Damian Hinds MP: speeches

Speeches

• 14 May 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  What awareness is there in very rural areas where there is not great broadband coverage and very poor indoor mobile phone coverage—sometimes no coverage at all—of the effect of this change, particularly in places where there are frequent and sometimes extended power cuts? When can we expect a full national awareness campaign?

• 14 May 2025 · Infected Blood Inquiry: Government Response · Hansard source

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  Clearly, getting to a good and timely operation of the compensation scheme will take the Paymaster General’s personal attention, and I know that he will give it that attention because of his dedication to getting this right. Could he give an update to the House on the anticipated memorial dedicated specifically to the children who were infected at Treloar’s?

• 13 May 2025 · Local Housing Need Assessment Reform · Hansard source

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  Mrs Hobhouse, it is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair—I think, in my case, for the first time. I congratulate the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) on securing the debate and bringing us together to discuss this important matter. It is very good to see this Minister in his place. I thank him and his Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government colleagues for their engagement on these issues. I have been in this place on more than one occasion to talk about related issues, including about how national parks work relative to local authority planning areas. I am grateful to his colleague the Minister for Housing and Planning for also meeting me separately as well as corresponding. Today, I am going to talk not about those issues, but about the algorithm overall and how it works and, in particular, about the affordability ratio and how it works—or, more correctly, does not work. We know that the Government are looking for a big uplift—a 50% increase—in the number of housing completions, but in areas such as mine in Horsham, the increase is much greater than that. In my local planning area the target is up from 575—already a pretty punchy annual target—to more than 1,100, which is effectively a doubling. It is not a north/south thing, it is a rural/urban thing. Rural areas throughout the country have some of the biggest increases, such as in the rural far north-west and far north-east. There have been really big increases in the target, and at the same time major conurbations are seeing much lower increases in their numbers—typically 16% or 17%. Some places, including parts of London and Birmingham, are actually seeing the numbers go down at a time when we are trying to build many more homes. Sometimes it is thought that this is correcting a historical imbalance—that homes have not been built in the countryside for all these years—but that is not the case. Proportionately over the last couple of decades, in the rate of additions of homes per 1,000 existing dwellings, the predominantly rural areas have seen a greater build-out rate than predominantly urban areas. I do understand that the Government need a formula—the 0.8% of housing stock multiplied by the five-year average affordability ratio, minus five, divided by five, multiplied by 0.95, plus one. It looks okay. Trust me: it looks logical if we break it down, but the truth is that in practice, it is not working. It is not delivering what all of us want to see, or what the Government want to see, which is a material, sustainable increase in housing stock in the places where people need it. The affordability formula matters so much more now because of that 0.95. It used to be 0.6, but since it has gone up, it has made the affordability ratio do that much more work. There are multiple aspects to query, such as whether to use workplace-based earnings or residency-based earnings. I think both of those things are relevant, and a comprehensive formula would probably use both. Whether earnings or income is used makes a difference, because it means capturing only the working population or the retired population as well. Crucially, the formula lumps all types of housing together, so it does not distinguish between the cost of a starter home and a two-bedroom flat, a one-bedroom flat or a three-bedroom house in these different places. Echoing what we heard from the hon. Member for Horsham, I have lots of people coming to my surgery who are unable to afford a home; probably everybody in this room has lots of people coming to their surgery in the same position. Some of those people are looking for social housing and there is a shortage of that, but when most people come to our surgeries and talk about the unaffordability of homes, they mean the affordability of a home they can buy—a decision that, I am guessing, most of us made at some point in our 30s or 40s. However, many more homes get built every year and I still get the same number of people coming to my surgery saying that they cannot afford to get on the housing ladder. We want there to be more affordable homes in both senses, both the public sector sense, in what I call “capital A” affordable—social rent, part-ownership and all that—and for young couples and young families to be able to buy a home and invest in their security and that of their children. But the problem is that, other things being equal, the best returns for developers are on larger, five-bedroom or four-bedroom executive homes in large plots of land outside of town centres, which are very aspirational homes for people to buy. Although there is nothing wrong with that, it does not address the needs of the people coming to our surgeries saying that they cannot afford to get on the housing ladder. Therefore, because we have high unaffordability ratios, we get lots more houses being built but they tend to be five-bedroom, four-bedroom executive homes disproportionately. That makes the area even more unaffordable on average, because the average price of a new build house is greater than the median price of the existing housing stock, so over time the formula ratchets up the price. It just says, “However many more homes you build, you will need to build more and more.” Honestly—there is no mathematical logic to it. We should be trying to address the actual need. I ask Ministers to look again at the formula, not to get rid of it but to change it. Development targets must be sustainable and reasonable in different areas of the country, and crucially they must target the addition of homes that people can afford to buy, so that over time affordability ratios improve.

• 13 May 2025 · Local Housing Need Assessment Reform · Hansard source

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  Well, I have been there, but I represent East Hampshire.

• 13 May 2025 · Official Development Assistance Budget · Hansard source

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  11. Which development programmes he plans to maintain funding for after the planned reduction of the official development assistance budget in 2027.

• 13 May 2025 · Official Development Assistance Budget · Hansard source

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  These severely constrained budgets call for thinking smarter, not simply smaller, so what work are the Government doing with the World Bank and other international institutions to make sure that UK development spend is fully leveraged so that every penny is as effective as possible?

• 8 May 2025 · Trade Negotiations · Hansard source

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  East Hampshire farmers will be relieved to hear what the Minister has said about food standards, including on hormone-treated beef and chlorinated chicken, after everything that has happened to them in the last period. Obviously we will have to see the detail, and see what else is in the agreement. I will ask about online safety. The Minister has said already that there has been no change to the digital services tax and no rowing back on the online safety regulatory regime. Can he confirm that no commitments have been made that would curtail the freedom of this House to make further changes in this area?

• 7 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Very quickly, I want the Minister to confirm that the Ofcom children’s codes, to which he has referred, are all about the 18 age threshold. They are a very welcome move to filter out wholly inappropriate content that is designed for over-18s and other very harmful content, but they do not do anything for the initial threshold—the age minimum—at age 13.

• 7 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Our nominal minimum age for social media usage in this country comes from a well-meaning piece of American legislation originally passed in 1998. The age did not have to be 13. Back in 1998 it was going to be 16, but it was changed to 13. With the birth of GDPR, the age did not have to be 13: the default was 16. Various countries, including Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland, selected 16, but we selected 13. That means that at the age of 13 people can sign up to social media, have their behaviour tracked for the purpose of targeting content and ads, start their own channel, have multiple IDs and make decisions about what details of their private life they share. Many people believe that, because of brain development, 13 is too young to make some of those decisions reliably, and that there are real downsides, risks and dangers from the combination of social media and the ready availability of a handheld electronic device. For children, there are addictive features, an effect on sleep, an ease of making unwanted content, rabbit holes to fall down and corrosive content that plays on the insecurity of adolescence. Objections to raising the age to 16 are normally centred around worries that pro-social applications will be hit and that there will be unintended consequences, such as children not being able to seek help if they in an abusive family, or to find information about contraception or whatever else they may need to know. Indeed, those were some of the reasons why, back in 1998, the age of 16 became 13, and those reasons came up again here in the debates over GDPR. As such, I worded new clause 12 to demonstrate how we could do it without losing anything, by having very broad categories of exemption. However, even with those exemptions, the Government would still be able to say—I am sure they will, and will say some of the same things about new clause 1 shortly—that new clause 12 is technically inadequate, worded badly and contains the wrong exemptions, and that there would be unintended consequences. New clause 19, though, which was tabled by the official Opposition, is almost impossible to argue against, because it contains the default position that these exemptions will change; under its provision, those changes would be subject to review, which would ensure that all those considerations were taken into account.

• 7 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman tempts me to broaden the debate, which I do not think you would encourage me to do at this late stage, Madam Deputy Speaker. However, he makes a very important point about self-regulation in this sector. The public, parents, and indeed children look to us to make sure we have their best interests at heart. The Online Safety Act may only say that age minima should be enforced “consistently” rather than well, but I do not think the will of this Parliament was that it would be okay to enforce a minimum age limit consistently badly. What we meant was that if the law says right now that the age minimum is 13, or if it is 16 in the future—or whatever other age it might be—companies should take reasonable steps to enforce it. There is more checking than there used to be, but it is still very limited. The recent 5Rights report on Instagram’s teen accounts said that all its avatars were able to get into social media with only self-reported birth dates and no additional checks. That means that many thousands of children under the nominal age of 13 are on social media, and that there are many more thousands who are just over 13 but who the platform thinks are 15, 16 or 17, or perhaps 18 or 19. That, of course, affects the content that is served to them. Either Ofcom or the ICO could tighten up the rules on the minimum age, but amendment 9 would require that to happen in order for companies to be compliant with the ICO regulation. The technology does exist, although it is harder to implement at the age 13 than at 18—of course, the recent Ofcom changes are all about those under the age of 18—but it is possible, and that technology will develop further. Ultimately, this is about backing parents who have a balance to strike: they want to make sure that their children are fully part of their friendship groups and can access all those opportunities, but also want to protect them from harm. Parents have a reasonable expectation that their children will be protected from wholly inappropriate content.

• 7 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 2 Apr 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right to identify the importance of network resilience as well as individual household connectivity—and, in a more general sense, to keep reminding us of the linkage between landline and mobile telephony. For so much of the country there is an assumption that if someone cannot get on the phone at home, they can still use a mobile phone. That just is not the case in some places, and certainly not in cases of storm damage.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is, of course, right. My constituency is not quite as rural as hers, but it is true that, while it sounds great when people talk about reaching 95%, 97% or 98% of households, hon. Members in this Chamber represent the 2%, the 3%, and the 5%, and we absolutely need a robust, reliable solution for them as well.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that we need to find robust solutions.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  I have heard that suggestion; it is interesting and something to be explored, but I do not think it is a substitute, particularly for elderly and infirm people who need that contact at home. My focus today, however, is not only on the elderly, infirm and the vulnerable; it is on anyone, because anyone can be vulnerable at some time. Anybody can need to dial 999, and anybody who lives in the sort of rural area that is prone to more frequent, sustained power cuts is someone we should be concerned about. Since we were born, we have all been used to the idea that, even if there is no power, we can still pick up the phone and be in touch. In emergencies, that landline can literally be a lifeline, but digital telephony needs its own power supply.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  First, my sympathies to the hon. Gentleman’s constituent’s family in that terrible case. I do agree, and those are points I will come on to. Identifying vulnerable users is vital; some will already be known to the communications providers, but the list of vulnerable customers is further expanded by data-sharing agreements with local authorities and housing associations. That is not a perfect process, and there is no complete picture of that user group, which leaves some elderly and disabled users exposed to non-voluntary migration. The previous Government did make important progress with the PSTN charter in 2023, with steps that the industry should take to protect vulnerable consumers and a pause on non-voluntary migrations unless a customer had not used their landline in the previous 12 months. That came after several incidents where medical alarms had failed to function on digital landlines, with tragic results. The March 2024 network operator charter, a voluntary agreement between the Government and the communications providers, aimed to ensure a smoother transition.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  I hear him. The hon. Gentleman is right—I cannot claim coastal for my area, by the way, but I can claim rural. Telephony is a fundamental service, most acutely for contacting emergency services whenever that need arises, but there is also a broader question about people just being able to stay in touch. Although the word “voice” is often used, including in Voice over Internet Protocol, the telecoms network is also used for other connections, including medical devices and security alarms.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  I agree entirely about the importance of communication. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) said, it is important for businesses as well as vulnerable consumers to understand some of those implications. When we communicate things, we need to think about people who do not use the internet. Organisations like Citizens Advice could play an important role in that, along with local authorities. Government Departments need to work with each other to make this infrastructure transition work. The Department for Energy Security, Ofgem and the energy sector need to work hand in hand with the Minister and his Department, regulator and sector, because electricity and communication are no longer two separate utilities—one relies on the other. Crucially, communication providers must find a way for all customers in areas that have a high incidence of power cuts—especially those that do not have a good mobile signal either—to provide a decent power back-up without additional costs to them individually. Those costs should be considered part of the fixed costs of the network as a whole, not for that individual household. Given that I do not have that data, I cannot work out how many postcode areas that is, or how many individual homes, but it must be a manageable number, because from what the Department for Energy Security has told me in answers to written questions, we have one of the most reliable energy systems in the world. Therefore, presumably the number of homes getting significant numbers of power outages must be relatively small. My final ask to the Minister is: please do not say, “This is an industry-led programme”. Ultimately, it is for the Government to ensure that people are not totally cut off and can contact the emergency services in their hour of most pressing need.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  I do. It is a major infrastructure change and there are particular considerations around the elderly and the vulnerable. I have heard from many constituents who have shared their concerns about the switchover, mostly about fear of losing that means of contact during a power cut and not having a mobile phone signal to fall back on. Elderly people often speak of their phone—their landline, as we would call it—as their lifeline, not only for their health support, but to be able to be in touch with friends and family, their support network. One constituent who has had the changeover talks about having her landline cut off, in her words, and replaced with a battery phone, which she says is too bulky for her to carry around and which does not reach all parts of the house. Because she lives alone and is disabled, she has relied on having multiple phones in the house, including a landline extension in her bedroom. The new phone has to be placed on a charger overnight, and the charger is located in a room up steps that she struggles to reach, so she no longer has a phone within reach of her bed.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  I am aware, and I do agree.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  The Minister is right that the most vulnerable people must be at the very top of our list of concerns, but can I be really clear that this debate is not only about that group? It is about anybody who is cut off in a storm and may need to phone the emergency services, because anybody—they may not even be elderly—might have a medical emergency. That has not been getting enough attention in his remarks so far.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  Absolutely. I found it difficult to get reliable data for a local geographic area on the instances of power outages but, like the hon. Member, I can say from my personal experience, as well as from constituents’ reports, that in my constituency we do have power cuts—as we would call them in old language—that are frequent and can be of significant and sometimes long duration. In the last few years we have had power cuts of multiple days at a time. With the PSTN charter, the previous Government asked communications providers to work with Ofcom to provide solutions going beyond the minimum of one hour of continued uninterrupted access to emergency services in the event of a power outage. I understand that Vodafone is now providing back-ups with four to seven hours of usage time free of charge to vulnerable customers. I am grateful to Vodafone for letting me see that technology and to ask about it further. For other customers not on the vulnerable list, however, those back-ups come at the customer’s own cost. In September 2024, Ofcom issued updated resilience guidance setting an industry expectation that power back-ups for newly installed fixed network cabinets should last four hours. As I understand it, however, although the Government continue to encourage providers to go further for householders, the actual minimum requirement remains at just one hour. That is simply not nearly enough for people experiencing power cuts of the duration that we have been talking about. I have the following asks. There must be much greater awareness about the digital switchover, through a nationally led campaign, alongside the telecare national action plan. Some of the fears people have could be allayed through just understanding more about what will happen.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  This may be the last thing in the debate, but it is important to say that in many of our constituencies, there are places where people cannot make a voice call on a mobile telephone indoors. That is what an elderly person would be trying to do. It is not about a data transaction; it is about being able to make a phone call.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way? I know he is very short of time—

• 2 Apr 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of the switch to digital landlines on rural communities. It is good to see you in the chair, Mr Betts. You are correct that a 30-minute debate is normally a two-person debate. This subject has attracted more attention than is normally the case. I come at this from this from the perspective of my beautiful rural constituency, with places such as the Candovers and the Tisteds, Binsted and Buriton, Froxfield and Privett, Hawkley and East Meon, but the debate is deliberately is not entitled “East Hampshire”; it is entitled “Rural Communities”, because the impacts and the issues are much broader. Colleagues from all parts, possibly all four nations of the United Kingdom, with us today may therefore wish to intervene, and I have trimmed my remarks to make sure that colleagues can intervene—within reason, obviously—should they wish to. Analogue telephony will soon be no more. PSTN, the public switched telephone network, uses technology that is outdated, with copper wire infrastructure nearing the end of its life and spare parts becoming harder to source. Britain, like other places, will thus be digitising its phone network. What follows will in many ways be better—more resilient, more scalable and more flexible. The roll-out of VoIP, Voice over Internet Protocol—we sometimes hear different names such as Digital Voice—is an industry-led initiative, but some of the issues that we will be talking about today go beyond that. They are issues for our society and therefore for the regulator, and ultimately, they are issues for the Government.