Ms Polly Billington
MP for East Thanet · Labour · United Kingdom
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for coming to the House and providing clarity and reassurance that the allegations will be taken seriously, but does he agree that alongside the transparency of this process comes the need for responsible reporting and a responsible Opposition?”
“I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am honoured to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward), and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) on securing the debate.”
“In Khirbet Zanuta, I saw the remains of a school partly funded by UK aid. It was destroyed by sustained settler attacks, which forced the community to flee. The British Government should seek compensation from the Israeli Government for the destruction of infrastructure funded by UK taxpayers.”
“We have a responsibility to make that state viable, and that starts with banning trade with illegal settlements. The UK should not allow goods produced on occupied land to enter our markets, and nor should British businesses profit from activity that our own Government say is illegal.”
“They are about defending international law, supporting those on both sides working for co-existence, and preserving any realistic prospect of a negotiated two-state solution. My hon. Friend the Minister is a man of principle, and of strong values and determination, and he will resist excuses for not acting.”
“I recognise what my hon. Friend says, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) pointed out, these are guidelines at the moment rather than obligations. Because they are only guidelines, they can be ignored.”
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“I am interested in what the hon. Lady says about the safety of those drugs. Does any adverse event data exist globally to quantify how much harm and suffering could be caused while inducing the dying process?”
“It is important for my hon. Friend to be able to explain in detail what the philosophical and institutional implications are. But, fundamentally for ordinary patients, what does she think the Bill will do to change the relationship between the patient and the doctor?”
“I think we all agree that it is important for us to protect all consumers from the volatile oil and gas prices that my hon. Friend has mentioned. However, while we shift and undertake that reform, has the Minister considered the benefits of having an energy social tariff, to protect customers now from those volatile oil and gas prices, and to prepare them for a cleaner, better and reformed energy market in the future?”
“I welcome these sanctions, which need to be seen in the context of £129 million of extra aid, the refunding of UNRWA, sanctions on settlers, the suspension of the arms trade and, importantly, the suspension of trade negotiations. That is the context of the action by this Government. However, the suffering goes on and it is not accidental; it is deliberate. The achievement of these sanctions today is a result of this Government working with other Governments. We know that we achieve more together than we do alone. In that context, and with the summit next week, will the Minister take the message from across this House and from all our constituencies and communities that Britain wants a recognition of the Palestinian state unequivocally, immediately and unconditionally? That is a message from Britain to the summit next week.”
“Would my hon. Friend help clear something up? The opposition parties seem to be claiming that they urged us to make this decision, but that is not true, is it? They actually urged us to give winter fuel payments to millionaires at the expense of our public services.”
“Part of the reason why we have missed out on funding in Thanet and in other coastal areas is that the deprivation in coastal communities is often hidden by the upper-tier local authority statistics—forgive me for being a bit of a data nerd on this. East Thanet is one of the most deprived areas in the south-east, but because it is in Kent it is lumped in with Tunbridge Wells and Sevenoaks. The existing Treasury orthodoxy has meant that coastal communities have often missed out on vital funding. I was encouraged by reports that the Green Book is being reformed in ways that will allow communities that have been overlooked for investment for decades to finally share in funding. If done right, that could be transformational for unlocking potential and economic growth in coastal communities.”
“Frontier Economics analysis shows that a £2 billion investment in mission-critical neighbourhoods would deliver £2.4 billion in fiscal benefits to the Treasury. We reduce the cost of failure by investing in these communities. I am the chair of the coastal parliamentary Labour party, and co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on coastal communities, alongside my good friend and ally, my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume). The ICON report highlighted yet again the need to invest in our coastal communities. Of the 613 mission-critical neighbourhoods in the report, almost half are on the coast. The 25 neighbourhoods identified with the highest need in all of England are all coastal—every single one.”
“It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. State failure can come in many different forms. When he was Leader of the Opposition, the Prime Minister said, “we must restore the sense that this is a country that can rectify injustice, particularly when carried out by institutes of the state.” —[ Official Report , 20 May 2024; Vol. 750, c. 668.] He was referring to the infected blood scandal, but lack of investment is a different form of state failure, and the sentiment therefore still stands. The state has failed so many of our communities. We must restore the sense that this is a country that can rectify injustice. This is not a new idea. In 2009, the Labour Government launched the Total Place initiative to improve the delivery of local public services and to increase the focus on communities.”
“Is the hon. Gentleman prepared to accept responsibility for the significant increase in child poverty caused by the two-child benefit cap that was introduced by the last Tory Government?”
“Friend is giving the Government the power to report, surely it would be right for the Government to give themselves the power to act once they have received evidence that something is going wrong, enabling them to enforce the copyright law that we all now agree is clear and should therefore be enforced.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I understand that he is being extremely patient in these circumstances. May I draw his attention to something that happened before 2010? I know that that was a long time ago, but both he and I are old enough—and, indeed, ugly enough—to remember those times. When Lord Mandelson was Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, what was then known as the Napster clause was included in the then Digital Economy Bill. That was done precisely to give reassurance to the music industry that if, later on, downloading became so problematic that the music industry was going to be hollowed out, the Government would give themselves the power to act. If my hon.”
“Does she agree with me that the shortage of prison cells, because of the Conservative party, and the lack of alternative punishments, because of the Conservative party, have contributed to that situation, which blights the lives of those in our communities?”
“What does the Secretary of State make of the extraordinary admission by the former Lord Chancellor last year that the previous Government chose not to take action on the prison crisis because “you have to win votes”? Fortunately, the Conservatives did not win any votes in Margate, Broadstairs and Ramsgate, which is why I stand here today to say that neighbourhoods in East Thanet are blighted by drug dealing, theft, burglary, sex trafficking and antisocial behaviour, which ebbs and flows according to whether the main criminals, organisers, pimps, co-ordinators and dealers are in or out of prison, causing mayhem.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for his tone and for the direction of travel that he is setting out. Bearing in mind that he is talking about “the most rapid fashion possible”, why are the Government refusing to put notice of backstop powers for transparency in the Bill? That is what the creative industries would like to see, in order to give reassurance that, in anticipation of further legislation along the line, the Secretary of State and the Government give themselves the powers to act, when and if they see that the current rules are being broken systemically by AI and tech companies.”
“On the point about speed, determination and the conventions of this House with regard to the legislative programme, in some ways that gives the Secretary of State a case for putting backstop powers on the face of this Bill to create the confidence that the creative industries require, so that we do not have to wait for full legislation. Having some confidence now would give the Government the power to enforce if they saw something that passed the test and there were some transgressions. There is a case for what we are asking for because of those constraints.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I am struck by not only the Supreme Court ruling, but the interim guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is causing extreme distress for a number of my constituents. I am having to rely on Margate Pride’s own advice to businesses to reassure them about things in the ruling and the guidance—they should be taking into account that it is not legally binding and does not change the law, and that businesses should not feel pressured to rewrite or roll back their trans-inclusive policies based on the draft guidance alone. This situation, in which interim guidance from the EHRC is causing more stress and anxiety than the initial ruling, is not acceptable for anyone.”
“It is welcome that new clause 10 seeks to protect more individuals, but can my hon. Friend say why she has still not chosen to make provision for hospices and care homes to opt out without having their funding threatened?”
“I thank my hon. Friend very much for giving way. Although it is important that a doctor’s reasons for refusing to provide assistance are noted down, there is nothing in the Bill to ensure that, if the person makes another request in the future, the next co-ordinating doctor will be made aware of the first doctor’s report. Will she say something to reassure those of us with concerns that people suffering mental ill health, including depression, may seek assistance repeatedly until they find a doctor who will assess them as eligible?”
“This situation is one of the most egregious examples of state failure and a consequence of the worst chaos and incompetence of the last 14 years. The Lord Chancellor has been clear that, given current levels of demand, we cannot build our way out of this crisis. Does the Minister agree that we have to be honest and do something different to ensure that we never again run out of prison places, including improving the existing prison estate and investing in the Probation Service, so that we can reduce reoffending and thereby reduce the pressure on prison places?”
“My right hon. Friend will be aware that mums and babies have been badly failed in the past by maternity services at Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother hospital in my constituency. I am sure she will share my delight that the unit has now been rated “good” by the Care Quality Commission. That improvement is testament to the hard work that has been put in by hospital management and staff to turn things round. Will she join me in welcoming the £1.8 million for additional improvements in the maternity unit, and share my rising confidence that QEQM has turned a corner—though I will keep a close eye on it, to ensure that we see further improvements in care for new mums and babies in Thanet?”
“I thank my hon. Friend for all his work—it must sometimes feel very lonely on that Front Bench—and particularly welcome the urgent session that we managed to secure at the United Nations, but things have become more difficult in recent days, and we must ask whether we are doing enough with our allies on a number of fronts, particularly recognition. A private letter has been sent by dozens of my colleagues on this side of the House, and there is unity on both sides of the House in favour of recognition of the state of Palestine, action on sanctions for Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, and on the violent settlements. Above all, can we please rule out a trade deal?”
“I thank the Minister for giving way; he is being extremely generous with his time. The Minister is talking about the possibility that the amendments put forward would not do anything today, but there is an urgency in the creative industries because the stuff that they create is being scraped now. Will he prioritise transparency by committing at the Dispatch Box to introducing enforceable obligations, if not through a statutory instrument then at least through a clear public commitment, so that transparency will be central to the Government’s approach to AI and copyright?”
“Again, my hon. Friend is extremely generous with his time. Will he therefore consider interim measures or guidance that would deliver similar outcomes while legislative options are being explored? That is what the creative industries are looking for.”
“Over the weekend I was shocked, but not surprised, to see the new statistics for young people in Thanet who are not in education, employment or training—having hit 11.6%, the figure is the highest in the south-east. Some 3% of young people in Thanet also experience support for special educational needs. Although I am not suggesting that correlation equals causation, can the Minister explain how denying access to the health-related element of universal credit will help those young people into work?”
“One of my colleagues had a conversation with representatives of the AI sector. She was very enthusiastic about the idea that there would be an enormous amount of growth in this country if they were able to adopt what they wanted, so she asked, “What would you like?” They replied, “We want the BBC archive, for free.” In circumstances of this kind, we need to think not only about transparency but about the second stage, which is licensing. Without the opportunity for small creators to have the power to permit and therefore to be paid, all this will be for nothing.”
“I observe that there is an issue of territoriality here. We have actually managed to get carve-outs and protect this country from deepfakes, for example; if something is made abroad, it cannot be used in this country. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should be able to have similar carve-outs for creatives, such as her constituent and my constituents, so that if AI-generated material is made elsewhere, it cannot be deployed in this country, in order to preserve a proper legislative framework to protect the rights of our creatives?”
“I am struck by the hon. Gentleman’s interest in making sure that young people get the opportunities that they deserve, because in East Thanet—far away from Scotland—we are deeply concerned that one in 10 young people is out of education, employment or training. I wonder what he has to say about the SNP’s record on this issue, given that one in six young people is out of education, employment or training in Scotland.”
“What is important is not only economic security for individuals and the opportunities that a strong economy would provide for them, but the economic security of our country. The SNP voted against Great British Energy and opposes nuclear power, both of which are vital to our energy security and our economic security. If it is opposed to those, how can we be sure that it would be competent to deliver immigration policy?”
“SNP Members talk about a period before Brexit that was ideal, and yet their proposal for this immigration system would increase the complexity at the border, including by creating a land border, despite the complexities of dealing with the island borders that we already have.”
“I am struck particularly by what my hon. Friend says about the impact being felt elsewhere in Whitehall when a lever is moved. I give the example of a friend of mine, who was a doctor working in a depopulated part of Cumbria for part of the month and in Orkney for another part of the month. How would we organise the visa that enabled her to serve the population in Orkney? Would she need a visa to operate in west Cumbria or, indeed, in both places? Those problems that cannot be solved by a one-line Bill. We need to be serious about the fact that we need an overall immigration policy, rather than one entirely designed by and for Scotland.”
“I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for securing this debate. In the light of what she is saying about young lesbians, I want to champion the work of Schools OUT, which is led and was founded by one of my constituents, Sue Sanders. The organisation educates people in school about the importance of LGBT diversity, challenges prejudice at exactly the important moment in young people’s lives when they will be exploring who they may want to be as they grow older, and increases the tolerance and respect that everybody deserves.”
“In the context of my hon. Friend’s experience as a lesbian mother, will she consider the experience of lesbian mothers in their 70s and 80s, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance)? Does she agree with me and my hon. Friend that there is an argument now for an apology to those mothers, who experienced not just shouting in the street but institutional attacks on their right to family life as a result not of the law, but of the prejudice of the courts?”
“One of the staples of British values is fairness; if someone does a fair day’s work, they get a fair day’s pay. Not only is allowing creatives to have their protection eroded not fair, but it is simply not British. We ask for simple fairness, the right to permit or protect, and the right to be paid.”
“We do not expect or allow other industries to do that, so why do we think it is acceptable to force creatives to accept this deal? I am not here to defend the status of our copyright laws—we are not starting from a high baseline in this country. Sadly, creatives are all too used to being ripped off and taken advantage of. The Government have acknowledged that our copyright regime is out of date, and I absolutely agree. However, it cannot be right that the answer is simply to make it harder for creatives—to make low-paid work even less rewarding and insecure work even more insecure. If we choose to modernise copyright law to increase protections for our national cultural wealth, we can turbo-charge the growth potential of this industry. Currently, we are on a path to undermine an industry that is already insecure.”
“The Government are currently taking the Employment Rights Bill through its legislative stages and, once introduced, it will be genuinely transformative for people in low-paid and insecure work. Simultaneously, the Government are consulting on proposals that could actively take away rights and protections from creative workers. The right to have one’s work protected by copyright law is enshrined in British law. Copyright exists to protect not just the wealth of the individual but the wealth of the nation. It is fundamental to the success of innovators, entrepreneurs and creatives—and it is fundamental to our economy. The claim that AI and tech firms will take their business somewhere else if they do not have free access to people’s work is, quite frankly, extortion.”
“It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I first declare an interest: my wife is a professional photographer. People who create art in any form add value to the world. They inspire people, provoke ideas and push boundaries—and deserve to be fairly paid for it. In East Thanet alone, we have the famous names of J. M. W Turner, Vincent van Gogh, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins and Jane Austen—all inspired by that constituency, all having called it home. Current creatives who live there must be paid to be able to do the same. The image of an artist in a garret has become romanticised to the point that it is almost used as an excuse not to pay creatives properly.”
“Copyright is often enforced by people who have licensing departments to enforce it, but smaller creatives, such as many in my constituency, find it extremely difficult to enforce copyright as it currently stands. That is one reason why we should use this opportunity to strengthen our copyright law to protect those low-paid workers.”
“Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify whether he was aware that the Chinese company that is now in possession of British Steel was sold it by a Conservative Government of which he was part?”
“The very least we can do for those who already struggle to do exactly that because of limited means is to protect them from the market. That is why a social tariff should be part of our plan for change and our national mission to transform this country for the better. Question put and agreed to . Ordered , That Ms Polly Billington, Yuan Yang, Torcuil Crichton, Andrew Pakes, Pippa Heylings, Luke Murphy, Wera Hobhouse and Mike Reader present the Bill. Ms Polly Billington accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 2 5 April , and to be printed (Bill 220 ).”
“For example, Spain has a tariff that provides a 35% discount for vulnerable customers and a 50% discount for severely vulnerable customers. I have spent a lot of my career working on how energy can be generated, supplied and consumed in a way that does not cost a packet or the planet. For far too long, energy companies have urged consumers to “engage” with the energy market. That, in my view, has always been based on a failure to understand that for most people, energy is a means to an end. It is not exciting, and it can be stressful, especially for those who are struggling. We should be in the business of reducing that stress, so that people can spend their time and energy doing things that are more interesting and fulfilling.”
“We should be developing a package of measures that prioritises shifting the most vulnerable on to the cleaner, cheaper and more secure energy that we are generating ourselves. There is always a risk that the case for such market interventions is made simply by talking about protecting people from the worst extremes of the market, but it is also important to say that such a measure increases economic security and is therefore good for economic growth. It puts money in people’s pockets. Money they are spending on excessive energy costs is money they are not spending in their local economies. With this relief, they can be part of the economic revival of the places in which they live. This is not a new idea; social tariffs are already working in many other countries.”
“These are the people who are most at risk of fuel poverty, and, crucially, we can find these people, so that those who need the support get it. This Government have rightly established a child poverty taskforce to tackle the scar on our society of children growing up poor. A social tariff can be part of a wider approach to tackling this moral outrage by ensuring that the families who are most in need have to worry less about their energy bills. Children who grow up in households that struggle to pay their energy bills are more likely to struggle at school and more likely to end up struggling in life. However, simply protecting people from a failing energy retail market is not sufficient.”
“It should be additional to existing and planned support, it should be targeted, and it should be sufficient enough to reduce costs to an affordable level. National Energy Action has argued that we need to aim a social tariff at people on low incomes, people with disabilities, carers, households with low energy efficiency, off-gas grid homes and households with prepayment meters. There are far too many complaints by energy companies that they cannot identify the people who need this support. These categories tackle that problem, because we already have the data: we know who is in receipt of universal credit, disability benefits and carer’s allowance; we know those on prepayment meters and the homes with poor energy ratings. These are people who face huge financial pressures and who are at the forefront of the cost of living crisis.”
“The warm home discount is the most prominent current scheme to help with this issue, but it is simply not sufficient for the scale of the challenge. It has not scaled with retail prices—as energy bills have increased by hundreds of pounds, the warm home discount has increased by only £10 since its introduction. The discount is also limited to households receiving means-tested benefits, meaning that many families living in fuel poverty miss out on this vital support. A social tariff should build on the warm home discount but not replace it. The purpose of the Bill is to enshrine in law the principle that a social tariff should be provided by all energy companies, to ensure there is no supplier lottery for those who need support.”
“The Labour party is the party that created the welfare state, and on these Benches, we understand why having a strong social safety net is vital, but energy is an area where the safety net has a gaping hole in it. That is why a targeted social tariff is needed—so that we can provide vital support for those in the greatest need. There is also an increasingly chronic problem with consumer energy debt. People owe more than £2 billion in energy bill debt, and that figure has doubled in the past three years alone. Those in debt then become stuck in a cycle where they face an increase in energy bills while also trying to pay off the debt they have built up. That is not sustainable for those consumers or even the energy retailers, which have to deal with the fallout from fuel poverty debt.”
“The costs of shifting to cleaner power have been loaded on to electricity bills, creating a disincentive for many to choose to shift to electric heat. We artificially make electricity more expensive, which makes it impossible for some to move to clean power. It is those who cannot pay who are least prepared. Rapid change has always been associated with upheaval and risk. A social tariff, working as part of the welfare state, can support people as we make these changes. This is the right thing to do from not only a fuel poverty perspective but a decarbonisation one. A modern welfare state has done this before, and it can do it again.”
“A social tariff that supports the most vulnerable with their energy bills and prevents them from falling into fuel poverty would protect them from some of the failures of the current energy market, and shield them as that market is reformed to make the most of leaving fossil fuels behind. The energy market needs to change so that the efforts the Government are making to decarbonise our energy system truly deliver benefits for consumers. The reform of retail prices will need to be part of that. As a member of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, I have heard witnesses’ growing calls for such change. The vast majority of homes are heated by gas, while electricity is much more expensive.”
“I remind the House that East Thanet is not a leafy, affluent community of the kind that many people associate with the south-east. It is a coastal community with high levels of deprivation, much low-paid and insecure work, many elderly residents, many families with a disabled member, and many cold, old and draughty homes. In Thanet, a quarter of all working-age adults claim universal credit, and over 40% of people claim at least one form of benefit from the Department for Work and Pensions. These are the people who suffer most from increasing energy bills, and who often have to choose between heating and eating.”
“People see increasingly that there are further benefits to such a shift: greater energy security from generating our own energy rather than being exposed to the whims of petrostates and dodgy regimes, as well as a reduction in the costs of generating that power. Some 96% of newly installed solar and wind capacity has a lower generation cost than natural gas. However, consumers are not feeling the benefits of cheaper costs as much as they could, partly because our energy prices are set by global oil and gas prices. As an MP, the reality of fuel poverty is frequently rammed home to me on the doorstep, where concerns are raised about the rising costs of energy and the pressure that they put on household budgets, especially among those on low incomes.”
“Watching him trying to convince energy companies to lower their prices as the country faced spiralling costs and economic chaos convinced me that a social tariff was the least a Labour Government could and should do to protect the most vulnerable. Much has changed since then. There has been significant success in shifting to cleaner power, as a result of a political consensus—held across this House until recently—on the need to decarbonise our energy system to tackle climate change. This Labour Government’s mission to achieve clean power by 2030 is part of our long-term solution to bring energy bills down for good.”