Category Archives: Hansard

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether DEFRA has the power to authorise individuals to release and catch non-native species, such as Asian hornets, for track and trace purposes.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, on securing such an important debate. I agree with all previous speakers that we need much longer to discuss these issues, in more detail and more often, both in your Lordships’ House and in the other place. If my noble friend the Minister was unaware of the lived experience of disabled people in the UK today at the beginning of this debate, he will not be now, so I will cut to the chase on employment and education.

If you are a disabled person in the UK, you are far less likely to have a good experience in education, to gain employment, to keep that employment if gained and, if kept, to receive a comparable level of pay to your non-disabled colleagues. Can my noble friend say what the current education gap is for disabled people at key stage 2, GCSE and A-level? What is the current employment gap for disabled people? What is the current disability pay gap? This thread runs through all elements of a disabled person’s lived experience, writ large through employment and education. If there is not that opportunity, as there is for every single person in society, to get it right the first time in education, life is made so avoidably difficult from that point onwards.

When will the EHCP system become equitable, accessible and resolvable in reasonable time and not just a matter of lottery or ability to pay for professionals to help you through a process that should be open to all those who need it?

We have heard about the difficulties with employment and education, but what about if you are not even able to get to your job, or if you are so stressed and done in by the journey to get to work that it feels like you have done your day’s work before you have even arrived? We come to the question of transport, and the lived experience of disabled people of what passes for public transport in the UK today.

Will my noble friend the Minister commit from the Dispatch Box today—why not?—to having a moratorium on floating bus stops? For noble Lords who may be unaware, these are bus stops that are essentially stuck in the middle of the road, with a cycle lane between the bus stop and the pavement. How can a disabled person—any person—effectively, efficiently and, crucially, safely access the bus? It is a planning folly: a planning disaster. Can we commit today that buses can only pick up and drop off from the kerbside? This needs to be urgently resolved.

I turn to taxis, another critical part of our public transport infrastructure, though seldom treated by the department in policy terms as that critical part of public transport, not least for disabled people. This very morning, the planning committee in the City of London is deciding whether to recommend that Bank junction should be reopened to black cabs. Its proposal is that the ban on black cabs at Bank junction continues. Why? There is no safety reason; black cabs have never been involved in a collision at Bank junction. It is planning folly and not evidence-based. Will my noble friend write to the City Corporation, reminding it of its equality duties, not least under the public sector equality duty, and urge it to reconsider reopening Bank to black cabs—yes, on a trial basis, to assess how it will go? The Court of Common Council will decide this on 20 June, and it is in everybody’s interests, not least those of disabled people, that we have black cabs being allowed to go back through Bank junction, because the message it sends right across the country is that cabs matter as a part of public transport. Ditto for Tottenham Court Road; if my noble friend could write to Camden council, that would be appreciated as well, while he has his pen out—or indeed his laptop, or whatever means of communication he chooses.

We do not have public transport in this country; we have transport that is accessible to certain sections of the public—partial public transport, if you will. For disabled people, be it buses, rail or indeed the absolute nonsense of so-called “shared space”, transport is at best patchy. I ask my noble friend the Minister: when will it be in this country that disabled people can experience accessible transport—whichever mode, at whatever time and whenever they choose, like everybody else, to turn up and seek to use it? Can my noble friend report on the so-called “shared space” experiments; we have managed to achieve a moratorium on future shared space, but how are the existing schemes going? They effectively plan out disabled people from their local communities.

Floating bus stops, taxis and shared space—all are problematic for disabled people, and all are resolvable. Then there is education, particularly the potential for personalised education. On employment, it is entirely resolvable to have similar rates of educational attainment and employment for disabled people. These issues are all entirely resolvable if we just start from the key principle: inclusive by design, accessible by all. I ask my noble friend the Minister: when will all government policies be able to pass those tests—inclusive by design, accessible by all? Fundamentally, all we are talking about here is talent: all of that phenomenal talent in all disabled people, up and down and across the UK. We still suffer from this tragic truth—talent is everywhere; opportunity, currently, is not.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, on securing such an important debate. I agree with all previous speakers that we need much longer to discuss these issues, in more detail and more often, both in your Lordships’ House and in the other place. If my noble friend the Minister was unaware of the lived experience of disabled people in the UK today at the beginning of this debate, he will not be now, so I will cut to the chase on employment and education.

If you are a disabled person in the UK, you are far less likely to have a good experience in education, to gain employment, to keep that employment if gained and, if kept, to receive a comparable level of pay to your non-disabled colleagues. Can my noble friend say what the current education gap is for disabled people at key stage 2, GCSE and A-level? What is the current employment gap for disabled people? What is the current disability pay gap? This thread runs through all elements of a disabled person’s lived experience, writ large through employment and education. If there is not that opportunity, as there is for every single person in society, to get it right the first time in education, life is made so avoidably difficult from that point onwards.

When will the EHCP system become equitable, accessible and resolvable in reasonable time and not just a matter of lottery or ability to pay for professionals to help you through a process that should be open to all those who need it?

We have heard about the difficulties with employment and education, but what about if you are not even able to get to your job, or if you are so stressed and done in by the journey to get to work that it feels like you have done your day’s work before you have even arrived? We come to the question of transport, and the lived experience of disabled people of what passes for public transport in the UK today.

Will my noble friend the Minister commit from the Dispatch Box today—why not?—to having a moratorium on floating bus stops? For noble Lords who may be unaware, these are bus stops that are essentially stuck in the middle of the road, with a cycle lane between the bus stop and the pavement. How can a disabled person—any person—effectively, efficiently and, crucially, safely access the bus? It is a planning folly: a planning disaster. Can we commit today that buses can only pick up and drop off from the kerbside? This needs to be urgently resolved.

I turn to taxis, another critical part of our public transport infrastructure, though seldom treated by the department in policy terms as that critical part of public transport, not least for disabled people. This very morning, the planning committee in the City of London is deciding whether to recommend that Bank junction should be reopened to black cabs. Its proposal is that the ban on black cabs at Bank junction continues. Why? There is no safety reason; black cabs have never been involved in a collision at Bank junction. It is planning folly and not evidence-based. Will my noble friend write to the City Corporation, reminding it of its equality duties, not least under the public sector equality duty, and urge it to reconsider reopening Bank to black cabs—yes, on a trial basis, to assess how it will go? The Court of Common Council will decide this on 20 June, and it is in everybody’s interests, not least those of disabled people, that we have black cabs being allowed to go back through Bank junction, because the message it sends right across the country is that cabs matter as a part of public transport. Ditto for Tottenham Court Road; if my noble friend could write to Camden council, that would be appreciated as well, while he has his pen out—or indeed his laptop, or whatever means of communication he chooses.

We do not have public transport in this country; we have transport that is accessible to certain sections of the public—partial public transport, if you will. For disabled people, be it buses, rail or indeed the absolute nonsense of so-called “shared space”, transport is at best patchy. I ask my noble friend the Minister: when will it be in this country that disabled people can experience accessible transport—whichever mode, at whatever time and whenever they choose, like everybody else, to turn up and seek to use it? Can my noble friend report on the so-called “shared space” experiments; we have managed to achieve a moratorium on future shared space, but how are the existing schemes going? They effectively plan out disabled people from their local communities.

Floating bus stops, taxis and shared space—all are problematic for disabled people, and all are resolvable. Then there is education, particularly the potential for personalised education. On employment, it is entirely resolvable to have similar rates of educational attainment and employment for disabled people. These issues are all entirely resolvable if we just start from the key principle: inclusive by design, accessible by all. I ask my noble friend the Minister: when will all government policies be able to pass those tests—inclusive by design, accessible by all? Fundamentally, all we are talking about here is talent: all of that phenomenal talent in all disabled people, up and down and across the UK. We still suffer from this tragic truth—talent is everywhere; opportunity, currently, is not.

My Lords, this has been a sober and serious Second Reading—understandably so. How does one even begin to find the words to describe such an unspeakable set of circumstances? Perhaps one pulls on the words of those who have been faced with many miscarriages of justice: the CCRC itself described this as

“the most widespread miscarriage of justice”

it had seen. It is for that reason at least that I support this legislation.

I am well aware, and completely supportive, of the separation of powers, and the fine and delicate balance of our unwritten constitution, but in passing this legislation, it is as clear as it can be that Parliament will be carrying out the will of the people. It is also clear that this will set a precedent. I am delicately untroubled by that, because it sets a precedent for a set of circumstances where, were they to occur again, it may well be the case that the will of the people and Parliament need to step in. It is that set of circumstances which—I say delicately and with respect—argue against the claims that this tends towards autocracy and totalitarianism.

This is not something that any of us are undertaking lightly, but it is a means of securing justice for those who have waited far too long, many serving prison sentences and all carrying the sentence of having been convicted, often for decades. This is why I believe Parliament is right to take this Bill through, to enable justice around in the most timely manner. It is difficult to even call it “timely”, bearing in mind how long this has already taken.

To ensure justice and equity for all those who have suffered for so long, I need to ask my noble friend the Minister: how can the Government act to ensure that justice for all happens on a similar, if not identical, timeline? How can the Government, while understanding the reserved nature of the Post Office and the devolved nature of justice, work even more with the Scottish Parliament to ensure that all postmistresses and postmasters in Scotland can achieve justice at the same time or in a similar timeframe to those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland?

Similarly, as other noble Lords have rightly stated, it seems inequitable for those who have already been to the Court of Appeal to be excluded from this legislation. They are effectively being punished for having been able to pursue their claims quickly and effectively, only to find themselves receiving no remedy and the outcome that the court, at that stage and on the evidence provided, delivered for them. We know that justice delayed is justice denied. We have the opportunity to at least bring justice through the legislative process—yes, it is novel and unprecedented—through this Bill.

I turn to the means by which the private prosecutions were brought about in the first place: Section 6(1) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985. Many members of the public were shocked to discover that the Post Office could pursue such prosecutions in this manner. They were even more shocked when they realised that this was a power in no sense available just to the Post Office but available across the piece. The Post Office was effectively acting as investigator and prosecutor in cases where it was the alleged victim. Does my noble friend the Minister not agree that this is self-evidently prima facie problematic?

If we are to deliver justice for all those who have suffered, how many sub-postmistresses and sub-postmasters will be left with their convictions not quashed even after this legislation is passed? As much as we can be clear on the numbers, there are approaching 1,000 convictions and so far—again, as much as we can know—around 103 convictions have been quashed: 10%. This Bill, when it comes into statute, will certainly address a large number of those convictions, but how many people—to the Minister’s best knowledge, on the evidence he has available to him—will still be left unhelped after we pass this legislation?

Without moving away from the serious matter of today, I would like to ask the Minister about what thoughts the Government have put to reflecting on Section 6(1) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985. What are the safeguards? How did they work in these instances? Are the Government satisfied to continue with this legislation in its current form? Is the Law Commission looking into this?

Similarly, looking to a potential future beyond this unprecedented set of circumstances, what are the Government’s thoughts in terms of the future of the Post Office? It is a unique entity. It has been in our communities, on most of our high streets, for over half a millennium—but 500 years-plus of history does not give any organisation any right necessarily to continue in any form. Does the Minister agree that urgent thought on the structure of the Post Office, potentially looking at mutualisation or other such models, could, at least once we are through this, enable a brighter, better Post Office?

With sub-postmistresses and sub-postmasters, the pillars of our community, knowing our communities and the business better than anybody else, would it not make sense to have their voices, past and present, involved in shaping that future? In equalities discussions, there is a useful mantra, “Nothing about us without us”. I gently suggest that that mantra should apply to considerations about the Post Office going forward, where all the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses right across the country are able to have a voice in shaping what needs to be a very different future for the Post Office.

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in Second Reading. In doing so I declare my financial services interests as set out in the register as adviser to Ecospend Ltd. I fully support the Bill and congratulate my friend the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, on bringing it. He, as much as anyone in this House, has backed mutuals, friendly societies, credit unions and all those organisations doing so much for so many people right across our country. It was also a pleasure to have the pilot of the Bill then followed by a pilot speaking on the Bill. I am going to keep my feet firmly on terra firma and stick to the financial facts, because in no sense is this a minority matter: 25.8 million of us avail ourselves of building society accounts and services, and they have assets racing towards £400 billion.

If we are talking about levelling up in this country, we should also talk about levelling the playing field for building societies, which do such good work in all our communities. In saying that, I thank the Library for its excellent briefing and the Building Societies Association for its briefing and for everything it does to represent this important part of our economy and society. This Bill will look not only at the capital requirements and some important corporate governance matters, but in doing that it will increase scale, growth and competition across our financial services sector. Those are three excellent elements at any time but are critical when we look at the current macroeconomics not just of the UK but internationally. I am delighted to support this Bill and its provisions. It also updates things by enabling virtual, real-time participation in AGMs. It aligns very much with what other countries have been able to enjoy for many years.

I have just three questions for my noble friend on the Front Bench. First, when will the secondary legislation be brought into being? The Explanatory Notes say “as soon as possible”—does that mean before the summer? It certainly sounds better than “in due course”. While the Bill itself is critical, it is as critical that we get the secondary legislation through in a speedy fashion to enable the full impact of these changes to be felt by people up and down the country, and indeed the institutions themselves.

Secondly, what is the Government’s current position on mutuals in general? So many elements of our society—so many economic and social issues—can be addressed by an increased focus on and enablement of mutual structures right across society. What is their current work on mutuals across the piece? They were extraordinarily influential when they first came into being and their potential impact could never be more needed than in the time we are currently experiencing.

Allied to our discussions this morning, have the Government considered a potential mutualisation of the Post Office—obviously once we are through all the current issues and the liabilities therein? Does my noble friend not agree that a mutualised structure could work incredibly well for such an organisation—a brand that has been part of our society and high streets for over half a millennium? We need a positive Post Office. We need to support all those excellent sub-postmistresses and sub-postmasters, up and down the country. What sensational new chapters could be written for the Post Office and the communities in which it operates? Mutualisation could be at the heart of that.

So I fully support the Bill. I think it will have a positive impact in short order. Scale, growth and competition will deliver economic, social and psychological benefits, increase financial inclusion and well-being and drive possibilities for individuals and small entities right across the United Kingdom. I wish it swift speed into statute.

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this Second Reading. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Black for his excellent introduction and my noble friend Lord Blencathra for his fine words. Unlike cats, in all of his contributions, you will never find him sitting on the fence.

I thank all the organisations who sent such excellent briefings ahead of this Second Reading. It would be invidious to single out any, but I will, for the work that Battersea Dogs and Cats Home continues to do year in and year out—not least all through those difficult Covid years. We should give all our thanks to every individual who works at and is involved with Battersea.

I fully support this Bill and I am pleased that we are bringing it forward at this time. As both noble Lords have said, it is right that we move from theft as a concept to abduction, which is the correct concept. It follows a legislative logic that we have had over a number of Bills, not least the Animal Welfare (Service Animals) Act we passed a number of years ago, which is also known as Finn’s law. Up until that point, police dogs and animals were seen as just property and subject to criminal legislation in that sense. That Act, like this Bill, sought to put the animals in their sentient centre, and in the right place in our human and animal-loving society.

To that end, I ask my noble friend and the Minister, given that it is quite correct that it is far more traumatic for anybody to have a pet abducted than to lose a car or a tool from a garden shed—irritating though that certainly is—would it not make sense to have a higher tariff than that set out in the Theft Act 1968 of seven years? I would be interested to see the logic of aligning all these acts around the five-year mark. Why should that not be increased? As my noble friend Lord Blencathra set out, it is highly unlikely that anyone will be given the maximum. So in a sense, the only way to address that from Parliament is to set a maximum that is higher, to enable a right sentence to be set. I would argue that the maximum sentence should be at least seven years, not the five years set out in the Bill.

Since Covid, and indeed during Covid, so much changed in terms of pets and service animals. It became nothing short of a Wild West out there. There were untrained dogs, abducted dogs and cats, and an atmosphere that seemed to change overnight. From a personal perspective, pre Covid I may have experienced a dog incident perhaps once per month or once a quarter. Since Covid, it can be daily. That is the experience for people with service animals and people with pets. It has to change; we have to get back to a situation where humans, pets and animals can all coexist in a far more harmonious manner. To that end, I will be looking at some potential specific amendments to bring through in Committee.

This is an excellent and a timely Bill. I support it fully. I will certainly be very interested in the amendments my noble friend Lord Blencathra is seeking to bring. In conclusion, this is probably a unique example of where it is positive to pass “paw” legislation.

My Lords, I declare my technology interests as adviser to Boston Ltd. I thank all the organisations and individuals that took the trouble to meet with me ahead of the Second Reading of my Bill, shared their expertise and insight, and added to the positive, almost unified, voice that we had at Second Reading in March. I thank colleagues around the House and in the other place for their support, and particularly thank the Labour and Liberal Democrat Front Benches for their support on all the principles set out in the Bill. I also thank my noble friend the Minister for the time he took to meet with me at all stages of the Bill.

It is clear that, when it comes to artificial intelligence, it is time to legislate—it is time to lead. We know what we need to do, and we know what we need to know, to legislate. We know the impact that AI is already having on our creatives, on our IP, on our copyright, across all that important part of our economy. We know the impact that having no labelling on IP products is having. Crucially, we know the areas where there is no competent legislation or regulator when it comes to AI decisions. Thus, there is no right of redress for consumers, individuals and citizens.

Similarly, it is also time to legislate to end the illogicality that grew out of the Bletchley summit—successful of itself, but strange to put only a voluntary code, rather than something statutory, in place as a result of that summit. It was strange also to have stood up such a successful summit and then not sought to legislate for all the other areas of artificial intelligence already impacting people’s lives—oftentimes without them even knowing that AI is involved.

It is time to bring forward good legislation and the positive powers of right-size regulation. What this always brings is clarity, certainty, consistency, security and safety. When it comes to artificial intelligence, we do not currently have that in the United Kingdom. Clarity and certainty, craved by consumers and businesses, is a driver of innovation, inward investment, pro-consumer protection and pro-citizen rights. If we do not legislate, the most likely, and certainly unintended, consequence is that businesses and organisations looking for a life raft will understandably, but unfortunately, align to the EU AI Act. That is not the optimal outcome that we can secure.

It is clear that when it comes to AI legislation and regulation things are moving internationally, across our Parliament and—dare I say—in No. 10. With sincere thanks again to all those who have helped so much to get the Bill to this stage, I say again that it is time to legislate—it is time to lead #OurAIFutures.

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to protect intellectual property rights in relation to artificial intelligence, in particular large language models, since discontinuing plans to develop a code of practice.

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my technology interests, as set out in the register, as an adviser to Boston Ltd.

My Lords, our great UK creatives—musicians who make such sweet sounds where otherwise there may be silence; writers who fill the blank page with words of meaning that move us; our photographers; our visual artists—are a creative community contributing billions to the UK economy, growing at twice the rate of the UK economy. In the light of this, why are the Government content for their work, their IP and their copyright to be so disrespected and unprotected in the face of artificial intelligence?