07/12/2015 Monday in Parliament

Hello and welcome to Monday in Parliament.

Sympathy and support for people affected by the severe flooding

It is devastating for those people who were previously affected by

flooding who believe that things would be better.

Labour calls Universal Credit the new IDS postcode lottery.

It is arbitrary. It is not fair. If you are a low wage working mother it

And fears of a possible coordinated cyber attack

There are huge fallibilities in the connections between the banks and

the rest of the economy that some people say could lead to panic and

one seasoned observer as a possibility of financial Armageddon.

A clean-up operation is under way in the North West of England

after Storm Desmond brought winds, torrential rain and flooding

The worst hit areas were Cumbria and Lancashire where over 5,000

homes were flooded - and tens of thousands were left without power.

There was a record breaking amount of rainfall.

David Cameron visited Cumbria to talk to local people

In the Commons there were expressions of sympathy

MPs debated England's flood defences and how far climate change is

responsible for episodes of extreme weather.

On Saturday night we saw an unprecedented amount of rainfall.

More than a month's rain fell in one day.

During Saturday night main rivers all across Cumbria exceeded

There is a mark on the bridge in Carlisle showing

The 2005 flood was half a metre higher than 1853 which was

This flood was half a metre higher again.

We will continue to ensure that all resources are made available to

Cobra will continue to meet daily to oversee recovery efforts

and I will be travelling to Cumbria and Lancashire after this statement

to continue to ensure we are doing all we can to help those affected.

I know local communities will want to know what action Government will

be taking to support the recovery phase.

I am pleased to confirm to the House that my colleague the Communities

Secretary will shortly be opening the scheme for local

100% of eligible costs will be met by the Government.

Your predecessor was not someone prepared to acknowledge

Does the Secretary of State agree that extreme weather

events unfortunately are increasingly a feature of British

weather and that Government policy has to adapt accordingly?

In one year alone the Coalition slashed flood spending

Will the Secretary of State now accept that this left

the UK unprepared for extreme weather events?

It has been devastating for those who previously were

affected by flooding who believed that things would be better and have

My huge sympathy goes to those business owners

and local residents and I hope to meet them later today and tomorrow.

And the honourable lady is absolutely right about the extreme

As we say it is consistent with the trends we are seeing

Climate change is factored into all the modelling work

And clearly in the light of this extreme weather we are going

And she defended the Government's record on flood defences.

Over the last Parliament we spent 1.7 billion on capital spending

That was a real terms increase on what was spent between 2005

Our next six-year programme is 2.3 billion which again represents

The floods that have brought so much damage throughout the north west.

I would like to reinforce the point about insurance claims.

Insurance claims should be met speedily,

People's needs are now and not in six months' time.

Also put on record my thanks to the emergency services and the

Department for Transport for the work they put in over the weekend.

Can the Secretary of State assure me that she will continue to work with

farmers in my constituency to ensure that the devastation that some of

them suffered over recent days will be looked at with some sympathy?

Some parts of York were four metres underwater.

This is the second flooding they have had within a month.

Businesses pay a heavy price for flooding.

Can the Secretary of State ensure that sandbags

and pumps are available free for businesses because they do pay

One has to live through such an event to understand

the devastation that that visits upon communities and families.

But the Secretary of State has made a great deal of

play about the real terms increase in flood maintenance spending.

However can she assure the House that she thinks there is an adequate

level of funding to start with in the budget for flood maintenance

and that the Environment Agency is adequately funded to discharge its

role in relation to flood prevention and flood response?

Liz Truss replied that the flood defences

in Cumbria did delay the impact but it was clearly an area that

A man has appeared in court charged with attempted murder after a knife

attack at Leytonstone Underground station in east London on Saturday.

A 56-year-old man was left with serious stab wounds

and another person was injured during the attack.

At the start of the day in the Commons,

the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith made a brief comment.

His constituency is in North East London.

Questions to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

Mr Speake,r I wonder whether with your permission I might just take

this opportunity, given the weekemd's events in my borough, to

say on behalf of myself and my other colleagues on the other side of the

House that we wish a speedy recovery to those who have

been injured by this tragic event at the Tube station in Leytonstone.

When question time got underway, Iain Duncan Smith faced criticism

about plans to cut the welfare budget by ?12 billion.

MPs said that people moving on to the new benefit -

Universal Credit - would be worse off than they are now.

The Government's forced U-turn on tax credits is very welcome to

those families in my constituency that were set to be affected

by it but many are being moved on to the Universal Credit system and

Given that young people in particular will not qualify for

the Government's so-called national living wage how does the Government

The key thing about what he is saying is that first of all

as a result of the budget there is nothing new in the Spending Review.

Long-term generosity of the welfare system will be cus

In other words the 12 billion savings were exactly as pretty

Can I just say Universal Credit has a huge effect.

Published figures this week show that Universal Credit means more

people go into work faster, they stay in work longer

That is a huge change that will affect young people dramatically

The truth is the Chancellor bailed himself out of the hole he dug on

tax credits by raiding the Universal Credit system creating a deeply

unfair two tier system where a working mother on Universal Credit

will next year be ?3,000 worse off than her equivalent on tax credits.

In all 2.6 million families will be ?1,600 on average worse off.

It is arbitrary, it is unfair, and if you are a low wage working

Let me just say to the honourable gentleman,

his party who has opposed Universal Credit from the outset can hardly

say that they are in the slightest bit interested in how it works.

The reality is all of those calculations for lone parents do

The childcare package that comes with Universal Credit is

Perhaps you would like to keep quiet and listen for once to somebody who

I say to him very simply that the childcare package on

Universal Credit gives parents with children childcare support for every

Under tax credit they got next to nothing.

While we welcome the apparent U-turn on cuts to tax credits it appears

that the cuts to work allowance will continue to go ahead under

Universal Credit, hitting families just as hard.

Can the Secretary of State assure us today that

the tax credits U-turn will also apply to the corresponding elements

of Universal Credit or confirm our suspicions that this so-called

The Universal Credit position is exactly as set out in the summer

budget and that means as we understand it and as we calculate

it, and the figures released in the last 24 hours show categorically,

there will be a huge improvement to the numbers

people going back into work, working full-time, and earning more money.

And he believed that eventually Neil Gray would be one

of the first people to say, thank God we brought in Universal Credit.

Now back in February a report by the Public Accounts Committee found

very little progress had been made on the implementation of Universal

Credit, which has been beset by delays and concerns about cost.

Revisiting the scheme with the DWP Permanent Secretary Robert Devereux

MPs still felt that the department was not coming entirely clean.

There is nothing in the public domain by reference to

which this committee, the taxpayer, can measure the success or failure

The point he is making repeatedly and quite rightly if these are

fairly broad-based milestones but we are now getting to the point

of actual physically delivery on the ground and I don't think there

should be any reason for the DWP to hide what the aims are.

We understand these big projects may slip at times.

But knowing what the aim was and then being able to ask

questions about why there has been slippage is pretty important.

The flexibility, we sometimes feel on this committee, has been used

You have, I suggest, not put into the public domain the dates

by which milestones are supposed to be achieved which are presently

internal to the Department so that neither I, nor this committee, nor

Parliament, nor the taxpayer can see whether you are behind again.

My first question to the Prime Minister in the summer was when will

Universal Credit come into Bristol South, to which he said, soon.

We cannot operate on the principle of soon.

It has now started with the low hanging fruit if you like.

But in talking to our constituents day by day,

without the detail of what Mr Phillips is talking about, we cannot

It is causing a great deal of upset on the ground.

Have you shared a detailed plan or indeed any plan with local

authorities and other delivery partners for the roll-out of the

As I explained they are talking to them about that now.

Is that every local authority in the country as part of this?

We're looking to those local authorities who we think will be

in the first phase of the May 2016 plan.

We're doing that on the basis of not central Government dictating

How many authorities is that in 2016?

By May 2016 I will want to have settled the plan for 2016, 2017.

How many authorities are you talking to in whose area this is going to be

By the end of about 2017 we will be...

We will be doing five in May and we have just announced them.

When will the twin track approach come to an end?

When is it finally going to be on digital service?

As part of the roll-out of digital service,

as we roll out an application, we will end of the live service and

move people from the live service over to the new full-service.

It is acceptable for you to say I do not know.

I was just trying to explain to you that this process, what date,

The final cases on the live service we expect to be finished

In October '18 the live service will be finished.

You are asking us to be clear about when are going to be seeing things.

We are quite consciously saying to you, I am not going to put out

the best guess of the entire shooting match because I

do not have a best guess that is worth the paper that is written on.

Can I have your undertaking that perhaps you and your colleagues will

have a discussion as to useful milestones that might be set by

reference to which this committee, Parliament and the taxpayer can

measure whether or not this programme is doing well and

I am very happy to have that conversation.

Thank you. It was a relieved looking Mr

Devereux who was finally told he could go.

You're watching Monday in Parliament, with me,

Now, the Government has been urged to carry out more research

into the impact on bees of neonicotinoid pesticides.

The UK has seen a decline in bee numbers and MPs are divided

MPs used a debate in Westminster Hall to consider an e-petition,

signed by 90,000 people, calling for a full ban to be reintroduced.

There have been field studies that suggest that the levels of exposure

experienced by bees in the wild are not sufficient enough to cause any

negative consequences for pollinators. The problem with

relying on this assertion is that there has not been experiments of a

significant scale to provide definitive evidence to base our

approach to neonicotinoids. The current usage authorised by the

government would be a good chance to ascertain on a bigger scale what

they impact may be. Science must always be front and centre in taking

decisions, but where it is uncertain, the precautionary

principle should always come to the fore.

Earlier this year, the single study used to justify the UK voting

against current restrictions was widely discredited. Key scientists

behind it actually left to join a pesticide company. Does he agree in

light we also need to rebuild the decision?

High number of signatures on the petition shows the concern of the

public. I would urge the government to gather together more scientific

evidence from the EU research, as well as science currently using a

banned neonicotinoids, and I would like to see them consider other

types of neonics which are currently authorised but may have a

detrimental effect. Since 1990, we should be reminded, the UK has lost

around 20 species of bees. We cannot afford to keep losing these crucial

pollinators. Bees have been the unhappy victims

of neonicotinoid use, and their decline is utterly devastating for

wildlife and damaging for food production and our agricultural

economy, and it is time the government ends what some others

fear might be a slight case of knee jerk anti-Europeanism, and that

would be to publish scientific sense and make sure our bees and farmers

can flourish in future. No one can argue that insecticides

are designed to kill insects. They are actually acute toxins, so bees

and other important pollinators are bound to be killed by insecticides

targeted at, for example, the flea beetle, which is the pest attacking

the oilseed rape, which farmers want to control.

Bees and pollinating insects are vital to our health, well-being in

future. These pats tight -- pesticides are rightly banned in the

EU while full-time to the test carried out as yet they are harmful.

The decision by the Scottish Government and the Cabinet Secretary

Richard Lochhead that they will not support any relaxation of

restrictions unless there is clear evidence that neonicotinoids do not

pose any threats to these species is correct and the right way to

proceed. In 2013, the last government was

found to be failing in the majority of its environmental commitments.

30% of UK ecosystem services, such as pollination, were found to be in

decline. We come preventively failed to deliver on -- they come

preventively failed to deliver on their biodiversity strategy, and

their promise to leave the environment in a better condition

than they had founded. Over the next 25 years, there is a 25 year plan to

restore the UK's biodiversity, and it has not begun to start to put

that right. We are adopting a precautionary,

evidence -based principle. We are very clear that in adopting the

precautionary principle, it should be a precautionary principle based

on an assessment of risk, not based on theoretical hazard. If you want a

precautionary approach, over time, we will have fewer pesticides that

are available in general, but as they are removed, as a precaution,

it is important that we make available the opportunity to grant

an emergency authorisation. Otherwise, what you have is a sort

of unintended consequence. You start farmers to start to use other

chemicals to escape the attention of the scientific immunity, but they

may be even more damaging. For example, when this band first came

in, there was some evidence that there was a shift to using another

chemical which was actually dangerous to birds. They then moved

to ban that chemical. Say you have to consider the unintended

consequences. To the Lords now,

where peers questioned the Government over how secure the UK is

against the threat of cyberattacks. In particular,

concerns were raised about the My Lords, one of the most serious

threat we face is that of coordinated cyber attack against the

UK financial sector. The Bank of England have shown that individual

banks, especially the large banks, are pretty well protected, but

they're right huge vulnerabilities in the connections between the banks

and the rest of the economy, which some people say could lead to

panic, and one quite seasoned observer described as a possibility

of financial Armageddon, the meltdown of the system, given that

most money today is electronic, no longer held in the form of cash.

Lord Giddens asked what steps the government was taking to address

As regards the specific point, as he may know, there have been a number

of exercises the financial sector, including the City of London, have

been able to take in recent years. Waking Shark One, Waking Shark To,

the market wide exercise, plus more recently, the Resilient Shield

exercise, last month, between the US and UK. In June, it was agreed that

the bank, the PRA and the FRC a should also arrange for sea bass

tests to become one component of regular cyber resilience assessment

within the UK financial system. The noble Lord and Minister will may

be aware that the infrastructure in most of the exchanges of the

internet service providers in this country is supplied by a Chinese

company. In the previous Coalition Government, I believe Sir Malcolm

Rifkind was commissioned to go and enquire as to the vulnerability the

country has, with the possible instruction of the Chinese

government to shut our systems down. government to shut our systems down.

And I wonder whether the noble Lord has any results of this

investigation by Sir Malcolm Rifkind. He should also be aware

that the United States do not allow this company to operate.

Clearly, we are not complacent on this issue. I would like to also

point out that virtually every telecommunications network worldwide

incorporates foreign technology. Can I ask the noble Lord, the

minister, to confirm that the firing chain for Trident in its entirety is

head capped, as it certainly was until 2006 -- air gapped, and

therefore in vulnerable to cyber attack, and Canales confirm any

updates planned to that firing chain will remain air gapped? If it is

not, clearly that gives a vulnerability.

"Air gapped" means that the network operating Trident is isolated

from other systems that could be less secure.

The minister said he could not comment on the details of security

for the nuclear deterrent, but that it was guarded from cyberattack.

May I ask the noble Lord, the Minister, if he can update the

figures, I think, from last year, of substantial attacks on the British

governing institutions and businesses which were then running

between 150 and 200 per month? Has that figure changed substantially,

and has there been the slightest indication that since the Chinese

leadership pledged to the Prime Minister that they would lay off,

that there has indeed been an easing from that quarter?

I can give some figures. GCHQ typically responds to an average of

17 sophisticated attacks on government networks per quarter. In

summer 2014, GCHQ responded to approximately 200 incidents, and

during summer 2015, this figure doubled to nearly 400.

The founder of the Big Issue magazine, John Bird,

Mr Bird set up the publication in 1991 as a way of helping

He will sit as a crossbench or independent peer,

I, John, Lord Birt, do swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful

and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, Her

Majesty and successors, so help me God.

And the steady stream of former Lib Dem MPs into the House of Lords

continued with the arrival of Andrew Stunnell.

I, Lord Andrew Stunnell, do swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful

and swear true allegiance to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth.

A fresh effort to allow voting at 16 has been made during a debate on the

The Liberal Democrat Norman Lamb argued that 16-year-olds

My argument is that we can reduce it, because people at the age of 16

and 17 do, as he rightly says, have rights, and can play a significant

part in society, joining the Armed Forces, for example, working and

paying taxes on their income, marrying. These are all significant

rights and responsibilities, and if they have rights and

responsibilities, they ought surely to have a say in the election of our

national government and in the election of local authorities as

well. I give weight. If he were charged with a serious

offence, would he really wants 16 and 17-year-old serving on a jury,

deciding on his guilt, or innocence? Because I certainly would

not, and I think there is a level of majority we are talking about, and

drawing a line is an appropriate one. If you would not want a

16-year-old sitting on a jury deciding whether you go to jail for

ten years, I suggest you would not want to let them pay a part in the

election of the country. -- play a part.

And it looks as if the Government shares his concerns.

Ministers are likely to block proposals voted through by the House

of Lords to let 16- and 17-year-olds vote in the EU referendum.

And that's it from Monday in Parliament.

Keith Macdougall will be here for the rest of the week but