the possibility of life for those with cystic fibrosis.”
“Patient groups are at the table, and I commend the work that the Cystic Fibrosis Trust is doing on behalf of CF sufferers. We need compromise and urgency from all. Nobody should expect Vertex to surrender its drugs, but neither should we accept a failure to reach an agreed price. I say to Vertex that the pipeline might need to be for another time. When I met Vertex, I cautioned that its “portfolio of drugs” approach may be cost-prohibitive to a decision, and that appears to have been the case. We need Orkambi for patients today. It is not the time to test the innovative decision making of NHS England. Vertex should take in good faith that a fair price to the world’s largest population of cystic fibrosis sufferers will set it up well for future developments.”
“I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We need to see far more nimble-footed decision making by the decision-making body, as per my call for a specific dedicated body for rare diseases. Parents in my constituency make the case about the plight of those with rare diseases. There is a constant sense of those enduring rare diseases being overlooked. We come to the remaining agents at the table. Just this weekend, NHS England has refused to agree to the deal that Vertex proposed last month. I do not think the wording of the refusal was constructive, but I am not surprised that the NHS was unwilling to sign up in principle to the deal, which amounts to a futures prospectus from Vertex off the back of a sure thing with Orkambi.”
“The Minister says, “You can bet your life” that he will continue to be involved. Any further delay is literally betting lives and the ever-diminishing lung capacity of those who go without Orkambi. What will he commit to do differently from today, and when will Orkambi be prescribed by the NHS?”
“I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Some 56% of Bury schools that responded to my schools survey told me that they had been forced to cut special educational needs and disability provision because of school budget cuts. Does the Minister acknowledge that a bigger number does not mean more money per student, and will he commit himself to a real-terms per-pupil fair funding formula that encourages the inclusion of SEND pupils in mainstream schools?”
“Some small businesses in Bury are still picking up the pieces following the Carillion collapse. Small business confidence in the north-west is at its lowest in four years, with UK skills shortages being blamed for some £3 billion of lost earnings. The Chancellor chose to come to the House today to give us this spring statement, yet he had nothing to say. We heard a fake news forecast with nothing for the real job creators. Will he give some certainty to the small businesses that are providing the jobs in towns such as mine, and will he stop this outsourcing to puffed-up vehicles such as Carillion, which appear to be too big to fail until the point when they do fail?”
“In Affetside, broadband is practically non-existent, and we all know that areas with no history of suitable broadband will also suffer from low-skilled internet use, which does not square with the inevitable claim that people can use internet banking instead.”
“The butcher, the baker, the dressmaker, the art gallery, the coffee lounge, craft shops, pet shops, micro-breweries, chocolate factory and specialist food stores, family-run restaurants as well as charity shops, have all spoken to me of the impact on them of the drying up of available banking and a local bank. The increasing risk of isolation for our older communities is also a consideration. Those for whom Ramsbottom is the nearest town with a bank, endure average broadband speeds 27% lower than the national average. My constituency is ranked 62nd of 75 constituencies in the north-west on that measure, and 467th of 650 constituencies in the UK.”
“Or the Head for the Hills music festival, the civic and town markets, or just a healthy mooch around the shops. Of course, the problems cannot all be laid at the door of the banks, but they are a considerable part of the cumulative issues facing this community, including business rates, public transport links drying up, and less disposable income after making ends meet. It is the independent nature of Ramsbottom that gives it its zeal. These are our entrepreneurs, who are not denying the march of progress with broadband, with cash alternatives and online shopping; they are, as I am, rightly defending their modern but traditional offer.”
“It will be one of the things that a business proprietor considers in determining where to set up in the first place, and if a local authority is struggling to attract new shops, it will understandably opt for another eatery for the night-time economy or reach for a high-street name, thus risking diluting the independent offer of a town like ours, which is, in its first instance, the fundamental nature of the place and why visitors come at all. It is all tied in to this proud community—one that has pulled together at a time of mourning recently, or a time of great testing—the Boxing day floods two years ago. There is always something fun to do and to see, whether at the chocolate festival, black pudding throwing competition— [Interruption.] It is true.”
“Paying in, cashing up, small impulse buys, floats, cash-only stalls, making deposits and general local bank services are all still part of business life and life and living in Ramsbottom. However, first Barclays then NatWest closed, and now Royal Bank of Scotland is reducing its opening hours, with visitors to Rammy, and customers reducing with them. A bank nearby is likely to determine the opening hours of any retail operation or business, as the proprietor will need to factor in the bank’s closing time with that of their business and the leaving time of their staff.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) and the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) on securing the debate. I would like to speak about Ramsbottom, which is frequently in the top-10 lists of best places to live and visit. Of the two market towns that I am proud to represent, Rammy has been hit first and hardest by the bank closure trend. It needs a community banking offer. When I visited small businesses there in December, the shopkeepers, charities and businesses all spoke of the distinct mix of problems that they face in keeping their heads above water. Community banks, and banks generally, bring tradespeople to the town. They increase footfall and help to determine a town’s future prospects.”
“They are the real employers, wealth creators and taxpayers. At least 80% of our economy is made by those people. They are job-creating heroes, sweating it so that the Government receive their taxes. The Government should not dismiss the argument that this is simply a commercial decision for the big banks. I urge the Government, instead of propping up the Carillion model of employment, to stand up for these real employers, heed the concerns expressed about the withdrawal of banks, and make a commitment to new community banking so that everyone in our society can benefit.”