Sir Desmond Swayne TD

Sir Desmond Swayne TD

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Food Bank Usage Email Campaign

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Food banks are independent, charitable organisations, and the Department for Work and Pensions does not have any role in their operation. 

According to the latest Government statistics – published in the Family Resources Survey – most households in the UK were food secure in the financial year 2021-22, with high household food security (88 per cent) or marginal households food security (6 per cent). A minority of households were food insecure, with low household food security (3 per cent) or very low household food security (3 per cent).

Of all UK households surveyed, three per cent had used a food bank in the last 12 months, and one per cent of all households in the last 30 days.

The Government has put in place a set of measures to help people with the cost of living. On energy bills, the Government is maintaining the Energy Price Guarantee. This guarantee limits the amount you can be charged per unit of gas or electricity. The current price guarantee, set at £3,000, will support households between now and April 2024. Although energy prices are currently below the level at which EPG payments would be made, it will remain in force until the end of March 2024 to protect households from price spikes, putting in place a safety net for households up and down the country.

Furthermore, at the Autumn Statement 2022, the Government announced a substantial support package for the most vulnerable for 2023/24, including £300 Cost-of-Living Payments for pensioners, £150 for people on disability benefits, and £900 for people on means-tested benefits. The Government is also providing £1 billion of extra funding by extending the Household Support Fund to March 2024, bringing the total of the Fund to £2.5 billion. 

Both the State Pension and benefits were also increased by 10.1 per cent from April 2023, in line with inflation. This represents the biggest cash increase in the State Pension ever and an average uplift of around £600 for households receiving Universal Credit.

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“School Meat Mandate” Email Campaign

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As set out in the Requirements for School Food Regulations 2014, schools should provide children with healthy food and drink options, and ensure that children get the necessary energy and nutrition throughout the school day. These regulate the food and drink provided at both lunchtime and at other times of the school day. The standards set out that meat or poultry must be provided on three or more days each week, and milk must be available for drinking every day.

Current standards provide a robust yet flexible framework to ensure that pupils receive high quality and nutritious food that builds healthy eating habits for life. The Government continues to promote compliance with the School Food Standards and will keep this under review.

In February 2022, the Levelling Up White Paper outlined the Government’s plan to strengthen adherence. This includes piloting work with the Foods Standards Agency, funding of up to £200,000 in a pilot Governor Training Scheme and encouraging schools to complete a statement on their websites setting out their whole school approach to food.

Although the School Food Standards regulate the food and drink provided at both lunchtime and at other times of the school day, the Government believes that head teachers, school governors and caterers are best placed to make decisions about their school food policies, taking into account local circumstances and the needs of their pupils. This applies, for example, to the provision of vegan meals.

Schools should therefore make reasonable adjustments for pupils with particular requirements, such as dietary and cultural needs. The Government is encouraging schools to speak to parents about their school meals provision and act reasonably to ensure it best meets the needs and beliefs of their school community. 

Schools must also provide access on their premises, at all times, to free drinking water. Schools should consider whether they are doing all they can to make free water visible and easily available.

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We need a new way of managing our rivers – Change.org Petition

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The Government fully appreciates the importance of our rivers. The volume of sewage and other pollution being discharged into our waters is completely unacceptable. The Government’s Plan for Water, published earlier this year, sets out more investment, stronger regulation and tougher enforcement to tackle every source of pollution.

As part of the plan, over £2.2 billion of investment has been accelerated. This will be directed into vital infrastructure to improve water quality and secure future supplies, with £1.7 billion of this to tackle storm overflows. Ministers have set stringent targets for water companies to reduce storm overflows, driving the largest infrastructure programme in water company history of £56 billion over 25 years. This is a credible plan which includes front-loading action in particularly important and sensitive sites, including bathing waters.

Regarding regulation, Ministers are driving up monitoring and transparency. Monitoring of storm overflows has increased substantially, from only 7 per cent in 2010 to 91 per cent now, and companies are on track to reach 100 per cent by the end of the year. It is because of this monitoring that action can be taken to fix storm overflows and hold water companies to account. The Government is clear that water companies must not profit from environmental damage and Ofwat has been given increased powers under the Environment Act 2021 to hold them to account for poor performance. In March, Ofwat announced new powers that will enable it to take enforcement actions against water companies that do not link dividend payments to performance for both customers and the environment.

In July, Ministers introduced laws to remove the £250,000 cap on penalties that can be handed out by environmental regulators, as well as significantly broaden their scope to target a much wider range of offences. This will ensure that regulators have the right tools to drive compliance across a range of sectors, including water companies. Fines from water companies are being reinvested into the new Water Restoration Fund, which will deliver on-the-ground improvements to water quality and support local groups and community-led schemes which help to protect our waterways.

Further, the Environment Agency has launched the largest criminal investigation into unpermitted water company sewage discharges ever at over 2,200 treatment works. The Environment Agency funding is closely monitored to ensure that it can carry out its duties and functions effectively. Its funding for inspections comes directly from the permits issued to companies; enforcement is funded by government, and in the current Spending Review period, the Environment Agency’s environment RDEL (Resource) grant for 2022/23 increased to £96 million from £56 million in 2020/21.

These measures and others are making progress and Ministers will continue to make further improvements where necessary. Our bathing waters continue to improve, with 93 per cent classified as good or excellent in 2022 compared to 76 per cent in 2010. There is now 80 per cent less phosphorus and 85 per cent less ammonia in our rivers compared to 1990 when water was privatised.

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Aid to India

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Every time India launches another successful space mission, I get a raft of complaints from constituents demanding to know why UK aid is still going to India which is a rich country, evidently rich enough to afford a space exploration programme.
To be fair, India’s spectacularly successful space programme is run on a great deal of ingenuity and a pretty small budget.
Although India’s economy is growing spectacularly, and it won’t be long before it overtakes UK as the world’s fifth largest. That however, doesn’t make it a ‘rich’ country. Despite a growing middle class, the nation’s income is spread between 1.41 billion souls. India has the highest proportion of the world’s poorest people. So, if the objective is to relieve extreme poverty, then not having an impact on it in India, means that the objective will not be reached at all.
Nevertheless, politicians are not tin-eared. The chorus of criticism of continuing aid to India has been long-standing. As a consequence, in 2011 we completed a review which concluded that we would run-down our existing projects and discontinue grant aid from 2015.
We determined that we would continue with commercial loans and with the provision of expertise to a couple of the poorest state governments, enabling them to make best use of revenues they received from the Government in Delhi.
(Inevitably however, given that the UK stumps up its proper share to fund UN Agencies, if one of them, say, UNICEF for example, has an education project in a poor Indian state, some of that expenditure could be traced back to the UK.)
So that’s the position: We aren’t giving grant aid to India or funding their space programme.

I was surprised that some commentators said that I was “disobliging” to the PM by “challenging” him on this in the Commons last Monday, when he returned from The G20 Summit in India. On the contrary, I was giving him the opportunity to knock the myth about aid to India on the head, which, I am glad to say, he took. Judge the exchange for yourself


Hansard Vol 737. Column 693 Monday 11 September
Sir Desmond Swayne
In 2015, I went to Delhi to implement the coalition Government’s decision to end grant development aid to India. That policy hasn’t changed, has it?

The Prime Minister
The policy did change and we stopped providing traditional development aid to India in 2015. Most UK funding is now in the form of business investments which not only help India reduce carbon emissions and address climate change, but deliver jobs and opportunity for British companies here at home

Stop the Horrors of E-Collars Email Campaign

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The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has considered the evidence regarding the use of electronic aids to control dogs. Research commissioned by Defra showed that many e-collar users were not using them properly or in compliance with the manufacturers’ instructions. As well as being misused to inflict unnecessary harm, there is also concern that e-collars can redirect aggression or generate anxiety-based behaviour in pets, making underlying behavioural and health problems worse. In addition, the Government’s consultation on this received more than 7,000 responses.

 

Following this research, as well as engagement with trainers, behaviourists, e-collar manufacturers, the animal welfare sector, veterinary and dog keeping organisations, the Government will ban training collars in England that can deliver an electric shock to a cat or dog by a hand-held remote-controlled device.

 

This ban will not extend to collars which use alternative stimuli, such as noise, spray or vibration. Invisible fencing systems which help animals quickly learn to stay within a boundary and have welfare benefits, such as keeping pets away from roads, will also still be permitted. These new regulations will come into force on 1 February 2024.

 

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Brachycephalic Animals Email Campaign

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The UK has some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world and it shares the highest ranking on the animal protection index and the highest in the G7. The Government takes the issue of low-welfare and illegal supply of animals very seriously. Significant steps have been taken to improve and update the laws in England to crack down on unscrupulous breeders who breed purely for financial greed at the expense of animal welfare.

Under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018, anyone in the business of breeding and selling dogs and/or who breeds three or more litters in a twelve-month period needs to have a valid licence from their local authority. Under these regulations, local authorities have powers to grant, refuse or revoke a licence. Licences must achieve and maintain statutory minimum animal welfare standards, linked to the welfare needs of the Animal Welfare Act 2006.

Further, under these regulations, licensed breeders are prohibited from breeding dogs if it can be reasonably expected that on the basis of their genotype, phenotype or health, this would lead to welfare problems for the mother or the puppies. This applies in the case of brachycephalic breeds. Both licensed and unlicensed animal breeders are required under the Animal Welfare Act to protect the animals involved in breeding from harm and to provide for their welfare in line with good practice. A breach of these provisions may lead to imprisonment, a fine, or both.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is in the process of reviewing the 2018 Regulations.

Finally, Defra’s campaign Petfished raises awareness of issues associated with low-welfare and illegal supply of pets. The campaign provides a list of red flags for buyers to look out for when searching for a pet online. More information can be found here: https://getyourpetsafely.campaign.gov.uk/

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Make Animal Welfare a Priority Email Campaign

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The Government is committed to upholding our world-leading animal welfare standards and to delivering a series of ambitious reforms, as outlined in the Action Plan for Animal Welfare.

The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 enshrines in domestic law the recognition that animals are sentient and creates an expert Animal Sentience Committee, which will advise the Government on how policy decisions should take account of animal welfare. In addition, the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act introduced tougher sentences for animal cruelty, increasing maximum sentences. The Ivory Act came into force in 2022 and has recently been extended to cover five more endangered species.

The Kept Animals Bill, introduced in June 2021, was designed to implement several of the Government’s ambitions for animal welfare. This included banning the live exports of animals, seeking to prevent pet theft, and new measures to tackle livestock worrying. The Bill’s multi-issue nature means that there has been considerable scope-creep, and the Bill risks being extended far beyond the original commitments in the Conservative Manifesto, as well as and the Action Plan for Animal Welfare. Therefore, the Government will now be taking forward measures in the Kept Animals Bill individually during the remainder of the Parliament. The Government remains fully committed to delivering its manifesto commitments on animal welfare.

Since 2010, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has had a strong track record in reforms. This includes: a ban on the use of conventional battery cages for laying hens; mandatory CCTV in slaughterhouses across England; a ban on the use of wild animals in circuses; the strongest ivory ban in the world; mandatory microchipping of dogs; and new regulations for minimum standards for meat chickens; and the modernisation of the licensing system for dog breeding and pet sales.

Finally, the Government supports a series of Private Members’ Bills which will deliver important reforms on animal welfare. These include the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill, which will ban the import of hunting trophies for specific species; the Shark Fins Bill, which will ban the import and export of shark fines; as well as the Animals (Low-Welfare Activities Abroad) Bill, which will ban the sale and advertising of activities abroad which involve low standards of welfare for animals.

Concrete: though tempted to profanity, Britain isn’t Finished

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This week’s spat about crumbling schools could not have been more exaggerated. We have been regaled with tales of children cowering under desks and pit props and that this is a metaphor for ‘broken Britain’ where nothing works.

This, of course, is the same Britain that recovered faster than any other economy from the pandemic; the Britain whose economy has grown faster than France and Germany; The Britain where we are educating one million more pupils in our schools than in 2010. The Britain where we are spending more on educating our children than ever before – by every metric: total cash, total real terms, and per pupil.
And as a consequence of thirteen years of education reforms  – all of them opposed tooth and nail by the opposition parties, this is the Britain where we now have the best readers in the western world, where 90% of our schools are rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ and where children from the most challenging backgrounds are now 75% more likely to get to University.

As for crumbling concrete, well, this is the Britain where Since 2010, we have invested billions of pounds in school capital. We have opened 650 new free schools. This is  Britain, where we launched the priority school building programmes, rebuilding or refurbishing 532 schools between 2012 and 2020. The Britain, where funding for school maintenance and rebuilding will average £2.6 billion a year over this Parliament as a result of a 20% increase on previous years. Indeed, far from cutting budgets this is the Britain where the amount spent last year was the highest in a decade.

Yes, this is the Britain where the BBC (in reality a partisan campaigning organisation) has ‘discovered’ that a number of the schools now with a concrete problem were due for rebuilding by Labour’s ‘Building Schools for the Future’ programme, which the Conservative-led government cancelled in 2010.
Hold on!, That government’s incoming Chief Secretary to the Treasury received a note from his predecessor stating that  ‘there is no money left’. Furthermore, that programme was expensive, bureaucratic, involved an  elaborate quango, with most of the money being spent before a single brick had been laid, and mostly built with the disastrous Private Finance Initiative which saddled schools and hospitals with interest payments and outrageous management fees for 30 years. It was a rip-off.

From the hyperbole you’d think that that the entire roof really had fallen in.
Of 22,000 schools about a hundred were identified as a problem. Only four have had to close temporarily.
As a former teacher I understand just how unwelcome this whole business is at the very busiest time – the start of the school year.
(My own school burnt down over a weekend and temporary classrooms had to be in place for Monday morning).
The reality is that the problem was known about and being addressed. The government continued to alert local government education authorities to their responsibility to survey, identify and manage the problem. The sudden need to raise the profile urgently now, was entirely down to new technical evidence leading to a change in our understanding of the concrete product itself. It is very inconvenient and disruptive, but we need a sense of proportion: One might be tempted to profanities, but Britain isn’t finished!

In the longer term however, let’s raise our game. Why have we been building schools since the nineteen seventies with an expected life-span of merely 30 years?
-And not very inspiring buildings either.
There are plenty of schools all over the country built by the Victorians that are beautiful and still giving good service. We would do well emulate our forebears.

Self-Identity and Indulgence

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One of the daily responsibilities of my Parliamentary Assistant is to trawl through the press and internet blogs to find interesting articles that I would otherwise miss.

This week’s selection included I wanna be black: the perils of self-identification by Manick Govinda in The Critic (The Critic is a monthly political and cultural journal)

It detailed a number of bizarre examples, here’s a selection:

An exhibition for artists called for artists who “identify as black”;
Another similar opportunity was targeted to “artists, academics, and researchers who identify as black”;

A white German woman went to great lengths to become (in appearance and attitude) what she believed to be the ‘quintessential black woman’;

A Theatre director , born to white  parents, was awarded a traineeship funded by Arts Council England, which was intended to address the under-representation of black and minority ethnic people in British theatre. Apparently, his argument was that because he looks like a person of “mixed heritage”, he had undergone the struggles of a black man as a consequence of his physical appearance;

A college student union published a statement asserting that it had “a long history of enabling its members to self-identify as being black…”

I’ve used this column in the past to explore the controversy surrounding the issue of self-identifying as a different gender. I can understand how someone might be confused about their gender, but self-identifying as a different colour, is a new one on me.
Four years ago I apologised to those who took offence when, in rather poor taste and equally poor judgement, I went to a Blues Brothers themed party as James Brown -the musician who invented Funk and grand-fathered Hip-hop. Nevertheless, it was intended merely as a tribute to a hero of mine. There was no pretence that I was a black musician.
This new fad however, of actually identifying as Black, has become more than a mere performance where, for some people, it isn’t enough just to have an interest in Black music, art, theatre, or whatever, instead they identify as actually being black.

Well, does it matter?
After all, it’s still pretty rare, and we are hardly fooled. Yet there is an impertinent presumption that we are required accept the fiction of false self-identification.
Despite my prejudice in favour of order and discipline, I have a libertarian streak: as long as you aren’t harming anyone else, you can call yourself whatever you like.
I was mortified when people were offended by my appearance as James Brown. But when two constituents explained to me precisely why they were offended, I understood and apologised.
I can’t believe people of any colour won’t be offended when a white artist claims an opportunity that was properly made available to address disadvantages experienced by artists who are black.
But then, in a free society, we have no right not to be offended.
Undoubtedly, many will be offended by my prejudice that the whole business is bonkers.

Taxing the Basic State Pension

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Last week’s ‘write-in’ email campaign purports to have the support of 62,000 members of the public and demands, on account of pensioner poverty, that the basic state pension should not be taxed.
I know that many pensioners are struggling but those who haven’t qualified for the state pension can apply for Pension Credit and anyone who is wholly reliant on the state pension as their sole source of income will not be paying any income tax on it because they have a personal tax free allowance of £12,570. In addition, pensioners do not pay National Insurance.
To exempt well off pensioners from paying tax on their basic state pension would be deeply unfair to the pensioners who are struggling, and to everyone else still at work and paying taxes to pay the pensioners.

Many of my correspondents forget that the pension is a state benefit, albeit not a universal benefit, but qualified for by national insurance contributions, a state benefit nevertheless.
We are often indignant when reminded about this. We insist that we are entitled to our pension because we have earned it by paying our contributions. Not so, we qualify for it by paying our national insurance contributions, we do not earn it. when we fully qualify we all end up with exactly the same pension notwithstanding that some will have paid many thousands of pounds more in contributions than others.
If our contributions were going into a fund and our pension was dependent upon the investment returns on the amounts we paid into that fund, then we could legitimately claim we had earned it, and not merely qualified for it.
Alas, there is no such fund. Our national insurance contributions are a tax like any other.
The reality is that current taxpayers are paying the pensions of current pensioners in the hope and expectation that this arrangement between the generations will continue.
So, perhaps pensioners might moderate the demands that will be placed on future generations as the numbers of the retired increase, and the working population shrinks.

The baby boomers enjoyed the ability to earn defined benefit private pensions which are no longer available, they had free higher education, and much easier access to house purchase.
My children have none of these things, and no prospect of being able to spend as much as a third of their lives in retirement.
The suggestion that the state pension should be untaxed is quite out of place.