House of Commons

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

Thursday 3 June 2010

The House met at half-past Ten o’clock

Prayers

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

1. What plans he has for the future of regional development agencies; and if he will make a statement.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

9. What plans he has for future support for businesses in Merseyside and the north-west; and if he will make a statement.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

12. For what reasons his Department plans to replace regional development agencies with local economic partnerships.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

15. What plans he has for the future of the regional development agency in the north-east; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

The Government intend to replace RDAs with local enterprise partnerships and to bring together business and local authorities to establish local accountability. Where they enjoy clear public support, the partnerships may take a similar form to existing RDAs. In making the necessary reductions in RDA budgets and reviewing their functions, we will seek to mitigate the impact on economically vulnerable parts of the country.

[Emma Reynolds]

I thank the Secretary of State for his answer, and congratulate him and his team on their new positions. I wish them well.

Advantage West Midlands brings an economic benefit to the regional economy of over £7 for every £1 spent. Does the Secretary of State understand that the cuts that his Government have announced will put jobs at risk in my constituency and critical projects such as the i54 business park?

[Vince Cable]

The Secretary of State does understand the importance of RDAs, which of course will be changed but in a way that makes them more effective. I am sure that the hon. Lady noticed that in my first comments on RDAs very shortly after I took office I recognised that several parts of the country were especially vulnerable. I mentioned the west midlands as one.

[Alison McGovern]

In my constituency of Wirral South there are a great many people who are very concerned about the coalition Government’s proposals, and specifically those with special relevance to the projects that have been progressed by the Northwest Regional Development Agency. Will the Secretary of State give me some reassurance that this vital business support will continue?

[Vince Cable]

Within days of taking up this job I went to the north-west of England. I visited the RDA and talked to the chairman and chief executive and to businesses in the region. I reassured them that we are well aware of the problems faced by Merseyside and the north-west, and that it is an area of priority in terms of resources.

[Steve McCabe]

I too congratulate the Secretary of State, and I heard what he said about not tinkering too much in the west midlands. How many jobs would have to be lost in the west midlands before he considers this policy to be a failure?

[Vince Cable]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on being returned to the House. I remember that he was a formidable force in the Government Whips Office in his day. He has already noted the acceptance that the west midlands has particular structural problems, and they will be taken into account in the reordering of the RDAs. In my first answer, I stressed that the changes depend very much on the reaction of local business and local authorities. I am sure that he will make representations to Birmingham city council and local businesses, and I hope that they will reflect the priority that he wishes to give.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the part that he played in securing a very clear assurance from the Prime Minister yesterday that One NorthEast will continue to have a key role as a regional development agency. Will that role and the way in which it is structured enable it to continue to assist existing and new firms to develop the private sector, for example in assembling land where needed?

[Vince Cable]

I hope that it will continue to play a positive role. My right hon. Friend has been extensively involved in supporting the north-east, and I talked to him about these things on the several occasions I visited Newcastle and the region. He knows that one of the early decisions that came to me was to appoint the new chairman of One NorthEast, and appointing someone to manage the transition was a statement of a wish to maintain an element of continuity. I do not pretend that the RDAs will not change: they will, but I recognise that the north-east is a particular case because of its very high dependence on public sector employment and the generally very positive feedback I get about One NorthEast.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend and his team on their new positions. Is he aware of the Richard report commissioned by the Conservative party in opposition? It found that a third of RDA money was spent on administration and that much of the rest was spent on signposting to other sources of information. I beseech him to ensure that in the new policy businesses and locally elected authorities can get together to avail themselves far more directly of all that taxpayer money.

[Vince Cable]

Yes, I am aware of that report. There was a happy coincidence of thinking between my colleague’s party and my own on the future of RDAs. She is quite right to say that there was a lot of administrative waste, some of which we are now removing as a result of the changes that have been made in the last week. There will be parts of the country—including, I think, the part that she represents—where we will have a substantial cutback in RDAs. However, they will be refocused and made more effective.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for last week coming to visit Pace International, an excellent company in my constituency. Following on from the excellent question from my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), I have been concerned that the Secretary of State has indicated that Yorkshire Forward may be given a reprieve. May I tell him that it is just as unacceptable for the unelected and unaccountable Yorkshire Forward to spend £300 million a year of public money as it is for similar organisations in the south of England?

[Vince Cable]

The language of “reprieve” is not quite right. All the RDAs will change their nature; they will become local partnerships.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I very gently say to the Secretary of State that he must turn to address the House?

[Vince Cable]

What I said is that Yorkshire, together with the north-east, the north-west and the west midlands, has particular structural problems that do need to be addressed.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State and his ministerial team to their post and wish them well. The Secretary of State and I have something in common: we both used to work for the late John Smith in times past, but that of course was before the Secretary of State fell in with the wrong crowd—and now he has fallen in with an even worse crowd.

The Secretary of State has said several times in recent weeks that his Department will be the Department for growth. I am not going to begin these exchanges by denying that whoever won the election, there would have been difficult decisions to take on deficit reduction, but does he accept that the £300 million of cuts to RDA budgets this year are not efficiency savings? They will mean real cuts in real business support, with less private investment leveraged in and cuts to important regeneration projects. Is it not the case that the specific feature of these cuts and his plans for replacing RDAs is that they will impact on our capacity to secure the very growth that is necessary to make deficit reduction a success?

[Mr Speaker]

There were two questions there. One brief answer will suffice.

[Vince Cable]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his welcome and congratulate him on his elevation to the shadow Cabinet. He is quite right: we both greatly respected John Smith, for whom we worked. I should also like to thank the right hon. Gentleman for what he did as a very hard-working Minister. He has made the life of this Government easier as a result of all the preparatory work that he did preparing for private capital to come into Royal Mail. But in relation to cuts, I am sure he acknowledges that the fiscal position does demand drastic action. When I joined the Department I was already aware that this process was being undertaken—cuts were already being taken in science laboratories, and further education lecturers were being made redundant as a result of cuts made under his Government.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

2. What plans he has to extend the right to request flexible working to all employees.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)]

I welcome the hon. Lady to the House and congratulate her on her election. The coalition agreement commits the Government to extending the right to request flexible working to all employees. We will be consulting businesses and listening to their views, and we hope to bring proposals to the House later in the year.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Thank you very much for that answer, and I am pleased to welcome all of you to the team. It is so nice to have you in this House.

I want to ask about flexible working arrangements in particular. I know from my own experience how valuable it can be to an employer to have employees on flexible working arrangements, but I realise that small businesses are very concerned about the potential impact of extending this regulation and I wondered what steps the team will take to consult on the extension of flexible working arrangements.

[Mr Davey]

Our commitment is for extensive consultation. I want to make it clear that my door is open to all business organisations and to the hon. Lady and hon. Members of the House. We will listen to those views and take them on board, but there is increasing evidence that flexible working arrangements are embraced by employers and employees and are welcomed in many businesses across the country.

[Christopher Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Many employers regard flexible working as involving the hiring of temporary staff—agency workers and so on. Will the Minister put it on the record today once and for all that there is no truth whatever in the reports in the Financial Times that his Government—the coalition—are planning to scrap protections for agency workers, for temporary workers, which give them rights to equal pay after 12 weeks?

[Mr Davey]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman back to the House; I remember sparring with him in previous Parliaments. As a former Minister, he will know not to believe everything that he reads in the papers.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

3. What his most recent estimate is of the financial effect on businesses of the present level of regulation.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

5. What his most recent estimate is of the financial effect on businesses of the present level of regulation.

[Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

7. What his most recent estimate is of the financial effect on businesses of the present level of regulation.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Mark Prisk)]

While no official estimate currently exists, British Chambers of Commerce calculates that, since 1998, the additional regulatory costs introduced by the previous Labour Government have equated to approximately £11 billion every year.

[Mr Bone]

I thank the Minister for that response and welcome him to the Dispatch Box; I can think of nobody in the House better qualified to occupy his role. The cost that regulation has imposed is staggering. Can he estimate how much of that regulation emanates from the European Union, and what can he do to minimise that?

[Mr Prisk]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those kind opening remarks, and I hope to be able to satisfy my colleagues’ desire to make sure that we make a real change in how we help small businesses. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that Europe is a key source of many of the regulatory problems that we have, but we gold-plate the situation. That is why the Government are determined to adopt a different approach. Let me briefly say what that is. There are two simple principles: first, we will ensure that the timing of implementation does not disadvantage British business, when compared to its European counterparts; and secondly, when introducing regulation, we shall do so in a way that does not substantially increase either the cost or the scope. That is a crucial commitment to small businesses, and I hope that it will stem the tide.

[Mr Ellwood]

I, too, welcome my hon. Friend to his position. Labour’s red tape comes in all shapes and sizes. There are examples of that in Bournemouth, where a heavy goods vehicle licence is now required to drive one of the Noddy trains, which have provided an excellent service for years. Also, the police are now required to pass a course to allow them to climb an 8-foot ladder to erect Neighbourhood Watch signs. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is not what made Britain great?

[Mr Prisk]

My hon. Friend is right about the way in which common sense seems to depart from the way that this works. That is why we need to change the system, not just deal with the symptoms of the problem. That is why we are introducing a one in, one out approach to change the whole culture of Government: no new regulatory burden on business can be brought forward unless reductions are made to existing regulations. That will change the culture of Whitehall and stop some of the nonsense to which my hon. Friend refers.

[Mr Amess]

As chairman of the all-party group on small shops, I receive many representations from shops in Southend West and across the country on the burden of such regulations. In these still unfavourable trading conditions, will my hon. Friend look carefully at those representations and, as a Minister open to new ideas, meet a small deputation from the all-party group?

[Mr Prisk]

I am very pleased to accede to that request. My hon. Friend is an excellent advocate of that vital part of our economy. It is crucial that we are open to fresh ideas, so I look forward to hearing those representations, and if he will contact my office, we can arrange that as soon as possible.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

With reference to the Minister’s desire to help small businesses, it has to be accepted that some effort needs to be made to create the right environment for manufacturing businesses. Will he therefore please explain the Government’s plans to remove the annual investment allowance, which helps thousands of manufacturing businesses, hundreds of which are in my constituency?

[Mr Prisk]

The hon. Lady is right to point out the importance of manufacturing; it is a crucial part of our economy. Sadly, it became imbalanced when her party was in power, and we need to change that. On the tax measure in question, and the representation that she made, she will understand that we are in the period running up to Budget purdah and need to be careful not to get ahead of what I think the Chancellor’s ambitions will be, but at the CBI dinner he made it very clear that, as regards corporation tax changes, we will not act in any way that impugns manufacturing in any form.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Does the Minister consider any part of health and safety regulation to be burdensome or, as he just said, red tape? If so, which bits?

[Mr Prisk]

The key principle in regulation is to ensure that it is proportionate and balanced, and that risks, where they exist, particularly in health and safety, are recognised. However, I say to the hon. Gentleman and to the whole House, let us ensure that regulations are introduced and implemented with a degree of common sense. Under the Better Regulation Executive we have good rules about proportionate regulation, and I want to ensure that health and safety meets those standards.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

May I offer my congratulations to the hon. Gentleman on his appointment? I was very pleased to read that this Government are to follow the previous Government’s initiative in publishing the forward regulatory programme. Indeed, I was very pleased to read the press release in the Financial Times this morning, which I must say was very familiar to me. Press releases are the easy bit, but when will the Government bring forward the costings for additional regulations, such as minimum pricing and additional planning regulations, which have already been proposed and are set out in the coalition agreement?

[Mr Prisk]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks and look forward to jousting with him in a reverse of the situation we had before. I am very pleased to answer his point directly, because he raises the question of those regulations that are in the pipeline. I am pleased to tell the House that this Government will initiate a fundamental review of all regulation that is scheduled for introduction over the coming year. In the first few days of this Government, we have already identified several billion pounds of costs in those regulations, and we want to ensure that, where we can, we remove them so that business can get on and grow.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

4. What his policy is on support for adult community learning.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr John Hayes)]

My strong commitment to adult and community learning is well known. It is shared by my Secretary of State and the Prime Minster, who in a recent interview with “Adults Learning” made clear his belief that learning is

“about broadening the mind, giving people self-belief, strengthening the bonds of community”.

That is why in 2010-11 we are developing a skills strategy with increasing importance placed on those with disabilities, learning difficulties and disadvantaged families and communities, spending £210 million in that year alone.

But that is insufficiently elegiac for you, Mr Speaker, and for this House. Lifelong learning feeds hope—builds and rebuilds lives by seeding a hunger for knowledge. It shapes people, families and communities and feeds social justice.

[Andrew Percy]

I thank the Minister for that response. Does he agree that the success and value of adult education is measured not only in terms of qualifications and certificates? Will he assure us that, as this Government move forward, the past cuts in adult education, for courses that do not lead to qualifications, will if possible be reversed, and that value will be placed on all layers of community adult education?

[Mr Hayes]

I welcome my hon. Friend to the House. I know of his rich experience in learning as a former teacher, and he, like me, understands that learning has a value for its own sake. I do not want to be unkind to my predecessors, because that would be slightly vulgar; nevertheless, it has to be said that the dull utilitarianism that permeated the previous regime’s thinking on this subject has now, thankfully, come to an end.

[Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware of the huge contribution that the Workers Educational Association has made to adult education. Can he confirm that his Government will support the WEA in its current form?

[Mr Hayes]

I am not only an admirer but, I would go so far as to say, a devotee of the WEA. The value that learning brings, in elevating lives and building strong communities, is exemplified by such organisations, and I look forward to an early meeting with the WEA to discuss how we can move forward together.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

6. What steps his Department plans to take to support businesses seeking to offer apprenticeships.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

We will increase the number of apprenticeship places, and we are committed to improving the quality of apprenticeships to make them better suited to the needs of employers and learners. The Government’s decision to redeploy £150 million of our savings in 2010-11, creating an additional 50,000 places, demonstrates our commitment to high-quality, employer-owned apprenticeships.

[Robert Halfon]

I thank the Secretary of State for his reply. Is he aware of the excellent Essex apprenticeship scheme that does so much for young people throughout the county? What steps will he take to replicate such schemes to ensure that apprenticeships are better championed to young people? Polling data from the organisation Edge show that just one in four teachers would recommend apprenticeships over higher education.

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: this is an extremely important aspect of helping to develop the careers of young people. It is worth putting it in context that the 50,000 additional places we are providing are on top of 250,000 that existed before—a 20% increase in one year. This is specifically directed at small and medium-sized businesses, which frequently do not get the benefit of apprenticeships. I am sure that the good practice in Essex will be emulated around the country.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to the Dispatch Box. Has he read the ERA Foundation’s report on the declining productive capability of our country? Does he accept that lively and proper apprenticeships will be an essential building block in facing the productive capacity changes that we need in our country? Will he remember that last time the Conservatives ruled this country, they got rid of apprenticeships? Will he have a free hand to build on the basis that we built on in the past 13 years?

[Vince Cable]

This Government are expanding apprenticeships very rapidly in their first few days in office. Of course the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right on his basic point that apprenticeships are not only good for the very many young people who would otherwise be unemployed, but good for the productivity of the economy.

[Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)]

May I ask the Secretary of State to give an assurance to manufacturing companies, particularly those such as Thamesteel in my constituency, which need to recruit people with high ability as apprentices, that the apprenticeships scheme that we are proposing will not be targeted only at people with less ability?

[Vince Cable]

Indeed; the hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. We are talking about the full range of skills in this regard. If he wishes to pursue his point in relation to his constituency, the National Apprenticeship Service is there to help him to steer the scheme in the right direction.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I warmly welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his position and welcome his apparent desire to carry on Labour’s outstanding record on growing apprenticeships. When I became the Minister with responsibility for apprenticeships, I thought I was being radical in appointing an apprentice to my private office, but I must admit that even I would not have been as brave as this Government and gone so far as to appoint an apprentice as the new Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

Given the need to set a good example to business, can the right hon. Gentleman tell us what the numbers will be for this year on public sector starts for apprenticeships?

[Vince Cable]

Of course we cannot give numbers for that, for the simple reason that it is an offer for businesses to take up. Many of them will be in the public sector, and many of them will be in the private sector. I will keep in touch with the hon. Gentleman and give him the information that he requires as it emerges.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend and his colleagues not only to their jobs but to their commitment to apprenticeships. May I ask him, in particular, to ensure that those involved in large-scale construction projects and large-scale transport projects take their full responsibility for apprenticeships and that all chambers of commerce are engaged in the process of spreading the word?

[Vince Cable]

Yes, indeed; that is a very helpful point. I would merely stress that, by and large, very large companies do engage in substantial apprenticeship schemes for their own good reasons, and have the resources to do it. The particular expansion that we are engaged in is focused on small and medium-sized enterprises that lack the resources and the support to do that.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

8. What the terms of reference are of the review of employment law referred to in the coalition agreement.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

We are reviewing employment law to maximise flexibility for employers and for employees. Our aim is fairness for employees within a competitive environment for business.

[Mr Anderson]

I thank the Minister for that response. During the election campaign, the Secretary of State said that he and the Liberal Democrats believed that the link between the Labour party and the trade unions was corrupt. Can we have an assurance from the team that that prejudice will in no way influence the employment law review?

[Mr Willetts]

The Secretary of State has made it clear that he did not make those remarks. We are looking at a review that will not cut the rights of individuals, but we want a streamlined process to cut the costs of compliance for employers. We have noticed the comments that have been made by, for example, British Chambers of Commerce and the Institute of Directors, which have called for changes to the employment tribunal system so as to streamline the process. That is what we are considering.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

10. Whether he has discussed with Sheffield Forgemasters the continued availability of a loan facility from his Department; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

At this time, I have not discussed with Sheffield Forgemasters the continuing availability of the loan facility but, as the then Chief Secretary’s statement on 17 May made clear, all projects that were approved after 1 January 2010, including this one, are undergoing a process of review. An announcement will be made in due course as part of the review.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the Secretary of State for his answer, but will he acknowledge that the loan was crucial in levering in significant private sector investment to enable the acquisition of the largest forging press outside Japan and Korea? Over three years, the loan was subject to rigorous review by the shareholder executive and a value-for-money exercise, and this further review is causing unnecessary uncertainty. Will he therefore urgently get rid of that uncertainty, give Forgemasters the confidence to move forward and confirm the loan?

[Vince Cable]

I understand the importance of that project to the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and to Sheffield, but he needs to understand that we inherited a very large number of projects that were agreed in a hurry in the run-up to the general election. I do not want to speculate about the motives, but we inherited a lot of projects that were of variable quality. We now have to judge those projects, including this one, according to the criteria of value for money and affordability.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

Let me assure the House that the Sheffield Forgemasters project was not agreed in a hurry. Does the Secretary of State understand that the decision of the last Government to provide a loan, not a grant, to that company was about not just support for one company but our ambition to secure a national capability for the United Kingdom in making key components for the nuclear supply chain that is set to grow throughout the world in the coming years? Does he also accept that if the damaging uncertainty not only about this but about other important projects, such as the electric car at Nissan and the automotive assistance to Ford, is not resolved soon, all the Government’s talk about supporting a lower-carbon economy will be seen as nothing more than rhetoric, with their actions going in entirely the opposite direction?

[Vince Cable]

I understand the issue because I have studied the reasoning behind the project. However, the hon. Gentleman has got to understand that we must do due diligence and a lot of projects have to be reviewed. There is also the basic question of affordability. We have inherited a very serious financial situation and all such projects must be judged against whether money is available for them.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

11. What plans he has to support women entrepreneurs; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Mark Prisk)]

While the existing start-up rates for female-led businesses compare favourably with other G7 nations, the Government believe that much more needs to be done to help more women in business.

I am currently talking to a wide range of businesses and considering what role the Government should play with regard to access to finance, home-based businesses and enabling more women to start their own firm.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

But the people who need to support women entrepreneurs and are failing to do so are at the banks, despite evidence from the Grameen bank and from the USA that investment in women entrepreneurs can grow the economy. What conversations is the Minister having with the banks to ensure that women-led businesses can succeed? Is he confident that a male team of Ministers will make that a high enough priority?

[Mr Prisk]

The priority of making sure that the banks are doing their job is something that both the Secretary of State and I are working on closely with the banking sector and the Treasury. We agree with the hon. Lady that we need to make sure that the banks are doing their job properly. I think there was a degree of, dare I say, complacency from some Ministers at the end of the last Government that all things were settled, but she is right to point out that they are not. She has also rightly pointed out the gender imbalance on the Front Bench, but I am pleased to tell her that my noble Friend Baroness Wilcox, who represents this Department in the other place, is working closely with me on the question of women in business. Baroness Wilcox is a successful business woman herself and I think she will make an excellent contribution. I know the hon. Lady takes a close interest in this matter. If she and other business women here would like to contribute to the debate, so that we can ensure we get the gender balance right and help more firms, they would be very welcome.

[Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)]

Many companies already accept the wisdom of procuring from companies that look like the customers whom they supply. We are behind many other countries, particularly the USA. I greatly welcome the Government’s aspiration to procure 25% from small businesses. Will the Minister consider the issue of procurement, and measuring procurement, from women-owned businesses for Government contracts?

[Mr Prisk]

I would be wary on trying to secure gender balance, as it becomes very complicated. The key is ensuring that women, as business owners and managers, can have the best opportunity. I would be happy to talk to the hon. Lady about how we can do that. I extend to her and other female Members who are in business and have real experience an offer to help me ensure that those businesses can succeed.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

13. What plans he has for funding higher education in 2010-11; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

Universities will receive £5.1 billion for teaching from the Higher Education Funding Council for 2010-11. This includes an increase of £70 million since the December 2009 grant letter. That reflects the 10,000 extra university places that the coalition is committed to delivering in 2010-11.

The Government will make future funding decisions in the light of the Browne review on student finance, established by the previous Government, which will report later this year.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I am sure that hon. Members know that for almost a decade Professor Philip Cowley and his colleagues in the school of politics at Nottingham university have been studying Back-Bench behaviour. Their findings have been published on the “Revolts” website and are widely used by journalists and hon. Members—particularly, I am told, the Whips Office. Does the Minister share my concern that the project has recently lost its Economic and Social Research Council funding, just at the time when it might yield the most interesting results from the Benches opposite?

[Mr Willetts]

I attended a meeting at Nottingham university before the election when Professor Cowley presented his report on the fascinating subject of rebellions in the House of Commons, so I am aware of his work. However, it would be dangerous if we got into a position whereby Ministers responsible for higher education started commenting on and micro-managing individual universities’ decisions about their departments. I do not think that we should go down that route.

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

My hon. Friend will be aware of the value for money that the US community college model provides in getting more disadvantaged young people into higher education. Is he having any work undertaken in the Department to assess what we can learn from that important system in the USA?

[Mr Willetts]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s expertise in the subject and his record of campaigning on it. I completely agree that progression through college to university is one of strengths of some American systems, such as that in California. Experts from California are coming here next week. We definitely need to learn from those systems so that people have opportunities as they progress through education to move from college to university.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new role. I know that many in the higher education sector value the continuity that he provides, but they also value consistency. In November 2009, he said:

“At a time when the jobs market for young people is tougher than ever, it is far better to find them a place in education than to leave them languishing on the dole.”

Why, within days of taking up the job, has he done a volte face and condemned 10,000 young people to the dole by not providing extra student places to HE this summer? Is that not desperately hypocritical?

[Mr Willetts]

I look forward to my exchanges with the right hon. Gentleman, and of course I recognise his expertise as the former Minister for universities. As he held that position, I am sure that he remembers the grant letter that the former Secretary of State sent out in December 2009 to the Higher Education Funding Council, which involved a reduction in the number of students. We have delivered the pledge that we made to our party conference, and which is in the coalition agreement, of 10,000 extra places. That is why the amount of money going to universities in teaching grant this year is £50 million higher than the figure set out in the December 2009 letter.

[Mr Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD)]

14. If he will take steps to increase the use of Royal Mail by public sector bodies.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)]

It is for individual Government Departments and public bodies to decide which mail carrier to use, having regard for the most efficient and cost-effective ways of sending their mail. Given the public sector deficit that the Government inherited, that must be the right way forward.

[Mr Sanders]

Several Departments do not use Royal Mail, but outsource to firms such as DX Group, which, of course, means that the public purse is not recompensed. Surely if we are to safeguard Royal Mail and the Post Office, we ought to do more to help them.

[Mr Davey]

I am sorry to disappoint my hon. Friend, but it is very important that we use the competitive mail market to get the best value for the taxpayer. It is crucial that we abide by public procurement rules, and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will not tell other Departments and public bodies how to procure their mail services.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I received 12 mailings from one organisation that has had a lot of state money in recent years, and some of my constituents received up to 30 mailings. Will the Minister have a word with some of his colleagues, because they all love to talk about how they support the Post Office, but when the Tory party and Lord Ashcroft funded those direct mailings, none was delivered through the Royal Mail? Will he have a word with those hypocrites, and every time they talk about the Post Office, remind them of that?

[Mr Davey]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Just before the hon. Gentleman replies from the Dispatch Box, I should say that I know he will want to keep his answer within order, and that as far as I am aware, the Conservative party is not a public sector body.

[Mr Davey]

Thank you for that helpful advice, Mr Speaker.

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) has always been known in the House for his modest use of language and his cross-party spirit, and I am sure he will want to ensure that all trade unions that fund mailings use Royal Mail.

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

16. What recent assessment he has made of the future prospects of the video games industry in Scotland; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

No formal assessment has yet been made since we came into office, only about three weeks ago. However, I can say that the prospects for the Scottish video games industry are excellent, particularly with the centre of excellence for games at the university of Abertay in Dundee.

[Ann McKechin]

As the Minister will be aware, the video games industry is increasingly successful in the UK and particularly in Scotland. The Labour Government indicated that they would give a specific tax relief to the industry, which faces huge competition internationally, particularly from the USA and Canada. Will he provide reassurance that that tax relief plan will continue under his Administration?

[Mr Vaizey]

As the hon. Lady knows, we are currently in Budget purdah, but in opposition, I was on the record as supporting a video games tax break long before the Labour party converted to that. Indeed, for most of the last 13 years, the only time the Labour party ever talked about video games was when the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) condemned them for all sorts of misdemeanours.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I am glad the Minister mentioned Abertay in Dundee, as the video games sector is hugely important there. Although it was disappointing that the last Labour Budget contained nothing on tax breaks for the games industry in this financial year, and although he is in Budget purdah, will he and his colleagues take excellent representations from TIGA, the games trade body, to understand precisely why tax breaks are required to fend off the competition from jurisdictions where tax breaks are already in place?

[Mr Vaizey]

When I was the Opposition spokesman, I had a close relationship with TIGA, which is an excellent trade body representing the video games industry—it put together an excellent submission on games tax relief and many other video games sector issues—and I am very happy to continue to meet TIGA representatives to discuss this important matter.

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

17. How many employers used the Train to Gain programme in 2009-10; and how many people were trained under that programme.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr John Hayes)]

By July 2009, around 200,000 employers had staff involved in training through the programme. In the 2008-09 academic year, learners started 817,400 Train to Gain courses.

[Mr Bailey]

I thank the Minister for his reply and welcome him to his portfolio. The figures he gave demonstrate that the programme is very successful. Local manufacturers in the west midlands have recognised and welcomed it in the past. Can he give assurances that the programme will be continued, particularly as it was used effectively during the global recession, for companies on short-time working? In the event that we relaxed back into a double-dip recession, it could be there for them to use again.

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman will know that the problem with Train to Gain is its deadweight cost—a fact that the last Administration were unwilling to face up to. The evaluations of Train to Gain suggest that it is used to support all kinds of training that employers would have funded anyway and to accredit skills that already exist—

[Mr Bailey]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Hayes]

Well, that is not just my view; it was the view of the National Audit Office, which looked at the scheme and said that it has not provided good value for money.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

18. What steps his Department plans to take to support businesses seeking to offer apprenticeships.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr John Hayes)]

I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State a short time ago.

[Mr Buckland]

What steps will be taken to ensure that the new system of apprenticeships reaches out to the very smallest businesses in my constituency and elsewhere? All too often in the past the very smallest businesses have had great difficulty in getting the information that they need to engage apprentices.

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend is right. The apprenticeships system needs to be built from the bottom up, which is why the Government are determined, as the Secretary of State said earlier, that small and medium enterprises should be supported in securing apprenticeships. We intend to introduce an apprenticeship bonus, which will help those small businesses to participate. We want to look at supply-side barriers and at root training organisations that will help small businesses to take on more apprenticeships. We are committed to apprenticeships in a way that has not been seen for years, perhaps not ever.

[Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

That is breathtaking. How can businesses in the supply chain in my area be expected to take on apprenticeships while there is so much uncertainty surrounding the reviews being undertaken on Vauxhall Motors and Airbus?

[Mr Hayes]

There is no uncertainty. Let me be clear about this Government’s commitment to apprenticeships. Even in the short time that we have been in office, we have transferred money into the apprenticeship programme that will allow the creation of 50,000 more apprenticeships. That is just the start. My ambition is no less than to build a system that facilitates more apprenticeships in Britain than we have ever seen before.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

My Department’s responsibilities include helping to drive growth, including rebalancing the economy; building on the strengths of manufacturing, the knowledge industries and the science and research base; helping businesses grow by getting rid of excessive regulation and ensuring that they can access credit; being open to trade and foreign investment; and encouraging the development of a skilled and educated labour force.

[Bob Russell]

I trust that, within that roll-call, the Secretary of State can persuade his Department or other relevant bodies to look into the debacle of Vergo Retail Ltd, now in administration, and its acquisition—less than a year ago—of the non-food outlets of the East of England Co-operative Society, with the pending loss of up to 300 jobs, given up by the caring, sharing Co-op across the east of England.

[Vince Cable]

I very much welcome back my colleague, the voice of Colchester, and I know that he will continue to fight assiduously for his constituency. I do not know the facts of this takeover and closure, but I will be happy to investigate if he writes to me or meets me to discuss it.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State acknowledge that cutting the higher education budget will place pressure on Lord Browne to conclude that student fees need to rise? Is it not the ultimate cop-out for the Secretary of State to cut the higher education budget and then abstain on student fees legislation?

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

Of course, Lord Browne’s report was commissioned by the previous Government, on a cross-party basis, so those on both sides of the House will agree that it is right to wait for his report. As I explained to the House earlier, compared with the plans announced in December 2009, we have increased our contribution to student teaching so that we can deliver our pledge of extra student places.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

T2. Does the Secretary of State have any plans for departmental reorganisation? Does he recall that his predecessor, Lord Mandelson, went on an empire-building spree as a price for supporting the former Prime Minister, and will he be moving back innovation and skills to the Department for Education?

[Vince Cable]

There are no plans to reorganise the Department, and in any event, it is a matter for the Prime Minister. Actually, one of the strengths of the new Government is that we have maintained continuity and are concentrating on policy and economic recovery, not on moving around the furniture in Whitehall.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

T3. Nissan is investing £400 million in its Sunderland plant, and the previous Government awarded it a £20 million grant for that, to help to secure thousands of jobs in the supply chain. Can the Secretary of State tell me whether that grant is still secure, considering that, if he answers no, thousands of jobs will be put at risk?

[Vince Cable]

No, I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman now, because as I explained earlier, all these projects are being reviewed. I know perfectly well that there is a strong case in this instance, but we have to review value for money and affordability in every case.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

T5. Will the Government’s apprenticeship initiative provide scope for the training of blacksmiths and other heritage crafts, bearing in mind the concerns of blacksmiths in my constituency that the new entrants training scheme for blacksmith training seems to have been closed down following the decisions of the previous Government?

[Mr Willetts]

I know that my right hon. Friend has a strong interest in this subject, and I assure him that the Department is committed to improving the apprenticeship regime for craft skills. I have also already had a meeting on how we can improve the qualification regime so that specific qualifications in craft skills are properly recognised and funded—something that disappeared under the previous Government.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

T4. Why is this new Front-Bench team so reluctant to talk about manufacturing? Can we not start to tie up the start-up of new businesses that make things with our university sector? Is it not about time that there was yet another inquiry into doing something about expanding our manufacturing exports?

[Vince Cable]

This Government are very fixed on the issue of rebalancing the economy. Manufacturing has declined continually over the past few decades, particularly in the past decade. It now has the advantage of a more competitive exchange rate, and it will be given support from the Government, particularly through the development of apprenticeships, as I indicated earlier.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

After vigorous lobbying, including by the all-party “Save the pub” group, the last Government confirmed plans to relax the beer tie and to set a timetable to act if the industry did not reform itself. Can we get an assurance from the Minister that this Government will stick to that plan and timetable?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)]

Yes.

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

T6. I note that this week the Secretary of State visited Glasgow university in my constituency, according to The Scotsman, although unfortunately I did not receive prior notice of his visit. He will be aware of the significant spin-off industries in life science from Glasgow university and other universities in Scotland. Does he agree that a patent box, which the previous Labour Government talked about, is essential if we are to grow and increase the life science industry in this country?

[Vince Cable]

I apologise to the hon. Lady if she did not get advance notice of my visit, but it was a very successful one. There is an outstanding project based on grants from the Medical Research Council, among others, with very good commercial spin-off. That is exactly what the Government want to encourage.

[Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks) (Con)]

Can the Secretary of State reassure us that any changes to the capital gains tax regime will not reduce investment in business, particularly in new start-up businesses, and will not undermine schemes of employee share ownership?

[Vince Cable]

As the hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well, the coalition agreement envisages the reform of capital gains tax as a way of making the tax system fairer and, among other things, creating revenue to help lift the tax threshold and lift very large numbers of low earners out of tax. We are conscious of the impact of capital gains tax on business, and we want to make it clear that any reforms will acknowledge the role of entrepreneurship, and not damage it.

[Mr Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow) (Lab)]

T7. The Minister will be aware that I have already been in contact with his office about Trench UK and Siemens’ proposals to close this very profitable plant and transfer production to France and Germany. Will he give an undertaking to meet Siemens at the highest possible level to avert this closure, and will he also meet a delegation from the plant so that we can discuss how we can save this jewel of British manufacturing?

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Mark Prisk)]

I know that the hon. Gentleman takes a keen interest in his local businesses and jobs, and I am concerned about the issue that he has raised. I am aware that Siemens is about to commence a 30-day consultation period for employees. Clearly that is a commercial matter for the company, but in response to his inquiry, I would be happy to receive further representations if he would like to contact my office.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

Yesterday, the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey), confirmed in response to a question of mine that the Government are committed to introducing

“an ombudsman, in the Office of Fair Trading, to enforce the Grocery Supply Code of Practice…and curb abuses of power which undermine…farmers”.—[Official Report, 2 June 2010; Vol. 510, c. 44W.]

Can he confirm that that is a reference to the physical location of the ombudsman, and that it does not mean that the ombudsman will be operating under the executive power of the OFT?

[Mr Davey]

I am grateful for that question. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has led the debate on the new proposal. He and other colleagues on the coalition Benches helped to persuade the previous Government to adopt the idea, for which he did so much work. He will be aware that the previous Government undertook a consultation, which ended at the end of April. We are looking at all the submissions to that consultation and we will report back to the House when we have had a chance to analyse them, dealing with the sorts of issues that he has raised.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

T8. Earlier, in response to three identical planted questions about regulation, the Minister gave us a whole load of sanctimonious poppycock about his views on regulation, saying that there should be much less of it. May I urge the Secretary of State to keep his Ministers in tow and to ensure a proper sense of regulation, especially in the financial services industry, in which there are still many predatory practices? In constituencies such as mine, loan sharks as well as reputable financial services organisations are still preying on vulnerable families.

[Vince Cable]

The ministerial team is completely united in its approach to regulation. There are clearly areas where regulation is necessary, not least for consumer protection, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, but it must be proportionate and cost-effective, and it must not obstruct genuine business growth.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Just before BIS questions, I received a phone call from the chief executive of a leading company in my constituency who is keen on apprenticeships and welcomes what the new Government are going to do. However, the company is just bigger than a small or medium-sized enterprise, and he does not feel that it gets the help and encouragement that it needs. Are we taking such companies into account as well?

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr John Hayes)]

Yes, we are indeed. I am having a dialogue with all the representative organisations of small businesses, and I am of course speaking to the sector skills councils, which play a key role in that regard, in building apprenticeship frameworks that are pertinent. However, as I said earlier, we need to look at the supply-side barriers and bureaucratic burdens that discourage small businesses, and we also need to offset some of the costs through our apprenticeship bonus scheme, and we will do that. We will build apprenticeships from the bottom up, for firms such as that which my hon. Friend has so nobly represented in the House today and the many others like it.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Business, innovation and skills are the engine that will drive forward our economic recovery. Given that, could the Secretary of State tell me the number of high-value engineering apprenticeships that he intends to fund from his Department in the north-east this year, and how it will increase over time? Further, as he has already accepted £836 million of cuts to his important Department, will he acknowledge that any further cuts would undermine our future economic recovery?

[Mr Speaker]

The Secretary of State will provide one brief reply.

[Vince Cable]

We have indeed made large economies, along with the rest of Government, and we had to do so. Had we not met the nature of the economic crisis that we now face across Europe, the cost of capital would have risen, causing even further difficulties for business. I have already told the hon. Lady about the increase in apprenticeships, and high-value engineering is clearly a major target for that.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

T9. Businesses both small and large in Wirral are showing great faith in our young people and their future by investing in apprenticeships. However, that work has the potential to be undermined by the great many reviews that the Government are now carrying out. Will the Minister confirm that if those reviews are truly necessary, they will be carried out swiftly and in liaison with businesses, so that their support for apprenticeships will not be undermined?

[Mr Hayes]

It may be that I have not made the position sufficiently clear, so let me do so now. No review that is taking place would impact in a negative way on apprenticeships. The hon. Lady can go back to her constituents with pride and say that this Government are committed to apprenticeships there and across Britain. She can also come back to the House and challenge me on that if I do not deliver.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State on his appointment. May I also congratulate him on what he said before the election about ensuring that bank lending would be improved, so that cities that are in recovery from the recession, such as the city of Nottingham, can see the cash flow coming into businesses to ensure that they go from recovery to prosperity?

[Vince Cable]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his welcome, and I am grateful to him for allowing this crucial subject to surface at last. The major factor in inhibiting the growth of business, particularly among small and medium-sized enterprises, is the lack of access to credit. It is the firm intention of this Government to ensure, through a combination of loan agreements, guarantees and other mechanisms, that that credit will indeed flow. I shall be working with the Chancellor on this.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

In what way will the Secretary of State ensure that bank credit flows? How is he going to keep the House informed of how successful his pious hopes turn out to be in practice?

[Vince Cable]

I look forward to keeping the House informed of progress. One of my criticisms of the last Government, which I made from the Opposition Benches, was that despite their successful intervention in the latter part of 2008, the banks then ran rings around them. The lending agreements were never enforced, and the semi-nationalised banks simply did not act on the instructions that they were given. We in this Government intend to do a lot better.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

On the coalition Government’s rather simplistic policy on regulation of “one in, one out”, will the Minister confirm that the one regulation coming in will be cost-equivalent to the one going out? If so, which regulation will go out when the agency workers directive comes in?

[Mr Prisk]

It is very simple: if a Minister wishes to bring forward a new regulation, they must show that they have removed a regulation and that that will reduce the overall burden of regulation, ensuring that businesses see a net reduction. That is an important change. It is something that the hon. Lady’s Government failed to deliver, but it is something that we will deliver on.

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

Does the ministerial team acknowledge that the sacking of 1,200 Jarvis workers in March by a company that did not manage its affairs properly was unacceptable? May I ask for a meeting, with the MPs who represent those experienced rail engineers, to see what work could be done on contracts that Network Rail needs to meet, to ensure that they find employment?

[Vince Cable]

I do not know the background to the right hon. Lady’s question, but I would certainly be happy to meet her if she thinks that my Department can help to alleviate those difficulties.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sorry, but we must now move on.

Business of the House

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

11:33

[Ms Rosie Winterton (Doncaster Central) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the business for the forthcoming week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 7 June will include:

Monday 7 June—Continuation of the debate on the Queen’s Speech. Constitution and home affairs will be debated.

Tuesday 8 June—Conclusion of the debate on the Queen’s Speech. Economic affairs and work and pensions will be debated.

Wednesday 9 June— Second Reading on the Identity Documents Bill.

Thursday 10 June—General debate on poverty.

The provisional business for the week commencing 14 June will include:

Monday 14 June—General debate on emerging economies, followed by general debate on the middle east.

Tuesday 15 June—Proceedings on House business.

Wednesday 16 June—Opposition day [1st allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion: subject to be announced.

Thursday 17 June—General debate: subject to be announced.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 10 and 17 June will be:

Thursday 10 June—A debate entitled “Volcanic ash—impact on passengers and the aviation industry”.

Thursday 17 June— A debate entitled “Alternatives to child detention”

[Ms Winterton]

I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the forthcoming business and I am also grateful for the statement on Gaza yesterday and for the planned statement today on the terrible tragedy in Cumbria. The thoughts of the House are with the families, friends and relatives of those killed or injured, and with the communities so devastatingly affected by what happened.

Last week, the Leader of the House agreed with me that it was “deplorable” that the Queen’s Speech had been leaked. He said that it was

“a discourtesy to the House and to Her Majesty”

and that

“steps will be taken to minimise the risk of such leaks occurring again.”—[Official Report, 27 May 2010; Vol. 510, c. 285.]

Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us what steps have actually been taken; what will be done differently; and what his current assessment is of the likelihood of a repeat of the leaking of information that we saw two weeks ago?

The right hon. Gentleman also said last week that the Government had no intention of reintroducing Regional Select Committees, despite the concern expressed by Opposition Members that their abolition would remove one of the ways for the House to scrutinise the effects of the £6 billion cuts that the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government had announced. However, he did say he would get back to us on what was happening to the Regional Grand Committees. Can he tell us the latest information on those Committees?

I ask that question particularly because on Friday, the Prime Minister went to Yorkshire to tell us how he wanted to develop regional economies. He set out a series of priorities, which sounded remarkably like the priorities we had identified when in government, but without the investment, because of the £336 million cut from the Business Department revealed at Business, Innovation and Skills questions today, and without the strategy to make it happen, because of confusion over the future of the regional development agencies. We heard further comments this morning from the Business Secretary, but I have to say that they shed very little light on the issue. I think he said that the RDAs would be changed fundamentally, but might actually look the same at the end of the process. That reminded us of last week’s comment from the Leader of the House that the child trust fund would not be abolished, but would be phased out—we were a bit puzzled as to the difference.

The Leader of the House will have noted the anxiety arising from this morning’s contributions and yesterday’s Prime Minister’s questions about the uncertainty the Government are creating for businesses in our regions. Surely Regional Grand Committees could help to throw some light on what on earth is going on in terms of regional policy. Should not the Government also rethink their policy on Regional Select Committees?

To add to the general air of confusion, the Prime Minister also announced in his speech that he would be “assigning” Ministers and “senior MPs” to some of our biggest cities, so what does this mean for smaller cities and towns, and what does it mean for rural areas, villages and seaside towns? In Yorkshire, for example, because of the effect of agriculture and tourism on their economies, rural areas have benefited from having a regional strategy and a regional body to help development, so why should they not get a Minister? Under the Labour Government, regional Ministers were able to speak for the whole region, but that just cannot happen under the current proposals. Will the city Ministers or senior MPs report to the House? Is their work to be scrutinised by members of some new City committees that the Government might have in mind? It really does look like the Government are making it up as they go along with a kind of botched DIY regional strategy, but what is really happening, as we saw this morning, is that key commitments made by the last Government are being put at risk.

I also ask the Leader of the House if we can have an early statement to clarify the position on Building Schools for the Future. After yesterday’s exchanges at Prime Minister’s Questions and after the education debate, I really think we are none the wiser about the future of the programme. The Prime Minister said he was absolutely clear about it, but I have to say that I would hate to hear him if he were being abstruse. Could the Leader of the House ask the Education Secretary to give the House a straight answer to a straight question? Is the Building Schools for the Future budget protected or not?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for what she said at the beginning. The whole House shares the grief of the families and friends of those who lost their lives in Cumbria. However, I note what the local Member of Parliament said about the resilience and cohesion of the area. I am sure that that is absolutely true.

I am happy to say that there has been no further leak since I made my announcement last week. As I said then, the Cabinet Secretary is taking steps to ensure that there is no repetition of the discourtesy that occurred over the Queen’s Speech.

I make no apologies for not re-establishing the Regional Select Committees. They were forced through on the casting vote of the former Leader of the House, and were narrowly approved in the last Parliament after a huge rebellion on the Labour Benches. They turned out to be a total waste of money, and, as I have said, I make no apologies for not reintroducing them. We will make an announcement in due course about the future of Regional Grand Committees.

The right hon. Lady asked about the schools budget. The Chief Secretary made clear that the in-year reductions to which he referred in his statement last week would not affect schools. As for child trust funds, I understand that they will not end immediately, but will be phased out over a period. I will ensure that the right hon. Lady is given the right answer on that. She also asked whether the Secretary of State for education would give a straight answer. I am sure that he will on the next occasion when he appears at the Dispatch Box to answer questions.

We have just had a lively exchange in Business, Innovation and Skills questions, in which many of the issues raised by the right hon. Lady were dealt with more than adequately by my ministerial colleagues.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Can the Leader of the House tell us whether there is any possibility of a debate—or an explanation—on Severn bridge tolls, which have continued to rise for people travelling into Wales, but were frozen in marginal seats by the last Government? Will he ask someone to explain to us why the last Government appeared to discriminate against the people of Wales in that fashion?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend has asked a robust question. I am sure that oral questions will give him an opportunity to elicit an answer and to find out exactly why certain seats were spared the increases in the last Parliament, and also to set out this Government’s philosophy on the important issues surrounding access to Wales.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the ability of Members of Parliament to do their job following the inception of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority? I should like a debate not on the incoherent and ill-thought-out rules that have been introduced, but on such matters as the operation of the online system, which often crashes, is incoherent and does not work, and the fact that Members of Parliament cannot talk directly to IPSA’s staff. That has led to new Members’ being in debt to the tune of several thousand pounds, and being unable to set up offices at an early stage in order to provide the service to their constituents that they were elected to provide.

[Sir George Young]

I take that issue very seriously. As I said last week, I think that the House made the right strategic decision in the last Parliament when it decided to contract out responsibility for the fixing and paying of our allowances. We know of the difficulties that we got into during the last Parliament in that regard. Having said that, however, I should add that the whole purpose of the allowances regime is to enable Members of Parliament to do their job: to represent their constituents, and to hold the Government to account. I am seriously concerned by the growing number of stories from Members on both sides of the House about the difficulties that they are experiencing in accessing the system.

Immediately after business questions I shall meet representatives of all the political parties, and shortly thereafter I shall have a second meeting with the chief executive and the chairman of IPSA, to whom I shall convey the strong feelings which I know are widely shared. I shall also do all that I can to ensure that the technical problems to which the hon. Gentleman has referred are addressed as quickly as possible.

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I am being besieged by requests to join all-party parliamentary groups. Surely there are now too many of them to be viable. Can the Leader of the House do anything to encourage a merger or coalition between APPGs?

[Sir George Young]

The solution rests in the hands of hon. Members. An all-party parliamentary group can only get going if enough Members agree to sponsor it; otherwise, it will not get off the ground. However, I agree that there are a large number of APPGs, many of which overlap.

Let me, at the beginning of a new Parliament, urge all colleagues to consider before automatically—to do a favour to a friend—signing up to an APPG whose meetings they have no intention of attending. Although APPGs have an important role to play, we need to be more selective about which ones we have, and to decide our priorities in a better way.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on the review of paediatric cardiac surgery that is currently under way, and which is due to report in September? I recently visited Glenfield hospital in my constituency, and the patients and staff at its outstanding paediatric cardiac unit are very concerned about the implications of the review for the future of the unit. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will wish those concerns to be fully debated in the House.

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Lady makes a forceful case, and I can only suggest that she puts in for an Adjournment debate so that her anxieties can be shared and she can get a response from the Minister responsible.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

May we have a full day’s debate prior to the strategic defence review on the adequacy of our strategy for Afghanistan? That would enable us to examine whether a policy of short-term surging, medium-term withdrawal and no apparent long-term plan for security whatever is the best way to proceed.

[Sir George Young]

As my hon. Friend will know, we had a debate last week in which the Secretary of State for Defence and the Foreign Secretary both spoke and issues relating to Afghanistan were raised. None the less, I agree that this country is at war and it is important that the House has an opportunity to debate the important issues my hon. Friend raises and to put them in the context of a strategic defence review. I would therefore certainly hope that before too long we have a debate along the lines that my hon. Friend suggests.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

In thanking the right hon. Gentleman for arranging a debate on the middle east, may I ask him whether he has seen early-day motion 120, standing in my name?

[That this House advocates and supports a warm and close relationship between the United Kingdom and the Republic of India; notes the two countries' historical ties; further notes that India is the world's largest democracy; recognises that such a relationship can help resolve the vexing issue of Jammu and Kashmir; believes that the Indian High Commission in London has a vital role to play in fostering this friendship; regrets that the conduct of the Indian High Commissioner, Nalin Surie, is causing serious damage to that friendship; condemns the failure of the Indian High Commissioner to respond to letters from the right hon. Member from Manchester, Gorton stretching back to January 2010, in which the right hon. Member has requested that the visa application of one of his constituents initially made many months ago and for which the constituent has paid £113.86 has still not been granted; is concerned that the efforts of a right hon. Member of this House to help have been rudely ignored; further believes that Nalin Surie is not fit to hold such an important and influential post; and calls for his removal to India by the Indian government and his replacement by a diplomat who will commit himself or herself to fostering good relations between the two countries.]

The early-day motion draws attention to the failure of the Indian high commission to grant a constituent of mine—a British national—a visa six months after he applied, while keeping more than £100 of his money. If the right hon. Gentleman cannot arrange for a debate on the matter, will he ask the Foreign Secretary to intervene?

[Sir George Young]

I am very sorry to hear of what has happened and of the discourtesy that was extended. I will, of course, pass the right hon. Gentleman’s representations on to the Foreign Secretary and see if he can take the matter up with the Indian high commission.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Will it be possible to have a debate next week on my right hon. Friend’s proposal to set up the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, rather than having it go through on the nod later this evening? If we had a debate on it, we would be able to consider early-day motion 79.

[That this House calls on the Government to ensure that any Bill to establish a fixed-term Parliament and to change arrangements for Dissolution is published first in draft and then subjected to pre-legislative scrutiny.]

Moreover, we would be able to consider whether the Committee should be a Joint Committee of both Houses. My right hon. Friend and I both served on a Joint Committee on constitutional reform in the last Parliament, and I suggest to him that a Joint Committee would be more appropriate than a single Committee of this House alone.

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We have put down a motion on today’s Order Paper to set up the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee because we thought it would be helpful to the House for that Select Committee to be elected at the same time as all the other Select Committees and to get it up and running quickly. My hon. Friend will know better than anyone else in this House that if he is here at six o’clock this evening and makes a noise, the matter will be adjourned and we will then have to find time for a debate. He is perfectly entitled to do that. The consequence would be that we would lose a bit of time in establishing this new Select Committee, but it would not be the end of the world if that happened—and my hon. Friend could, indeed, raise in that subsequent debate the broader questions about how this proposed new Select Committee would interface with, for example, the Public Administration and the Justice Select Committees.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

Last year, in Liverpool, Wavertree we saw the savage death of John Paul Massey, who was savagely attacked by a pit bull. A review of the dangerous dogs legislation was initiated in March, under the last Government. Will the Leader of the House urge the Home Secretary to update the House on the progress being made with this review?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that question, and I understand the concern felt in her constituency. On Monday, we have the Queen’s Speech debate on home affairs, and I will make sure that the Minister replying to that debate takes her point on board and updates the House on the review to which she refers.

[Mark Lancaster (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the courage and dedication of firefighters up and down the land. May we have a debate on funding for fire authorities because under the previous comprehensive spending review, shire authorities, such as your own, Mr Speaker, received on average an allocation of just 2%, whereas many urban authorities received up to 18%. Although we all understand the financial constraints that we are under at the moment, can the funding under the next review at least be fair across the land?

[Sir George Young]

There are oral questions to the relevant Department a week today, so I hope that my hon. Friend will have the opportunity to share his concern with Ministers and get a robust response.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

When will the Leader of the House timetable a debate on the provision of respite care homes and, in particular, on their closure when there is an urgent need for them and no alternative provision? I am thinking, in particular, of the possible closure of Earlsmoor respite care home in my constituency. Does he agree that such homes should not be closed when no alternative provision has been made, given what is, in many cases, a thankless task carried out by thousands of carers?

[Sir George Young]

I join the hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the job done by those who work in respite care homes. I do not know whether it would be appropriate for him to have an Adjournment debate on the specific subject that he raises and, thus, get an answer from the responsible Minister.

[Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)]

Further to this week’s letter written by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government regarding regional spatial strategy and specifying recommendations for Gypsy and Traveller site numbers per region, could we have a debate on how local authorities can protect themselves from Gypsy and Traveller encampments riding roughshod over planning law in green belt areas? We must ensure that we have a fair system of proper provision of legal campsites for Gypsies and Travellers.

[Sir George Young]

I understand the anxiety that the hon. Lady expresses and I know that at the previous general election my party put forward proposals to give local authorities greater powers to deal with these unauthorised encampments. She may have an opportunity a week today at Communities and Local Government questions to develop her concerns with the appropriate Ministers—perhaps she will be able to do so during topical questions.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

May we have a debate on domestic energy prices and, in particular, on the fact that many of my constituents are still being ripped off? That applies particularly to those who live in rural areas that do not have a connection to the gas mains. Those people’s unit prices are increasing every quarter and people living on some small estates are paying different prices. Can we ensure that the market helps these people, because at the moment it is not working?

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Gentleman speaks with feeling on behalf of those who live in rural constituencies and are exposed to those higher prices. I shall share his concern with the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and see that he receives a reply.

[Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)]

Yesterday, the Prime Minister said that community hospitals could “breathe easily”, which is great news for those of us who have such hospitals in our constituencies, as we know how important they are. Could we have an early debate on community hospitals so that I and others can raise issues of importance to us? For example, people in Clitheroe were promised a new hospital to replace the old community hospital, but the project was frozen last year—the people of Clitheroe should not have to wait.

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend makes a forceful case. He will know that we exempted health expenditure from the difficult decisions that an incoming Government will have to take. He may wish to apply for a debate in Westminster Hall on community hospitals, and I am sure that if he does so, the debate will be well attended by Members from both sides of the House.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Would it be possible for the Leader of the House to make time for a debate on support for the UK film industry? Labour Members raised the issue in Business, Innovation and Skills questions earlier. My personal interest arises because of the centre of creative excellence south of Seaham, part of the funding for which comes from One NorthEast, the regional development agency, and from Northern Film and Media. We understand that One NorthEast faces a cut of 40% in its budget this year. This is a matter of concern, because of the potential for jobs and training opportunities. Those on both sides of the House might find it instructive if we were to have a debate on this issue.

[Sir George Young]

The UK film industry is an important export earner for this country, and we are proud of it. Culture, Media and Sport questions will take place on 21 June, and I shall bear in mind the hon. Gentleman’s request for a debate on the film industry.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

May we have a full debate on the implications of the Government’s excellent proposals to get rid of the previous Government’s planning targets? Two beautiful pieces of countryside in my constituency, which are at Micklethwaite and in Menston, face unnecessary and unwanted proposed developments. Our holding a full debate may allow residents in those areas, who are campaigning against the developments, to see a route map towards having these pieces of land taken out of the unitary development plan altogether.

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend reminds the House that the letter from the Secretary of State abandoning the regional spatial strategies has been greeted with acclaim by those on this side of the House and, I suspect, secretly by those on the other side of the House too. My hon. Friend will have an opportunity to cross-question planning Ministers a week today, and I will see that they are forearmed with an answer to his question about the sites in his constituency.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Funding for the Manchester Metrolink extensions is being reviewed by this Government, despite the fact that advanced works and track laying are taking place. Can the Leader of the House use his good offices to urge the Secretary of State for Transport to come to this House to give assurances to Greater Manchester transport planners and my constituents on this important matter?

[Sir George Young]

I am sympathetic to what the hon. Gentleman says, because in a previous capacity I authorised the extension of the Metrolink. All the questions from Labour Members are requests for more public money, at a time when they have left us with a deficit of £160 billion. It would be helpful if, at some point, we heard, alongside the suggestions to spend more money, one or two suggestions as to how we might save some of the money and get the public accounts back in balance. To return to his specific question, I should say to him that Transport questions will take place on 17 June, and that will give him the chance to press the case for the Metrolink in his constituency.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I understand that the Government intend to press ahead with using valuable parliamentary time to debate a Government motion on hunting. If that is the case, may I urge the Leader of the House to ensure that that debate is as quick as possible and takes place as soon as possible?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend is right, because the Queen’s Speech contains a commitment to have a debate on hunting and for the House to resolve whether or not the Hunting Act 2004 should stay. I note his request for such a debate to take place sooner rather than later, but it will have to take its place against bids for debates on other subjects that are equally or perhaps more important.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

In the previous Parliament and in the run-up to the general election, the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), who is now the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, made it very clear that one of the first priorities would be to remove allowances from Members of Parliament who are elected to this House but who do not take their seats and do not fulfil the range of duties that people expect of a Member of Parliament, and thus to resolve an iniquitous situation. Given the great public concern about the abuse of expenses and allowances in the previous Parliament, when can we expect a motion to come before the House to remove those allowances from Members of Parliament who do not do their jobs here?

[Sir George Young]

I understand the concern that the hon. Gentleman raises. I hope that he will understand my saying that I will need to consult colleagues in government and perhaps the authorities in the House before we go down the particular route that he has outlined.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Yesterday, the Prime Minister confirmed that nobody in the public sector will be allowed to earn 20 times more than what the people at the bottom earn. I calculate that no manager in the NHS will, thus, be able to earn more than £189,321.60. Can the Secretary of State for Health make a statement as to when that limit will be imposed?

[Sir George Young]

I commend my hon. Friend on his mental arithmetic in coming up with that figure. Clearly, this involves issues relating to those who are already getting paid salaries that exceed the differential, so the policy is easier to implement in respect of new recruits as opposed to existing staff. None the less, I shall raise this issue with the appropriate Minister, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, and see that my hon. Friend is given an appropriate answer.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

This follows on from our initial discussion about IPSA. If the Leader of the House has any discussions with Sir Ian Kennedy, will he remind him that a lot of people in this House are concerned about the safety of the online system? Is the Leader of the House aware, for instance, that this email that I have here has been sent to me when it should have gone to another Member of Parliament? It has names and everything on it—I am not disclosing the name now, but he is welcome to see it if he wants. He should draw this to the attention of Mr Kennedy and tell him that a system that allows this to happen within the space of a few weeks—according to my information, this has also happened to another Member of Parliament—has to stop. Therefore, when the Leader of the House has these discussions he should consider the question of not merely sticking to the online system. While he is at it, will he ask Mr Kennedy whether his expenses details are online? And what are they?

[Sir George Young]

Yes, I will. I take very seriously any breach of confidentiality, particularly on the sensitive matter of Members’ expenses, against the background of all the problems that we had in the last Parliament. I will therefore take up the whole issue of security at the meeting that I will have shortly with the acting chief executive and the chairman. I will ask whether they will consider, even at this late stage, an alternative regime for those who are not comfortable with claiming online.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate to follow up the important issue of business rates and major regeneration schemes? In the Gracious Speech, we saw our first glimpse of the excellent Bill for decentralisation and localism, which promises to give local communities a real share in local growth. In my constituency of Harlow, the regeneration of the town centre would be hugely supported if a greater share of the new business rates could be kept in the local community.

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend makes a forceful point. There will be CLG questions a week today, when he will be able to press the Ministers on that, but I agree that it is important that those who pay business rates should have access to the relief that they are entitled to automatically, and that there should be opportunities to recycle the business rates within the local community.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

I entirely agree with the comments made by colleagues on both sides of the House on the workings of IPSA. I did not come to this Parliament to be an accountant, and yet I find that I spend an inordinate amount of time now trying to sort out all the demands of IPSA. I wonder whether there might be confusion in the Government on this, as the written answer from the Leader of the House published in Hansard today in response to a series of questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) states:

“There is no ministerial responsibility for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.”—[Official Report, 2 June 2010; Vol. 510, c. 45W.]

On another page, however, a written answer from the Prime Minister states:

“The Deputy Prime Minister will also have policy responsibility for the Electoral Commission, Boundary Commission, and Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.”—[Official Report, 2 June 2010; Vol. 510, c. 23WS.]

So who is responsible for what, and is the Deputy Prime Minister actually a Minister?

[Sir George Young]

Yes, he is. I understand the concern that the right hon. Lady has raised, and let me explain the thinking behind this. The Bill setting up IPSA was sponsored by the Ministry of Justice, and any legislation that dealt with IPSA would have to have a Government Department sponsoring it. To that extent, therefore, it is true to say that responsibility for IPSA and all the other bodies falls under the umbrella of the Deputy Prime Minister. However, it is also the case that at the moment IPSA is an independent body, so questions about how much people get paid and how it operates are not ones that Ministers can answer—hence the reply to the hon. Member for Walsall North. Against that background, however, I hope that she will accept that those two apparently conflicting statements can actually be reconciled.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I remind the House that there is a statement to follow, and a heavily subscribed debate thereafter. If I am to have any chance of accommodating remaining Members, therefore, I need short questions and short answers.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend make further representations about the demonstration in Parliament square? The current demonstration is completely different from the one in the last Parliament. That focused on one individual, but this morning there were 20 tents in Parliament square. Does he think that this is a satisfactory situation?

[Sir George Young]

I understand that the Mayor of London is going to the High Court today to get an injunction in order to make progress on clearing Parliament square.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House assist me in getting a response from the Department of Health on a matter that I first raised in February, prompted by consultants at Wexham Park hospital in my constituency? They feared that the hospital had fiddled the books to acquire foundation status. I got replies from the former Secretary of State for Health every month, telling me that the Department was still looking at the question. I have been in direct touch with the current Secretary of State’s office but have still heard nothing. Will the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State to reply to me on this important issue?

[Sir George Young]

Yes.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

Will the Leader of the House consider having a debate on the badger cull, which is a real and present danger to farmers in my constituency? An infected heifer must be put down immediately, whereas an infected badger has to be let go, as putting it down is a criminal offence.

[Sir George Young]

I will share my hon. Friend’s concerns with the Minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs who has responsibility for this matter. I know that there is concern in rural constituencies about the current regime, which precludes badger culls.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate next week on reducing Humber bridge tolls, or maintaining the current freeze on them, so that they are no longer a tax on local people and businesses in my area?

[Sir George Young]

I would be misleading the hon. Gentleman if I said that I could find time for a debate on that next week. However, may I suggest that he applies for a debate in Westminster Hall or for one on the Adjournment?

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

In the last Parliament, I asked the previous Leader of the House for a debate on the NHS’s use of independent sector treatment centres, following the tragic and unnecessary death of a constituent of mine at the Eccleshill facility in Bradford. May I ask the new Leader of the House for a debate in Government time on this important issue, so that we can reassure people that the use of independent sector treatment centres is both safe and appropriate for the NHS?

[Sir George Young]

I was sorry to hear about the death of the hon. Member’s constituent. I see no reason why he should not get an answer from the Secretary of State for Health giving him an assurance that, where health authorities contract out and use the independent sector, they first of all assure themselves that all the appropriate safeguards are in place to ensure that patient health is not prejudiced.

[Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

According to the Bank of England’s annual report, which was published today, the Governor was paid £305,000 last year. However, that pales into insignificance when compared to the salaries of the chief executives of major—and indeed minor—financial organisations. They are regularly paid more than £1 million a year, and sometimes £10 million or even £20 million. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) would like a debate on public sector salaries, but will the Leader of the House find time for a debate in Government time on all high salaries? That would allow the House to be aware of the vast disparity that obtains in this country.

[Sir George Young]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. I think that I am right in saying that Will Hutton has been invited to do a study into pay differentials in this country, and I hope that that will inform the question that the hon. Gentleman has asked.

[Christopher Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on pensions and on encouraging the general public to save for their old age? That is especially important given the report in today’s Financial Times that suggests that the coalition Government are planning to scrap from 2012 the requirement on employers to enrol employees automatically in pension schemes.

[Sir George Young]

I would counsel the hon. Gentleman against believing absolutely everything that he reads in the papers, even the Financial Times. However, there will be opportunities to put questions to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the hon. Gentleman will, of course, be able to share his anxieties with ministerial colleagues during the debate on the Budget statement, when that comes.

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

The Leader of the House will be aware of the plight of people with haemophilia who were infected with HIV and hepatitis C as a result of their NHS treatment with contaminated blood products. Given the confirmation yesterday that Ministers do not intend to challenge the High Court ruling in the case of March, will he arrange for the Secretary of State for Health to come urgently to this House to set out the Government’s approach to supporting that very needy group, bearing in mind that nearly 2,000 haemophiliacs have died so far?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I remember the campaign in the last Parliament, which had support from both sides of the House. Of course I will arrange for the Secretary of State for Health to answer the question that he has raised.

[Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Can the dear Leader tell us when he might find time for a debate on the future of the aircraft carriers? Before the election, we were promised that we would have an examination of the break clauses on day one of the new Government. However, day one, week one and almost month one have gone and there has been no announcement. Any public expenditure could be found by cutting the grants that we provide to the EU.

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful for that helpful suggestion—the only suggestion that we have had so far from the Opposition—as to how money might possibly be saved. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have announced a strategic defence and security review, which will examine the issues that he has raised, and he will have an opportunity at Defence questions to press Ministers on the specific projects that he has outlined.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

May I ask the Leader of the House when we are going to have a debate on what the Government call quangos, because there are 700 jobs at stake in Coventry? More importantly, do the Government consider regional development agencies such as Advantage West Midlands to be quangos? Do they also understand that major problems are now building up in the civil service itself—among the lower-paid, not the higher-paid? If the definition of quango includes them, should we not have a major debate on this?

[Sir George Young]

On the specific issue of the west midlands regional development agency, we have just had an hour’s questions to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which included, I understand, a question on the west midlands RDA. On the issue of quangos generally, quangos cover a wide range of Government Departments, and it may be better to look at the quangos within the context of each individual Department and see how they fit in, rather than have a wide-ranging debate on quangos spanning every Department.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Leader of the House to the Dispatch Box. Thinking back to when he and I, and the Speaker, entered the House, one of the toughest parts of the job was if someone had a young family and represented a constituency some way from the House. They were tough times, and I do not want us to go back to the days when I very rarely saw my wife and children because they lived 200 miles away. Is it not the case that IPSA almost seems to be at war with new young Members who have family responsibilities some distance from this House, and without consultation has changed the transport arrangements for families and is making it more and more difficult for families to stay together when we are doing the difficult job that we do in this House?

[Sir George Young]

I believe people of all incomes, all ages and all types of family arrangements should be eligible to become Members of Parliament, and the allowance regime should not penalise any particular group or deter any particular group from becoming MPs. IPSA has said that it will conduct a review of the regime. I believe that that is an important step, and I know that other hon. Members will feed into the review points similar to the one that the hon. Gentleman has raised, so that Members are not separated from their families for large lengths of time.

[Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

I am aware that the Government have so far announced in just two weeks some 24 reviews; there may well be many more. May we have a debate in the House on the number of consultants who will be employed to conduct these reviews—and, possibly, the Leader of the House might be agreeable to having a debate on whether we need a review to look at the number of reviews?

[Sir George Young]

I am sure that that was meant in an entirely helpful way. I see nothing wrong in having a review on a serious and complex issue, in order to ensure that Governments come to the right conclusion, and the last Labour Government announced a long series of reviews. At the same time, we are taking steps to cut costs in-year on IT and the use of consultants, and I see no conflict between having some serious reviews on constitutional issues, economically conducted, and at the same time reviewing the use of consultants more widely within Whitehall.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Further to a number of questions asked during BIS questions, may we have a debate, or at least a clear statement, on the future of the agency workers directive, which would affect beneficially and give minimal protection to millions of workers in many constituencies, including my own? Before the election there was a clear commitment to enforce the agency workers directive. There seems to be some confusion in the new Government; that may be the product of having Ministers from different parties in the Department, but we need a clear statement so that we know where we are.

[Sir George Young]

I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that there was sometimes confusion between Ministers when they all came from the same party. On the serious issue that he raises, I understand that it was touched on during BIS questions, but I will ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to write to him, dealing with the specific question that he asks about the agency workers directive.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Given the contradictory answers given to me and to the shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills by the Secretary of State, I wonder whether we could have a debate on the loan facility for Sheffield Forgemasters, given that it is not only of importance to Sheffield but of strategic national importance for manufacturing.

[Sir George Young]

That sounds an excellent candidate for an Adjournment debate, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman is successful in the ballot.

[Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

For the convenience of the House, will the right hon. Gentleman publish in a single document a list of all the reviews that the Government are undertaking, their purpose and their time scale?

[Sir George Young]

If the hon. Gentleman tables a question for written answer along those lines, I am sure that he will get a full reply.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Is it true that the Lib Dem part of the coalition is continuing to claim state funding, despite not being in opposition, and if so, should we not have an urgent debate on that obvious way to save the Leader of the House some money?

[Sir George Young]

Short money is available to Opposition parties; it is not available to Government parties. On the more general question, we are committed to a reform of party funding, and that was announced in the Queen’s Speech.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

May we have a debate in Government time—a full day debate, on the Floor of the House—on human rights around the world, in which we might discuss, for instance, the problem in Russia and the Government’s change of policy in relation to Russia, which is cutting all the programmes that engage with civil society in Russia and that make it possible for people to defend their rights against a very difficult regime, in a situation where very few people have an opportunity to put forward their legitimate rights and few people have an opportunity to assemble? Will he ensure that Ministers come to that debate and explain their change of policy on Russia?

[Sir George Young]

It sounds to me an ideal question to put to Foreign and Commonwealth Office Ministers when that time arises.

Cumbrian Shooting Incident

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

12:16

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the shootings that took place yesterday in Cumbria. My right hon. and noble Friend Baroness Neville-Jones will make this statement in the other place.

I know that the whole House will want to join me in sending our heartfelt condolences to everybody touched by yesterday’s tragic events. In particular, our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of those who were so senselessly killed and injured in the shootings. We also send our thoughts to the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed), who is in Cumbria today, in his constituency. He represents communities that have been touched by tragedy too many times in recent months—but they are strong communities and I know they will bear these sad events with dignity and fortitude.

I would also like to pay tribute to the police and emergency services. In my short time as Home Secretary I have been struck by the bravery, professionalism and sense of duty that police officers demonstrate every single day. Yesterday, the men and women of Cumbria constabulary—aided by the civil nuclear constabulary, neighbouring police forces and the other emergency services—showed these qualities in abundance. They have the support and admiration of the whole House as they go about rebuilding the lives of the people of Cumbria.

I spoke yesterday to Chief Constable Craig Mackey, and we talked again this morning. He has told me that his force is now conducting a full and thorough investigation to find out exactly what happened, how and why. More than 100 detectives have been assigned to the task. Their investigation will look into Derrick Bird’s history, his access to firearms and the motivations for his actions.

As I said yesterday, while the police investigation is ongoing, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on any details beyond what has been released by Cumbria constabulary, but I would like to tell the House what I can.

Twelve people were killed yesterday, in addition to Derrick Bird. There were 11 casualties who were being or have been treated in hospitals in Whitehaven, Carlisle and Newcastle. Of those, four are stable, four are comfortable and three have been discharged. The police are confirming the identity of those who died, and names are being released by Cumbria constabulary as and when formal identification is confirmed and immediate family have been informed. More than 30 family liaison officers have been working throughout the night to identify formally the 12 people who were killed and notify their relatives. The police investigation is being led by a major incident group from the police headquarters in Penrith, and there are 30 different crime scenes.

Derrick Bird’s body was located in woodland near Boot at around 1.40 pm yesterday. No shots were fired by police officers. At this stage, the police believe that he took his own life. Two weapons were recovered by police and are being examined by forensic experts. They are a shotgun and a .22 inch rifle fitted with a telescopic sight. Derrick Bird was a licensed firearms holder. He had held a shotgun licence since 1995 and a firearms licence for a .22 inch rifle since 2007. I can now tell the House that the police have confirmed to me that his licences covered the firearms seized yesterday.

I will visit Cumbria tomorrow, together with the Prime Minister, so that I can meet Chief Constable Mackey and other senior officers in person and make sure that they have all the support that they need to complete their important work. I can also announce today that I will, if necessary, provide additional funding for Cumbria constabulary through the police special grant facility.

I spoke this morning to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who has asked his Department’s emergencies management team to contact the local authorities involved to see what support and assistance they need. The Minister with responsibility for civil society, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), will talk to charities working in Cumbria and is looking at ways to provide them with extra support at a time when their work will be vital in helping the community to recover.

Undoubtedly, yesterday’s killings will prompt a debate about our country’s gun laws. That is understandable and, indeed, right and proper, but it would be wrong to react before we know the full facts. Today we must remember the innocent people who were taken from us as they went about their lives. Then we must allow the police time to complete their investigations. When the police have reported, the Government will enter into, and lead, that debate. We will engage with all interested parties and consider all the options, and we will make sure that hon. Members have the opportunity to contribute. I will talk to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House about the best way to ensure that Members have such an opportunity before the summer recess.

Mass killings such as those that we saw yesterday are fortunately extremely rare in our country, but that does not make them any less painful, and it does not mean that we should not do everything that we can to stop them happening again, so where there are lessons to be learned, we will learn them, and where there are changes to be made, we will make them. But for now, let us wish the injured victims a speedy recovery, remember the 12 innocent lives that were taken, and pray for the families and friends left behind.

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

It seems perverse to welcome the Home Secretary to her first outing at the Dispatch Box, given the awful and tragic circumstances that have led to this unscheduled appearance, but we wish her well in her demanding job, and I thank her for providing me with a copy of her statement in advance. I join her in sending condolences to the families and friends of those killed yesterday, and we send our heartfelt hope that those who have been wounded recover from their injuries. As she says, the police and the emergency services have performed magnificently, and on behalf of those on the Labour Benches, I, too, pay tribute to the dedication and skill of those involved.

I appreciate that the Home Secretary’s ability to answer questions at this stage will be limited, given the ongoing police inquiries, so I will limit my remarks to a few areas on which I believe it may be fruitful to concentrate attention. As the Home Secretary said, my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) is quite rightly with his constituents and cannot be with us in the House. I spoke to him yesterday and again this morning, and he makes the point that while we should not rush to change firearm laws, we should at least review them in the light of this case. Does the Home Secretary agree?

In particular, we may need to focus on the question of follow-up checks. Does the Home Secretary think that they are adequate, and does she agree that there may be a need for a greater role for GPs and the NHS? She will know that while there is a role for the applicant’s family doctor before a firearms certificate is issued, there seems to be little involvement thereafter to ensure that the certificate holder’s mental health, in particular, is not deteriorating.

Cumbria constabulary is, I know, an excellent force achieving excellent results. I am sure that it will be examining the whole question of response times and whether there was anything more that it could have done in the dreadful circumstances with which it was presented yesterday. As the Home Secretary says, such incidents are thankfully rare, but she will know that since the Mumbai massacre, our counter-terrorism capability has put in place strategies to deal with such an eventuality. Is she happy that the expertise and knowledge being assembled in this area is being disseminated across all forces, so that it can apply equally in a non-terrorist related incident, which is what the incident in west Cumbria appears to be? Does she think that a small, rural force such as Cumbria is properly equipped to deal with events that are more often predicted to happen in urban areas?

I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister’s comments yesterday about doing anything that he could to help Cumbria police, who have had to deal with a series of tragic events. The House will recall the death of PC Bill Barker last year in the dreadful floods that badly hit the area. I am pleased to hear about the help that the Home Secretary will provide through the special grant facility; that is indeed good news. Presumably, she is confident that it will cover all that Cumbria police need for the ongoing investigations, and indeed what they may need for counselling for those officers directly affected.

The Prime Minister also rightly praised the work of the NHS, and in particular West Cumberland hospital. My hon. Friends the Members for Copeland and for Workington (Tony Cunningham) have today written to the Secretary of State for Health—who, I am pleased to see, is present—about the uncertainty over future funding for that hospital. That needs to be resolved quickly; the hospital’s work is difficult enough at this time without those continuing problems.

Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland has asked me to express his thanks, on behalf of the community that he represents, for all the expressions of support that he has received from across the House. These are dark times for a strong and close-knit community, renowned for the beauty of its surroundings and the warmth and friendliness of its people. They will recover from these recent tragedies, but the help and support of everyone in this House and of those whom we represent will be essential to that process. The Home Secretary can certainly be assured of our support as she seeks to find answers to the questions raised by these tragic events.

[Mrs May]

May I first thank the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words of welcome to me in my new position, and for his closing remarks about the willingness of the Opposition to provide support as we take these difficult matters through the House? We will all be searching for answers that will help to ensure that such incidents cannot happen again, but as I said, and as he acknowledged, in the current circumstances there is a limit to the extent to which I can answer questions, and the extent to which any of us should jump to conclusions about what is necessary. However, as I said, that does not mean that once the full facts are available to us, we should not look at them and see what action can be taken. That covers a number of the issues that the right hon. Gentleman raised.

The right hon. Gentleman asked specifically about follow-up checks. As he acknowledged, there is involvement of GPs and, further, there is the issue of individuals who have particular medical conditions applying for a firearms licence. He raised a number of other issues, and asked about ensuring that police forces learn from the expertise that is being built up in the centre as a result of counter-terrorism work. Of course, there is always room for ensuring that good practice is spread across our police forces and for ensuring that they learn from experiences elsewhere.

As regards the proper equipment for the Cumbria force, I spoke to the chief constable on a number of occasions yesterday and this morning, and he has assured me that although there were issues with the force not having equipment available—it did not have a helicopter, for example—it was able to use a helicopter from the Lancashire force that was made available to it. It had offers of help from a number of forces, including Lancashire, Northumbria, North Yorkshire, and Dumfries and Galloway, and from the civil nuclear constabulary, to which I referred in my statement, and which is based at Sellafield. From what I have heard from the chief constable, I am confident that the force has had resources available to it, and indeed other forces are continuing to make resources available to it for the ongoing investigation.

This is, of course, an event the like of which Cumbria force has never seen before. The force has very low levels of crime and, obviously, a largely rural area to police, but I am confident that support has been provided by neighbouring forces, where they are able to help, and that will be ongoing.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned West Cumberland hospital, and my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary, who is present, has heard the points that were made, and is indeed aware of that hospital, having visited it himself.

I spoke to the hon. Member for Copeland yesterday. He has obviously been considerably shaken by the events in his constituency, as any Member would be, particularly in a tight-knit rural community such as he represents—and we should all pay tribute to the calm and measured way in which he has dealt with the incidents in interviews and in the other remarks that he has made.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed), with whom I have been in touch, is of course in his constituency, but speaking on behalf of a neighbouring Cumbrian constituency, may I tell my right hon. Friend that we here in the House and elsewhere quite rightly express shock, but that in Cumbria this is something that touches every life? I also thank my right hon. Friend for the steps that she is taking. She speaks and acts for all of us.

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for those remarks. That part of the country has been sorely hit by incidents in the past few months, but its people are people of fortitude who will, I am sure, come through, with their strength. However, they will need support, and we stand ready, through various Departments, to provide that support. Our thoughts are with all the people of Cumbria, who will have been deeply touched by those events.

[Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)]

After what has been described as the blackest day in Cumbria’s history, now is the time for people to grieve. However, will the Home Secretary assure me that everything that can be done will be done to help and support those communities affected, and that in time there will be the fullest inquiry?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman is correct about the impact on Cumbria. As I indicated in my statement, a number of Departments stand ready to provide extra support to Cumbria constabulary, local authorities and local charities, because the police investigation is not the only necessary process in this incident; many people who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) said, have been touched by the incident will require and look for support and help. We are making every effort to ensure that that is available through local authorities and other bodies that can be of genuine assistance to people.

[Mr Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) (Con)]

The Labour Government in 2005 rather clumsily tried to force police forces together. However, Lancashire and Cumbria constabularies were willing to work together, in particular because of the difficulties in delivering protective services throughout the vast spaces of Cumbria and north Lancashire. Will the Home Secretary look again at merging protective services, or offer some support to allow that to happen, so that in future Cumbria and Lancashire can ensure that they get the best value and deliver the right policing to the right parts of the country?

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that issue. I am currently looking into those matters, and there is considerable benefit in greater collaboration between forces on protective services. As I said earlier, forces have been willing to support Cumbria constabulary, but there is a longer-term issue concerning protective services. My hon. Friend spoke of force mergers, and we were quite clear about opposing the attempts to merge forces. Some forces might look for voluntary mergers, and I would be willing to look at that, provided that it is the will of the local community. That is absolutely crucial.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her tribute to the Cumbrian people. Speaking as a new Cumbrian MP, and as a constituency neighbour of my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Mr Reed), I must say that her words will be very much appreciated up there. I also associate myself with her tribute, and that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), to the work of emergency services.

At a time like this, and after seeing the tragedy that unfolded, we in the House feel the acute limitations of government, and the right hon. Lady is absolutely right that there must be a period of reflection, and indeed grief. However, will she assure us that in the Government’s consideration of the issue they will look not only at firearms legislation but at the capacity, such as there is, to review community mental health services in order to understand how an apparently reserved member of the community suddenly snapped and became capable of such evil deeds?

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. The issue of mental health capacity might come out more fully as a result of the investigation, but as yet we cannot say exactly what caused that individual to undertake those actions. We must ensure that we know the full facts before we jump to conclusions. All I would say is that all parts of the House have for some time recognised the necessity for a wider debate about mental health in our society. As for the actions that could or should be taken as a result of what has happened, when we know the full facts we will genuinely look at this issue with a view to taking what action is necessary.

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

May I, on behalf of my party and all elected representatives from the north-west, associate myself with all the condolences and expressions of support for all those affected by these tragic events? That beautiful part of the country has been disfigured by inexplicable, senseless and horrible violence. Death has rarely seemed so arbitrary. I welcome the assurances and positive help from the Secretary of State, and I praise the actions of the emergency services and the many formal and informal networks that will surely be needed—but will the Secretary of State explain how a simple taxi driver could possibly justify the apparently lawful possession of such a formidable and devastating arsenal for such a time? What, if anything, can prevent such things from happening again?

[Mrs May]

I simply say to the hon. Gentleman that he invites me to go into details, and down a road, that at this stage I do not feel able to embark on. Indeed, it would not be right for me to do so. He raises a question that will doubtlessly be in the minds of many people who look at those events, but it is right for us to wait for the police investigation and for their presentation of the full facts. Then it will be possible for us to debate the issues that he raised in his question.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I thank the Home Secretary for coming to the House so soon to give us her statement, and I, like the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), other local MPs and the right hon. Lady, acknowledge how vital it is to establish the facts before we rush to judgment. However, while the police investigation is ongoing, will she look at one particular aspect of the matter, which may be unrelated to the circumstances but is related to firearms—the recommendation by the Home Affairs Committee in the previous Parliament on minimum sentences for those who possess firearms? I am sure that she will look at all the legislation and review everything, but in the meantime can she assure us that when we have the full facts she will return to the House with a full statement?

[Mrs May]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question, and I do intend to keep the House informed as further information becomes available and we have the full facts. As part of the coalition agreement, my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice will undertake a review of sentencing policy, and I am sure that in that review the Committee’s report will be brought to his attention.

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend ensure that, should lessons need to be learned from this terrible tragedy about the adequate response times of armed rapid-reaction forces, they will be learned and implemented forthwith, not only in Cumbria but throughout the country?

[Mrs May]

I assure my right hon. Friend that when we have had an opportunity to look at the full facts of this case, we intend to learn any lessons that come out of it. On the issue to which he alludes, I have spoken to the chief constable about the reaction times that were available. My right hon. Friend, and others, will be aware that there are particular circumstances in Cumbria involving its geography, and the knowledge of the local area of the individual concerned in this incident, Derrick Bird. Of course operational matters are for the police, but I assure my right hon. Friend that if there are any lessons to be learned, they will be.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

I thank the Home Secretary for her very measured statement. I do not think that words can really describe the horror of what happened yesterday. Does she agree that we already have the most stringent gun control laws in Europe, and that before making any changes, or doing anything that she thinks may be done, we should consider this in the widest and most measured way possible so that we do not stop people who legitimately use weapons for sport and in other legitimate ways, and do not have an automatic knee-jerk response? I very much welcome the fact that she wants to see all the facts before we make any decisions or even start to discuss this.

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady is right that we have among the most stringent gun regulations in Europe. We must not respond immediately by taking a decision as to what is necessary, but wait until we know the full facts and then take the opportunity to look at the results of the police investigation, to consider what has happened in this incident and to ask ourselves whether there are lessons to be learned and whether we need to take further action. I am very clear that we must not have a knee-jerk reaction to this incident, but it is right to look at it properly in due course and take any decisions that are necessary. As I say, it would be my intention, subject to others, to provide an opportunity for Members of this House to debate these issues before the summer recess.

[Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

Does the Home Secretary accept that the vast majority of those in this country who enjoy shooting will share her dismay at the events in Cumbria and will want to send their condolences, too? I very much welcome her statement that she will resist calls for a knee-jerk response to these incidents and will bear in mind the interests of the many thoroughly responsible shooters who wish to continue to enjoy their sport.

[Mrs May]

I do indeed accept that, as my hon. Friend says, there are many responsible shooters in the UK who will have been as appalled by these events in Cumbria yesterday as everybody else was. As I indicated in my previous answer, it is right that we should have an opportunity to consider these issues, but we should do so only when we have the full facts—when the police have been able to investigate and we know as much as we can about the events that took place in Cumbria. We must not leap to conclusions before we have those facts.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

The Home Secretary is absolutely right to say that today is a day for remembering the innocent victims. May I, on behalf of my party colleagues, extend our deepest sympathies to the families and friends of those who have been murdered, and to the wider community in Cumbria as well? May I support the remarks of the hon. Member for Workington (Tony Cunningham), and other local Members, about the need for continuing help for the area to assist the police, statutory agencies and charities as they continue with their important work in helping the communities through this awful time?

[Mrs May]

Indeed. I think we all recognise in this House that there are two jobs to be done: one is the police investigation, but the other is the need to provide support to the local communities in Cumbria so that they can recover from the terrible tragedy that has occurred. It is right that we recognise that there is a role for central Government and for local government in that, but there is also a role for others, including charities, many of which will be best positioned and best able to offer the sort of support, counselling, advice and practical help that people will need.

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

Notwithstanding the strong legislation surrounding firearms at the moment, will the Home Secretary give an undertaking that she will not rule out the possibility of the complete prohibition of the private ownership of firearms as the best way of preventing such atrocities in future?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman is inviting me to do precisely what I have said that I will not do, and leap to conclusions. As I said, we will aim to give the House an opportunity to debate these issues, and I am sure that when that time comes the hon. Gentleman will want to make his views known to the House in rather fuller detail. At the moment, however, it is right, before we jump to conclusions, to wait until we know the full facts and can learn from what has happened.

European Affairs

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

12:45

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of European affairs.

It is a great pleasure to have the honour of opening the first European affairs debate of this new Parliament. These debates not only provide the House with the opportunity to consider developments in the European Union in general but, more immediately, allow the House to give its thoughts on the forthcoming meeting of the European Council. In the past these debates have been held so shortly before the European Council meeting—sometimes only hours before, or the day before, or two days before—that the House has had no real chance to ensure that its thinking is in any way absorbed by the Government in their approach. We believe, in the new Government, that we can do better than that. This debate is taking place two weeks ahead of the European Council meeting, and before the Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Luxembourg on 14 June.

The new Government will bring a fresh approach to Britain’s involvement in the EU. I said in opposition—to some scepticism on the Labour Benches, it has to be said—that we would be active and activist, positive and energetic, from day one. We have been exactly that. The Prime Minister’s first visits to foreign capitals were to Paris and Berlin, where he had highly successful meetings with President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel. My ministerial team has been extremely busy. The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), attended the EU-Latin American and Caribbean meeting a fortnight ago in Madrid, and the EU-Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Madrid. I was able to meet many of my European counterparts at the Latin American meeting. I was in Sarajevo yesterday for the EU-western Balkans meeting, which I shall come to later. In the next seven days I intend to visit my counterparts in Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and Rome. The Minister for Europe attended the informal ministerial meeting on the eastern partnership in Poland last week, and has met in Brussels Members of the European Parliament and the European Commission. We said that we would be active from day one, and we have indeed been so.

This Government strongly believe that the European Union has a crucial role in enabling the countries of Europe to work together to face the vast challenges of this century: the maintenance of our global competitiveness, the problem of climate change, the grim facts of global poverty, and the need for the nations of Europe to use their collective weight in the world to deal with foreign policy issues. All are better dealt with if the nations of Europe can bring together common solutions—and above all, the right solutions.

We will, where necessary, be more robust in defending Britain’s national interests than the previous Government were. We will not repeat their wretched handling of the negotiations on the current financial perspective, which saw them accept a cut of £7 billion in our rebate while obtaining nothing of substance in return.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Will the Foreign Secretary, here and now, congratulate the previous Prime Minister on his great wisdom in keeping Britain out of the eurozone?

[Mr Hague]

I do congratulate the previous Prime Minister. I am not in the habit of doing that, but on this subject I am very happy to do so. What a good job it was that the former Prime Minister, Sir John Major, ensured that we had an opt-out so that the most recent Prime Minister could keep us out of the eurozone.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Hague]

I give way to a former Minister for Europe.

[Keith Vaz]

I am most grateful to the Foreign Secretary; I am actually going to be very nice to him. I congratulate him on his appointment and remind him that I gave him his first job in the Commons, as secretary of the all-party footwear and leather industries group. I am glad that he is going to be active; we would expect nothing less from him. On enlargement, will he continue the previous Government’s policy of ensuring that countries that are capable of joining will be allowed to join? Leaving aside transitional arrangements such as whether people will be able to work, particularly in relation to the Croatia file, which must be on his desk, will he confirm that we believe in a Europe that is wider and stronger?

[Mr Hague]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The role that we played together on the leather and footwear industries all-party group 20 years ago will for ever be somewhere in the recesses of my mind. I am very grateful for that reminder; the memory has just been retrieved from somewhere. He is absolutely right: there is a strong cross-party commitment on EU enlargement, to which I want to turn later in my speech. I want to talk specifically about Croatia later. He used an important phrase about countries joining when they have met the conditions. It is important that they meet the conditions for membership, rather than the conditions being changed to suit a particular country. I very much agree with what he said.

It is also our intention to approach European issues in a more coherent way across Whitehall than has sometimes been the case. In the three weeks for which I have held the office of Foreign Secretary, it has been apparent to my colleagues and me that under the previous Government, Departments could have worked together better, particularly more strategically. That point might also be relevant to previous Governments, and we intend to put it right. We are establishing a new Cabinet Committee on European affairs that I will chair, with the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change as the deputy chair. [Interruption.] It is another example of a good coalition in practice.

That Committee will allow the new Government to take a more holistic approach to EU issues than was sometimes the case in the past, and I hope it will achieve better results for Britain. We must ensure that we are always ahead of the game in Brussels, unlike the previous Government, of whom that could not always be said; the position in which they left us in relation to the hedge funds directive is a particular example. In doing so, we will be aided by achieving a more collegiate feeling in a two-party Cabinet than in the previous Cabinet of one party.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

I welcome the Foreign Secretary to his post and remind him that I still owe him the proceeds of a wager, when I said that his party would not leave the European conservative grouping, which, of course, it did. I have proved to be wrong on occasions. Returning to his point about greater co-ordination, will he say how he will arrive at a view about whether the Government agree with the proposals for a new European single credit agency operator? Will he explain how that will work?

[Mr Hague]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for reminding me of our wager. Without giving too much away, I should say that I am looking forward to drinking with her the proceeds that she owes me. The wager was made on the understanding that I would join her so that we could consume the proceeds together. I am looking forward to doing that. [Interruption.] No, it is not beer on this occasion; it is something that we will drink together.

She asked how we would arrive at the decision. Well, that is exactly what the new European Affairs Committee of the Cabinet is there to do, supported by officials from both the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office. There will be greater Foreign Office involvement and co-ordination of European affairs than has been the case for a long time. That is part of the more central role in government for the Foreign Office that I have always envisaged and am trying to bring about. That Committee will examine such issues, including the one to which the hon. Lady referred.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I warmly welcome the Foreign Secretary to his new job, and I am encouraged by what he has said about the new European Affairs Cabinet Committee. Can he assure me that the Committee will pull together issues of climate change and climate crisis across the whole of Government, because those matters are relevant to the Ministry of Defence, for example, and clearly to business, too? If Britain can be seen to be leading the new green agenda in Europe, there is a real chance that we can influence the world. To put it bluntly, if Europe does not lead, the Americans, the Chinese and others are not likely to follow.

[Mr Hague]

I very much take that point. The hon. Gentleman can see how seriously we take the matter from the fact that his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is the deputy chair of the Committee. I shall talk about climate change during my speech. It was noticeable in the final stages of the Copenhagen meeting that the European Union was not at the final table—in the final discussions—and we have to put that right for the future. That will be part of the approach that we are trying to put together in the European Affairs Cabinet Committee.

The main issue before the forthcoming European Council is, of course, the current economic situation. A number of member states face severe fiscal difficulties, and growth across Europe is anaemic. The priority for all of us is to rectify our budgetary problems and deal with the fundamental underlying problem of weak economic growth. The Government have made it clear that we will stay out of the euro, but at the same time, we must acknowledge that the EU is our single biggest trading partner. Problems in one member state affect us all, whether we are single currency members or not. Recent developments in the eurozone have exemplified the need for fiscal consolidation, which is the No. 1 priority across Europe. We have made an urgent start on dealing with the deficit, and those actions will be crucial for the stability of our public finances, after those who are now on the Opposition Front Bench bequeathed the country the worst peacetime deficit in modern times.

The major issue dominating discussion of European affairs is the difficulty facing the eurozone. A strong and healthy eurozone is, of course, in this country’s interests. That is a view held even by those of us who have always opposed Britain joining the euro. Much of our prosperity depends on our neighbours’ prosperity: 49% of our exports go to the eurozone.

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making an incredibly important point about the eurozone and our trade with it. We acknowledge that there is significant trade, but would he also accept that one of the reasons why the eurozone is imploding is the vast amount of social and employment legislation––the over-regulation and burdens on business not only in Europe but imposed on this country as a result of European directives and regulations? Will he therefore accept that the Prime Minister’s commitment to repatriate those powers is essential not only for us but for negotiations in the European Union? If that does not happen we will not have jobs, growth or enterprise, nor will we be able to reduce the debt or pay for public services where necessary.

[Mr Hague]

There are several parts to my hon. Friend’s question about the reasons for low economic growth in the European Union. One of those reasons is the extent of regulation, inflexibility and bureaucratic burdens. I think that is true in most, if not all, the countries of the EU, for a mixture of reasons. Some of that regulation is at EU level and some is at national level. I was going to deal with that issue.

Winning the argument for appropriate regulation is a very important part of the plans that we have put forward to revive economic growth in the EU, and sometimes that will mean having lighter regulation. That can be addressed partly through the European Union regulating more effectively and in a less burdensome way, and partly by nations doing so individually. The extent to which we can deal with the issue by changing the balance of competences between the EU and member states is something that we now have to examine as a coalition. My hon. Friend has a long-held view on the subject, and I have expressed views about it. We are a coalition Government, and he and I must accept that there is not necessarily a majority in the House of Commons for every single thing that we would have wanted to do. We must examine the issue as a coalition, and we are now doing so.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The Foreign Secretary speaks warmly—as so many Europe Ministers and Foreign Secretaries have—about our trade with the European Union. Is not the reality that we have a massive trade deficit with the European Union, and we do much better with trade outside the European Union? We do not benefit from that trade; Europe benefits from us and our market.

[Mr Hague]

It is in the nature of trade that we all benefit from each other. The hon. Gentleman is right: if 49% of our exports go to the eurozone, the other half do not. However, I would not want to do without the 49% that go to the eurozone. All trade is very important to the future of the country.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Hague]

A lot of hon. Members want to intervene, so I will try to fit them in. We will go to Glasgow first, because the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson) has made great contributions to such debates in the past.

[Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the Foreign Secretary on his new appointment. There is undoubtedly a crisis within the eurozone, but does he not agree that there is a danger that those in Brussels will simply see this as an opportunity to accrete more power to themselves, centralise still further, and that their analysis will be that the solution to the problem is more Europe, not less. What steps will the Government take to ensure that that does not happen, and that Britain is not sucked into the black hole of the eurozone?

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman is right about that. I am about to come to that point in my speech, so I will address the matter in a moment.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

I too welcome the Foreign Secretary to his post. He has a reputation for blunt speaking, so will he tell the House whether he regrets his and his party’s decision not to proceed with a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, which was something that the people of Britain and the United Kingdom desperately wanted?

[Mr Hague]

I shall also deal with referendums later in my speech. I explained yesterday that the edge is taken off blunt speaking by becoming Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, and it is probably in our national interest that the edge is taken off. Of course, I regret that there was no referendum on the Lisbon treaty—I campaigned for one for years—but the treaty was ratified. As the Prime Minister and I explained in opposition a few months ago, we cannot make up a referendum. The Lisbon treaty is now one of the treaties of the European Union. However, we will provide for referendums in future—I will deal with that point shortly.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I was listening carefully to the Foreign Secretary’s comments on labour market flexibility. May I give him the chance to elaborate slightly on that? Does he have any proposals to avoid the situation that arose at East Lindsey and Staythorpe, whereby, in the case of Staythorpe, skilled British workers were unable to apply for jobs to build new power stations precisely because of the lack of regulation in Europe? How will he address the Staythorpe situation?

[Mr Hague]

I do not have proposals at this moment to address that, but the hon. Gentleman raises a legitimate point, so I will note it as something that the new Government will look at. From what I remember, it is not an easy problem to solve, but the point is legitimate and we can have further discussions about it.

The hon. Member for Glasgow South West has gone—I was about to address his point. So much for his enthusiasm for an answer! As I was explaining, the major issue is the difficulties facing the eurozone. Given the extent of our exports to the eurozone, of course we will support our partners in their efforts to deal with the current difficulties, but without being drawn further into the eurozone. For example, while we recognise the importance of maintaining a dialogue on deficit reduction across the eurozone and the wider EU, we are firm in our view that our national budget must always be presented first to our national Parliament.

We are listening to member states that are discussing institutional reforms to the eurozone—that is an ongoing debate—but I assure the House that the Government will maintain our position that there should be no further transfer of sovereignty or powers from Britain to the EU over the course of the Parliament. Sanctions for breaches of the stability and growth pact may be the right way forward for our partners in the euro area, but they should never apply to countries that retain their own currencies, and this country will retain its currency.

The next question for all members of the European Union is, “From where will the growth that we need come?” The Government, working with our European partners, mean to address that question with vigour. We know that spending our way further into dangerous levels of debt is not the answer. We need to get Europe back to work, create jobs, attract investment and deal with the erosion of our long-term competitiveness. Those issues concern every member of the European Union, not just the eurozone. We will urgently make the case for the extension of the single market, better regulation that can lighten the burdens on businesses, and seizing opportunities to create freer and fairer trade between the European Union and third countries. In that context, we will particularly encourage greater economic engagement between the European Union and new, rising economic powers.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

rose—

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman wants to intervene for a third time. I will let him do so once again.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I will try to make this the last intervention, but it is on an important point. Squeezing deficits and introducing labour regulation, which would depress wages, will simply drive the European Union further into depression and deflation. Is not that the real danger that we face?

[Mr Hague]

I do not think that that is the danger that we face. Deficits unaddressed or regulation that prices people out of work in some European nations are the real dangers to economic growth in the long term. When we consider the position of the countries in the eurozone that face the most severe fiscal difficulties, their problem is not insufficient state spending or insufficient regulation, but very much the opposite. I am sorry—the hon. Gentleman and I agree on so many aspects of European policy, but we will have to disagree on that one.

[Mr Cash]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that the objectives that he would try to achieve by negotiation, in particular on some of the economic proposals that are coming forward, will be subject to majority voting? If and when he is outvoted in that context, what is his fall-back position? Will he introduce and enact a sovereignty Bill so that he can underpin those negotiations with a firm opportunity for the House to override European regulation in our vital national interests?

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend has a long-standing campaign for such a measure. We are examining the case for a sovereignty Bill in the coalition, for the reasons that I explained to him earlier. It was part of the Conservative party’s election manifesto, but not part of the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto. We must therefore examine that together, and that examination has already begun. Of course, we will come back to the House with our conclusions.

I was making a point about the importance of extending the single market, where we think there are real opportunities to boost growth by further opening up energy and services sectors and moving forward on patents. There are many helpful proposals in Mario Monti’s recent report about relaunching the single market, on which we want to build. All that is germane to the Europe 2020 strategy, which will be the main formal item of discussion at the forthcoming European Council. It is the successor to the Lisbon strategy, which is widely acknowledged to have been well intentioned but disappointing in its results.

The current crisis in the eurozone demonstrates that it is vital that the EU has a coherent strategy for growth and jobs, but it must fully respect the balance of competence between member states and Community action. We will work with our partners on the Commission’s proposals for a Europe 2020 strategy to promote growth. The strategy is intended to drive growth in the next decade and secure jobs, and those are, of course, the right objectives, but we will want to pay close attention to the detail.

At the spring European Council, five EU-level target areas were identified: employment; research and development; energy and climate change; education; and social inclusion. We are concerned that some, while not legally binding, may stray into the competences of member states. Some are inappropriate for the different systems and models that various member states use. That variety must be respected in creating a meaningful strategy that addresses the economic issues faced across Europe.

We are clear that the EU has a role to play, for example, through providing a deeper and stronger single market, with smarter regulation, a more strategic approach to trade and a framework for innovation. The 2020 strategy faces two other immediate problems that need resolution. First, the next financial perspective—the seven-year EU budgetary framework—needs to cohere with it. In our view, its priorities should be aligned with the strategy. It is deeply unfortunate that the budget review has been so long delayed that linking the two is more difficult than it should be. Secondly, the 2020 strategy is a long-term strategy—it is meant to be—but recent events require a more immediate response to drive growth now. As I said, that response will be the Government’s priority. If we can get the 2020 strategy to be more coherent with the financial framework, and link its long-term nature with the immediate action that is needed, perhaps we can avoid the risk of a strategy again proving disappointing in the benefits that it brings to European nations.

[Mr Davidson]

Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman has returned. I will give way to him so that he can nip out again while I answer his question.

[Mr Davidson]

In my defence, I came back. I had to leave because I had visitors—I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for that. I explained to them that the joys of listening to him were greater than those of meeting them. They are not voters in my constituency, which makes it a great deal easier to say that.

On the coherence of Government policy on Europe, given that financial cuts are being made across the Government’s budget, will the Foreign Secretary give us a guarantee that a cut will also be applied to the contribution that the EU receives from this country? Otherwise, there will be inconsistency.

[Mr Hague]

There may well be inconsistency. The hon. Gentleman knows that I cannot give him such a guarantee, which is why he enjoyed coming back into the Chamber to ask the question. The contribution is not immediately under the Government’s control, but is the product of differences in agricultural payments, VAT payments and so on. It is regrettable, as I said earlier, that the Government whom he largely supported—his Front Benchers do not recognise that description of him; perhaps I should say, “the Government he was elected to support in the past”—gave away £7 billion of our rebate while securing nothing in return. He can be assured that we will not do that, and that will help keep the payments down, but it is not possible to vary them by unilateral Executive action.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Following the very good point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson), who asked why people in this country should take the pain when more and more money is going into the EU, will my right hon. Friend say why the Government think it right that this country should give increasing amounts of money to the EU when it does not have its accounts signed off? If the Government are serious about getting the EU to reform its budget, why does he not go there and say, “We’re not prepared to give any more money to the EU until it gets its accounts properly audited and signed off, which is what we would expect from any other organisation to which we give money”?

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. Like him, I have often complained vociferously about our inability to sign off the accounts of the European Commission. It is true that most of the problems that arise are now within member states rather than with the Commission, but nevertheless, the new Government will certainly re-examine that and want to put some energy into sorting that out. I feel very strongly about it, as does my hon. Friend.

The Council will also set the Union’s position for the G20 Toronto summit at the end of June, and the Government want to ensure that the position agreed at the Council reflects our views on fiscal consolidation, and on strengthening standards on financial regulations and bank levies. It is hoped that the Council will sign off the EU position for the UN high-level plenary meeting on the millennium development goals in September, which will take place just before the UN General Assembly. The Government will encourage other member states to fulfil their aid commitments. I am pleased to report that the United Kingdom is on track to meet both its 2010 target of 0.56% of overseas development assistance and its 2013 target of 0.7%. We can be proud that that is a point of consensus in the House between all three main parties, and I pay tribute to the work of the previous Labour Government.

However, collectively, the EU is not on track to meet its commitments, and we will encourage all member states to reinvigorate their commitments to that end. Tackling global poverty is one of the great causes of our age, and one in which the nations of Europe should play their full part.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Has the Foreign Secretary had any recent discussions with his Italian counterpart on the deplorable position of the Italian Government on international development assistance?

[Mr Hague]

I have not, but I will be visiting my Italian counterpart on Monday in Rome. While I am having an otherwise enjoyable meeting with him, I will drop that point in. Indeed, I will now be able to say that the matter has been brought up in the House of Commons. It is a valid point, so I will certainly pursue the matter.

The Commission will present a communication on the EU’s ambitions for a 30% carbon emissions reduction target, including an analysis of the costs and benefits to the EU economy, and of the impact on energy security, exports and job creation. The Government want the EU to show leadership in tackling international climate change and will support an increase in the EU’s emissions reduction target once that has been addressed with proper thoroughness.

Looking ahead, we recognise that there is a serious problem with the lack of proper democratic control in this country over the way in which the EU develops—I have already been asked about our position on the referendum. Beyond this Council meeting, the new Government will introduce a Bill to amend the European Communities Act 1972. We are agreed that there is a profound disconnection between the British people and what has been done in their name by British Governments in the European Union. In the past 13 years under the Labour Government, the percentage of the British public who believe that our membership of the EU is a good thing has, according to surveys, fallen to 31%. That is the previous Government’s legacy on Europe: public disenchantment after years of arrogance from Ministers, who did not listen to the people. That lesson should be borne in mind by the shadow Foreign Secretary as he seeks to learn lessons about his party’s election defeat.

Both parties that form the coalition are determined to make the Government more accountable to the British people for how the EU develops, so that Bill will be introduced later this year. It will enlarge democratic and parliamentary scrutiny, accountability and control over the decisions that we make in the EU. As the House will know, it will include a referendum lock, so that no future treaty may pass areas of power or competences from the UK to the EU without the British people’s consent in a referendum. The Government have already agreed that there will be no further transfer of sovereignty or powers in this Parliament in any case. The lock will also cover any proposal for Britain to join the euro. We regard that measure as essential in ensuring that the EU develops in a way that has the British people’s consent.

We are also clear that the referendum lock will apply only to any proposed future treaty transfers of power or competences from Britain to the EU. It will not apply to treaties that do not do that, such as treaties that make technical changes or accession treaties. We are now working on that legislation.

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

I note the Foreign Secretary’s renewed enthusiasm for referendums. The Maastricht treaty is second only to the Single European Act in terms of the amount of power transferred to the EU. Will he explain why he voted against a referendum on that?

[Mr Hague]

There is nothing “renewed” about my enthusiasm for referendums—I am simply setting out exactly what I said in the last Parliament and in the general election campaign. There is great merit in a Minister doing what he said he was going to do before the general election. I voted against a referendum at the time of the Maastricht treaty because I was a member of the Government—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] The Government had the absolutely correct policy on that. We secured the opt-outs on the euro, for instance, of which we spoke earlier, and built in the commitment to a referendum on the euro if ever there was a proposal to join it, which is exactly the policy that will be encapsulated and legislated for in the Bill that we will introduce.

[Mr Cash]

I am listening with great interest to my right hon. Friend on this hugely important matter. He referred to the question of further treaty transfers of powers, and as he will know, the coalition agreement states:

“We agree that there should be no further transfer of sovereignty or powers over the course of the next Parliament”

before referring to the working time directive. Will he concede—I am sure this is the case in a legal and constitutional sense—that “powers” in that context includes the extension of powers under the Lisbon treaty and the introduction of directives?

[Mr Hague]

I was just coming to that point. The Bill will ensure that primary legislation will be required before the British Government may authorise the use of ratchet clauses in treaties—as some of us have called them—some of which result from the Lisbon treaty. Such clauses allow for a modification of treaties or provide options for existing EU powers to expand, which is my hon. Friend’s point. The proposed use of a major ratchet clause—for example, the abolition of vetoes over foreign policy—would also be subject to a referendum. That will be built into our legislation. Taken together, those measures will ensure that unlike under the Labour Government, the European Union can increase its powers vis-à-vis the United Kingdom only with the agreement of the British people. That is a major step towards rebuilding popular trust in the EU.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

I may be anticipating what the Foreign Secretary will say, but at the moment, many items are available as opt-ins, particularly on criminal law and so on. There will be many cases over the next few years in which the choice will be either to opt-in or to withdraw from a whole section of a treaty. Will those be dealt with so that the House is given a vote on whether the Government should opt in or opt out?

[Mr Hague]

They will certainly demand a lot of examination in the House. In the coalition agreement, we have committed to approaching further criminal justice legislation on a case-by-case basis. The UK has the right to decide whether to participate in new EU justice and home affairs measures, so we will give careful consideration to whether to opt-in to new measures in those areas while at the same time ensuring that the UK’s security is maintained and our civil liberties are protected, and that the integrity of our criminal justice system is preserved.

We recognise the importance of Parliament having adequate time to scrutinise those opt-in decisions. In all but the most exceptional cases, that means that we will not opt-in to any new measure in the first eight weeks following its publication, to give Parliament time to give a considered opinion. The hon. Gentleman will know that we are looking at how to improve parliamentary scrutiny of decision-making in Europe, and the positions that this Government or any future Government take at European councils. Indeed, we would welcome his views, as a distinguished former Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, on how those procedures can be improved. I know that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House would welcome hearing from the hon. Gentleman.

[Simon Hughes]

It is important that what the Foreign Secretary has just said is given maximum publicity. One of the aspects of the disempowerment felt by the British public is the perception that European legislation has been forced on them. We should have a real debate about the merits of issues such as the working time directive, and what he has just said will be warmly welcomed not only by his party, but by mine.

[Mr Hague]

That is further evidence—to the deep disappointment of Opposition Members—of how well coalition government is now proceeding.

I will attend the Foreign Affairs Council on 14 June in Luxembourg. As I have long said, it is strongly my view that the nations of Europe should do more to use their collective weight in the world to advance shared values and interests. The problems have not been institutional, but political, including a lack of will and consistency. That is the spirit in which we will approach these matters.

I mentioned last week in the debate on the Queen’s Speech that this Government will give greater weight to elevating our relationships with emerging powers across the world, and that policy will, I hope, be complemented by other European nations doing the same. Indeed, some of them are further ahead than us in doing this, and it will form part of our collective work in the EU. The Council’s agenda will include Iran and the western Balkans. It will also be important to discuss recent developments in Gaza, how the European Union can give fresh momentum to the middle east peace process and what role we can play in helping to address the crisis in Gaza.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I understand that my right hon. Friend has recently visited Bosnia, a part of Europe that is often overshadowed by other international events, but tensions there remain high. There are frictions over the constitution, and I wonder whether he agrees that the EU and the UN would be wrong to dismiss Bosnia. We need to invest time and energy to ensure that the cycle of violence that we have seen in the past 10 years does not restart.

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Bosnia is one of the major issues that I will discuss with the European High Representative, Baroness Ashton, this evening. I will say more on the issue in a moment.

I wish to update the House on the British nationals caught up in the incident in Gaza and improve on the information that was given yesterday. The latest information I have is that 34 British nationals were involved, not 37 as I informed the House yesterday. Two of those who were reported as missing do not appear to have been in the flotilla, and we are seeking to confirm that. Another was a duplicated name with different spellings. All the remaining 34 are now accounted for. One British national was deported directly earlier in the week, 32 have arrived in Turkey and one, who is a dual national, has been released and is in Israel with family. Of the 32 who have arrived in Turkey, one has returned to the UK and 31 remain there. We are offering assistance through our consulate general to British nationals who seek it.

As I said, Iran will be on the Foreign Affairs Council’s agenda. We remain extremely concerned about Iran’s nuclear programme. Iran has failed to suspend its nuclear activities in line with UN Security Council resolutions, has shown no serious intent to discuss its programme with the international community and has failed to address the outstanding concerns of the International Atomic Energy Agency. For those reasons, we are pursuing—as we speak—new sanctions, and a draft resolution is now being discussed at the UN Security Council. The EU has agreed to take measures to accompany this process and we will work hard with our EU partners to ensure that we take strong measures that have an impact on Iran’s decision making. The House will be aware that on 17 May Iran, Brazil and Turkey announced that Iran had agreed a deal to supply fuel for the Tehran research reactor. While that deal, if implemented, could still help to build confidence in Iran’s intentions, it cannot do so while Iran’s other actions show a complete disregard for efforts to engage it in serious negotiation, such as continuing to enrich uranium up to 20% despite having no apparent civilian use for that material.

A comprehensive diplomatic offer has been made to Iran and remains on the table. The EU High Representative, Cathy Ashton, made it clear in her statement of 21 May that we stand ready to meet Iran at any time to discuss its nuclear programme. The onus is on Iran to assure the international community of its peaceful intentions and to enter into negotiations. Until it does so, we have no choice but to continue to pursue the path of sanctions. The House will need no reminding of the risks associated with nuclear proliferation in the middle east. The pressure placed on Iran must be peaceful, multilateral and legitimate, but unless it is intensified, the opportunity to change Iranian behaviour on this issue may be lost.

The Government have also made it clear that we believe that the European Union must sharpen its focus on the western Balkans—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) said—until all the countries of the region are irreversibly on the path to EU membership. Achieving this and helping to turn the page decisively on the painful chapters of the region’s past will be a major test of what the EU can accomplish in world affairs. An EU without the western Balkans would for ever have a disenchanted and disillusioned hole near its centre. The western Balkans matter to stability and prosperity in Europe, and we cannot afford to ignore developments there, especially the current lack of progress in Bosnia, which demands sustained international attention. I yesterday attended the high-level meeting of EU and western Balkan Foreign Ministers, and set out our support for a clear strategy of firm action from European countries, as well as concrete steps by the countries of the region. We will work actively and intensively with our European partners, the High Representative and the Governments of the region to take this work forward in the coming months.

The issue brings me to enlargement more generally. In Britain, we have had a strong consensus on the principle that widening the European Union is a good thing, and I hope that that will continue. Widening of the European Union must go along with the rigorous application of the entry criteria. The Government will continue to champion the European Union’s enlargement, including to the western Balkans and Turkey. We will be assiduous in working with Ankara and other member states to resolve outstanding issues.

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that continuing peace and stability in the western Balkans cannot be taken for granted, and does he also agree that the constitutional changes necessary in Bosnia and Herzegovina are critically important to enable that country to progress its accession to the EU?

[Mr Hague]

I very much agree. It cannot be taken for granted that the problems have been solved. The 5+2 conditions necessary for the closure of the office of the High Representative have not yet been satisfied. As I have often said, I believe that European nations will have to be more forceful about this, and we will have to be prepared to push as well as pull some people in the western Balkans towards EU membership.

[Michael Connarty]

Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

[Mr Hague]

I have given way for the last time: I owe it to the House to allow the shadow Foreign Secretary and others to speak.

We continue to support the negotiations to re-unify the island of Cyprus—I am pleased that they restarted last week. Although we do not underestimate the difficulties, it would be very greatly in the interest of both communities on the island for those talks to succeed.

The House will also want to know about the institutional aspect of the EU’s external relations, the establishment of the European External Action Service. As the House will know, my party did not support the creation of the External Action Service, but it is now a fact. We warned that its creation would not necessarily lead to greater inter-institutional harmony in Brussels and that has unfortunately proved to be the case so far. It is now our task to ensure that the service is both useful to the nations of Europe and respects the role of national diplomatic services. The European Parliament has made its suggestions on how the service is to be organised, and there are discussions on the matter with the High Representative and the Spanish presidency. I hope that the European Parliament will recognise that the service will be a success only if it commands the confidence of member states. That is a crucial consideration.

The High Representative has made a good start to her very challenging role. We wished her well when she embarked on the task, and we look forward to working with her closely in the future.

The last Conservative Government left a considerable legacy in the European Union: the creation of the single market; the enlargement from nine to 15 members; and the setting in train of further eastwards enlargement. I will not take away from the last Government their achievement in helping to complete that enlargement, but in other respects their legacy is to be regretted: the alienation of the British public from the EU; the failure to stand up for Britain’s interests on the budget, and so on. The new Government have started as we mean to continue—with activity and energy in European affairs. We will play our role with enthusiasm, while vigorously advancing our country’s interests and never taking the British people for granted.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst)]

Before I call the shadow Foreign Secretary, I say to the House that there has been some comings and goings on the numbers wishing to speak in the debate. I propose, therefore, to alter the nine-minute time limit to 10 minutes. I do not automatically expect every hon. Member to expand their speech by one minute. It is just to ease the pressures that might otherwise exist during the debate.

13:31

[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is unusual in the House for the Foreign Secretary—at least it was under his previous roles—to lose an audience during a speech, but I will seek to address many of his points, focusing my remarks on the agenda for the European Council in two weeks. Of course, this quarter’s pre-European Council debate is unusual in that it is scheduled in the middle of the Queen’s Speech debates, but it comes at an important time for Europe.

I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for his explanation of the Government’s approach. We want the Prime Minister, when he attends the European Council, to represent the interests of the country in a strong, outward-looking European Union, supporting an agenda of economic reform and social justice at home, and hard-headed internationalism abroad. The Foreign Secretary bravely said, in the Queen’s Speech debate last week, that he now favoured a policy of enlightened self-interest. We congratulate him on moving from unenlightened to enlightened self-interest—it is a step forward—but I hope that he will allow me, in the nicest possible way, to remind him of Harold Macmillan’s point that a Foreign Secretary is always caught somewhere between a cliché and an indiscretion. I hope that his repetition of his commitment to enlightened self-interest will not capture him in that trap.

It is not enough to say that one is enlightened. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary need to show it, and show it quickly, on the big issues facing Europe. They must put to one side institutional squabbles and focus on the substantive issues facing the European Union: a steady process of building economic growth alongside deficit reduction; developing the EU as a low-carbon economic zone of the future able to lead the international green economy; and supporting a strong European foreign policy that uses our weight in Europe to advance British interests. The Prime Minister’s press conference with Chancellor Merkel last month—his first foray into European politics as Prime Minister—was not encouraging. We are told that the Prime Minister is a fan of Disraeli, who said that

“petulance is not sarcasm, and insolence is not invective”.

The Prime Minister’s remarks in Berlin verged on both petulance and insolence.

I will focus on the Council’s agenda, but first I must pick the Foreign Secretary up on one thing. These debates are not traditionally partisan affairs, and my remarks will not be dedicated in that dimension. Pre-European Council debates—not European debates in general—have generally been focused on the agenda of the European Council. The shadow Foreign Secretary said—[Hon. Members: “You’re the shadow Foreign Secretary!”]I mean the Foreign Secretary. It sticks in the gullet, Mr Deputy Speaker; I am happy to admit it. However, in a few weeks, I hope I will get used to referring to the right hon. Gentleman as the Foreign Secretary.

I think I quote the Foreign Secretary correctly. He said that the United Kingdom got “nothing in return” for the 2004-05 budget deal. He also said that he was a long-standing supporter of enlargement, and he congratulated the previous Government on achieving enlargement. He knows that the budget deal agreed was necessary to make enlargement possible, and I say to him in the nicest possible way—well sort of—that he cannot keep on attacking the 2004-05 budget deal while professing his loyalty to the project of European enlargement. That project requires commitments in substance, and sometimes in budgets, as well as in words, and it simply is not good enough for him to keep on saying that we gave away the house in 2004-05 when it is not true. The EU achieved a historic agreement to expand, which he says he supports.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

If all budget contributions by nations were proportionate to their living standards, it would be fair, but they are not, so it will always cause problems, especially for Britain.

[David Miliband]

The rebate, which now applies to four countries, not just to the United Kingdom, is there because of the pattern of spending in the EU, and it is the pattern of spending that distorts the net contributions.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

Reduce them.

[David Miliband]

The hon. Gentleman says, from a sedentary position, that we should reduce them, but he will know that the 2004-05 budget deal agreed for the first time that British and French net contributions should be more or less equal. That had never been achieved before under any previous Government.

[Michael Connarty]

Is it not true that not only did it allow the accession of the A8 countries, plus Malta and Cyprus, because they had problems with the budget proposed before that, but it changed fundamentally the basis of the common agricultural policy, so that we did not continue to plough money into the agricultural surpluses, but put the money into development in the countries joining? It was a fundamental change that was necessary for Europe, and one that was beneficial in the long run to the UK.

[David Miliband]

My hon. Friend speaks with all the authority of a former Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee. Of course, the change was twofold: first, the shift in industrial and infrastructure support into the A8 countries and, secondly, the creation for the first time of the second pillar of the CAP—the pillar devoted not to agricultural subsidy, but to rural development. The previous Government set out a clear plan for how the CAP should be reformed, so that there was spending on rural development and rural support, notably with an environmental, green and climate change focus. The market-distorting aspects of the CAP—the so-called first pillar—were reduced. So I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention.

[Mr Davidson]

I am grateful to the shadow Foreign Secretary for giving way. However, does he not agree that Britain actually struck a very bad deal during the last budget negotiations? We did not get nearly as much as we ought to have, we gave up far more than we should have, and essentially the EU took advantage of us and our commitment to enlargement to strike a far better deal than we should have conceded. In fact, the deal that we conceded on enlargement was one of the things that lost us the election, not because people were hostile to enlargement, but because they were hostile to the uncontrolled immigration that resulted and to the feeling that the pervious Government were more interested in listening to Brussels than to their own people.

[David Miliband]

The Foreign Secretary and I jested earlier, when he said that my hon. Friend had always been a staunch supporter of the former Government, but I worry that he has been reading something left by the previous Opposition Whips Office, before the general election, setting our its view of what happened in 2004-05. I will make one important point to him: he will remember that six months before the budget deal was agreed, the then Government were denounced by the then Opposition for their failure to agree a deal. In June that year, there was a failure to agree a deal, and only under the British presidency, in December, did we get an agreement on the budget deal. So I do not accept his description.

[Mr Cash]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[David Miliband]

No, I will make some progress, and if I may, I will come back to the hon. Gentleman later. He made at least two interventions on the Foreign Secretary.

I shall focus on the June Council agenda, which is understandably dedicated to addressing first the economic situation. The difficulties are well known, but the extent and possible permutations of the solutions are still relatively unknown, causing some instability in European and global markets. Concerns about Greece’s sovereign debt have led to market concern about other southern European economies. Eurozone growth figures are due to be released tomorrow—one disadvantage of having this debate before the European Council—and they will obviously provide a useful indicator for Council action.

All that matters to Britain, as the Foreign Secretary suggested, because 55% of our exports go to the EU. We are part of the largest single market in the world, along with our European partners. Half of UK inward investment comes from the EU. Out of the euro, we should still want the euro to succeed. In the light of those problems, the European Council needs to be clear about what needs to be done. The instability in the global economy as a result of Greece’s problems emphasises the need for effective and co-ordinated European action, as well as certainty for financial markets. A clear resolution framework is needed, and the eurozone countries must reach agreement between their members on the way forward.

However, this Council must be about growth, too, and it should look at the European economy as a whole. Competitive austerity, blind to the need to secure growth, will secure neither deficit reduction nor economic growth that improves living standards. In Europe and at the G20 meeting in Toronto, it is vital that the Government make that argument. As the US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said only yesterday:

“we want…fiscal reforms to happen in a way that’s growth friendly.”

That must surely be the right approach for any sensible Government. We on the Opposition Benches certainly share that view, for Europe and the global economy going into the G20. Deficits need to be brought down, but Europe also needs to think about generating growth, not simply stymieing demand through cutting too fast and too far. We urge the Government to push that argument, as well as that expressed by President Obama’s Administration.

The European Council has an extremely important role in agreeing ways of supporting European economic growth and better governance, and in fostering understanding between some of the strongest economies in the world. The last European Council meeting in March agreed, at the instigation of the then Prime Minister, a series of propositions on competitiveness, the prospects for European growth and the state of preparedness for the G20 summit.

[Mr Cash]

In the context of what the right hon. Gentleman has just said, will he concede what Lord Mandelson said about the extent of over-regulation that comes from European directives and the like, which is that 4% of the European Union’s GDP is absorbed in unnecessary and burdensome regulation? That is the real reason why the eurozone is imploding. It simply does not have the capacity to produce enterprise and jobs. Indeed, enlargement, to include Bulgaria and Romania, is extremely suspect, because those countries have acted as a drag on the opportunity for the rest of Europe to prosper.

[David Miliband]

The hon. Gentleman asked almost exactly the same question of the Foreign Secretary. Difficult as it is for me to say it, the Foreign Secretary gave him rather a good answer, which is that a lot of the regulation to which he referred is, in fact, national regulation, not simply European regulation.

[Mr Cash]

Four per cent. of GDP.

[David Miliband]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman was unable to listen properly to what his right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said, but in this case what he said was actually true.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the shadow Foreign Secretary, but let me just say to the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) that he is setting an awfully bad example to hon. Members who are waiting to make their first speeches by conducting a sedentary commentary, which he knows the Chair strongly deplores.

[David Miliband]

I am sure that my hon. Friends will come to learn that the contributions—not sedentary, but standing—of the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) are an important feature of these debates. The consistency of his remarks is at least one model for us all to follow, even if that cannot always be said of their content.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Or their length.

[David Miliband]

Indeed, as my right hon. Friend also says from a sedentary position.

We look to the new Prime Minister to continue to show the level of engagement seen in the past on European economic issues. Of the many hard lessons that Europe has learned, the most significant is the importance of collaboration in the global economy. The “Europe 2020” growth strategy will be formally adopted at the Council. It was the previous Government who led on the development of those proposals, during the financial crisis that Europe faced last year, and who pushed for many of the positive solutions. We support a strong external dimension, to ensure that the EU is promoted on the global scene, notably through engagement with the so-called BRIC economies—those of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

We also support the expansion of research and development, increasing the share of renewables in final energy consumption to 20% and moving towards a 20% increase in energy efficiency. We also look to the Prime Minister to make the case for longer-term reform in the European Union, particularly in areas such as energy liberalisation and the completion of the single market in areas relatively untouched, such as e-commerce.

There was one country that the Foreign Secretary did not mention, but which it is appropriate to do so. He rightly talked of the importance of the rising powers, but he did not mention Russia. The EU is by far Russia’s largest trading partner, with three quarters of all Russia’s direct foreign investment coming from EU member states. The EU-Russia summit—the first since Lisbon came into force—took place on Tuesday, I think. I look forward to hearing further from the Foreign Secretary about how he sees Europe’s relationship with Russia. He will know—he referred to this in the debate on the Gracious Speech—that Britain’s relations with Russia over the past three years have been extremely testing.

The then Opposition supported the Government in the measures that we took in respect of Russia. However, when it comes to helping the modernisation of Russia, the European Union should be our best instrument. That is why we agreed to the opening of the so-called partnership and co-operation agreement negotiations—I think against the advice of the then Opposition. I hope that the Foreign Secretary will seek to use those discussions to help the process of engagement with Russia. We have a lot to gain, not least on issues to do with energy supply, on which the whole of the EU is a significant partner for Russia.

The European Union also has an important human rights dimension to its work in Russia. Indeed, it is appropriate that the Secretary of State for International Development should be in the Chamber now—he missed the Foreign Secretary’s speech, but I am glad that he has come in at this moment. He made great play during the election campaign of what he called the absurdity of the Department for International Development funding work in China or Russia. Let us leave China to one side. The work that the Department for International Development was funding in Russia was vital human rights work in Chechnya and Ingushetia, parts of Russia that are extremely poor and extremely riven with human rights abuses.

I hope that the Foreign Secretary will talk to his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development, because the important work that was being done with DFID money—relatively small amounts of money, compared with the multi-billion pound DFID budget—was supporting human rights issues that the Foreign Secretary said in his speech in the Loyal Address will be a vital part of his Department’s work. We have heard a lot of words about joined-up government from the new Administration, and this is one area where the price of a campaign commitment to an across-the-board cut in the work done in Russia will be borne by people trying to do brave and important work, in an important country in an important part of the world.

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

I am pleased to hear what the shadow Foreign Secretary is saying, but could he explain to the House why under his Administration the funding for the Council of Europe—and, implicitly, for the European Court of Human Rights—was basically frozen, while he allowed the European Union to spend hundreds of millions of pounds creating a fundamental rights agency that has nothing whatever to do with human rights in Russia or anywhere else?

[David Miliband]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman’s intervention had so little to do with what I was talking about, which was a serious point about the development of human rights support in Russia. As he knows, the Council of Europe continues to receive generous support from the United Kingdom. The fact that we froze our budget is an example of the sort of efficiency and drive that he has often preached about. However, there is an important point there for the Foreign Secretary to address.

[Keith Vaz]

“Europe 2020” is the successor to the Lisbon agenda. What went wrong with the Lisbon agenda was that European countries did not acknowledge and achieve their benchmarks on certain aspects of policy. Before the shadow Foreign Secretary finishes the economic section of his speech, will he say whether he agrees that, as we focus on the new European Council, it is extremely important that there should be credible benchmarks? There has to be a proper understanding from European countries that those benchmarks are not pie in the sky; rather, they actually have to meet them if Europe is to become truly competitive.

[David Miliband]

I fear that there is a rather more fundamental problem than the one that my right hon. Friend has addressed. Although it is right to have a single European growth strategy, there is not a single European Government, nor is there a single European economic policy. We have nation states of Europe that pursue their own policies, and the vast majority of right hon. and hon. Members across the House would support that. The benchmarks that he talks about could not be enforced by the European Commission, or by anyone else, in those areas that were not within the competence of the European Union. I do not think the lesson from that is that we should centralise all work on universities or other supply-side issues. However, the structural problem remains, whereby the European Union operates by agreement, but implementation in significant areas is carried out by nation states.

[Mr Ellwood]

rose—

[David Miliband]

I want to make some progress, but I will see whether I can squeeze the hon. Gentleman in a bit later.

I want to cover the important issue of the banking levy, which the Foreign Secretary did not mention. The last European Council’s conclusions noted

“possible innovative sources of financing such as a global levy on financial transactions”.

We have consistently been in favour of such a banking levy. The UK was the first major country to push for such a levy, at the G20 Finance Ministers’ meeting in St Andrew’s last November. We have also been clear about the need for such a levy to be agreed internationally. The former shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury—now the Secretary of State for Transport, the right hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond)—agreed with that, saying:

“We’re very interested in the levy idea and we said so. We like what President Obama has announced but it’s got to be done on an international basis.”

Now is the time for the Prime Minister to follow through on that commitment.

We urge the Government to concentrate on finding consensus for a global levy. The G20 summit will provide another opportunity to build such agreement. I hope that the Minister for Europe will address that issue when he replies to the debate, as it was not addressed by the Foreign Secretary. He might also like to confirm that there is cross-party agreement on the suggestion that a banking levy should operate as some form of insurance fund. We have some concerns about that. We believe that the way in which any proceeds from a levy are spent should be a matter for individual countries to decide.

The European Council also has on its agenda the important preparations for the United Nations high-level plenary meeting on the millennium development goals. The Government have our full support in this area, and we are proud of our record on international development, to which the Foreign Secretary referred. The outlook for the goals is mixed. The right hon. Gentleman was poetic about his Government’s commitments, but he also pointed out that some other European countries were falling back in their commitments. For example, the proportion of children under five who are undernourished has declined from 33% in 1990, but it remained at 26% when the last figures were taken. According to the UN’s figures, the number of children in developing countries who were underweight still exceeded 140 million. There has been success in tackling hunger in parts of east Asia, but in sub-Saharan Africa, the poverty rate has remained constant at approximately 50%. These are issues on which Europe’s development budget, and its development work, have an important role to play, and I hope that we shall get a report back from the right hon. Gentleman, or from the Prime Minister when he returns from the European Council.

On climate change, which the Foreign Secretary mentioned in passing, the Commission report presented by new Commissioner, Mrs Hedegaard, was important. We on this side of the House are committed to increasing the EU’s target on emissions cuts as we move forward to a more comprehensive global agreement for the period beyond 2012. Figures released yesterday show that EU member states are halfway to cutting their emissions by 20% by 2020, which shows good progress, but that represents progress over a 20-year period, and we have only 10 years to go. We also need to ensure that the targets are not shirked, and that loopholes are closed.

In the light of the discussion yesterday, and of the terrible events that took place on Monday, it is right that I should dwell for a moment on the situation in the middle east. The European Heads of Government decided last year to devote one meeting a year to foreign policy, but that cannot lead to the exclusion of foreign policy from every other meeting. The Foreign Secretary spoke, quite legitimately, about the next meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council, but the European Council has especial weight when it comes to choosing some foreign policy issues and dedicating time to them. I would not support the development of a Christmas tree approach, whereby every foreign policy issue was discussed at every European Council, but I do believe that the crisis in the middle east that was catalysed by the events on Monday deserves the attention of the Heads of Government.

We know that the EU is a big funder of humanitarian work on the west bank and in Gaza. We also know that it funds work for the Palestinian security forces on the west bank. Those are two ways in which the European Union makes like better for people in the occupied Palestinian territories. In political terms, however, Europe has not been a player of equivalent strength. The tragic events of this week bring into stark relief the consequences of stasis on the political track. These include limited progress on the implementation of resolution 1860, stalled proximity talks, and EU relations with Syria that are going backwards after the outreach early last year. Discussion has also been diverted from the important Iranian nuclear issue.

International engagement in this arena is not blocked by a lack of consensus; in fact, there has rarely been consensus on the long-term solution to the Israel-Palestine issue. However, the engagement has not been turned into action on the ground. This is a massive test for the foreign policy of all four members of the Quartet, but we on this side support a stronger role for the Quartet as a representative of the international community, and more structured links with the Arab Quartet, which needs to be part of any drive to reverse the slide in confidence and commitment that has been evident for some time, and which will be accelerated by this week’s events. The Foreign Secretary talked yesterday about making his and Britain’s voice heard. The European Council offers a chance for Europe’s voice to be heard, and I hope that the Prime Minister will take it. Europe needs a strong Britain, and we need a strong and successful Europe.

[Mr Davidson]

Given that the role of an Opposition is to oppose, is it the intention of the comrade leader aspirant that we should attack the Government for being insufficiently pro-Brussels? That was the position traditionally adopted by the Liberals, and it did not do them any good at the last election. I wonder whether we ought to learn the lessons of the general election and adopt a somewhat different position. For example, perhaps we should say that, if there is to be any more accession, there should be an end to unfettered immigration from the EU.

[David Miliband]

First, we will attack the Government for being insufficiently pro-British, and not for being insufficiently pro-Brussels. When they are insufficiently strong in their defence of the national interest, in regard to any aspect of European policy, we will attack them for that. Let me address my hon. Friend’s last point. His new ally, the Prime Minister, repeated in each of the prime ministerial debates that Britain needed a policy in which new entrants to the European Union had transitional arrangements for labour market access. That exists today for Romania and Bulgaria, precisely because we are learning the lessons of the past 10 years. I would say to my hon. Friend that, when our comrade party has done something right, it would be worth his while to recognise that. In this case, we have got it right.

[Keith Vaz]

Please could the shadow Foreign Secretary explain to our comrade from Glasgow—this now seems to be the parlance on these Benches—that this is not actually immigration? Once the treaty has been signed, people from the European Union have a right to come and work here unless there are transitional arrangements. Furthermore, there are 1 million British citizens working in mainland Europe in exactly the same way.

[David Miliband]

It is important to point out that there is now a net outflow of European workers from the UK, according to the latest figures, which were published at the end of last month. That reflects quite a lot about our economy. It is also important to say that other European citizens are required to work and pay taxes for 12 months in the UK before they are entitled to claim benefits. That is an important part of the compact. I accept that there are rights, but it is important not to forget that there are also responsibilities attendant on migration within the European Union.

[Michael Connarty]

It is also worth putting on record that the Single European Act, signed by Margaret Thatcher, gave people the right to travel and work within the European Union. That changed the fundamental structure in which people now operate in the EU. It was not the Labour Government who decided that; it was decided long before we came to power.

[David Miliband]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I want to refer back to the exchange between my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) and the Foreign Secretary. It is not often that he is stalled in his stride, but my hon. Friend managed to stall him by pointing out that his new-found enthusiasm for referendums on any transfer of competence, however small, stands in stark contrast to his loyal vote for the Maastricht treaty under his then Government. It also stands in stark contrast to all those Conservative Members who were in the House during the passage of the Single European Act and who loyally stuck to British parliamentary convention. That is, that we are a parliamentary democracy and that when there are fundamental transfers of power around the euro, for example, there should, of course, be a referendum, as all parties have agreed. It is the job of this Parliament, however, to scrutinise, debate and to vote on any other matters.

Although I shall not devote a long section of my speech to this subject today, we look forward to long debates about how the Foreign Secretary will justify spending £80 million to £100 million on referendums, for example, on a change in the organisation of the pension committee of the European Parliament, which is one consequence of the new-found policy adopted by the Government. We will have particular fun in asking the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who has long stood for a high degree of European integration, to explain why that is a good use of taxpayers’ money.

[Ms Gisela Stuart]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[David Miliband]

My comrade friend from Birmingham, Edgbaston is always too tempting for me not to give way to her.

[Ms Stuart]

Although this grieves me, let me put on the record that when it comes to referendums, all three parties have nothing to be proud of. We all went into the 2005 election promising one: Conservative Members kept saying “Oh, well, if it is passed, we cannot have one”, but they could perfectly well have had one; the Lib-Dems said, “Oh, we change the question; it should be in or out”; while we said that the document was different from the treaty. None of us came out of this with glory, and I think that we should recognise it.

[David Miliband]

I want to put on record the fact that my hon. Friend did cover herself with glory in respect of the consistency of the positions she took on European issues and—[Interruption.] I have to say to the Foreign Secretary that we have been working on that through separate channels. My hon. Friend achieved a remarkable result in the general election and her result was testimony to what independent-minded and strong constituency MPs can achieve in this country. I am very pleased that she will be applying her independent mind not only to everything that I say, but to everything that the Government say on European issues as well, pointing out the inconsistencies as they develop.

Many of our European partners will be looking forward to the appearance of the Prime Minister at the new European Council. They will be scratching their heads about some of the policies that the new Government will develop. It is not that they find coalition Governments alien—there are, of course, coalition Governments all over Europe—but they often assume that members of the Government will agree with each other on key foreign policy issues. The other leaders will know that the Conservative party has spent a large part of the last decade campaigning to “save the pound”, as they would put it, and that the Liberal Democrats have been campaigning for the last 10 years to ditch the pound. That is why the Foreign Secretary said that there was no more “fanatically federalist party” in Britain than the Liberal Democrats. That was before his new-found enthusiasm for their support on the Government Benches.

[Simon Hughes]

rose—

[David Miliband]

No, I have taken enough interventions. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman can make a speech later rather than intervene on mine.

We say to the Foreign Secretary that the one person he should listen to is the former Member for Bath and commissioner, Lord Patten, who was both a mentor to the current Prime Minister and also, I think, an employer of the current Deputy Prime Minister when he was a commissioner. Lord Patten said recently that the sensible thing would be for the Conservative party to move back to centre where big players sit around the table and make the big decisions affecting Europe. We do not want the British Prime Minister going to the European Council to represent the whole of the UK and be sitting in the corridor while the European Peoples party and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats Heads of Government make the real decisions and invite him—the only Head of Government not to attend either of those meetings—along afterwards only for a toast. There are big decisions to be made in Europe: they need leadership and good judgment. That is the basis on which we will hold the Government to account.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I remind the House that the 10-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches will come into operation from now.

14:04

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

I welcome the Foreign Secretary and the Minister for Europe to the Front Bench. I think that I speak for the whole House—or certainly for this side of the House—in saying that we now have a very strong team at the Foreign Office which will stand up for the United Kingdom’s interest in Europe as well as the UK’s interest in the wider world. It is with some sadness that I say I am speaking probably for the last time with you in the Chair, Sir Alan. We will miss you in that particular position, but I am sure that we will none the less see a lot of you around the House, which we look forward to in the future.

The Foreign Secretary spoke at some length about democracy and what could be described as a democratic deficit in European affairs, particularly in the European Union. I want to speak a little about what I see as a democratic deficit in common security and defence policy in the EU. There are a lot of good words on the role of national Parliaments in the Lisbon treaty, but there is little substance or structure on that subject. Sadly, one of the last dying acts of the previous Government—on the last day that this House sat before the general election was declared—was the announcement that they were signing the death warrant of an organisation called the Western European Union, and with it parliamentary scrutiny of European security and defence policy and common foreign and security policy.

Let me take a few moments to explain to colleagues what the Western European Union was, as it was the forerunner of the European Union. Its history dates back to 1948. The Brussels treaty was modified in 1954 to make the WEU an effective defence pact, and it participated in the early stages of the Balkans and Gulf wars. Then, 10 years ago, the European Union decided that it would transfer the functions of the WEU to the European Union, including the transfer of its military staff and its satellite centre, and the Western European Armaments Group effectively became the European Defence Agency. That is not what I want to talk about, however.

[Michael Connarty]

I thought that the hon. Gentleman might move on to make the simple suggestion that the scrutiny process carried out by the Western European Union should be remitted to the European Scrutiny Committee of this House, because at this moment decisions on those matters are not subject to scrutiny by that Committee.

[Mr Walter]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I shall come on to the role of European scrutiny committees in that respect. He may know that his colleagues in the French Parliament have already suggested that something similar to COSAC—the Conference of European Affairs Committees—of which the hon. Gentleman has been a member, should be involved in the process.

The Assembly of the WEU has brought together members of national Parliaments from across the European Union and also involved the non-European Union NATO members. Two years ago, the Assembly formally changed its charter to make all 27 national Parliaments and the now five non-EU members of NATO members of its Assembly. The WEU has been providing parliamentary oversight of European security and defence policy as well as wider European defence issues and, more particularly, the use of taxpayers’ money on European collective defence procurement.

As I said, in a written statement on 30 March, the former Foreign Secretary announced that the UK was intending to give 12 months’ notice that it wanted to withdraw from the organisation. The following day, all the other signatory states to treaty announced that they would do likewise on the basis of what can only be described as a cost-cutting exercise. We all want to save money, of course, but there is a danger when it comes to democracy of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

As seen in the Government’s statement, the statement of the WEU Permanent Council—the ambassadors in Brussels—and the recent motion in the French Parliament, to which I referred in my response to the intervention, and at the recent meeting of EU Speakers and at the EU Foreign Affairs Council in April, scrutiny is a role for national Parliaments and not for the European Parliament. They all made that clear.

The European Parliament, however, is ready, willing and able to step into the gap. In a resolution passed back in March, it claimed that the Assembly of the WEU—the European security and defence Assembly—had misappropriated its role in acting on behalf of national Parliaments, and that the European Parliament was the only competent body. That flies in the face of the Lisbon treaty, which states that this area of policy is intergovernmental and should remain so, and that there will be no further competences for the European Parliament.

It is national Parliaments and national Governments who authorise the use of our armed forces, whether it takes place on a European Union mission or on any other type of collective mission. It is national Parliaments and national Governments who pay for those deployments. It is national Parliaments and national Governments who pay for the equipment used by those armed forces, and it is national Parliaments and national Governments who decide on the terms of engagement.

The House of Commons Library contains an excellent research paper, which is currently sitting in the international affairs section, entitled “Parliamentary approval for deploying the armed forces: an introduction to the Issues”. Nowhere does that document, which makes very good reading, mention that the European Parliament has any armed forces whatsoever to deploy, or that it should in any way be involved in decisions about the deployment of our armed forces.

The decision made by the last Government—who have now been joined by other Governments—to abolish the Western European Union and wind up the treaty of Brussels abolishes parliamentary democracy, and nothing has been provided to replace that parliamentary democracy and oversight. Those Governments have provided no mechanism to implement all the rhetoric that they have produced in the Foreign Affairs Council and in their own statements by creating a new structure that would bring together national Parliaments to perform that role.

There are a number of options on the table. The simplest is for the current Assembly to transfer itself in order to become a European Union body. Plenty of precedents are provided by previous structures. The Foreign Affairs Council, which will meet in a week or so and which the Foreign Secretary will attend, may have an opportunity to move the discussion forward. What is proposed is a steering group that could draw up plans over the next six months or so, so that before the end of the life of the WEU and its Assembly we would have a structure that could exercise parliamentary democracy on behalf of all our national Parliaments and Governments.

I believe there is a real danger that if there is inactivity—if we all say that that is a good idea, but do nothing about it—the European Parliament will move into the void immediately. It has the money, the resources and the time to act in that way. We must now look to that Foreign Affairs Council meeting, and hopefully even the European Council meeting, to put some meat on the bones of the declaration of the last Foreign Affairs Council and start to create the structures that can take this form of parliamentary democracy forward. Otherwise, I fear that there will be another centralising drift in the European Union, which none of us wants.

14:14

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter), and to make some comments that are relevant to what he had to say. First, however, let me welcome the Foreign Secretary to his post. He need not stay; he can do a Member for Glasgow South West on me if he wishes. I welcome the Minister for Europe to his post as well.

Let me begin with a quotation from an article in yesterday’s Financial Times by Charles Kupchan, professor of international affairs at Georgetown university. It is entitled “Britain is no longer America’s bridge to Europe”. Professor Kupchan writes that the present Government

“seems bent on pursuing a traditional Conservative foreign policy: cosy up to the US while giving Europe short shrift.”

In his view, that would

“leave Britain in a geopolitical no-man’s land and marginalise its international influence.”

He gives three reasons. The first is that the United States does not require us to do that any more. The second is that the United States has shifted its focus from the Atlantic zone to the middle east and Asia,

“leaving Washington keenly sensitive to Europe’s ability to share global burdens.”

The third is that

“Europe needs Britain as much as Britain needs Europe… British leadership is sorely needed to help lead the EU out of its doldrums.”

I entirely agree with that analysis.

The United Kingdom needs a strong eurozone. Members should be deeply concerned by the concerted attacks on the euro by the speculators in the money markets, who make nothing but trouble. As the Foreign Secretary generously pointed out, all that that does is weaken our market—the important market that is the European Union.

The process of fiscal consolidation and deficit reduction is very important. It is nonsensical for some Members in other parties, and the public press, to compare the situation in Greece to that in the United Kingdom, or to compare the troubles of Portugal and Spain to the situation facing the UK. The UK concentrated on building its supply side, and on education, training and research and development. As Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee for the past four years, I went to Portugal and Spain, and noted that they concentrated on major infrastructure projects rather than building up the talents of their young people or their manufacturing bases. Unemployment in Spain is nearly 40% among those aged 25 and under, and its national unemployment is 18%. We do not have those problems.

I welcome the paper by Mario Monti. It is important to focus on the new Lisbon 2020 strategy. It is true that growth is anaemic in the European Union, and it is not helped by currency speculation. We should recall the damage done repeatedly to our country and to sterling in past decades by currency speculators, and realise that what the eurozone countries have—whether they wanted it or not—is a commitment to stand together or fall together. Sadly, if we were attacked alone again, we would have to turn to those countries for support, because we do not have the strength that they have through their unanimity.

We need a strong EU climate change and energy programme. The UK’s 2% contribution can make little difference to the carbon footprint of the world without an EU programme. We—the UK and the world—need a focused EU international aid strategy. I pay tribute to Lady Kinnock for working so hard in the EU, when she was a Member of the European Parliament, to secure a strategy that focused on countries and Governments rather than project-by-project commitments. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), the former Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, it is all too easy for national Governments to cut their international development budgets, and it is important that the stability and growth pact is not used by countries to abandon the poor of the world.

Let me now turn to a matter that concerns me particularly. Members have mentioned the European Council that will take place in two weeks’ time, but some may not be aware that five European subject Councils have taken place since the Government came to office. Those who take an interest in what is happening in Europe should note that the activities of two of them were reported in yesterday’s Hansard. There was a meeting of ECOFIN on 9 May, after the Government had come to power but before the current Parliament was formed, but there has been no scrutiny of that or of the subject Councils, because no European Scrutiny Committee is up and running. There has been no written ministerial statement on the 9 May ECOFIN meeting, to which there was a reference in the ECOFIN statement of 18 May, although it dealt with some extremely important matters. There has been a press release from the European Council and a communication from the European Commission, but nothing from our own Government. Very important matters that we should be concerned about were discussed. Those are to do with the consolidation of the financial markets, but there was no scrutiny of that, and no report. The follow-up report

“underlined the need to make rapid progress on financial market regulation and supervision, in particular with regard to derivative markets”

and the role of credit rating agencies, and went on to discuss the excessive deficit procedure for Spain and Portugal. That was widely reported in the press, but nothing came through the processes of this Parliament.

On the Government’s approach and commitments, in what is now the coalition agreement there is the clear statement that

“there should be no further transfer of sovereignty or powers”—

I stress “or powers”—

“over the course of the next Parliament.”

We have heard from the Foreign Secretary about the methods by which that can be done. One of them, obviously, is treaties, but if I heard the Foreign Secretary correctly—perhaps the Minister for Europe can confirm this—he said that that excluded accession treaties: they would not be subject to a referendum, therefore. People will be concerned about the accession of other countries, and we know that there will be amendments attached to those accession treaties clarifying matters in respect of the Lisbon treaty, yet we have just been told that there will be no referendums on them. There is already smoke and mirrors from the Government, therefore. I do not know whether that is because they are influenced by their new Liberal Democrat partners, or perhaps the major Government party have chosen to do that themselves.

We have been told about the use of the passerelle clause, which can change the voting method on any issue from unanimity to qualified majority voting. If the UK Government decide in Council to give up their veto, the passerelle clause will be subject to a referendum or primary legislation, but the Government have to decide in the Council to give that up, because they already have a veto in Council. Therefore, the idea that we will be asked about that after the event is very worrying, as the Government will already have decided—and, I presume, will have discussed the matter with the coalition partners—that they will give up the veto before they put it to the House. They will then, of course, whip in Members in order to effect the dumping of the veto. Again, therefore, this is smoke and mirrors.

I asked about the opt-ins. We currently have opt-outs in many areas. If measures are amended, we can decide to opt in or opt out completely. In the European Scrutiny Committee, there was in the past unanimous concern that this process was not open enough for Parliament to have a say, and that many things were going through because that was suitable to the Government of the time. That is not what the Government that is now in power promised us. There has been mention of the issue of sovereignty or powers being transferred, and I wish to hear how they will deal with that.

Although its publications are not usually my favourite reading, Open Europe has a very good briefing on these subjects, which people might want to take a look at. I see that the former shadow Minister for Europe, the hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), is smiling from the Government Front Bench. It is important that I pay tribute to him for the role he played on the Opposition Benches during the last Government’s term in office. I have always said I am not a Eurosceptic, but I am a Government sceptic, regardless of which Government.

Many parts of the Lisbon treaty are now being interpreted as denying the right of scrutiny to Parliaments—this Parliament and other Parliaments. We must try to deal with these matters sensibly. There are many articles in the Lisbon treaty that say they are not legislative Acts, and therefore, as such, the European institutions have said they are not subject to protocol 1, which gives Parliaments eight weeks in which to look at them, and protocol 2, under which they can be challenged using the orange and yellow cards or challenged in the courts. It is also very important that the draft conclusion of the Council is tabled, so that it can be dealt with in the ESC before going on to the Council. I hope the Government will allow that to happen.

14:24

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for this opportunity to make my maiden speech as the new MP for Wyre Forest, and I also thank the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) for his contribution.

As I look around the House, I am very much aware of the fact that Members will have just come back from tough election campaigns, where candidates will have been getting stuck into each other in order to get elected, yet in Wyre Forest the campaign could not have been more gentlemanly. It steadfastly adhered to a political version of the Queensbury rules, and that is entirely due to the nature of my predecessor, Dr Richard Taylor. Richard was famously elected as an independent in 2001, trying to save Kidderminster hospital from down-scaling and the closure of the accident and emergency department. Although he may not have achieved everything that he and his party set out to do all those years ago, his political achievements have become a byword for people power. The term the “Kidderminster effect” is now used to describe political curiosities, and he is already described in modern political textbooks as an example of how the traditional party system can be broken when constituents feel strongly enough about a specific local issue. While Richard’s local achievements may not have been as huge as hoped for in 2001, he has proved two things for modern politics: that Governments ignore the views of the electorate on local issues at their peril, and that when it comes to important local issues, people are a lot more politically minded than we imagine.

Richard follows in a long line of interesting politicians in Wyre Forest, including former Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and the hugely charismatic Gerald Nabarro, but Wyre Forest also has many other interesting sons, including the 17th-century Puritan preacher Richard Baxter, who set up his ministry in Kidderminster in 1641. Also from Kidderminster was Sir Rowland Hill, the inventor of the modern postal system—someone whose legacy Members are reminded of every day as they collect their post bags from the House of Commons post office. More recently, and no doubt of interest to Members who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, Led Zeppelin front man Robert Plant is still an active member of the local community.

Comprising the three towns of Kidderminster, Stourport-on-Severn and Bewdley, as well as the outlying rural communities, Wyre Forest is a community that is both historical and fascinating. Straddling the river Severn, its earlier history is based on trade along the river. The town of Bewdley used to be an important trading port, part of which is mentioned in the Domesday Book, while the main town received borough status from Edward IV in 1472. This, of course, is the town that Stanley Baldwin lived in and from which he chose his title: Earl Baldwin of Bewdley. Downstream from Bewdley lies the Georgian town of Stourport-on-Severn, created as a port where the river Stour joins the Severn, but made much more prosperous by the building of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal. The canal basins and locks now form a stunning central focus for the town.

The biggest town in Wyre Forest is Kidderminster. Also mentioned in the Domesday Book, Kidderminster was granted a borough charter in 1636 by King Charles I—a former, and unfortunate, visitor to this House. Kidderminster is, of course, known for its carpet industry, which was started by the Brinton family in 1785. This has been the main driver for the local economy until recent times, and indeed there are still a number of successful carpet manufacturers based in Kidderminster and Stourport. So significant to the local economy was—and to a lesser extent still is—the carpet industry, that the local newspaper, The Shuttle, was named after the shuttle that forms an integral part of the looms used in the weaving of carpets.

The modern economy is more diverse, however, with manufacturing ranging from design and building the undercarriage for heavy earth-moving equipment to—slightly surprisingly for land-locked Worcestershire—the manufacture of luxury ocean-going yachts, and from forging parts for motor car components to the cutting-edge design and manufacture of rocket motors.

Taking advantage of the outstanding local beauty and our fascinating local history is the impressive local tourism industry, which includes both the West Midlands safari park and one of Europe’s finest heritage steam railways, the Severn Valley railway. Both represent significant tourist draws for the west midlands, and provide important diversions for my three children.

More recently, Wyre Forest has undertaken a comprehensive review of all the schools in the district, as a result of which the former three-tier system has changed to a two-tier system. That process has included a major rebuild and investment from Worcestershire county council. Worcestershire is a wave 6a Building Schools for the Future authority, and the proposals are to rebuild four of our secondary schools: Stourport high school; Wolverley Church of England secondary school; Baxter business and enterprise college; and King Charles I school. The proposals also include the provision of a new special school for two to 19-year-olds and the refurbishment of Bewdley school and sixth-form centre. The BSF programme has been signed off this year by the Treasury, so although I have no reason to believe that the rebuild will not go ahead as planned, I cannot understate the importance that this investment will have in Wyre Forest, where there is a need to deal with issues relating to certain pockets of local deprivation. These areas will benefit immeasurably from this investment.

On the wider issue of per pupil funding, Wyre Forest, as part of the Worcestershire education authority area, suffers from being near the bottom of the per pupil funding league table. That means that a school the same size as Kidderminster’s Baxter college would receive more than £3 million per year more to do the same job if it were located down the road from here, in Tower Hamlets. Of course we recognise the increased costs associated with being in the centre of London, but are they really that much higher? I hope that the proposed pupil premium for disadvantaged pupils will help to redress the imbalance, but I seek a move towards a fairer funding formula for Worcestershire schools.

I was keen to speak in this debate on Europe because I feel that we can learn many positive things from our European partners, including lessons from Sweden on school provision. I am frequently asked where I stand on the issue of Europe, and my answer is that I am neither a Europhile nor a Europhobe, but a Euro-realist: I feel that we are where we are on Europe. As someone newly elected to Parliament, I deplore the creeping nature of legislation that comes not from this place but from Brussels. I welcome the coalition’s proposed referendum lock, and I will always stand firm against joining the euro.

When I consider whether we should be in or out of Europe, my first instinct is to examine how it will affect the people of Wyre Forest, and whether my constituency would be better off if we came out of Europe. I remain open-minded and could be persuaded otherwise, but my instinct is that Wyre Forest’s economy stands a far better chance in the future if we stay in Europe, taking advantage of the trading opportunities available, which we talked about earlier.

I look forward to serving the good people of Wyre Forest not just in this place but locally in the community, where I intend to spend my time working with the business community, trying to attract more opportunities locally and tackling low local wages and rising unemployment. The man of the moment back in 2001, when the hospital was threatened, was always going to be a doctor, but in 2010, when we have rising unemployment and a doubtful economic outlook, I look forward to using my experience of business, investment and economics to work hard for the people of Wyre Forest to tackle the crucial issues facing us all.

14:31

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), not least because I still fondly remember having a photograph taken in 1997 with David Lock, the then Labour Member for Wyre Forest. We all had red balloons and we travelled down to Westminster together. I am glad to say that, apart from David Lock, all of those in the photograph are still in the House. I wish the hon. Gentleman well. I am sure that people in his local carpet industry would have had one or two things to say if it had been forced to “go metric” on the weaving shuttles; I am sure that he will have one or two particular points that he wishes to bring to the House.

I wanted to speak today because Europe is facing a political and economic crisis which, although it has been brewing for a considerable time, is, in some ways, being denied both here and abroad. It is a political elite that is in denial, and in some sense that does not surprise me, because I still bear the scars of spending 18 months in Brussels attempting to write a European constitution. The democratic mandate was ignored then, too, and a political elite essentially rode roughshod over the wishes of the electorate.

Frankly, no party here has much to be proud of on the issue of referendums, nor do the Governments in the countries across Europe whose people said no when asked—and were simply ignored, as happened in Holland and France. Ireland’s people were simply asked twice; they were asked until they came up with the right answer. So there is something wrong going on in the house of Europe, and at the moment, that shows itself in terms of economics and the single currency.

Those who have warned against some of the problems of the single currency take little pleasure in being tempted to say, “I told you so”. People need to face up to what is happening at the moment, because this is not a question of one member of the eurozone having a financial crisis from which they can simply be bailed out. A bail-out is not the answer to the problem, nor is it in the current treaty provisions. The central issue in Greece is not associated with the pubic finances, although those are a problem. The real question is what happens when a country in the current monetary union loses competitiveness and cannot regain it. In essence, we are asking Greece to implement what amounts to two thirds of a traditional IMF package, which usually involves raising taxes and cutting public expenditure. However, the third and crucial element that always comes with recovery is depreciation of the currency, and that adjustment is not happening.

What the European monetary union calls “internal depreciation” has to replace a currency depreciation, but that is nothing other than a polite phrase for debt deflation. The programme currently recommended for Greece will crush output and increase both unemployment and private sector default. It will reduce Government revenues still further, and make public sector default and national bankruptcy even more likely.

Some people in countries such as Germany think that every country in Europe should behave like the Germans. As someone born in that country, I think that that is a perfectly reasonable expectation—but it is not the answer, as we cannot answer our economic problems by requiring every country to run a trade surplus. To be fair to Germany, it got out of its own economic crisis of the late 1990s and the first years of this century only at the expense of some of the other countries in the EMU.

So what are we going to do? Two solutions offer themselves. One is to transfer funds from countries with a current account surplus—in effect, those in the German bloc—but that assumes that a one-off payment is the answer. It is not. What is really required are year-on-year transfers, equivalent to what West Germany paid to the old East Germany. Let us be clear about this, however. Just for Greece, such a year-on-year transfer would amount to something like €35 billion to €40 billion a year. If we were talking about the default for Spain and Portugal, we would be looking at something like €100 billion a year, and that would wreck not only the German economy but its public finances as well.

The second solution would involve a massive devaluation of the euro.

[Michael Connarty]

I hope that my hon. Friend does not mind me intervening, but it seems that, having put down a set of rails, she is going to go all the way along until she crashes. Is there not a possibility that the fundamental flaws lie in how the failed economies acted? For example, Spain and Portugal put money into infrastructure and not education, with the result that people left school and built houses instead of educating themselves and creating a new economy. In Greece, the question centres on how much of the tax take that is due has been paid. Should we not concentrate on changing those economies so that they are stronger? Should we not use the 2020 strategy to rebuild growing economies, and not just bail them out?

[Ms Stuart]

That is a perfectly fair point, but there are two problems. The first goes back to the claim that we would have trade surpluses if only every country were like Germany, but things do not work that way. The second problem is how such a strategy would be policed.

There is a third difficulty, too. Every successful single currency requires significant transfers from the centre to deal with asymmetric economic shocks, and those transfers would be of the order of between 20% and 30% of the overall tax take. In Europe, that would require a European economic and political Government. The approach could not work in any other way, because we cannot expect countries to behave like that in the absence of any mechanisms for policing or transfer that would compensate them for their loss of competitiveness.

The problem in Greece is that it could become competitive again by devaluing its currency, but it is not allowed to do so. As a result, the approach outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) does not address the problem.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Exactly.

[Ms Stuart]

Thank you.

The second solution is a massive devaluation of the euro—a devaluation that some people say would have to amount to something like 50 cents against the dollar. A small devaluation would not be enough for Greece, and a large devaluation would be disastrous for the other countries in the EMU. For a country like Germany, a small devaluation would help competiveness, but a large devaluation would lead to incredibly high inflation that would ruin the economy again.

Again, what should we do? There is a least bad solution, although it is not a happy one. People argue that Greece should leave the euro, but I think that the least bad solution would be for the German bloc to leave the euro. That would, in a sense, allow for competitiveness to develop. Germany’s banks would still have to recapitalise, but it would be less costly to do this directly than it would be to do it indirectly by trying to rescue Greece.

The simple truth is that neither the eurozone countries nor any countries around the eurozone will get out of this mess without some very serious decisions being made, and there will be consequences for us all. As I understand it, the Prime Minister says that it is in Britain’s interests for there to be a stable and strong euro. If he says that out of diplomatic politeness, I understand and accept that, but with the current structure there is no way that he can have a stable euro and a strong euro. It will be weak in its basic economic fundamentals, and that is what has been wrong with something that was driven by political will but underpinned by excessively bad economics. The euro has always been a political project, and people keep assuming that given sufficient determination by the politicians, this structure will work. But it is fundamentally flawed.

It is then argued that the answer is more central control from Brussels, with its already incredible intrusion into countries’ sovereignty. Look at what has been happening to Greece, and what has been happening to Spanish Ministers and what they were told to do. Essentially, Brussels is now running Greece as if it were a protectorate. Is that the answer? I do not think it is. I do not think it is acceptable. That is the real difficulty—that nobody is facing up to the fact that the structure is so fundamentally economically flawed that it will not work.

That is why, when the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister go for the first time to European Union meetings in their new roles, I urge them to stop using phrases such as “having to protect our negotiating capital.” I think they have to face the fact that that is simply a polite phrase for not being prepared to say no when on occasions you need to say no. Again I have seen it, and the Foreign Secretary himself acknowledged that once people join the Government again, the tones get slightly softened. When a problem arises, the Brits will, as always, within a few hours say, “I’m sure there’s a way through this,” encouraged by our very able diplomats—who, I remind the House, are always in government, irrespective of which side of the House hon. Members are sitting, so it is in their interests to find these rather smooth solutions.

We are coming to a point where, to get out of serious economic difficulties, Britain will have, on occasions, to say no. When it comes to threats to our financial industries and our financial sector, it is no good protecting our negotiating capital. It is time to say no, just as the French would say no if we attacked their wine industry, or the Germans if we attacked their car industry. The price that will have to be paid if we do not become competitive again, if we do not protect our own currency, will not be paid by Members in the House, or by the Commission in Brussels. The political elite and the nomenklatura are always protected. The price will be paid by the old and the young, by the people who have no jobs, the people who lose their savings and the people who lose their pensions. The political elite have not been prepared to listen to them. It has been driving through a political project that was underpinned by bad economics. I hope that the people on the Government Benches will now show that when in government, they are able to act with the mettle that they pretended to have when they were in opposition.

14:43

[Simon Kirby (Brighton, Kemptown) (Con)]

I shall be brief, in the hope that I might catch your eye again in the near future, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I am delighted to rise to speak today as the new Member for Brighton, Kemptown, the sixth in the 60 years that the seat has existed. Brighton, Kemptown, as we know, is very close to Europe, and I have to tell the House that in 1514 the French invaded the town of Brighton at the time and razed it to the ground. I am not surprised that even 500 years later, many of my constituents are still suspicious of our relationship with Europe.

Tradition dictates that I should thank my predecessor, Des Turner of the Labour party. For 13 years, he was the MP for Brighton, Kemptown, and I have to say that he did a good job. He worked hard and was an excellent constituency MP. In this House, his experience as a scientist was put very much to use, and I hope, as a mathematician, that I might follow him in that regard.

I should also like to pay tribute to his predecessor—not Dennis Hobden, who was the first Labour MP in Sussex, having won by seven votes, nor David James, the man who pursued the Loch Ness monster, but Sir Andrew Bowden, the MP for Brighton, Kemptown, from 1970 to 1997, a friend of mine and an excellent constituency MP.

Let me tell hon. Members about Brighton, Kemptown. It is without doubt one of the best seaside destinations not only in this country, but in Europe. It attracts 8 million visitors and many conferences. Many of us in this House will have enjoyed the hospitality that Brighton has to offer. The constituency runs from the Palace pier to Peacehaven, and from Moulsecoomb to the marina. It is, in my opinion, the best part of Brighton and Hove city, and the best part of East Sussex. Whitehawk has had human inhabitants for thousands of years. My hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) mentioned the Domesday Book; Brighton appears in it, and there is a fantastic Norman church in the village of Ovingdean. I have mentioned the French invaders, so we will move on.

Brighton has a large lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community, and I am proud and honoured to have the opportunity to represent it and the constituency in Parliament. It has a race course and the leafy suburbs of Woodingdean, Rottingdean, Saltdean, Telscombe Cliffs, and Peacehaven. It has older people and younger people. It has two universities. It has a hospital—designed, incidentally, by Charles Barry, the architect of the building in which we stand. It has a grade II listed lido in Saltdean, and one of the largest marinas in Europe, which I very much hope will remain a marina.

I am honoured, humbled and privileged to represent Brighton, Kemptown. It is an exciting, diverse and happening place, and I hope to do my very best.

14:47

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

May I first offer my thanks to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for this opportunity to make my first contribution to a debate in this House, and for the kindness that you and other experienced Members of all parties have shown me in recent weeks? I should also like to congratulate the hon. Members for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) and for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) on their excellent maiden speeches.

I intend to be brief, but I hope that the House will permit me the time to say a few words about my constituency and the issues that are important there. I considered it a very great honour to have been selected as a candidate to represent the place where I was born, and that I call home. To represent here those with whom I grew up in Wirral South, my family and my oldest friends, is a responsibility that is sincerely humbling, and one that I can barely find the words to describe.

As a Wirral South person, I have had the pleasure of my predecessor’s acquaintance for many years. Mr Ben Chapman is a very amiable man, and I have been struck by how many Members of this House have taken the time to speak to me about him in recent weeks. They have stopped me and asked me to take with me to Wirral their best wishes for him. I am sure that that does not happen to every new Member of Parliament, and it is a sign of how highly he is regarded here. He worked hard to foster better relationships between our country and others, most especially China, and his legacy to this House will be in those relationships. Today’s debate is about Europe, and I believe that politics is more internationally minded because of Ben’s work. In a globalised world, nothing could be more important.

I note that my predecessor made his first contribution to this House during a debate on the National Health Service (Primary Care) Bill. He explained that some of our constituency’s most pressing problems related to health services. He spoke of 6,000—more than one in 10—of our residents being on waiting lists, and those in hospital having long waits on trolleys, and not swift effective treatment.

In the coming months, I wonder whether some might attempt to rewrite the history of the recent Labour Government, but I can report that in Wirral South we have achieved a great reduction in clinically unnecessary waiting times, and that in the Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology we have a world-beating treatment centre for those with cancer. Along with our marvellous NHS staff and Ben Chapman’s hard endeavour in standing up for local health services, we also have Labour Health Secretaries to thank for that.

I am deeply proud to originate from the constituency that I now represent, but I cannot claim to be the first local resident of Wirral South to become involved in Labour politics. In 1932 a Mr Wilson, an industrial chemist, on being made redundant from his job in Huddersfield, moved to Spital in my constituency. His son joined the local grammar school and became its head boy. Young Harold was clearly made for leadership roles, and, although he went on to represent constituencies over the water in Huyton and in Ormskirk, Wirral has never forgotten him.

Wirral is a geographically wonderful place—especially the southern part, which I represent. From the banks of the Mersey overlooking the Liverpool skyline to the banks of the Dee where one can see the heights of Snowdonia, we Wirralians are thankful for our good fortune to reside in one of the most visually stunning parts of Britain.

However, it is our people, our culture and our heritage that truly makes us. We are an internationally minded and cultured people in Wirral South. We are the traditional home of Unilever, and many of my constituents work for nearby Vauxhall Motors and Airbus, as well as for other international companies in manufacturing and other sectors—companies that trade on the European and world stages and worked with the Labour Government and the trade unions to carry British industry through difficult times over the past year. Britain’s role in leading Europe over the past decade has benefited Wirral and north-west England, and I trust that all members of the new Government will be able to maintain our influence.

For us Merseysiders, our culture and heritage is at the heart of who we are. According to Impacts 08, the report on Liverpool’s year as European capital of culture, we are more likely than others in the UK to go to a museum or gallery, and I like to think that that is not much of a surprise, given that my constituency boasts the treasures of the Lady Lever art gallery in the Victorian model village of Port Sunlight and a wealth of community organisations dedicated to involving people in music, dance and drama. I, myself, am the granddaughter of local songwriter and folk singer Pete McGovern, and I grew up spending many hours in the Philharmonic hall in Liverpool, wrapped in its peerless acoustics.

As such, I should like to say a few more words, if time permits me, about culture. The passion for culture is especially strong in young people in my constituency, and I cannot imagine that there are any more talented young people in any other constituency. Local schools use children’s creative talents on stage in order to build their confidence and, during the recent election, I was lucky enough to visit several schools to see their pupils’ performances. That work has a really positive effect on the rest of a child’s education, and my constituency, like many others, has seen schools make great strides in educational achievement. We should not forget how far very able head teachers have taken us in the past 13 years.

We also recognise culture as a driver of economic growth. For example, the recent increased promotion of culture in Merseyside resulted in the north-west being seen as a better place to do business. The same is true of other places in the UK, from Folkestone to Newcastle, and at a time when we run the risk of sliding back into recession that lesson can surely be applied more widely.

Our culture is an asset. Although we should never stop celebrating it for its own sake, we should not be blind to the benefits it brings to our economy. In the coalition agreement, the Government made great play of returning to the original four good causes of national lottery funding. We will have a debate in due course about whether that is the right approach, but lottery funding for capital projects is no substitute for core public funds, on which the arts in this country are built. Yes, lottery and private funds play a vital role, but they cannot be sought without the foundation of public funds on which to build. I recall that the first chair of the Arts Council was John Maynard Keynes, a great economist who understood this very well, as do the people of Merseyside.

Wirral South is a constituency whose people, throughout the recent election, showed me and the other candidates very great kindness; especially to me, they showed friendliness as one of their very own seeking to represent them. I hope that I can do so, living up to their expectations, and provide Wirral South with the strongest possible voice in the coming years.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Hugh Bayley)]

It is a pleasure for me now to call Julian Sturdy.

14:55

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

I start by paying tribute to the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) for her excellent contribution, and to my hon. Friends the Members Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) and for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) for their excellent maiden speeches.

I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to take part in today’s debate, as I stand here making my maiden speech on my 39th birthday. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I had to think about that this morning—exactly how old I was. I am filled with a great sense of honour and pride but, most importantly, a feeling of determination to ensure that I do not let down the residents of York Outer, who have put their trust in me, and that I represent them to best of my ability over the coming years.

York Outer is not the catchiest name for a new constituency. However, one thing that the name cannot take away is the huge privilege that I have in being the first MP to represent this new seat. York Outer is a ring around the city of York, taking in all the villages and communities on the edge of our great Yorkshire city; in essence, it is a doughnut seat, I think the only one in the country. I realise that I am going to have to watch my weight over the coming years, as the connotations could be a problem.

Representing a new seat means that I have a number of distinguished predecessors to whom I should like to pay tribute, two of whom are still serving in the House and two who have retired. I start in no particular order, with the former Member for Ryedale. John Greenway was a very hard-working, extremely well-liked Member of Parliament who started his political career as a local councillor in North Yorkshire county council. He had a fantastic grasp of local issues affecting Ryedale. I have been knocking on doors campaigning for the past four years, and this phrase greeted me on many occasions when discussing local issues: “The support we’ve received from John on this issue has been fantastic.” He will be sorely missed in the House.

I also have the great privilege of having my hon. Friend the newly elected Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) as one of my predecessors. Anne gave me tremendous support during my time as a local councillor in the old Vale of York constituency. As a local farmer, I pay tribute to her tireless work and support for local rural communities and agriculture. I know that that work will continue over the years, and I am delighted to see her back in the House.

The former Member for Selby represented the southern area of my new constituency from 1997. John Grogan and I have a number of things in common. First, we are both born-and-bred Yorkshiremen, and exceptionally proud of it. Secondly, there is our support for Yorkshire county cricket. I must pay tribute to all the work that John did to try to keep test match cricket on terrestrial TV. Thirdly, there is his great dedication to his local community and constituents, highlighted by the number of committed Conservative voters who would tell me, “I’ve never voted for John, but he’s been a brilliant MP.” I hope that over time committed Labour voters will say the same about me, or might even vote for me. This is probably where the similarities end. However, John’s independent spirit, friendly approach and support in the House for our great county of Yorkshire will be sadly missed.

Last, but by no means least, I must pay tribute to the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), who is now representing the centre of the York Outer seat. It is a great privilege for me to be making my maiden speech with you in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker—thank you very much. Hugh represented City of York from 1992, taking over from Conal Gregory. Hugh’s respect and experience in the House, and in York, has been built through his dedication and work for his constituents. He has championed several causes over the past 18 years, serving on the International Development Committee and being the chair and founding member of the all-party Africa group. I am delighted to see him appointed as Deputy Speaker, albeit on a temporary basis; the fact that he has got this position certainly underlines the high esteem in which he is held in the House. Given the links between our two seats, it is important that, on certain issues, politics is put to one side and we work together by putting the issues of our great city above party politics. I know we will be able to do that.

York is undoubtedly one of the most inspiring cities of our country. It is steeped in history, has stunning architecture, is surrounded by beautiful countryside and offers a charming and wholehearted Yorkshire welcome. I know that I sound like a representative of the York tourist board, but I count myself extremely privileged to live on the edge of such a great city. I cannot think of a better place to bring up my young family and it is a great honour that I now have the opportunity to put something back into my local community.

From the urban fringes, such as Dringhouses, Woodthorpe and Rawcliffe, to the more rural towns, such as Haxby, to the villages, such as Strensall in the north and Elvington in the south, Dunnington in the east and Rufforth in the west, one thing that all the different communities have in common is that they make up this new seat and they all see York as their main centre and a provider of essential facilities.

With that in mind, I would like to raise a number of issues that impact on my constituency. Investment in local infrastructure in and around York is crucial to its long-term success. Local transport is a classic example of that, from a poor road network and the infamous York northern ring-road, which is becoming permanently gridlocked and slowly strangling our city and is affecting future business investment and putting current businesses under threat, to our disjointed rural bus services and the need to access future rail halts.

Sadly, for too long the previous Government have short-changed our region on transport funding and our local council has not had the vision to put forward a long-term plan that can take our city forward. It has opted for short-term solutions to an ever-worsening problem. Such a situation has to change and I will pursue the matter in Parliament over the next few years.

A further issue is the threat to the green belt around York, which has been brought about by the top-down approach of planning targets imposed on this House and on the City of York council. I am delighted to see that Her Majesty’s great speech included a Bill to devolve a large number of powers to councils and neighbourhoods, and to give local communities control over housing and planning decisions, therefore enabling York’s green belt to be protected for future generations.

With respect to today’s debate on European affairs, I must confess that I have a rather personal connection to all things Europe. My father, Robert Sturdy, is a Conservative MEP and, given that it was under his watchful eye that my passion for politics flourished, I shall always have a keen interest in European matters, if only to allow me to hold my own at the dinner table, where things can get quite heated from time to time.

On a more serious note, I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak in this debate and raise one of the key issues that was constantly brought up on the doorstep during the election campaign. That issue is, of course, the previous Government’s abject failure to fulfil their long-standing pledge to hold a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. The previous Administration’s decision to deny the people of this country such a vote was, frankly, a devastating blow to those who care passionately about the sovereignty of this House. Indeed, I feel the decision not to fulfil the promise of a referendum further damaged public trust in our politics and politicians. I therefore welcome the new Government’s determination to improve political accountability, openness and transparency.

Europe has always been a contentious issue and I am sure that will continue to be the case here in Westminster. However, I can assure the House that, back in York Outer, a sizeable majority of my constituents seem to share my concerns about the recent transfer of power from Westminster to Brussels. To put it simply, I firmly believe that we cannot allow any further erosion of powers from this Parliament without allowing the public to directly express their will on such important constitutional amendments.

As such, I welcome the European Union Bill that was set out in the Queen’s Speech last week. The Prime Minister is right to ensure that the people of this country are granted a referendum before any future treaties that hand over powers to the European Union are approved by Government. The Government should seek to be a proactive, positive and friendly partner in Europe, particularly when it comes to promoting British business and trade. In other key areas, too, the EU has the potential to be a force for good as we tackle global poverty and the rise in global competitiveness, and get to grips with global climate change.

Britain should play a full role in ensuring that the EU’s voice is heard loud and clear on an increasingly diverse global stage. However, we will not be able to play such a role unless the boundaries and limitations of the EU are clearly drawn. The public need to believe in the worth of the EU and, in my view, that will happen only when we strengthen and protect further our own democracy here in Westminster.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his kind remarks.

15:05

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to make my maiden speech in the debate on Europe. Our membership of the European Union has brought significant benefits to my constituency, particularly through investment in businesses and jobs.

I congratulate those who have also made their maiden speeches today: my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) and the hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy). Both speeches were excellent.

I pay tribute to Doug Henderson, my predecessor as Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North from 1987. As a former Minister of State for Defence, and for Foreign Affairs, particularly Europe, he would approve, I am sure, of my making my maiden speech during today’s debate. He was renowned for his athletics— he was a marathon runner, who ran about 50 miles a week. However, one of his proudest achievements in the House was Royal Assent for the Access to Health Records Act 1990. As someone who has personally benefited from the protection that that Act affords, I thank him today for that and for his unfailing support. I pledge that I, too, will make a positive difference to people’s lives through the work that I undertake in the House.

I am incredibly proud to have been elected to represent Newcastle upon Tyne North, the constituency in which I was born and continue to live with my own young family and my extremely large extended family. I thank the people of Newcastle upon Tyne North for electing me. It is a part of the country that I truly love and will do my best to serve.

Newcastle upon Tyne North is home to a vibrant and diverse community. We house the award-winning Newcastle airport, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, and, since 1881, Newcastle race course. The constituency is home to Sanofi Aventis pharmaceuticals, the factory that created Andrews Liver Salts and, next door, Nestlé, home of the famous Rolo.

The constituency has a proud industrial history, from extracting coal from the banks of the Tyne to manufactured engineering and glass and steel products exported all over the world. However, by the time my predecessor took on the honour and responsibility of representing the people of Newcastle upon Tyne North in 1987, the majority of industry was gone. I read Doug Henderson’s maiden speech with a sinking feeling. I will take the liberty of sharing a quote from it. He said:

“The people of the north know… that unless the manufacturing base of our city is rebuilt and we begin to attract and create new high-tech jobs, no amount of special assistance will tackle the real problems that our cities face… They know that it is sheer hypocrisy for the”—

then Conservative—

“Government to claim that they can stimulate an enterprise culture when they… reject the establishment of a northern development agency.”—[Official Report, 2 July 1987; Vol. 118, c.674.]

Today, we have our much valued regional development agency, One NorthEast, which is based in Newburn in my constituency. It is itself a shining example of major investment as it sits on disused industrial wasteland, which has been redeveloped to create a vibrant home for businesses. Across the political spectrum, One NorthEast is heralded as a success for the region. It has been a vehicle for major investment and has played a key role in developing a low carbon economy in the region. It has also changed the face of our regional economy and through its Passionate People, Passionate Places campaign, helped position the north-east and my constituency as a prime destination for tourists and businesses.

That brings me back to the subject of the debate. The regional development agencies are responsible for administering the European regional development fund, significant amounts of which have been invested in my constituency and across the north-east. There are examples of ERDF investment throughout the region, from the Printable Electronics Technology Centre in Sedgefield and the New and Renewable Energy Centre in Blyth, to the Newcastle enterprise scheme, which benefits Newbiggin Hall in my constituency, which has received £1.56 million ERDF to increase enterprise in the most deprived communities.

Across the north-east, we have benefited from a strong regional voice that is able to attract national, European and international funding to our economy and to job creation. However, the EU does not give handouts. ERDF expenditure is dependent on the local economy finding match funding. Such funding can come from a variety of sources, including private and Government investment, and the complex arrangements that are in place are currently co-ordinated by One NorthEast. That is all under threat following the 40% cuts outlined by the coalition Government and the threatened senseless dismantling of a highly successful, much needed RDA.

All ERDF is time-limited, and expenditure delayed because of uncertainty around administrative arrangements or the inability to raise match funding will almost certainly be lost. The north-east missed out time and time again before One NorthEast was created, and we will not stand by and watch our region go backwards because of an ideological opposition to an interventionist economic approach.

I must also pay tribute to our excellent regional press, in particular to the Journal, which has championed its case for the north-east and one strong regional voice. The threat to ERDF is just one of many concerns for the people of the north-east, who are staunch defenders of our RDA. As a region, we stand stronger together, and we will not accept the Government dismantling our strength by withdrawing regional support and leaving us an underfunded toothless tiger to represent us on the national, European and international stages. I pledge today to fight my hardest to ensure that that is not our fate.

15:11

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), who made a very feisty and savvy contribution. She was clear on the importance of Newcastle and the support that the north-east and its great capital city need.

I made a mistake in the last year. I thought that my colleagues were talking about amending regional development agencies, but I had had clear instructions for months that One NorthEast should continue. I heard from my right hon. Friend the Business, Innovation and Skills Secretary today that One NorthEast will continue, and I hope the hon. Lady will be reassured by that—[Interruption.] RDAs may be different in structure, but the message is clear. My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) has also been very clear on that. Through the pages of the Newcastle Journal or otherwise, I hope there can be collaboration on ensuring that Newcastle continues to do well. I know that my colleagues who run the council are equally determined to ensure that every possible opportunity is given to the hon. Lady’s great city, and I will give it my support. I have been there often and love it much, even though those of us who ended up in the south have to put more clothes on all year round than people in Newcastle.

I also congratulate the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern). We have two things in common. As she knows, we were both born in Cheshire—

[Alison McGovern]

indicated dissent.

[Simon Hughes]

Well, the Wirral is in Cheshire.

[Alison McGovern]

indicated dissent.

[Simon Hughes]

Well, it was in Cheshire, and some of us think it always has been and always will be. We may disagree on that, but we both come from that part of the world, and we both ended up being politicians in Southwark. I pay tribute to her for the four years she served on Southwark council for the Brunswick Park ward and for being deputy leader of her group in that period. We are glad to see her here, whatever our party differences.

I welcome the new Minister for Europe, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Mr. Browne), and the Foreign Secretary to their briefs. We hope that they do well in their representation of us in the European Union and more widely in Europe, but we also hope that Baroness Ashton continues to have the support and good wishes of Ministers and the Government. We wish her well in her responsibilities.

I started my intervention on the Foreign Secretary by making it clear that one of the great reasons why the European Union and wider international organisations are needed is that many issues do not stop at boundaries—and the threat to our climate is one of those. I hope that the Minister for Europe and his colleagues will be forward-looking and robust on the challenges of the international climate crisis to which Europe can positively respond. If we are really clear about the science, we should seek to limit the temperature rise to 1.7° Celsius, not 2°. We should also ensure that the European Union—as per the agenda for the European Council this month—moves to a 30% reduction in emissions as our target. I regret that that was not achieved in Copenhagen. If we are to be really robust in our leadership, we will also ensure that we have strategies not just for European economic recovery and dealing with the world economic crisis as it affects our continent, but for the environmental crisis.

We should do better at promoting the fact the European Union has as its agenda the things that matter most to this continent. The main item on the agenda later this month will be the strategy for jobs and growth, and how we come out of the recession stronger and better, in spite of the huge difficulties. Other agenda items include preparing for the G20 summit, ensuring that we focus much more on achieving our millennium development goals, and dealing with the climate threat. We have heard some excellent contributions on the interrelated economic issues. It is clear that, as a continent, we need strategies for addressing the financial and banking sectors. Although any levy raised may be spent nationally, we must have a more effective Europe-wide strategy to ensure that bankers do not play with people’s money and take the profits.

For the avoidance of doubt, although my party has said that there may be a time when it is right to join the euro, I have never campaigned for us to join. Nor has my party, and we are clear that the time is not right. I am therefore happy to sign up to the agreement, as part of the coalition, that the pound should remain for the whole of the coalition agreement for this Parliament, and that no attempt will be made to change that position. I am also clear, however, that we need to revisit some decisions, such as the working time directive, where the European Union made mistakes. My great enthusiasm for the European Union and better collaboration across Europe does not make me blind to those things that have not gone well or where we need to do better. Overly prescriptive regulation, such as the working time directive, is one such example.

[Mr Cash]

I am greatly encouraged by the line that the hon. Gentleman is taking on this issue. In the spirit of good fellowship, does he agree that in negotiations to change the working time directive—or any of the other massive burdens on business that Lord Mandelson suggested were costing 4% of GDP—we would need to be able to repatriate those powers? Otherwise we would end up with a European Union that did not work because we would not be able to trade effectively.

[Simon Hughes]

That opens some big questions. I do not oppose considering the repatriation of some powers—it depends on the power. I do not take the view that we should only ever have one-way traffic of power from member states to the European Union, but we have to be careful that we make the right judgment. Some things clearly need European responsibility—aviation, for example, which cannot be dealt with on a purely national basis as the boundaries do not permit that. Environmental issues are another example. There are many issues on which the European Union is a better sized organisation to compete in the world. It is better that we have a common market when it comes to taking on China, India and the US. So there are advantages to the European Union, but I am not against the repatriation of individual issues and subject areas. I hope that we can consider that sensibly and with as little partisanship as possible.

The one big point of difference between us and the Tories during the election campaign, Europe, has been resolved in the coalition agreement, which is testimony to intelligent draftsmanship and savvy political work. In passing, I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws), who was one of the authors of the agreement, and whose service to our party and—already—Government I hope will be continued before too long, following his recent difficulties. The Liberal Democrats made it clear that we need Europe to ensure that we deal with criminals better, and the European arrest warrant and other mechanisms are important parts of a wider European collaboration.

There are organisational matters to deal with too. We must keep on the agenda the fact that it is a nonsense for the European Parliament to meet sometimes in Brussels and sometimes in Strasbourg. That has to be sorted. I understand why we are where we are, but it is right that it should be on the agenda, and it is also right that we continue to look at the EU budget. It is unacceptable that it has never been adequately audited, and we need to ensure that the rules are complied with. There is also a continuing issue about agricultural subsidies, but that does not stop us being proactive and helpful to rural communities that need us to support people moving on to the land and being able to inherit tenancies.

I am clear, too, that we now have a clear, popular and reasonable position on future referendums: we will not have one if, for example, Croatia wants to join, but we will have one if there is a major political change. I welcome the fact that both coalition parties have said that they believe in the expansion of the EU, but expansion should come with a transition period for every country, as in the agreement, in relation to the right to move freely around the EU—the Bulgaria and Romania example. I have always been suspicious, privately and publicly, about whether we should have opened the doors immediately to all the previous accession states, at the time that Poland was given free access. The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), the then Home Secretary, argued for immediate access, and on the basis of the figures projected, we went along with that, but I was clear that it was a risk. A phased admission of people from new countries would be a much better process and reduce the fears about immigration and migration that the public naturally express.

I would like to raise a few issues about individual countries. It would be helpful if the Minister could tell us the latest news on the conversations with Iceland, which is now an applicant country, and with Turkey. I welcome very much the fact that Turkey should be seen to be an important part of the EU. I ask him to give our condolences, concern and support to the Government and people of Poland after their terrible national tragedy of the air crash only a few weeks ago. I also encourage him to do what his predecessor as Minister for Europe did: understand that sorting out the Cyprus problem is a big priority. It is a nonsense that the EU has not yet been able to resolve that issue.

I ask the Minister publicly, as I have done in private, to pay attention to Russia and the Russian issues that have been raised on the Floor of the House. The relationship with Russia is important, but so too is that with Ukraine, which is an important European country that has not fulfilled its potential. There are economic issues, as well as human rights issues, in relation to both. Finally, the wider European concerns must be that the EU is proactive in the world in leading on conflict prevention; in dealing with the situation in the middle east, which is a crisis and a tragedy; in continuing to sort out the legacy of the civil war in Sri Lanka; and in promoting human rights in Africa, Iran and China. I welcome this debate and wish Ministers well.

15:24

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me the time to make my maiden speech. I, too, congratulate the hon. Members for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) and for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby), my hon. Friends the Members for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) and for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), and the hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) on their excellent contributions. However, I beg to differ with the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes): I was not aware that the north-east had a capital city, and coming from Sunderland, the largest city in the north-east, I disagree with his comments.

It is a great honour to be here today, having been elected a few weeks ago by the people of the community that I have lived in and around all my life—Sunderland. Sunderland Central, the constituency that I represent, is a new constituency, taking in parts of three previous constituencies. The first was Sunderland North, which was represented from 1992 by Billy Etherington, who served at the Council of Europe for many years. I wish him a long and happy retirement. The second constituency was Houghton and Washington East, which was represented from 1997 by Fraser Kemp. Fraser is someone with whom I worked before he entered the House and for whom I have the greatest respect. A more shrewd political brain I have not come across. He was a tenacious advocate for his constituency and the north-east region, and will, I am sure, be missed in this place.

The third constituency was Sunderland South, which was represented from 1987 by Chris Mullin. Before announcing his intention to retire, Chris was selected as the candidate for the constituency that I now represent. Although not from Sunderland, Chris has made it his home. He had a long and distinguished career in Parliament, as a Back Bencher, a Minister and the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, a role that I know he found particularly rewarding. I am sure that he will continue to contribute to debate outside this place through his writing. He has also given me enormous support and advice since I was selected, something invaluable, and for which I thank him.

Sunderland is a city on the north-east coast of England. Its industrial history is one to be proud of. At one point in the previous century, Sunderland was home to the most productive shipyards not just in Europe, but in the world. Ships were built on the River Wear that sailed the world, thanks to the work of men dedicated to their craft—skilled men who took huge pride in the ships that they produced. Sadly, in the late 1980s the major shipyards on the Wear closed, with the loss of many thousands of jobs.

Coal mining was the other major industry to dominate Sunderland in the previous century. Part of the Durham coalfield, the area produced good quality coal for many years. The last deep coal mine in Sunderland, Wearmouth colliery, closed in 1993 with the loss of many jobs, bringing to an end an industry that still had life left in it.

For me, those two events were tragedies for my city, the result of what I firmly believe were political decisions by Governments of the day, not economic decisions. Although I was already involved in local politics, living through the demise of those two industries—industries that I feel passionately should have continued—and witnessing the impact that that had on Sunderland and the communities in which I lived was an experience that galvanised my increasing involvement in politics. I felt that I had to try to fight injustice where I saw it and do whatever I could to ensure that my city was never hit like that again.

We have come a long way in Sunderland since those dark days of the late ’80s and early ’90s. There has been regeneration in Sunderland, but there is still much more to do. New jobs have been created, but more are needed. We still have relatively high unemployment and too many areas of deprivation—things that I am totally committed to trying to improve.

Sunderland is a city of contrasts. It has one of the most beautiful coastlines in the country. Whatever the weather, the beaches of Roker and Seaburn are always beautiful. We also have the National Glass Centre on the banks of the Wear, a fitting place for it to be, for Sunderland has a long history of glass production. Next door to the National Glass Centre is the St Peter’s campus of Sunderland university. The university is a real good-news story, employing many people and attracting students not just from Sunderland and the north-east, but from all over the country and around the world.

We also have—how could I not mention it?—the magnificent Stadium of Light, the home of Sunderland football club and one of the most important places, probably in the world, to fans of the team and to my city. Built on the site of the former Wearmouth colliery, a miner’s lamp at its entrance, the stadium is a celebration of our past and our future. Hon. Members should never underestimate the impact that the football club doing well will have on the people of Sunderland.

Looking forward, Sunderland has a huge opportunity to take advantage of the jobs being created through the green jobs programme. We have the Nissan plant in Sunderland, although it is not in my constituency. It employs thousands of people directly, and many more indirectly. It is excellent news that the battery plant and the recently announced production of the Leaf electric car will be coming to Sunderland. These are forward-looking developments that will benefit Sunderland, the north-east and the country. I am concerned, however, by the Prime Minister’s refusal yesterday to confirm that the £21.7 million grant already promised to Nissan by the last Government to enable these developments to happen will still be available. That is very worrying, and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills also refused to confirm it this morning. That money is essential to secure Sunderland as the plant of choice for Nissan in Europe. The consequences of its not coming are unthinkable.

In Sunderland, we also have a huge opportunity to play our part in the development of offshore wind farm production. The skills needed to develop this area of work are the same as those required in our historic industries. Turbines and offshore windmills are going to be built somewhere. There is a huge market for them, not only in the UK but throughout Europe. In areas such as Sunderland, where jobs are needed, it is important that we attract new industries such as these. They will sustain economic growth in my city in the years ahead. We have the natural resources of a port, a river and direct access to the North sea, and I genuinely believe that if we are to start to tackle climate change through the supply of our energy, offshore wind farms have a part to play.

The opportunity for the north-east to become the centre of excellence for this industry—not just in this country but in Europe—is real and there to be taken advantage of, with Sunderland playing its part. We already have a testing facility at Blyth, which has benefited from European funding. For Sunderland and the north-east to become the centre of excellence, we need the Government to support the development of this industry.

I should like to say what an honour it is for me to be given the opportunity to serve in this House. It is something that very few people have the opportunity to do. I want to thank the voters of Sunderland Central for giving me this opportunity. As I said throughout my campaign, I will stand up for Sunderland with determination and vigour. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak today.

15:32

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech today. It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Members for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) and for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), and all the new Members on both sides of the House who have spoken so eloquently. I hope that I will do justice with my own speech.

I am conscious of the apocryphal story of the newly elected Member many years ago who, after making his maiden speech to the House, was delighted when a senior and highly respected grandee—a gentleman with a great deal of “bottom”—approached him in the Tea Room later and patted him on the shoulder, muttering, “Rolls-Royce of a speech, old boy, Rolls-Royce of a speech.” The delighted Member later recounted this to a colleague, and was most disappointed by the response: “Ah yes, he always says that to the new boys. It means you were well oiled, almost inaudible and went on for a very long time.” I am aware that time is precious today, and I will try not to run on.

I would like to start by expressing my deep gratitude to the people of North Warwickshire and Bedworth, who have entrusted me with the honour of representing them here in Westminster—a task that I take very seriously and will seek to undertake with enthusiasm and energy. Having lived and gone to school in Warwickshire, now to represent a Warwickshire seat in Parliament is truly an honour.

North Warwickshire has a broken history as a parliamentary constituency, having once been abolished under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885—something I sincerely hope will not be repeated any time soon! But North Warwickshire was not to be erased so easily, and, some 98 years later, the seat was resurrected in time for the 1983 general election, when it was won by my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude), who held the seat for two terms. He is remembered with great warmth and affection in North Warwickshire and Bedworth, and kindly visited on a number of occasions during my campaign to offer avuncular advice and support.

Let me also pay tribute to my immediate predecessor, Mike O’Brien, who was elected as Member of Parliament in 1992 and represented the seat for 18 years. Since May 1997, Mike O’Brien held an unbroken string of some eight junior ministerial positions. He was once described by Matthew Parris as

“a dapper fellow, the sort of junior Minister every mother would want her daughter to marry”.

Mike worked hard as a constituency MP and always fought for what he believed in. During my time as the parliamentary candidate, we had our political differences and our ding-dongs in the press, but we could always shake hands and we never lost sight of the fact that we both wanted what was best for North Warwickshire and Bedworth. I wish Mike all the best for the future.

My constituency is large and has a diverse economy. Historically a coal mining area, the last working mine in the west midlands, Daw Mill colliery, sits on our border with Nuneaton, and 2008 saw a record year of production. Much of the constituency remains rural, with significant areas of green belt land, and farming remains a strong part of the local economy. Our superb road links make North Warwickshire a hub for distribution and transport, and giants such as UPS and TNT have flagship facilities in the constituency. As in much of the west midlands, manufacturing remains vital to the local economy and to local jobs. An estimated 8,000 jobs in the constituency are linked to manufacturing, ranging from the BMW engine plant at Hams Hall in Coleshill to highly specialised niche engineering companies such as Powerkut Ltd in Bedworth, which, among many other activities, exports precision components for nuclear power stations as far afield as China and around the world.

Culturally, North Warwickshire retains many old and cherished traditions. In Bedworth, a great benefactor was the fondly remembered Nicholas Chamberlaine, who was rector for 51 years from 1664 until his death. In his will, he provided for a school for local children and almshouses for the poor. Today, four local schools and the Nicholas Chamberlaine almshouses continue to receive support from his legacy. Indeed, last Friday, I was privileged to attend founder’s day—or “bun day” as it is known locally—in his honour, and to continue the tradition of handing out currant buns to pupils from the schools that enjoy support from the trust.

In Atherstone, the famous “Atherstone ball game” is an ancient Shrove Tuesday tradition, which dates back some 900 years and continues to raise money for charity—and indeed continues to send one or two people to hospital every year. There is only one rule—that the ball must not be taken outside of Atherstone. Whoever is holding the ball at 5 pm is declared the winner. Beyond that, anything goes. I am delighted that for 900 years, the ball game has avoided the attentions of the “health and safety police”—and long may it continue to do so!

North Warwickshire has a number of difficult issues, which are of deep concern to local people. As MP, I will do all I can to fight for my constituents’ interests in these matters. The proposed rail route for High Speed 2 will potentially devastate the villages of Gilson, Water Orton and Middleton. Bedworth is at risk of losing the local fire station as a result of a proposed reorganisation of the Warwickshire fire and rescue service, and I have been part of a local campaign for some time to fight a large, unsustainable and unwanted housing development on green belt land close to the villages of Keresley and Ash Green, near Bedworth.

In addition, there are a number of national issues that I plan to champion during my time in the House—issues on which I know from the doorsteps I have the support of my constituents. One such issue is the welfare of our soldiers and their families, and in particular the issue of mental health care and rehabilitation for veterans and reservists.

I am aware that we are not discussing defence here today, but, as an old soldier, I hope that the House will indulge me for a moment. I had the privilege of serving for some nine years with the Royal Army Medical Corps as a medical support officer. Indeed, I served on operations in Bosnia under the command of the EU military headquarters, when I served with HQ EUFOR in Banja Luka.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

God help you!

[Dan Byles]

I will leave my thoughts on that for a later speech.

I left the Army to enter politics because I became deeply concerned about the support that we as a nation give to our wounded soldiers. That the British people hold our servicemen and women in the highest regard is beyond doubt; the success of fantastic charities such as Help for Heroes and Combat Stress ably demonstrates that. But these are charities that should not need to exist. I still do not believe that we, as a nation and as a Government, give our soldiers and their families the support they deserve when they are damaged on operations fighting for our country. As the Prime Minister noted yesterday, the sad fact is that we have now lost more veterans of the Falkands conflict to suicide than we did during the conflict itself. Specialist programmes such as the veterans medical assessment and reservist mental health programmes rely on referrals from civilian GPs. They are excellent programmes for those who make it that far, but study after study has shown that only a small minority of civilian GPs are even aware that they exist. In theory, veterans are entitled to priority treatment on the national health service, but in practice, for too many that entitlement simply is not there.

There will doubtless be much debate over the coming months about the value of some major defence projects costing billions of pounds, but please let us get the fundamentals right too. Let us not forget the poor bloody soldier and his family—the soldier on whom we call to do so much in our name, and who deserves our support when he has been wounded, when he has been traumatised, and when he is back home, out of uniform, and the medal parades are over.

Thank you for indulging me, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Those are concerns that I know are shared by hon. Members in all parts of the House, but they are also issues on which we can and must do so much better.

15:40

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to deliver my maiden speech during today’s debate on Europe. I congratulate the hon. Members for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) and for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby), my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), the hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy), my hon. Friends the Members for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) and for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott), and the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) on their fine speeches.

It is an honour and a privilege to be in this Chamber representing the people of Nottingham South. I am particularly proud to be the first woman to represent our city in Parliament. When I was a little girl, my dad often talked about his mother, whom I never met but whose name I share. He told me that although she was bright and won a place at grammar school, she was unable to take up the place because my great-grandfather thought that education was wasted on girls. A generation later, my own mother, the daughter of a Lancashire clog-maker, also had limited educational opportunities. Her teachers at secondary school asked her to help with the younger pupils, but there was no opportunity for her to take public exams, and she left school without a single qualification.

The fact that the abilities of those two women had been squandered or ignored on the basis of their sex or their class infuriated and inspired me as a child. It made me determined to grasp every opportunity I had, but it also made me want to fight to ensure that every girl and young woman—many of whom did not have the support and encouragement that my parents gave me—could fulfil their potential. I am therefore delighted to be here to speak for the men and the women of Nottingham South.

I hope that many hon. Members have already had an opportunity to visit the queen of the midlands, as Nottingham is sometimes known. If they have, they will know that it is a fine city with a long and fascinating history, but as it is represented by three Members of Parliament, they may be wondering which of its delights are in my own constituency. I hope that my hon. Friends the Members for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) and for Nottingham East (Christopher Leslie) will forgive me if I claim to have more than my share of the best bits, particularly those that demonstrate the innovation on which our city prides itself.

Nottingham South is home to the oldest inn in England, Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, carved into the sandstone caves at the base of Castle Rock. The camellia house at Wollaton Hall is the oldest cast-iron glasshouse in Europe, and we have, in Notts County, the world’s oldest professional association football club. But Nottingham is not just a historic place; it is an industrial city. While the lace workshops may have disappeared, as sadly has the factory producing thousands of Raleigh bicycles, Nottingham has shown its resilience, and other enterprises have sprung up to take their place. We are a modern European city, home to many thriving businesses employing cutting-edge science and technology to produce products and services for the 21st century. Our employers include Boots, Experian and Speedo. Moreover, it is no coincidence that Nottingham is developing as a science city, given that it has not one but two world-class universities.

My immediate predecessor, Alan Simpson, is a graduate of Nottingham Trent university, and was a student at a time when the cost of study was borne by the public purse. I know that the taxpayers of Nottingham have had great value for money from Alan, because he has been an outstanding representative of our city. Everyone who I have spoken to in the past few weeks, whether Members or staff in the House, has told me how much they liked Alan and how much he will be missed. I say “everyone”, but I must confess that when I visited the Whips Office I did detect some relief, for Alan was fiercely independent and never afraid to stand up for the things he believed in, even when that incurred the wrath of his colleagues. Perhaps his greatest achievement has been to secure recognition that climate change poses an immense and immediate threat to our planet and that we must take action urgently to address it. Although Alan has retired from Parliament, I know that he will continue to enjoy being a thorn in the side of any Government or Opposition who fail to grasp the importance of protecting the environment for future generations.

I have never asked Alan why he decided to stand for Parliament, but I had only one reason for becoming an MP: to make a difference. I know that sounds rather grand, but let me explain. I have spent my whole working life representing working people, many of them low paid or part time and most of them women, and 18 of those years have been spent in Nottingham as a trade union organiser for Unison. My first few years were depressing times for anyone seeking to defend public services and the people who provide them—hard-working, committed and caring people who have often sacrificed pay and perks to do those jobs, which are not just socially useful, but vital to every one of us.

In the early 1990s when I started, local government, the health service and higher education lacked the investment they required—but what a difference a Labour Government made! For many low-paid workers in Nottingham, from care workers to bar staff, the introduction of the national minimum wage meant a pay rise. For my own children, and those of many constituents, Labour’s investment in education meant that they were taught in brand-new classrooms, with state-of-the-art IT facilities, rather than in leaky portakabins. For young people with little prospect of work or an education, a Labour Government brought new jobs, apprenticeships and university places, and the winter fuel allowance meant that thousands of Nottingham’s pensioners no longer had to worry about switching on the heating in the colder months.

I am proud of Labour’s achievements, but I want more, and so do the people I represent. As we begin a period in opposition, I will stand up for the people of Nottingham South, for their families and for our city, to ensure that the things that have changed their lives for the better are preserved and built upon, to fight for effective action to free them from poverty and inequality, and to strive for a better future for every one of them.

Unfortunately, I fear that the so-called new politics that Members on the Government Benches are so keen to talk about may provide a pleasing soundbite but be of no use to the people I seek to represent. I fear that the drive for efficiencies and cutting waste that the Chancellor’s team is so intent upon will actually take us back to a time as bad as the one that I remember in the 1980s—a time when millions faced the misery of unemployment with no prospect of real help or support, when public housing was either sold off or allowed to deteriorate so that only those in desperate need would want to live there, and when it was normal to wait for months, and even years, for hospital treatment. My constituents do not want a return to those times, and it is my duty and responsibility to ensure that their voice is heard, their questions are answered, and their hopes and aspirations are met.

Among the most pressing of my constituents’ concerns is the future of several capital investment projects planned for the city, such as the widening of the A453, a vital link between Nottingham and the M1, which is of huge importance to the local economy, to local businesses and to local people coping with the danger and inconvenience that heavy congestion brings. They want to know why this has been deferred, and for how long, and whether the new Government appreciate the cost of delay.

My constituents are also concerned about phase 2 of Nottingham’s tram network. Last summer, the previous Government committed £530 million to help build two additional lines. This development will regenerate parts of the city, further develop our excellent public transport infrastructure, and encourage more people to leave their cars at home, choosing instead this clean green alternative. It will also provide between 4,000 and 10,000 new jobs—but is the funding secure?

During the election I was asked about the new school building for Farnborough school in Clifton, and whether it would go ahead if Labour was re-elected. I was happy to be able to assure the chair of governors that it would, but what shall I tell him now? And what can I tell the other heads, governors, parents and pupils whose schools were due to be rebuilt or refurbished under Building Schools for the Future? What, too, can I tell council tenants waiting for new kitchens, bathrooms, windows and doors under the decent homes programme?

Over the coming months I shall be raising those concerns, and I apologise now if Members tire of them, but I am here to press the Government on the issues that matter to my constituents.

I am delighted to conclude my first speech to the House, and pleased that in a while I can head back to my constituency and my family. It is a journey that I will make often, so hon. Members should not be surprised when I press the Government on the electrification of the line to Nottingham, and on a high-speed rail link to bring our city closer to the heart of Europe. I will do so not just because I understand the need for great transport links and the vital importance of staying close to those whom I represent, but because I must always try to get home before my three daughters’ bedtime on a Thursday night.

15:50

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to give my maiden speech. In this debate we have heard many fine maiden speeches, all of which were well crafted and delivered. In particular, I must compliment the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on her speech, and declare a vested interest: I am a graduate of one of her area’s great universities, the university of Nottingham. I must also admit to having sampled the hospitality of Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem inn on more than one occasion.

I took advice on what the contents of a maiden speech should be, and I was surprised by some of what I heard. I was told that my speech should have all the attributes of a lady’s well-cut dress, meaning that it should be long enough to cover all the important points but still short enough to be interesting. I will try to comply with those criteria.

Hon. Members will know that this is the first time for more than five months that this Chamber has been addressed by an hon. Member for North West Leicestershire, following the tragic and untimely death of my immediate predecessor, David Taylor, who, very sadly, passed away on Boxing day last year. I have become aware that tributes to one’s predecessor are sometimes given through gritted teeth, especially when the previous Member had sat on the opposite side of the House, but that is not the case on this occasion. Although David Taylor and I often disagreed on what he did, I have always been a great admirer of the way in which he did it. At this time, when we are so keen to rebuild the public’s faith in our Parliament and our parliamentarians, we could find few better examples or role models than David Taylor. When David and I agreed, we fought together for the benefit of our constituency—defending Moira fire station from closure, opposing open-cast mining at Measham, and trying to protect the green wedge from overdevelopment.

David Taylor was born in North West Leicestershire, and he lived and worked there. He was unflinchingly loyal to his constituency, and as a result was extremely well regarded by his supporters and political opponents alike. His dedication to his work was unparalleled both in this House, where he was voted Back Bencher of the Year in 2007, and in his constituency. Given all his work against smoking and the dreaded weed, I know that he would be delighted that his successor is a reformed smoker. Our constituency is a far lesser place for his passing, and it is a privilege to be here in his stead.

Hon. Members will recall many column inches being filled in April with speculation about the voting intentions of “middle England”, but there was often confusion about exactly whom that referred to. From my perspective, it referred to the people of North West Leicestershire, who are literally based in the very centre of our country; mine is possibly the most landlocked constituency in the country, surrounded as it is by eight other constituencies. North West Leicestershire is at the heart of the new national forest, where many millions of trees have been planted over the past 15 years. That fabulous countryside sits alongside the traditional and gritty mining town of Coalville and the historic market town of Ashby de la Zouch. My constituency’s gently undulating countryside is both quaint and picturesque, spanning Newton Burgoland in the south and Cavendish Bridge in the north, and containing the villages of—I shall name but a few—Castle Donington, Kegworth, Moira, Measham, Ibstock, and Swannington, which is in the middle, and is where I live with my wife and children.

However, that description belies a constituency of extremes. My late predecessor experienced many of those extremes. Imagine his surprise in 1992 when, despite polling more than 28,000 votes, he lost the election. North West Leicestershire had the highest turnout that year, with more than 85% of the electorate going to vote. However, David got the rewards for all his hard work in 1997, when he gained the biggest swing against the Conservatives in that election.

In 2007 the pendulum swung again, this time back towards the Conservatives. We had the biggest swing against Labour in the district council elections that year, and on 6 May this year we again witnessed another 12% swing back to the Conservatives. Indeed, the chimes of the mediaeval church at Breedon on the Hill symbolised the bellwether nature of our constituency, which has always gone with the Government. I believe that when the people of North West Leicestershire have had enough of you, they come out and vote and let you know. History proves it. That was always very heartening in opposition, but I assure the House that it is slightly more worrying when I am standing in this position—which brings me back to today’s debate.

We are here to debate Europe, and I am delighted to be speaking on that subject because I love Europe. I have travelled extensively through it, at my own expense. Indeed, East Midlands airport in my constituency is our border with Europe and the world. I adore much European cuisine. I admire much of its culture, and I revel in its diversity, but I am not a supporter of economic union. I was an active member of Business for Sterling in the no campaigns. I strongly support the Government’s policy of placing a referendum lock on new European treaties, and indeed on anything that would give more powers away to Brussels.

The events in Greece, which spread quickly to Spain and elsewhere, demonstrate the danger inherent in trying to pull together a disparate group of economies and cultures. We need to learn from their misfortunes and hold on to our triple A rating at all costs. I am particularly pleased that all hon. Members on this side of the House, our Liberal allies included, now appreciate that we need early deficit reduction to protect our credit rating. In my first three weeks in politics I believe that I have seen something I never thought I would see—a miracle. I think that we should call it “The Conversion of St. Vince on the Road to Whitehall”.

The consequences of not holding on to our credit rating are extremely frightening. Our economy has been run on to the rocks. Had we joined the euro, we would not just be holed below the waterline, we would also be without lifeboats. We have a huge task ahead to rescue our economy and solve the problems of 21st-century Britain. Sadly, we Members of this House, with a few notable exceptions—or should I say extensions; I am thinking of my hon. Friend the Father of the House—are merely “here today, gone tomorrow” politicians. As a result, we must not consider ourselves to be the owners of sovereign powers. We are merely the custodians of power and sovereignty for future generations. Sovereignty is not ours to give away; it belongs to the people who elected us, and to their heirs and successors.

On that basis, I am very pleased to be one of the many Members of this House who fought and argued over many years to prevent the UK from joining the euro. We Eurosceptics have often suffered the disdain of the Europhiles: at times—heaven help us—we have been called “little Englanders”. As an Englishman of below average height, representing a constituency in the centre of our great country, that is an accusation that I personally find difficult to refute.

My background is in business. I firmly believe that our country’s small and medium-sized enterprises provide the backbone of our economy. If we help them, they will help to get us out of the current predicament that we find ourselves in. It is not just as a politician but also from a business perspective that my views on Europe have developed over the last 20 years. In 1997 we were the fourth most competitive place in the world in which to do business, but now we are a lowly 84th. Much of that is due to regulation from Europe. This cannot continue.

My business has been a major employer in North West Leicestershire for many years, and I want to be a champion of business and enterprise. I shall support the creation of an environment in which public spending is managed more efficiently and the private sector is unshackled from the weight of burdensome EU regulation. I want an environment in which our country can move free from the lodestone of needless red tape, and where we can build for our future by correcting so many of the mistakes of the recent past.

It is a privilege to stand in this House, and to serve the people of North West Leicestershire. I will do my very best not to let them down, and if at the end of my time in this place, however that may come, I am thought of anywhere near as well as my predecessor David Taylor, I will class myself as having done a very good job indeed.

16:00

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for inviting me to make my maiden speech today. First, I congratulate hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches today, including my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) and the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen). Those two highly contrasting speeches sum up many of the differences between the two sides.

My constituency of Sefton Central is made up of parts of the old Crosby constituency and parts of the old Knowsley, North and Sefton, East constituency. Crosby was represented by Claire Curtis-Thomas, who served here from 1997 until this year. She served her constituents diligently, and many of them have expressed their gratitude to me for the support that they received from her. She was also one of the few qualified engineers to serve in this House, and spoke with great authority on the subject during her time here. Knowsley, North and Sefton, East was represented by my right hon. Friend who is now the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth). He has been good enough to introduce me to many people in his former constituency who are now constituents of mine. I believe he has served the House and the people of Knowsley, North and Sefton, East with distinction, and he will do the same for the people of his new constituency. He is deserving of the support of Members in his bid to be Deputy Speaker.

I believe I am not the first member of my family to make a speech in this Chamber. My granddad was an electrician, and after the war he worked on the rebuilding of this Chamber. A number of the Polish workers who had served in the forces were also employed on the same work, and when the British workers, who were all strong trade unionists, discovered that the Polish workers were being paid less, they organised a meeting in this very Chamber. My granddad, as the shop steward, made the first speech in the newly refurbished Chamber. Unlike in the case of my granddad, there are Clerks here to record my speech, but I am happy to claim that my granddad’s story is right, and that he gave his maiden speech here some 64 years before I did.

Of course, the story of east European workers being paid less than British workers has relevance today. Like many other hon. Members, I have heard countless tales of east European workers being paid less than the minimum wage, taking jobs that British workers would otherwise have been employed to do. I therefore hope that the Government will confirm that the law is enforced, and that foreign nationals are not exploited in this way to their cost or to the cost of British workers. It was wrong when my granddad was here in 1946 and it is wrong now.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) gave his maiden speech and recalled what an excellent seaside constituency he represents. Sefton Central is another excellent seaside constituency. It is between Bootle and Southport, and has many outstanding features. Its sandy beaches stretch from Waterloo to Formby, and form part of the 20-mile stretch of sand dunes that characterises the Sefton coastline—the longest stretch of sand dunes in the country. Crosby beach is decorated by the Gormley statues, which are named Another Place—a much-admired tourist attraction—and there are red squirrels to be found at Formby, looked after by the National Trust.

Sefton Central is also home to the Grand National, and to Aintree race course, and I hope that the Government do not carry out their threat to take the world’s top horse race off terrestrial TV and sell it to Sky.

Many people in Sefton Central believe it has the highest number of Premiership footballers of any constituency in the country. That may well be true. I would like to congratulate two of my constituents, Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher, on their selection for the England World cup squad this week. Wayne Rooney also used to live in Sefton Central, and I am sure that Members on both sides of the House will want to wish them, and the whole England World cup squad, well. My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) mentioned Harold Wilson, who represented the Ormskirk constituency in 1945. Parts of that constituency are now in Sefton Central.

I hope that the coalition Government go ahead with a number of important projects in my constituency that were given the go-ahead by the Labour Government. One is the Thornton relief road. I mentioned the importance of tourism to my constituency; the Thornton relief road is much needed to reduce congestion from Switch Island, which is at the junction of the M57 and the M58, to Thornton. The route is a bottleneck for people trying to reach Crosby, Formby and Southport, and the new road would have a significant economic benefit for tourism and other business. People in Sefton Central remember when a previous Tory Government neglected them and thousands more across Merseyside. I will press Ministers to make sure that this vital project and others are not axed, and to ensure that the road’s importance is finally recognised.

According to many people in Sefton, the road was first proposed in 1934. Surely that is too much delay for any new road. At the election, candidates in Sefton Central from all parties pledged to make sure that the road was built, and I hope that Ministers from both coalition parties will note the promises made on their behalf by Tory and Liberal Democrat candidates.

Sefton has many fine schools, and my wife and I have been hugely impressed by the primary school that our children attend. I have also visited a number of excellent secondary schools in Maghull, Formby and Crosby, and will argue with Ministers to make sure that Building Schools for the Future is not a victim of Government cuts. Chesterfield High and Crosby High are good schools, and are due to be rebuilt on a joint site. Brand-new facilities do not guarantee success, but having 21st-century buildings certainly makes a difference if we want 21st-century learning and standards.

The constituency has four Sure Start children’s centres—at Holy Rosary Catholic primary school in Aintree, at Hudson primary school in Maghull, at Freshfield and at Thornton. My son attended a nursery at a Sure Start centre, and the support that my family had was outstanding. Many of the other parents told me that they noticed the difference that Sure Start had made to them, their families and their children. They noticed a marked improvement in support once the children’s centre opened, and have noticed the impact that it has had on their families, and on the progress made by their children. I welcome the coalition’s commitment to Sure Start, and I hope fervently that it is a promise that is kept.

People in my constituency were horrified to learn of the £4-million cut in the Merseyside police budget that was announced by the coalition last week. I urge the Government to reconsider such a cut, and to think about the likely impact of such drastic action on front-line policing. More importantly, the Government should consider the impact on our communities and on the people of Merseyside. I said earlier that I hoped that we would not see a re-run of the neglect of previous Tory Governments. Sadly, the police cuts, and the threats to the Thornton relief road, to Chesterfield High and Crosby High schools, and to the Royal Liverpool University hospital, do not bode well for the economy or my constituents.

16:08

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to deliver my maiden speech to the House as the newly elected representative of the good people of Hove and Portslade. I also thank the previous speakers for their excellent contributions, including my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby), and the hon. Members for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) and for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), who all claim to have the best seaside town in the country in their constituency; I will try to persuade them otherwise later.

I pay tribute to the work of my predecessor, Celia Barlow. She worked tirelessly during her five-year term on local and national matters. She was just as formidable in the House as she was on the doorstep, and I wish her well in whatever career path she pursues. I should like to mention another former Member for Hove, Sir Tim Sainsbury, whose advice and support over the years have been invaluable to me.

Brighton and Hove does, of course, take its name from two neighbouring historical towns, situated on a delightfully sunny, and sometimes windy, spot on the south coast. From the inclusion of Hove in the name of the city, it might rightly be assumed that those living in my constituency are mindful of its unique identity, separate from our larger neighbour, Brighton. We Hove residents are often asked whether we live in Brighton, and our defensive response gives rise to the well-known phrase, “Hove, actually.”

I will be keeping a close eye on Hove’s individuality—that is, on its regency and Victorian architecture, wide boulevards and colourful beach huts. I shall keep an even closer eye on the individuality of Portslade. Its history, and indeed its contribution to local affairs generally, is just as rich as Hove’s. I am so keen to see that fact recognised that I shall campaign to change the name of the constituency to Hove and Portslade.

The bedrock of our community has always been our elderly population, although demographically Hove has changed a lot in recent years. It is a friendly place, with many different cultures represented, and I pay particular tribute to my friends the Coptic Christians from Sudan and Egypt, a thriving Muslim community, which includes a number of entrepreneurial Iranians, and a well-established Jewish community, whose roots go back to the 18th century. I, like my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown, am also proud to represent the LGBT community in the city.

I come to politics from a background in film and music, and I shall channel my passion for each into supporting local talent. It is no secret that Hove is home to a great number of musicians, some of whom are internationally famous, but it is home also to the excellent Brighton institute of modern music. Hove’s cinematic past, however, is often overlooked, and it is frequently forgotten that, at the end of the Victorian era, the pioneers of Hove developed techniques that are still in use throughout the world today.

The distinctive beaches and buildings of Brighton and Hove translate extremely well on to film, and that is why they have featured in countless films over the years. Classics include “Brighton Rock”, “Oh! What a Lovely War”, “Carry On At Your Convenience”, “Carry On Girls” and “Quadrophenia”; and in recent years there has been “The End of the Affair”, “Circus”, “London to Brighton” and the rather curiously named “Brighton Wok: The Legend of Ganja Boxing”.

Promoting the city as a location for filming and, indeed, as a place for the media business to thrive must be done in partnership with my council colleagues, and that will be just one area where we are able to work together. Another area is the promotion of local businesses. As a qualified management accountant, and as a past owner of one of the area’s largest manufacturers, winning two Queen’s awards and the Sussex company of the year award, I shall make supporting small and medium-sized enterprises one of my biggest priorities.

All councils should take back some powers from London, and as an example I note that Brighton and Hove city council has limited powers to pursue the owners of neglected listed buildings for the reimbursement of costly emergency repairs. I have therefore written to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport to see whether more powers might be handed to councils so that they can deal with such irresponsible people.

On sport, Hove is home to the well-established and successful Sussex county cricket club, the winners of last year’s Twenty20 cup, which they successfully started defending this week. On football, I have been a supporter of the Seagulls, Brighton and Hove Albion, and during my teenage years I used to go and watch them when they actually played in Hove. We should soon have our new stadium in Falmer—and a deserved promotion in due course. Brighton and Hove do not do everything together, however, and Hove has the more successful rugby club, which won the Sussex cup just last month.

Secondary education in my constituency has been a hot topic in recent years, and I have deliberately avoided putting a partisan twist on to my maiden speech, but Hove and Portslade are just the sorts of places that will benefit greatly from the policies of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education. I look forward to being involved in any way that I can, and that includes supporting the award of academy status to Portslade community college.

Hove needs a new primary school, and I am working with parents and councillors to see what the best options are. The process has just taken an interesting twist, with the news that the much-loved Connaught centre has been vacated as an adult education base. It began as a school in 1884, and I am keen to ensure that a return to its original purpose is investigated in full. I could refer to many local heroes who have put their lives into educating our children, but I should like to mention one man, Bob Wall, who runs an extremely tight ship at Hillside special school in Portslade. When I think of a model head teacher, I think of that man.

I should also like to single out several charities. There are so many worth mentioning that I could fill my whole speech with them, but I shall name just a few. The Martlets hospice, Impact Initiatives, Off the Fence, the Alzheimer’s Society, Macmillan and Emmaus all stand out as beacons of excellence in my constituency.

Returning to music, I perhaps bring something new to the House in the form of my huge passion for rock and heavy metal. A few years ago I rashly pledged that I would be the first Member to wear an Iron Maiden T-shirt in the Chamber, so, Mr Deputy Speaker, I may be in touch soon to see how I can deliver that promise without breaking too many rules. The benefit of this country’s musical success to our economy is often understated. In 2008, for example, overseas earnings rose by 15% to £140 million. I was particularly delighted, therefore, to see a commitment to live music in the coalition policy document. On that musical note, Mr Deputy Speaker, I thank you again for the honour of letting me make my maiden speech today.

16:15

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Let me first say what a splendid speech we have just heard from the hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley). I am particularly interested in his support for music. As a former musician and a lifetime lover of music, I think that he will make a very valuable contribution.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

You like jazz.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Indeed, that is true, but I have a wide range of tastes in music, including opera and classical. My son is even educating me in heavy metal, but that is a rather new field for me, I am afraid. I was very interested in what the hon. Member for Hove said, and I congratulate him; I am sure that he will make a fine contribution to the House over the years.

I want to speak about the eurozone and its current problems and to reflect some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart). The eurozone is facing disaster at the moment—a disaster that some of us predicted some time ago. However, the eurozone is not the European Union, and it is quite possible to imagine the European Union without a eurozone. Indeed, I think that that is likely to be the future provided that the EU itself does not start to fragment as a result of the eurozone’s troubles. I also want to emphasise, as I have time and again in the past, that Europe is not the European Union, or the European Union is not Europe; eliding the two terms is a mistake. The European Union is a political construct that has been imposed on, or adopted by, several of the nations of Europe, but it is not Europe. Europe is a place that, like the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), I love very much. In a few weeks’ time, I shall be surrounded by the vineyards of Provence, no doubt listening to Mozart and drinking something very decent. I love Europe in every sense, even in struggling to speak French, but I am deeply critical of the European Union and think that the eurozone is a terrible mistake, as is proving to be the case.

The eurozone is in crisis, and a very predictable one. Some 20 years ago, I wrote a paper—I used to write many papers on the EU and its economy—predicting the exchange rate mechanism debacle before we actually joined, and I proved to be exactly right. People thought I was prophetic, but anyone with a moderate knowledge of economics and a little foresight would have seen that the ERM was going to bring about a disaster. In fact, it led to the defeat of the Conservatives in 1997 and the election of a Labour Government, so for the Government side of the House it was indeed a disaster, but, unusually and unexpectedly, it brought benefits in terms of a Labour Government.

Strong currencies derive from strong economies, not the other way round. If one tries to impose a strong currency on a weak economy, it will not survive. There are great examples of this around the world. The best one in recent years is perhaps Argentina, where people linked the peso directly and rigidly to the dollar for a period, which caused terrible mayhem inside their economy. Eventually, after some 10 years, when the economy was almost wrecked, they were forced to devalue to break that link. As a result of that devaluation, Argentina is now bouncing back, no doubt helped by its splendid wine industry. I am sure that the competitive edge that the wine industry has had because of devaluation has helped the Argentine economy to recover.

Weak economies within the eurozone will have exactly the same problem, and we will not solve it without those countries departing from the eurozone. The first would be Greece, but others would follow. I will come to some of the problems with that in a moment. From time to time, I have met Irish politicians and suggested that their only solution is to recreate the punt, devalue and rejoin the sterling zone instead of the eurozone, because we are Ireland’s major trading partner—it is essentially part of the larger economy of the British Isles. Ireland would benefit greatly from such a decision.

Some people think that it is unrealistic to expect countries to leave the eurozone, although Angela Merkel suggested, some eight or nine weeks ago, that it should not be impossible for countries to do so. She was then roundly condemned with a fierce reaction from the French, who thought that that was an appalling thing to say, and she has now drawn back from it. However, there are those who believe that in the long run the Deutschmark will be recreated, or that there could be a Deutschmark zone that might include Holland and Luxembourg, but not much more.

The problem is that if Greece goes, the other PIGS countries––Portugal, Ireland and Spain––will also eventually depart the euro. The problem that the French and German Governments have is that their banks are heavily exposed in lending to those countries, which would immediately devalue and start to become very competitive with stronger nations in northern Europe, particularly with the French. The French would immediately have a problem competing with Italy and Spain—their next-door neighbours––and would then eventually leave the eurozone and devalue. That would leave the German economy on its own, effectively with a currency that in real terms was much more highly valued because the others would have been devalued.

That takes us back to what Keynes suggested in Bretton Woods. He wanted a world in which there would be stable but separate currencies and said that those countries that get into a big deficit should be able to devalue and, indeed, those countries that run big surpluses should be required to revalue. Indeed, the German economy was built for decades on an undervaluation of the Deutschmark, which is, in a sense, what has given it its strength and has enabled it to become effectively overvalued within the eurozone. Other countries cannot compete with Germany—indeed, we cannot compete with it, which is why, I think, we devalued. Despite the devaluation, we still have a massive trade deficit with Germany, but we are starting to improve and recover, because we had that opportunity.

Because we are outside the eurozone, we have the ability to devalue—depreciate—our currency as appropriate and to choose our own monetary and fiscal policy. Those policies are interrelated—we have relations with the countries in the eurozone—but, nevertheless, we have a degree of freedom in managing our economy that countries inside the eurozone do not. If we try to impose strong currencies on weak economies, such a problem occurs.

If we do not allow those countries to leave and dismantle the eurozone, we will see massive deflation. One cannot just expect countries such as Greece and Spain to cut their deficits and deflate their economies massively and, indeed, get rid of protection for workers, so that wages are driven down. That would merely make their economies much poorer and weaker, increase unemployment and be no good at all. The logical thing for those countries to do would be to withdraw from the eurozone, start to direct demand towards their own economies and spend time behind the effective barrier of a depreciated currency, rebuilding the strength of their economies in a realistic way.

That is what is needed in the eurozone and that is why the eurozone is deeply flawed. It has to be dismantled and we have to build a Europe based on economies that have separate currencies, which are like shock absorbers between economies––they have to be able to adjust. If they cannot do so, those economies will be in serious trouble for a very long time. Indeed, there could be serious social unrest, the like of which we have not seen for a long time.

In a sense, I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston was saying. We ought to look forward practically. Rather than indulging in Schadenfreude—pleasure in the pain of others—and saying, “I told you so,” we should take practical steps to persuade those countries to think about dismantling the eurozone, recreating their separate currencies and progressing from there onwards in a much more practical and sensible way.

16:23

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

I had the pleasure of being able to refer to some of the matters I wish to mention in the Queen’s Speech debate. I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me another opportunity to carry the matter forward, particularly in the light of some absolutely superb speeches from Back Benchers on our own side on the question of the European Union as a whole and also in the light of the contribution of the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who began to move quite perceptibly towards the centre of gravity of where we are now in the coalition Government.

It is no secret that my concern about any coalition Government remains that we must keep to our principles and our manifesto promises. It is essential that we stick to our template and manifesto commitments on sovereignty—I originally proposed a sovereignty Bill some five to seven years ago—and human rights, with which I will deal shortly, and the associated charter of fundamental rights, for a simple reason. There are three categories of activity in coalitions: the easy stuff, the difficult stuff and the red lines stuff. As I said repeatedly on radio and television in the aftermath of the coalition announcement, we must stick to the red lines because they are about who governs us and how. I do not need to elaborate, but a sovereignty Bill and the repeal of the Human Rights Act 1998 are central to that.

As hon. Members who spoke this afternoon have strongly emphasised, we have a responsibility and an obligation to put the sovereignty of Parliament at the top of our agenda because, as I have often said, it is not our Parliament but that of the people who elect us. The question, “Who governs the United Kingdom?” is therefore central and we have no right to make any concessions on that.

Like the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) for her speech. By the mettle of her arguments and the manner in which she addressed the questions that I asked in several interventions on the Foreign Secretary and the shadow Foreign Secretary about the burdens on business and deregulation, she gave the impression that she had somehow been liberated.

With great respect, it is not good enough to imply that gold-plating and national over-regulation is the real problem, when the problem is the extent of the acquis communautaire. It has an enormous impact on burdens on business—£88 billion according to the British Chambers of Commerce recently. I pay tribute to Tim Ambler and Francis Chittenden for their remarkable analytical work, from which I drew the figure of 4% of GDP, to which Lord Mandelson referred when he was a Commissioner. Mr Verheugen gave similar figures about the over-regulation of European business.

The eurozone does not function properly because of the economic model of the Lisbon agenda—my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) admitted that it had not been working. For years, the European Scrutiny Committee has shown that it has not worked properly. That is all part and parcel of the reason for the widening of our trade deficit with Europe. We cannot manage to trade with an imploding eurozone, part of which is affected by profligate public expenditure, as in the case of Greece, and part of which is affected by the deeply flawed statistical base of the EUROSTAT system. People are allowed to engage in what would be regarded as false accounting in any company.

We are in a European Union that simply cannot work as it is. It is imploding. It cannot compete with China and India because it is inherently ossified. It is a great concrete jungle of over-regulation. One cannot change the nature of employment, yet the whole social and employment base must be changed. To my mind, whether we transfer further powers is neither here nor there. It would be wonderful if we had a referendum on the European question, but the notion that we would be committed to it only when a further transfer of powers occurred is wrong. I have heard it all before. I heard it when Lord Hurd was Foreign Secretary during the debates on the Maastricht treaty. I stood in this very place, inveighing against it. As the hon. Member for Luton North said, we got so much about that right at the time. The late Peter Shore and I found an amity based on a common understanding that that system was not going to work, and so it has proved.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The hon. Gentleman may know that Lord Hurd, a euro enthusiast, said last week that it would now be difficult to find more than one in 10 people in Britain who are prepared to contemplate the single currency.

[Mr Cash]

I certainly do, and I say without any sense of self-congratulation that when we said such things in the Maastricht debates, we were vehemently criticised by the then Government. We were rubbished, if I may use that expression, for daring to suggest that the single currency would not work. The same goes for the paraphernalia that followed in a succession of treaties. I must have tabled at least 150 or 200 amendments—I cannot remember exactly how many—to each of the treaties from Maastricht onwards, including the Lisbon treaty, which we simply must not implement.

The whole European system must be radically and drastically reformed, precisely because it is impossible to repatriate powers without a sovereignty Act—I repeat my call for that to be introduced as urgently as possible—and we need that to underpin the negotiations on economic recovery. We must have economic recovery because otherwise, we cannot reduce the debt or pay for the necessary public services. We are living in a fool’s paradise if we think otherwise. That is fundamental.

I am concerned about further enlargement, and my earlier exchanges with the shadow Foreign Secretary are on the record—I was slightly pulled up for following my point up. The European Scrutiny Committee asked very serious questions about the accession of Bulgaria and Romania. Those countries are reasons why we should not enlarge any more, to include, for example, Albania, Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey. I do not have time to go into those arguments now, but the bottom line is that the European Union is more than large enough, and unfortunately, it does not work, and must be reformed drastically.

If there is no way of reforming the EU from within because of the acquis communautaire and the role of the European Court of Justice, and because other member states are simply not prepared to negotiate sensibly on legislation that requires unanimity to repeal, we are going to be stuck by the majority vote. All the protestations, hopes, aspirations, and perhaps some rather over-enthusiastic promises, will come to nothing, because it is impossible to change the system under majority voting when there is no will to do so on the other side, which takes us back to repatriation and the sovereignty Act.

The human rights question is enormously important. The necessity for the repeal of the Human Rights Act 1998 runs in tandem with the charter of fundamental rights. In a recent speech to judges, the Lord Chief Justice stated:

“The primary responsibility for saving the common law system of proceeding by precedent is primarily a matter for us as judges…Are we becoming so focused on Strasbourg and the Convention that instead of incorporating Convention principles within and developing the common law accordingly as a single coherent unit, we are allowing the Convention to assume an unspoken priority over the common law?…We must beware.”

We must take such things very seriously.

Lord Hoffman has said that the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg

“has been unable to resist the temptation to aggrandise its jurisdiction and to impose uniform rules on Member States. It considers itself the equivalent of the Supreme Court of the United States, laying down a federal law of Europe.”

The same applies to the charter of fundamental rights. We must stop that process.

16:35

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the honour and the opportunity to make my first contribution to this House and I congratulate other hon. Members who have done so today. If I may be forgiven for being partisan, I especially enjoyed the contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott), for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) and for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood). I also wish to compliment the hon. Members for Hove (Mike Weatherley), for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) and for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby).

As several of my colleagues have said, to represent the people of your home constituency—in my case, Easington—is a great privilege. It is all the more special for me as I represent the constituency in which I was born and where I have lived, brought up my family and worked all my life. As hon. Members may be aware—or perhaps not—Easington has an illustrious list of former Members of Parliament and a proud tradition of trade union and Labour party representation. The area that I now represent has returned Labour Members of Parliament since 1921, when the great socialist Sidney Webb was first elected. He was a leading member of the Fabian Society, one of the founders of the London School of Economics, and author of the Labour party’s original clause IV.

Labour’s Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald was one of my predecessors. The House would do well to take note of his experience of peacetime coalition Government. When he split with the Labour party, his 1931 coalition leading the Tory and Liberal Democrat—sorry, I mean Tory and Liberal—parties, with an agenda of severe cuts in public spending, was opposed by the Labour Party. At that time the Labour Opposition developed a progressive socialist alternative and opposed the cuts that were to hurt ordinary working people and the unemployed. The following election saw Labour gain 102 seats, and the election after that was a Labour landslide.

The eminent Manny Shinwell served the people of Easington for more than 35 years. As Minister for fuel and power he achieved the nationalisation of the coal industry in 1947. It is recorded in Hansard that following angry exchanges in this House, Shinwell crossed the Floor, not in the usual fashion, but instead to strike a blow at the face of a Conservative MP. More recently, the popular Jack Dormond represented his local seat of Easington and served as chairman of the parliamentary Labour party for several years.

However, it is my direct predecessor John Cummings about whom I can talk without reference to history books or the parliamentary archives. Like me, John was born in Murton, a small village in Easington, and he worked in the coal mines from the age of 15. He was a political activist in the Durham Colliery Mechanics Association and the Labour party. He was later elected to the Easington district council and became its leader. In 1987, he was elected to this House and he has served the people of Easington with passion and diligence for 23 years. Indeed, I had the privilege of working for John and witnessing his extraordinary commitment on behalf of the people of Easington during his 23 years of public service. The whole House can be proud to serve in a democracy where a boy who went down the pit aged 15 could rise up to serve as a distinguished Member of this House. John is a friend who has been an inspiration to me, and I wish him well in his retirement.

Easington consists of a series of small villages and the larger towns of Peterlee and Seaham. It has natural beauty in abundance. Our east Durham heritage coast is an undiscovered masterpiece which enticed Lord Byron and Lewis Carroll to the area two centuries ago. The communities of Easington are former coal mining communities. The House should understand the importance of this proud history but also the lasting legacy of coal mining. Easington’s pits produced the nation’s wealth, its communities were created and built around a life in coal mining. Areas like Easington were a microcosm of the welfare state before any national Government had the foresight to implement it. Part of Easington’s proud tradition was its self-reliance and its widespread socialised community provision, which included socialised medicine, health care, pensioner housing and even funeral arrangements.

The lasting legacy of coal mining in Easington, however, is tarnished by the joblessness and economic activity that followed the reckless actions of previous Tory Administrations. Easington has prospered and seen significant improvements over the past decade, but more recently it has been at the forefront of job losses and economic decline, due to the global financial crisis and recession, which is why the successes of Caterpillar in Peterlee and the automotive industry—directly related to the success of Nissan in Sunderland—are so important.

The achievements of the last Labour Government are exemplified by the physical regeneration of large parts of Easington and the laying of the foundations for economic revival. Our new restaurants, cafes and retail outlets, such as Dalton Park—the biggest outlet shopping centre in the north-east—have brought jobs and a new dynamism to east Durham, its surrounding areas and the whole of the north-east. We have new Sure Start centres, new primary schools, such as Trinity primary school in Seaham, and new secondary school buildings, such as Shotton Hall community school. They have given hope, optimism and a sense of purpose to the people of Easington, especially young people.

Most of all, the last Labour Government protected the elderly people of Easington. The winter fuel allowance and cold weather payments stopped pensioners having to choose between heating and eating; a rising state pension, the pensioner guarantee and help with paying council tax gave them financial security; and the free bus pass gave them their independence. Easington, in its transition from its coal mining legacy, was always going to need the support of the Government to assist in building a new economic infrastructure. It is a shame that the people of Easington had to wait until 1997 for that support to come, when a generation had already been lost to unemployment and ill health. However, significant progress has been made and the face of Easington is changing.

I have been elected to serve the people of Easington at a time when the coalition Government have committed to cut spending, to cut the support to business through the regional development agencies, to cut support for jobs through the future jobs fund and to cut support for education by jeopardising the flagship Building Schools for the Future programme and through unidentified cuts to the education budget. The work of the RDA, One NorthEast, which was highlighted by my hon. Friends the Members for Newcastle upon Tyne North and for Sunderland Central, has been pivotal in encouraging new businesses and jobs, not only in Sunderland and Newcastle but in areas such as Easington.

The House has only to look at GT Group in Peterlee, in my constituency—a cutting-edge manufacturing company specialising in environmental engineering—which, with the support of One NorthEast, has safeguarded 200 jobs and guaranteed 200 new jobs. That is not just my perception. In the words of GT Group managing director, Geoff Turnbull,

“The major investment programme”

in GT Group

“would have been very difficult without the assistance of One North East and Durham County Council, both of which have shown a real commitment to ensuring our business has the support it requires to be a pioneer in this important technology.”

I hope this coalition Government will consider seriously the policies of the previous Labour Government, which harnessed the resources of the state to encourage the creation of new businesses and the expansion of businesses such as GT Group.

The European consensus on renewables, green technology and combating climate change, which was referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband), the shadow Foreign Secretary, is a prime example of the need for co-ordinated Government policies that cultivate a positive response from private business in these sectors. One NorthEast was created by the previous Government and was funded to deliver its ambitious plans for regeneration. We now understand that it faces cuts of up to 40%, which will effectively cut the legs from beneath it. We have also lost our north-east Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), who provided leadership and a coherent strategy across a range of issues in our region, not least in his support for the Centre for Creative Excellence south of Seaham.

I am most grateful to you for permitting me to make my maiden speech, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I am most thankful to the House for its courtesy and attention. I look forward to more robust exchanges in future and to many more opportunities to represent the views and interests of my constituents in this Chamber.

16:45

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make my maiden speech to the House. I commend the speech that the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) gave in such an eloquent and powerful manner.

On the subject of the debate, I agree not only that Britain can benefit from its membership of the European Union, but that Europe benefits from Britain’s membership of the union. We should resist unnecessary interference from the European Union, which should not seek to interfere with every facet of our lives. We need individuals to have greater freedoms over their lives and for this House to have the freedom to operate without further subservience to the European Union.

This House benefits from the expertise that different Members bring to it. I pay tribute to my predecessor, Dr Howard Stoate, who brought to the House an in-depth knowledge of medical issues, which I am sure the House appreciated. He served the residents of Dartford for well over a decade and worked hard for them.

Dartford has a tradition of not changing its Member of Parliament very often; indeed, I am only the sixth Member for Dartford since the second world war. That is a tradition that I would like Dartford to continue. Dartford is also the longest serving bellwether seat in the entire country, with the Member of Parliament reflecting the Government party for nearly 50 years. Again, that is a tradition that I would like to keep. Dartford is also the seat that Lady Thatcher contested twice and the place where she met her husband Denis. To this day, she is referred to as Margaret Roberts by some of my more senior local party members.

It is traditional for new Members of Parliament to say something complimentary about their constituency. For me, that is easy. Dartford is my home, my background and my life. I grew up locally. I helped my father to deliver milk to the local area on his milk round, and I attended Dartford grammar school. Although I probably spent more time in the headmaster’s study than he did, I still gained a great deal from my education, and I doubt whether I would be here today if it were not for that experience.

Dartford is a diverse constituency, with rural villages and an urban town centre. It is a commuter town, with a heavy reliance on the rail network. As part of the Thames Gateway, we have seen a large number of new houses built in the area. Thousands more houses are planned that could threaten the stability of the local area if we do not properly prepare for them. However, they could also create a wonderful opportunity, if we can ensure that the necessary infrastructure is in place to cope with the influx of new residents. The more established areas, such as Joyden’s Wood, Longfield and Hawley, are popular villages for local families to live in. Areas such as Greenhithe are once again flourishing, after declining with the loss of manufacturing in the area.

Dartford also has a rich vein of history. The Roman road of Watling street was built through Dartford, going under the site of the town’s church, via a ford over the river Darent, thus giving the town its name. Wat Tyler’s revolt began in Dartford, which was where he lived and where the peasants congregated before marching towards this House. I am pleased to say that the residents of Dartford still like to lobby their representatives in a forthright manner, but thankfully for me in a less blood-thirsty way these days.

In the 16th century, Henry VIII’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleeves, lived in Dartford, and shortly afterwards the school that I attended was founded in the town centre. Thus began a tradition of good quality education in Dartford that still exists today. Although we have four excellent grammar schools in Dartford, we also have flourishing academies, such as the Leigh technology academy, which attracts pupils from a wide area—so much so that Dartford now needs more school capacity to provide sufficient places for local school children.

Dartford has other challenges ahead. Our town centre is desperately in need of regeneration. The recent recession has prevented a development project from taking place, and local traders are suffering the consequence of that.

Another thing that affects traders and local residents is the continuation of the tolls on the Dartford crossing. The tolls remain in force despite previous assurances, and they create congestion and misery across the entire area. They act as a literal road block to the opening up of the Thames Gateway. Any Member who has found themselves stuck in traffic at the Dartford crossing will confirm that, instead of opening up the area, the crossing actually stifles it. It also creates pollution, which has a detrimental effect on the health of my constituents. For all those reasons, and many more, I will never stop campaigning for the tolls on the Dartford crossing to be scrapped.

Dartford also has much to be optimistic about. Too often, we hear reports in the media about religious tensions, but our Baptist church sits right next door to our Sikh temple without a murmur of difficulty, something of which both congregations are rightly proud. Bluewater shopping centre provides fantastic employment opportunities and a model apprenticeship scheme—not to mention the shopping opportunities that are keenly experienced by my wife. A lot of work has gone into improving Dartford. It has a first-class new judo centre at Stone, as well as a brand new football stadium and a forward-thinking local authority. My constituency is also the home of Ebbsfleet International train station, which lies on the new high-speed rail line between London and Paris. These increased transportation links—rather than increased political links—with the European Union represent the direction in which I believe we should be moving.

I am the first ever Member of Parliament to live in the beautiful rural village of Hartley in my constituency. Villages such as New Barn, Wilmington and Southfleet add to the pleasant country feel of much of the area. Although it is just 16 miles from this Chamber, Dartford has a very Kentish character and culture. It is proud to be distinct from London, and I am very proud to be able to represent it.

16:52

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) on his excellent maiden speech, and all the other hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches today. I particularly welcome the fact that we have had four superb speeches from new women Members on the Labour Benches. That demonstrates the fact that, although it is still happening too slowly, the more representative the parliamentary Labour party becomes, the more effective we will be. As an Opposition, we will be far more effective as a result of their contributions and those of others that we shall hear. That was ably demonstrated during the debate.

I also note that, during the past three hours since the Front-Bench speeches, the notional quorum of 40 has not been reached in the House. There are no specific business votes today, but this situation will need to be challenged—perhaps not today, but in the next few weeks. It is neither fair nor reasonable that we should have a coalition Government with only half the coalition present. I apologise if there are Members whom I do not recognise because they are new, but I do not spot any Liberals here. I have spotted some documents that have arrived, however: the Liberal party, in government for the first time in 80 years, is represented here today by a pile of papers. For the past two hours, there have been no Liberals present in the Chamber. They have a responsibility, when in government, to be here to listen and to argue their case.

I commend the Minister for Europe, and welcome him to his job. I believe that he has been present throughout the debate. That is appropriate Front-Bench activity for any party, but where is his Liberal deputy, or any Liberal? Not so long ago, the Liberals would have crawled across broken glass to attend a debate on Europe to show their enthusiasm for the European Union. Perhaps that explains their reluctance in this new coalition, when Members such as the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) can congratulate them on their speeches on Europe and tell them how far they have moved in three weeks.

This fragile coalition will, I predict, be still more fragile on the issue of Europe in times to come. One thing I can assure the Liberals of is that they are going to have to provide, as a coalition Government, sufficient Members at any one time—or they will be challenged, whatever day and whatever time of day it is. That is particularly so when the new Government want to reduce the number of Members—by 65, I believe. Well, that is a legitimate debating point and we will no doubt vote on it at some stage in the future, but if we are going to reduce the number of Members, we have to have those who are Members here in the Chamber in the first place. That is the first duty of Government. We, of course, have less onerous duties in terms of—[Interruption.] Oh, I see that a Liberal is belatedly emerging, which gives me the opportunity to reinforce my point, and the Liberals will be particularly keen to understand and contemplate it, given their role in the coalition.

It seems to me that politicians across the world and within Europe, however it is defined, are not addressing the two biggest issues in the world. The first is population. It is not sustainable for the world population to continue to increase in the way it has. Politicians across the world, including in Europe and in this House, have virtually nothing to say on that key issue. The second issue that goes alongside the growth of population and exacerbates it is the problem of migration.

Peoples have always migrated, but when the number of people migrating and the volumes and speed of migration are increasing as fast as they are today, conflict will emerge in all parts of the world. Some of those conflicts will be based on resources, some on climate, some on wars—in fact, some will create wars—and some on economic migration, but conflict is fundamental. Given the size of the world population, it seems to me that the levels and speed of migration are not sustainable. A quarter of the world’s countries have had food riots in the past 18 months. Many of the mass migrations outside the European Union in recent years have led to major conflict, leading to multiple deaths because of war.

One of the dilemmas and problems that this coalition will have to face over the EU is that although the Prime Minister makes great play of how tough he is on immigration, on all occasions when he refers to immigration, he means immigration from outside the EU. Thus doctors from India cannot get into this country, even when our hospitals want them, because the Government—it was the same under the Labour Government—are “toughening their stance” on immigration. As I say, that means immigration from outside the EU.

Earlier today, however, we heard a leading Liberal, the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), when he had bothered to attend, say that the new coalition was potentially in favour of Turkey acceding to the European Union. We have also heard the new Foreign Secretary outlining how there will be no referendums on accession. He was prepared to name Croatia, but how many more countries are there? With accession, of course, comes free movement of labour. The Maastricht treaty, as voted through by the Foreign Secretary and his colleagues in 1992, created the format, using the treaty of Rome as its basis, but going much further on the free movement of labour.

We have heard speech after speech, including those from the Eurosceptics on the Conservative Benches, saying unequivocally that what they want is more flexibility—in other words, a cheap labour pool for business. That is what flexibility is about for them. For a power worker at Staythorpe power station or for a worker at the East Lindsey oil refinery, or at many other places, as new migrants have come in, the agencies have squeezed wage levels and reduced the opportunities for jobs. In my area, the agencies recruit in Polish from Poland and then employ those people in factories on a casual basis, day by day. The fact that workers in my constituency and surrounding constituencies cannot compete with those wage levels is causing fundamental problems which this dishonest coalition is refusing to address.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

During their 13 years in office, how did the last Labour Government manage to address the problem that the hon. Gentleman has described—of “British jobs for British workers”?

[John Mann]

The hon. Gentleman has not had the privilege and joy of listening to my speeches about the issue in the past, but I will give him an opportunity to do so now. I have made the same criticism of the Labour Government, who made a fundamental error in failing to address the problem of agency workers and the programme of migration.

This issue will not go away. We cannot go on expanding the European Union and allowing more cheaper-wage economies to move in, because that is not sustainable. There is a deeper unsustainability when we see people migrating to where social conditions are better. The Germans have a solution with their Gastarbeiter—there are 20 million Turks living in Germany who are not official citizens—but it cannot be applied within the European Union.

People migrate here quite legitimately, realising that they can work here and then retire here, benefiting from health and education services that are significantly better than those in the potential new accession countries. In their position, I would think it rational to move. I would think it rational to get my children into good British schools. I would think it rational to use the British health service, because investment has made it far better than others. The people who lose out, however, are not the middle classes, who are happy to enjoy a plethora of new restaurants in London and happy to benefit from the au pairs, gardeners and other advantages of cheap labour, but working-class communities. That is where the new migrant labour lives. The pressure on health and schools has a disproportionate impact on the very people who do not gain the benefits of that migrant labour, and who are competing with it for jobs. That is not a sustainable social model.

A major change will be necessary at the heart of the treaty of Rome. Currently, under that treaty, the Maastricht treaty and the various accession Acts that have been passed by successive Governments, workers and family members must not become a burden on the social assistance system. Well, they are not, but that is to do with the benefits system. The real cost is the cost to the working-class communities in schools, in health and in infrastructure. It is those communities who are losing out, and the middle classes who are benefiting.

I hope that the spokesmen on my party’s Front Bench are listening, because this issue is fundamental to the people whom we represent. The social model within Europe that allows this mass migration—the free movement of labour to whatever destination—is not sustainable, and the European Union is not sustainable with it. There must be a restriction to protect the position of those working-class communities, not least mine.

17:03

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to make my maiden speech, and to speak up for the people of Dover and of Deal. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) on his excellent maiden speech, and on his passionate and trenchant defence of the Dartford crossing. He and I share an interest in, and a concern about, the selling off of our nation’s assets. I also congratulate Members on both sides of the House who have made their maiden speeches today. The list has grown too long for me to name all those Members, but all their speeches were excellent, and I believe that they all have a great future in this place.

It is traditional to congratulate and celebrate one’s predecessor in the constituency. I pay great tribute to Gwyn Prosser, who was an excellent hard-working Member of Parliament, well known by Labour Members. He was also a very loyal and diligent Member of Parliament, who took up the causes and concerns of the people of Dover and Deal. When what I used to think were simple problems, easily solved, suddenly landed in my lap, I found that they were less simple and less easily solved than might have seemed the case outside this great and august House. He was a very fine Member of Parliament, and he will be a hard act to follow.

I understand that it is also traditional to talk about one’s constituency and its history. We in Dover are, of course, used to visitors. One of our earliest recorded visits was in 55 BC by Julius Caesar; he caught an early ferry from France and came to Dover. In those days border security was quite good—would that were still the case—and he was unable to make a landing at Dover because warlike tribesmen were going to see him off. Instead he went down the coast a few miles—to Deal and Walmer, it is said—where he landed and did the customary European thing in those days: proceeded with an invasion. Having made some progress with his invasion, he then dispatched a communiqué back to Rome. This is what he said:

“By far the most civilised inhabitants are those living in Kent, a purely maritime district”.

Well, Dover maritime is very maritime—and, we like to think, very, very civilised. While we are disappointed that Julius Caesar made war upon us, we forgive him a bit because of his very communautaire approach in talking so nicely about us to his capital city.

European relations have continued in this vein ever since, in war and in peace. In Napoleonic times the channel fleet was stationed off the coast of Deal. The long historical link between Deal and the Royal Marines was forged, too. As Members will know, we are celebrating the 70th anniversary of Operation Dynamo, the glorious retreat from Dunkirk. Our white cliffs came to symbolise a nation’s struggle to survive—a nation’s struggle for sovereignty and the values of liberty, democracy and freedom that our nation upholds. As Member of Parliament for Dover, I know that I carry a heavy responsibility to uphold those vital values.

Dover paid a heavy price for being in Hellfire Corner. We lost a beautiful regency town, and we are still waiting for regeneration to this day. I have said to my electors that my hope is that with investment, jobs and money, the gateway to England can once again become a jewel in the crown of our nation. This is my hope. I want it to be my life’s work, and I hope we will achieve it and succeed.

Other things come out of our history of being the gateway to England and the border of our nation. The first of them is concern: concern that the previous Government conceived a plan to sack our experienced immigration officers. We are concerned because we do not want porous borders, nor do we want more human trafficking, more gun running or more drug smuggling. We want to ensure that we have proper border security and national security. We want to ensure that the “jungle” in Calais is dealt with, not simply because we are concerned about the number of people there, but because we are concerned about the children there, who are living in terrible conditions. We want them to be looked after properly in a proper European settled way. We must co-operate with our friends, allies and community partners to get a lasting solution to this concern that many hold.

The previous Government also conceived a plan to sell off our port. We do not want our nation’s borders to be sold. The people of Dover are trenchantly opposed to that idea. I come here planning to do all in my power to find a better way forward than simply to sell it off at the bottom of the market, possibly to a foreign power. That would be the wrong thing to do for our nation’s security.

The people of Dover also want to have a proper hospital back in Dover. The previous Government offered us a polyclinic, having run down our hospital. We say we want a proper hospital, with care beds and doctor-led emergency services. These things are important to us because the nearest acute hospitals are 40 minutes down the road by car and four hours by public transport. That is bad for old people, and those who are badly off and cannot afford a car and do not have access to one. We want a fair share of health care; we feel that is very important.

People in Dover have also told me time and again, “When you come to the House, Charlie, tell them we want a George cross, too.” That might be a bit much to ask, but our area paid a heavy price in the war, and people might compare the price we paid with the price that Malta paid. This case should be examined, and I hope that it will be, in due course.

Finally, I should say that the liberty of the subject is one of the most important calls on any Member of Parliament, and as the Member of Parliament for Dover, I especially feel that responsibility, given my constituency’s history in defending our nation’s freedom and liberty. The honouring of the military covenant is also important to people in Dover and Deal. I therefore bring to the House’s attention the case of Major Bill Shaw, MBE. He is a man who was commissioned from the ranks. He was a regimental sergeant major and was awarded an MBE for his excellent services to the armed forces. He was promoted to the rank of major and subsequently retired having served in Bosnia and Iraq, having been decorated and having instructed at Sandhurst.

He has served our country well, but today he finds himself in an Afghan jail facing a two-year sentence as a result of allegations of “corruption”; there seems to have been a misunderstanding as to what constitutes corruption and what constitutes a payment to release one’s car from the pound. I am concerned about this matter, as is his family, and we want to see that justice is done. There are questions as to whether due procedure was followed, and whether he received justice. I ask my colleagues on the Front Bench to examine this case and see what can be done for this man. He defended us for most of his life, and it is therefore right that we should defend him in his hour of need and ensure that his case is properly looked at and his interests properly defended by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to make my maiden speech; I am very grateful.

17:11

[Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech as the new Member of Parliament for Great Yarmouth. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and all the hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches today. So excellent have they been that there is great pressure on those who rise to speak at this stage of the day, because we are very aware of what has come before.

I am also conscious of Great Yarmouth’s history, and it seems, in an ironic way, fitting that I should make my maiden speech in a debate on Europe, given some of the political controversy that Great Yarmouth has enjoyed over the years. That dates back to the fact that some Members of Parliament of the time signed the death warrant for King Charles I in Great Yarmouth—I commend the museum there to any hon. Member who wishes to find out more about that—and carried on through to its dissolution as a constituency in the mid-1900s for electoral questions and corruption, only for the constituency subsequently to rise again.

I am the third Member of Parliament to represent Great Yarmouth in its new formation. The first was Michael Carttiss, which is why I mentioned the irony of the fact that I am speaking in a European debate. Michael’s views, actions and speeches on Europe and on the Maastricht treaty are still notorious in Great Yarmouth and Norfolk, as they doubtless are with some hon. Members. He gave years of public service and still serves as a Norfolk county councillor in the Great Yarmouth area. He was followed by my direct predecessor, Mr Anthony Wright, who has also given a huge amount of public service and who deserves a great deal of thanks from me and from all the constituents of Great Yarmouth. We should recognise the amount of time that he put in as a councillor and council leader, and as the Member of Parliament for Great Yarmouth. He built a great reputation among all its residents for being a genuine, straight and friendly man to deal with, and he did so much to represent many charities across the constituency.

There are a great many things to do in my constituency, and it is fitting that I am speaking on a day when so many hon. Members representing seaside and coastal resorts have spoken. There has been a form of competition as to who represents the best coastal town, and I shall put my pitch in for Great Yarmouth, the second largest seaside town in the country. Tourism is a hugely important industry for my area, as it is worth getting on for £500 million a year to its economy. That makes it important to Great Yarmouth, to Norfolk and to East Anglia. Our area contains more than most people realise. It contains a large chunk of the Norfolk broads, rural villages to enjoy, architecture that dates back to the ruins of Roman forts, places with links to Nelson, some fabulous museums, a race track, a dog track and a wonderful shoreline.

However, part of that shoreline is under threat from coastal erosion. Our coast stretches from Winterton, through Hemsby, Scratby, Great Yarmouth itself, Gorleston and Hopton. I will have work to do as a Member of Parliament to support the new Government on this issue, when, as I hope, we move away from the bureaucracy and red tape that has led to report after report on coastal erosion, and get down to doing some work to protect our coastline and safeguard some of the communities in Great Yarmouth. I will work with my hon. Friend and ally the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) to make sure that we protect the coastline to the east of Norfolk more generally.

We must also remember that tourism is an important industry for our country. I hope to play my part in arguing the case for it, as it is one of our most cost-effective industries in creating jobs. That is something that we in Great Yarmouth need, as at certain times of the year our unemployment is way above average.

The town has one of the most deprived wards in the country, and there is much work to do to improve our infrastructure. One of my predecessors often joked that the nearest motorway was on mainland Europe, and not too much has changed. We have work to do in that regard, but it is worth doing.

Earlier, I was pleased to hear my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary mention the green agenda, climate change and the need for new energy sources in the future, because all that represents an opportunity for Great Yarmouth. Just as the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) noted with regard to her constituency, Great Yarmouth can benefit from renewable energy. I believe that I can work with my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) to make Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth an epicentre for renewable energy in our region, as well as in our country and in Europe.

We in Great Yarmouth already have the experience of working with the offshore oil and gas industries, and the offshore wind farm at Scroby Sands used to be the largest in Europe. A new wind farm is coming, and there is the local potential to exploit marine energy and other renewables because we have the necessary experience and expertise. Most importantly, our phenomenal new outer harbour has created a deep-water port that will allow us to service the industry, not just through facilitating its supply chain when it is built, but by acting as its construction base. I intend to play my part, loudly, in bringing that about. I have already talked to Ministers to ensure that Great Yarmouth gets a really good shot at delivering on some of the opportunities arising from the new energy industry. I want to protect and grow our economy, and to protect and grow energy for our country in the future.

We have a wide diversity of business in Great Yarmouth. The Government’s plans to free up business and entrepreneurs are very exciting. The tourism industry is the essence of our entrepreneurship, but among our businesses are also companies that supply potatoes for crisps and chips. Other firms supply microchips for NASA and the Ministry of Defence, and still others provide broadband services and other facilities.

Mine is a diverse and exciting constituency. I have a phenomenal job ahead of me in making sure that I deliver on the trust and faith that the people of Great Yarmouth have placed in me. I want to follow those that have gone before in making sure that we take advantage of the opportunities that exist for the area. I intend to play my part in making sure that we grip with them with both hands. I hope that I can play a small part in moving Great Yarmouth forward, thereby helping our country to grow in the years ahead.

17:17

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me my second opportunity to speak in what is only my third week in this place. I look forward to goading my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), the former Minister for Europe, into answering some of my questions in a few moments.

I come to this place after 10 years of experience in the European Parliament. Throughout that time, the hon. Member for Rhondda was ever present in European circles. He first came to us as a lobbyist, talking to us in BBC-speak about the audio-visual media services directive and such like, but his later guise was as the Minister for Europe.

However, first I want to address the current Minister for Europe. There are a number of tricks of the trade—I know that my hon. Friend will learn them very quickly—but I do not think that they were completely grasped by his predecessor in the role.

First, I do not think that we have ever used all the power that we should be able to wield in European institutions. We are, and have been for a number of years, the second largest net contributor to the EU budget. We all know, because it is often talked about in this place, that for the past 15 years the European Commission’s accounts have not been signed off—in the technical language, given a “positive statement of assurance”—by the European Court of Auditors.

That state of affairs has continued since 1994. During all 13 years of the previous Labour Government, not one Treasury Minister visiting Brussels queried whether we were getting value for money. Not only that, but no one asked whether so much money should be spent on projects that were well known to be affected by fraud and mismanagement.

If we were to punch above our weight—or at least at our weight—in Europe, I would suggest that we honour, almost, what French, German and Spanish colleagues do. They would stop at absolutely nothing to get their way in those institutions. They would drag the budget process to a halt. They would drag a former British Prime Minister to talk about trumpets at the gate and say that he is actually just about to give away a huge amount of British money to keep them quiet—to stop them moaning at him for some other engagements that he might be doing around the world. We must absolutely remind our European partners that yes, we do want to play a full part in European institutions with our European friends, in whatever future Europe has, but that actually we want to be regarded as a fair partner as well. We have been playing—and paying—their game for too long.

I suggest to my hon. Friend the Minister that we should be arguing for more repeal of European legislation—something that just does not happen any more. We want sunset clauses in all new directives passing through the European Commission, as I hope we would expect in any new legislation that passes through this place, so that if a directive does not work, there is an opportunity for it to fall.

I would advise my hon. Friend about EU-creep. No, I am not like Nigel Farage, the former UK Independence party leader, referring to the Presidents of the European Council. I am talking about where Europe gradually extends its field. Six years ago, as a Member of the European Parliament, I went to a meeting where I was advised that the External Action Service—which we commented on earlier today—was simply not going to happen. On the way to that meeting, I met a friend of mine who had just had a job interview for a position with that External Action Service. I told the gentleman from the Foreign Office who had told me that the service would not happen that I had this friend and that jobs were available, and he said that no, he must have got that absolutely wrong. For years, those who now sit on the Opposition Benches have said that there would be no such thing—that it would not happen—and now we have a full-blown External Action Service. We are going to have European Commission offices acting like embassies across the globe, diminishing the role of those of member states.

I am deeply concerned about the passerelle clause that came into being in the Lisbon treaty—the constitution: it was and is the same thing. I believe that that clause will be actioned on many occasions, and probably is being actioned at this moment. I am equally concerned about the growth in the European Union’s budget. All these things are not negatives taken on their own, but together they add up to what I call Euro-creep: a growing tendency for powers and money to gravitate towards the centre, which is Brussels—and, of course, Strasbourg.

I opened my maiden speech by saying that it was a great shame that we have to have Strasbourg as a home for the European Parliament. Ministers, the current Deputy Prime Minister and I set up a campaign in the European Parliament. We had a petition that got 1 million signatures online—including that of the now European Commissioner from Sweden—to try to get only one seat for the European Parliament. I know the problems that go with it, but I emphasise to hon. Members that surely the current arrangement is one example of a member state punching way above its weight.

[Ms Gisela Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is a former Member of the European Parliament and before he gets too sanctimonious, I remind him that during the Convention on the Future of Europe the European Parliament refused to agree on one seat because the default position in the treaty is that the Parliament sits in Strasbourg. Without French agreement, it would have had to give up its seat in Brussels.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

There are many other examples, from debates held over the years in all institutions in Europe—and from debates that I have read in this House—of wonderful ideas on what we could do with the buildings of Strasbourg or Brussels. The fact is that we are talking about a huge, expensive white elephant that the people of Britain think is yet another waste of taxpayers’ money.

I know that this will not make my hon. Friend the Minister particularly popular when he is in negotiations on the other side of the channel, but I just ask him to mention, every now and again when the French delegation gets a bit excited about reformulation of the common agricultural policy or something else—the French get excited about all sorts of things—that we have been very generous in allowing them to maintain the seat of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, because it is unpalatable to most of our electorates.

I wish my hon. Friend the greatest of luck in his new role. There are great difficulties across the continent at the moment. There is the crisis of the huge debt that many countries have, and the incongruous way in which that debt may have to be serviced by other members of the eurozone—I like to think that it would not be serviced by British taxpayers. There are other pressures, too. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) made the point that we cannot have British jobs for British workers, and talked about the pressures that future accessions might bring. I know from my time in the European Parliament, and from going round schools in what was my region and is now my constituency, how deeply unpopular among the British people the possible accession of Turkey could be. If we press forward with it, we will have a great deal of work to do in explaining to our electorate that it is the right thing for Britain and British workers.

[John Mann]

Can the hon. Gentleman explain why the new coalition Government will potentially have referendums on all sorts of things to do with the European Union, but not on the question of any accession? Does he not see that as rather a contradiction?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for asking me a question way above the pay grade of such a cub Member; I refuse to answer it because I haven’t got a clue what the answer is. That is the blunt honesty that will, I hope, become associated with me. If we go down the line of accession, we should look not only at Croatia, but at countries such as Macedonia, which has been held back because of its problems with Greece over so simple a thing as its name and history.

There are many items on which there are problems ahead, but I would like to think that my hon. Friend, the Minister for Europe, has it all completely under control.

17:28

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is an enormous pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), who referred to me as his hon. Friend; coalitions are building, but I do not think that they are going quite that far. It is a delight to see him, because despite his absolutely ludicrous, nonsensical opinions on Europe—and nearly everything else under the sun—he is quite a nice guy. Indeed, we have shared many a pint, and several bottles of wine, which I think I always paid for, in Les Aviateurs in Strasbourg. I wish him well. The hon. Gentleman follows on from a very fine Member of Parliament, who was much respected across the House; he had much more sensible views than the hon. Gentleman, I fear.

I should explain to new hon. Members that the normal course of an EU debate is that we have exactly the same people along to every single one for about 15 years, and they deliver their single transferrable speech, which they have delivered at every previous such debate. It sometimes reminds one a bit of a sitcom—“Dad’s Army” springs to mind. There is always somebody—normally it is the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who does not seem to be in the Chamber at the moment—who is rather irritating, and just ever so slightly pompous, but whose heart, we know, is really in the right place: the Captain Mainwaring of the House. We always have the immensely suave Sergeant Wilson, who is of course the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter). I am not suggesting that he resembles Sergeant Wilson in any other regard, incidentally.

We always have someone who has to say, “Don’t panic, Mr Mainwaring! Don’t panic! It’s all going to be okay!”, and that is normally my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), who on these matters, unfortunately, never agrees with me about anything.

[Mr Davidson]

Get on with it, Pike!

[Chris Bryant]

I am glad that my hon. Friend is piping up, because we always have Private Frazer, “We’re doomed, Captain Mainwaring! We’re doomed!”, and he is always played by my hon. Friend.

Then, of course, we always have someone who is immensely sanctimonious—[Interruption.] And lo and behold, the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) has arrived in the Chamber. Such sanctimony, I hope, will be a thing of the past from the Liberal Democrats. If there is one thing that they must have learned on becoming members of the coalition, it is that sanctimony must be a thing of the past for the Liberal Democrats. I can see that several Conservatives who were Members in the previous Parliament agree, and the hon. Gentleman is surely the vicar from “Dad’s Army”.

At this point I should like to welcome the Minister for Europe, the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr Lidington) to his post. He is a splendid man; I know him well; and he has very good intentions. Again, doubtless, he is about to show us that he has ludicrous politics, but he is a nice man. He is sometimes perhaps a little too precise in his politics, and that might render him the verger from “Dad’s Army”, who was just always a little too precise for his own good. However, the hon. Gentleman is an extremely intelligent man, who I think has led the most winning teams on “University Challenge”, and we look forward to his intelligence, which I am sure he will deploy throughout Europe over the coming months.

We heard a great number of maiden speeches, and that makes this debate rather different from any other, because remarkably few Members said anything about Europe. But, that is in the way of things, and there have been some excellent speeches. It is a shame—

[Ms Gisela Stuart]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, of course.

[Ms Stuart]

I was just wondering: is there any room for women in “Dad’s Army”?

[Chris Bryant]

I was about to make exactly that point. It is so rare for my hon. Friend to help me in any debates on Europe, but it is a great pleasure. It might just be a facet of today’s debate, but, as I was just about to say, it is an enormous shame that, while we have had several maiden speeches from women Opposition Members, we did not have a single one from a woman Government Member. I do not want to make a big partisan point about that, but we must achieve a House that is more representative of the whole of Britain.

There have been some excellent speeches. The hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier)—

[Mr Cash]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

Ah! Captain Mainwaring himself.

[Mr Cash]

I cannot resist it. Does the hon. Gentleman take upon himself the mantle of Godfrey?

[Chris Bryant]

Far be it from me to take any mantles upon myself at all, although I thought that I might be Warden Hodges, who was always the nemesis of Captain Mainwaring.

Anyway, we had a splendid speech from the hon. Member for Wyre Forest—[Interruption.] He has moved! He gave us some wonderful geographical outlines of his constituency, and I thought that I could just hear Elgar playing in the background.

We also had a splendid speech from the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby), who talked about how the French razed Brighton at some point. He thought that the people of Brighton were rather troubled by the French, but then he went on to praise the Norman church. I think that at some point the Normans were the French, were they not? So there seemed to be a bit of inconsistency there, but he made a splendidly short speech, and brevity is the soul of wit in this Chamber. [Interruption.] That does not apply to me. [Interruption.] Neither brevity nor wit.

We had a splendid speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), who gave us a great sense of a passion for culture, which is not just an add-on to political life, but absolutely intrinsic to the life of her constituency. She also referred to our former leader, Harold Wilson, and his time in the constituency.

We had a splendid contribution from the hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy)—a peculiarly named and, perhaps, constructed constituency. He referred to it as a doughnut constituency and he did, indeed, sound like the representative of the York tourist board, as of course all hon. Members do at some point—well, not for York, obviously. He said that it is his 39th birthday, so we wish him well. He does not look 39 yet, but I can assure him, given the way that Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is treating us all, that within a year he will look considerably more than 40. I also note that he looks a little like his father, the Member of the European Parliament.

We heard a splendid speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), who referred to Doug Henderson. I hope that she will be running marathons as well. He was, I think, the third fastest marathon runner in the House; there is a tradition that several are run every year. She referred to Rolos—I never liked Rolos very much—and Andrews Liver Salts, which did not seem like a particularly interesting combination of food. She is a very astute woman, because she praised the local media assiduously; I am sure that that will get her a fine headline in her local newspaper.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) made a fine speech. I did not understand any of the stuff about football, because I have never understood football; I look forward to switching off all the televisions over the next month. She referred to Chris Mullin, a Member who was respected across all parts of the House for his work—and feared, in equal measure, because of his diaries. There are more instalments to come, I fear.

The hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) kindly referred to Mike O’Brien, who was, again, respected by many people. He mentioned the bun day at his local school, with the giving out of buns. It sounded as though that was happening during the general election, which I thought counted as “treating”, but there we are. He referred to his time in the Royal Army Medical Corps and in Banja Luka in what was, I think, normally referred to as the mental factory rather than the metal factory. It is good to have such a mix of people who have served in the armed forces in this House, especially when we are still at war.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) made a very good speech. For me, the most moving point was when she referred to the squandering of the talents of so many women. She has experienced that in her own family’s history, but it is also true in very many walks of life, and it is something that we still need significantly to address.

The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) started with a risqué joke. I myself have never used a risqué joke, or tried to be risqué, in the past. He said that he loved Europe, but of course we knew what was coming—he does not really like Europe very much, or any of its institutions, and certainly not the single European currency.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) made an important speech, particularly in relation to the need for 21st-century buildings if we are to provide 21st-century educational standards. He talked about the exploitation of foreign workers, with a very interesting story from his own family.

The hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) said that he is an Iron Maiden fan, or supporter; in any case, he intends to wear his T-shirt in here at some point. He mentioned various films because he has a history of his own in that line of work.

My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) made an extremely passionate speech referring to the problems that mining constituencies have had—something that I know about from my constituency in Rhondda, where we still have to overcome some of the problems that were given to us from the past.

The hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) mentioned Wat Tyler’s revolt. I thought that we were about to hear a radical, left-wing speech and that he was going to give us Wat Tyler’s lines, “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”—but then we know, of course, that it is every single member of the new Cabinet.

The hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) went right back in history to the time of Julius Caesar and said that the border controls were rather good in those days; well, they were not, really, because we were entirely invaded. He described Dover as the gateway to England, whereas I think of Bristol as the gateway to England from Wales—a far more important avenue.

The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) started by talking about the death warrant for Charles I. I was a little bewildered at that point, because I thought that he was going to blame that on the European Union.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

indicated assent.

[Chris Bryant]

I see the hon. Gentleman nodding. He thinks that everything bad that has ever happened is basically down to the European Union, the Labour Government or, for all I know, me personally.

There were also important contributions that were actually about Europe. In particular, the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter) referred to the issues relating to the Western European Union, in which he has played a significant part. I hope that the new Minister for Europe will be able to answer some of those questions, particularly about what his plans are for making sure there is a replacement, so that the important job of scrutinising European foreign and defence policy is not just assumed by the European Parliament. That would not be the right place for that to be done.

My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), who I hope is not only the past Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, but the future Chairman, made some important points about how we conduct scrutiny in the House. I have always thought that we have not done it very well and, during my time as a Minister, I tried to improve that. I hope that the Minister will be able to say whether he will table a new scrutiny reserve resolution for that Committee as soon as possible. That was very much in the pipeline before the general election and I hope it can be arranged as soon as possible.

I celebrate the presence of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) in the Chamber. Even if she can sometimes slightly irritate me, I am delighted she is here. The doughtiness of her campaign in her constituency stood her in good stead in the general election and, even though we sometimes disagree with her, I am sure that we all accept that the doughtiness of her argument is well put. She made some important points this afternoon about the euro and the genuine crisis in Europe, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins). However, he did say something rather odd about Argentina’s economy, which I would suggest is nowhere near as prosperous as he seems to think.

The speeches of the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) speak for themselves and I cannot add to them. He put his Front Benchers on the spot a bit about whether there should be a referendum, which was an important point also well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann). One of the most controversial European issues––it certainly has been over the past six months in British politics, although it is rarely expressed in public––is that of migration within the European Union, and I do not understand why accession treaties should not, under the logic being advanced by the new Government, be subject to a referendum as well. It is one of the issues that will most materially affect member states.

[Mr Cash]

As I am sure the right hon. Gentleman knows, the problem specifically arises in relation to Croatian accession, particularly the linking of that to the Irish guarantees. That takes us back to the constitution under the Lisbon treaty.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman makes a point to which I hope the Minister will be able to reply.

[Mr Davidson]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Bryant]

Yeah, go on.

[Mr Davidson]

I am grateful to Private Pike for giving way. Can I take it from his criticisms of the Government Front Benchers that it is the Opposition’s policy that there should be a referendum before any other accession treaty?

[Chris Bryant]

No, of course my hon. Friend cannot! He knows perfectly well he cannot––he is a mischievous lad. The point I am trying to make is that there is an illogicality about the Government’s position. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman––sorry, I mean my hon. Friend, I sometimes forget––will at some point want to make that point to the Government, rather than always doing so to us.

May I just ask the Minister some very quick questions? First, I urge him to be extremely careful about trying to reset the relationship with Russia. There are very big problems in relation to Russia, not only in its attitude towards Ukraine and Georgia, but with internal democracy and human rights––those who seek the bear’s embrace all too often get hugged to death. On Cyprus, I hope that he will push forward as much as he possibly can. We can stand ready to help if there is anything that we can do. Britain obviously plays a key role in trying to develop a peace in Cyprus.

Likewise, Britain has over the past couple of years played a strong role in relation to Greece and Macedonia, trying to resolve something that to many people outside those countries seems completely illogical.

The European Union has got close to signing up to a free trade agreement with Peru and Colombia. When I was in post, I was keen to try to ensure that that would have to be ratified in the Parliaments of every member state. I hope that the Minister for Europe will ensure that it must be ratified in this Parliament.

The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark said that the Liberal Democrats had never argued for the euro. Perhaps the party did not all the time, but the new Chief Secretary, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change did. It is good to see them on the road to Damascus, but it would sometimes be nice to hear a little less sanctimony from them.

17:45

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

I thank the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) for his welcome to me on my first appearance in my new ministerial capacity in a European Union debate. If he looks at the repeated comments of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary in opposition and since we came to office, he will see that, although we have said that we hope for a better relationship with Russia than has been the case in recent years, we do not regard it as something to be entered into lightly. We certainly expect Russia to abide by her international obligations, and events such as the occupation of territory, which is legitimately part of Georgia, are unacceptable. We are all too aware of the implications of the Litvinenko case and Moscow’s refusal so far to respond. Although our approach to Moscow will be positive—we hope for Russia’s co-operation on important global issues, such as counter-terrorist efforts and countering the threat of nuclear proliferation from Iran and other countries—it will also be cautious.

The hon. Gentleman will be all too aware of the complexities of the dispute in Cyprus, but the Government are intent on being energetic in supporting the relevant parties in seeking an agreement leading to the reunification of the island. That would be the best thing for both communities.

[Ms Gisela Stuart]

What is the British Government’s position if the United Nations says that Cyprus is a European problem and we need to sort it out?

[Mr Lidington]

With respect to the hon. Lady, we are not in that position yet. Talks have resumed between the Government in Nicosia and the representatives of the Turkish Cypriots, and I greatly hope that they have a more positive outcome than has been the case in the past couple of years.

I am with the hon. Member for Rhondda on Macedonia. It is important that we get a resolution to the dispute between Skopje and Athens. From our point of view, the sooner that Macedonia can be seen to be clearly on the path towards full EU membership, the better.

The hon. Gentleman needs to be careful when giving lectures about referendums and seeking popular consent. It is fair knockabout for him to say when responding to the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson) that he detected some illogicality in the Government’s approach. There is complete logic in his approach to referendums: he does not want any, in any shape or form, on anything to do with the European Union’s future powers. That makes his position different from that which the two coalition parties have adopted and embodied in their agreement. We believe that power resides ultimately with the people, who should have the final say on any further initiative to transfer powers from the House and the British Government to Brussels.

[Mr Davidson]

rose—

[Mr Lidington]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I must press on.

There were 15 maiden speeches and I compliment all those colleagues and Opposition Members who spoke for the first time today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) demonstrated early on that he aims to copy the independent streak of his immediate predecessor. He will be a doughty champion for his constituents, but he also spoke wisely about the economic advantages that he sees his constituents gaining from this country’s continued membership of the EU.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) spoke about the ups and downs of the Anglo-French relationship over the centuries. Like many hon. Members on both sides of the House, he gave us a kind of Cook’s tour of the best tourist sites in his constituency. I felt I was getting the benefit of a top-quality travel documentary programme condensed into a parliamentary debate.

The hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) spoke of the importance of European trade to businesses in her constituency. What came through above all in her speech was her sense of pride in, and affection for, the area where she grew up and that she now represents. I was delighted to hear from her that Harold Wilson could be said to have started his career in her constituency. Of course, when he became Prime Minister, he fell so in love with Chequers and Buckinghamshire that he ended up retiring to Great Kingshill just outside my constituency. It is something of a habit for former Labour leaders. Clem Attlee did exactly the same thing—when he accepted an earldom, he took the secondary title of Viscount Prestwood, in honour of the village in Buckinghamshire where he lived—and now Mr Tony Blair has also decided to make his home in that most conservative of counties. The estate agents in my constituency scan the post every morning for the envelope postmarked Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.

My hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) spoke of the sense of public disaffection from the EU. Awareness of that is very much driving the Government’s policy towards the Europe Bill, which we hope to introduce later in this Session. He also said that he wanted the Government to be proactive, positive and a friendly partner within Europe. With the addition of the words “clear-eyed and hard-headed,” that is exactly how the Government intend our policy to be. It is customary to say that we hope to hear from those who have made their maiden speeches frequently and in the near future. With the lavish praise that he bestowed upon the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), my hon. Friend can be fairly confident that he will be called again before too long.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) spoke of the need for jobs and investment in the north-east, and made a very wise paean for her local media, which I am sure will ensure that her speech gets the coverage in her region that she hopes for.

The hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) spoke about the importance of Nissan, jobs and economic growth in her constituency, but also warmly of Chris Mullin, a former colleague whom we all miss. He had no airs and graces—probably very few ex-Ministers, when penning their memoirs, would actually write about an incident in which officials forgot to remove a post-it note that they had inscribed, “This is a very low priority. Perhaps we could pass it to Chris Mullin.”

My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) spoke about the diverse community in his constituency and the diverse recreations in which they take part. However, if I may say, I thought he was hiding his light under a bushel. I feel that a man who has rowed the Atlantic could surely emerge in next year’s Atherstone ball game at 5 pm holding the ball—he will probably be the only one remaining upright in Atherstone village. I look forward to him telling us of that achievement in future years.

The hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) spoke with great passion about what led her into politics. I suspect that she and I will have many disagreements, but anybody who listened to her speech, whatever their political view, will have felt encouraged and inspired that they too might one day be able to make a difference. Her determination and perseverance are things that all of us can admire, and she is very welcome here.

My hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) spoke of the urgency of tackling the United Kingdom’s deficit in public finances. The hon. Member for Rhondda was unfair to my hon. Friend, because he reminded us that it is possible for someone to feel that they are culturally part of Europe—to feel an affinity with everything that European civilisation has produced—but also to feel that they do not want further political integration within the European Union. We need to accept that Europe is now united and at peace, but also that it is diverse. The trick for Europe is to recognise that diversity as well as its unity.

The hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) spoke in particular about the importance of education to his constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) set some sort of record by managing to work in references to both Iron Maiden and the Carry On films in the course of a single speech.

The hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) enticed us with visions of the beaches of east Durham, but spoke seriously about the need for more employment and investment in the north-east of England. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) explained to me finally what lies behind the big brown signs that say “Historic Dartford”, which have baffled me every time I have visited friends in his constituency. When I am commuting between London and Brussels, I will think of my hon. Friend as the train passes through Ebbsfleet, and I shall know exactly whose constituents I am close to.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) spoke about a particular constituency case. I can tell him that consular staff at the Foreign Office have visited his constituent and they have been in touch with the family. We think that in the first instance it is for Mr Shaw’s lawyers to come to our officials with the evidence that gives rise to their concern that the trial was unfair so that we can consider their case and determine how we might take it forward. It would be most appropriate for the judicial proceedings to run their course first, and for any direct intervention from the British Government to follow once those have been concluded—

[Charlie Elphicke]

rose—

[Mr Lidington]

I suggest to my hon. Friend that, rather than intervene—as I am very short of time—he could perhaps have a meeting with me or the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who is responsible for south Asia, to discuss the case in more detail. We will be happy to listen to his concerns.

Finally, but not least, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) spoke with great eloquence and warmth about the glories of his constituency. He reminded us that he would not let us get away with ignoring the problem of coastal erosion. I can see that he, too, will be a formidable champion for his constituents. All 15 maiden speakers are welcome and all have had a successful first outing today. We look forward to hearing from them again.

In view of the lack of time, I propose to write to those hon. Members who have raised specific questions, especially the former Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee, and let them have a considered response, instead of half a sentence now. On the Government’s approach to Europe generally, we see no contradiction between being vigorous in defending and asserting the national interests of the United Kingdom, and playing an active and activist role within the European Union, in pursuit both of our national interests through the institutions of the European Union and the common advantage of European countries, where our interests coincide.

I believe that part of a successful European policy will be to demonstrate to our own people, here in the United Kingdom, that the decisions taken on their behalf by British Ministers in the institutions of the European Union will be more accountable. That is why we will press forward with our referendums Bill and look to improve dramatically our efforts to scrutinise European legislation in the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of European affairs.

Business without Debate

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

Political and Constitutional Reform Committee

Motion made,

That the following new Standing Order be made, until the end of the current Parliament:—

(1) There shall be a select committee, called the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, to consider political and constitutional reform.

(2) The committee shall consist of eleven members.

(3) The committee shall have power—

(a) to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, to adjourn from place to place, and to report from time to time; and

(b) to appoint specialist advisers to supply information which is not readily available or to elucidate matters of complexity within the committee’s order of reference.

(4) Unless the House otherwise orders, each Member nominated to the committee shall continue to be a member of it for the remainder of the Parliament.

(5) The committee shall have power to appoint a sub-committee, which shall have power to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, to adjourn from place to place, and to report to the committee from time to time.

(6) The committee shall have power to report from time to time the evidence taken before the sub-committee.—(Angela Watkinson.)

[Hon. Members]

Object.

Select Committees (Election and Allocation of Chairs)

Motion made,

(1) That Standing Order No. 122B (Election of select committee chairs) be amended by inserting, after line 6:

‘(aa) the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee;’

(2) That the Order of 26 May relating to Select Committees (Allocation of Chairs) be amended by inserting at the appropriate place in the Table:

[Hon. Members]

Object.

Pay for Chairs of Select Committees

Motion made,

That this House expresses the opinion that the Resolution of the House of 30 October 2003, relating to Pay for Chairs of Select Committees (No. 2), should be further amended by inserting after “the Committee on Members’ Allowances”, “the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee”.—(Angela Watkinson.)

[Hon. Members]

Object.

Crossrail

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn—[Angela Watkinson.]

18:00

[Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to raise a matter that is of great importance not only to my constituency, but to the whole of London and for the future prosperity of our economy. Although I have sought this debate because of its significance to my constituency and to London, I should also draw attention to my interests recorded in the register.

Crossrail is vital to London and the wider economy. If London is to continue to be a world-leading city, it needs continuous investment in infrastructure. The tube network alone will not be able to cope with the projected increase in passenger numbers over the coming decades, and investment in cross-city links is imperative.

Crossrail will alleviate the already congested public transport service in central London and relieve the bottlenecks that are already an issue at national rail termini, particularly at Paddington, with its connections to Heathrow, and in the east of London, at Liverpool street. Perhaps most importantly, Crossrail will draw together areas of the city that have the capacity to house the work force needed to keep London’s financial and commercial hubs expanding and at a pace that keeps London, and the British economy, competitive on a world stage. It will add no less than 10% to London’s existing rail capacity, and bring 1.5 million people within a 60-minute commuting time from the centre of our capital.

Estimates of the economic and transport benefits of Crossrail are compelling. It is projected that in 2026 alone, London as a whole can expect to reap benefits of £1.24 billion in 2008 prices. Over the next 60 years, the Mayor of London’s transport strategy estimates some £36 billion of value would be added to the economy in today’s prices. Seen in these terms, it is clear that Crossrail is an economic imperative from which our capital and our country will derive real benefits for decades to come.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I am grateful that he has begun his contribution by outlining the importance of Crossrail to the whole of the UK economy, because I was concerned when I read the debate’s title—“Crossrail and its importance to South East London”—on the Order Paper. This is not just a south-east London, east London or even London issue; as he has started to argue, this is a matter for the UK economy. London will choke without Crossrail, and I am grateful that he is going to develop his argument further.

[Mr Raynsford]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that observation, which I entirely support and agree with, although I am obviously going to focus on some of the specific concerns for my constituency in south-east London. However, he is right that there are benefits in his constituency—Canary Wharf is one of the major station sites—for London as a whole and, indeed, for the whole country.

The benefit is not limited to boroughs with immediate station access to the network. My borough of Greenwich is projected to benefit in 2026 by £84 million, but other boroughs, such as Barnet—the Minister’s borough—will see projected benefits in excess of £30 million in that year. Given the importance of the scheme, it might appear surprising that it has taken so long to reach the construction phase. The concept has been around for decades, but as the Minister will be aware, the project has had to go through many hoops to get where we are today.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my feeling of déjà vu at being here trying to convince yet another Government of the importance of Crossrail, and in particular the extensions to outer London, which are so vital to the economic viability of the areas that we represent? When he develops his argument, will he underline the fact that the scheme has been debated at great length? A great deal of local debate has gone into providing the detail that will benefit south-east London and, more widely, London as a whole.

[Mr Raynsford]

I am grateful for that intervention from my hon. Friend, who knows only too well the importance of improved transport links to south-east London. He is also aware of the battles that we have had to fight over the years to secure investment in improved transport linkages, not least at the Crossrail station at Woolwich, to which I shall refer in a moment.

The concept of Crossrail has been around for a long time, but the scheme has had to go through many hoops. There was a false start under the previous Conservative Government in the 1990s, and the current scheme was subject to lengthy and detailed scrutiny during its passage through the last Parliament. Members who were in this place at that time and who followed the Crossrail Bill will know of the degree of detail entered into by those Members who served on the hybrid Bill Committee, and they will appreciate the great endeavour that the Bill demanded of those Members.

The result was clear, with strong support from the Committee for a scheme that would connect east with west and the City with Canary Wharf and Heathrow, as well as linking communities both in south and east London and out along the Thames Gateway to major employers in the centre of London. The Committee was also clear on the strong case for a station at Woolwich. The Woolwich station was incorporated in the Bill at the Committee’s instigation, not least because its work demonstrated both the favourable cost-benefit ratio for the station in transport terms and its huge regeneration potential in a deprived area of south-east London. The population in my borough of Greenwich is projected to grow by 113,000 by 2031. At the same time, the number of jobs in the borough is projected to increase by just 8,000; however, just across the river, Canary Wharf will require an extra 110,000 workers. Linking the two is vital, and with just a seven-minute journey time from Woolwich to Canary Wharf, Crossrail would meet the need admirably.

Demand for transport links is often underestimated. When the docklands light railway first came to Woolwich 18 months ago, Transport for London estimated that 2.4 million journeys would be made annually to or from Woolwich Arsenal station. Yet in the first year of the DLR’s operation to Woolwich, actual usage was 5 million—more than double the estimated number of users. That demonstrates the huge demand for improved services and the potential for Woolwich to serve as a strategic transport hub, bringing hundreds of thousands of homes within commutable distance of Canary Wharf and the City of London.

The huge benefits to business and the economy from Crossrail explain how the funding package for the project is heavily supported by business contributions. Business organisations such as London First have passionately advocated the scheme, and the business community is supporting Crossrail in two distinct ways.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

As the right hon. Gentleman is coming to funding, does he agree that, although we all appreciate that these are difficult and constrained economic times, in many ways we are beyond the point of no return? I very much agree with what he and other Opposition Members have said about the benefits that would extend beyond south-east London through to the country, and as he has rightly pointed out, the business rate supplement is already in place. Huge amounts of money have been raised, both from Canary Wharf Group and the City of London. We always talk about the £16 billion package, but in fact the central Government sum is considerably smaller, at around £5.5 billion, of which £2.5 billion has already been spent—I think of the areas in my constituency around Tottenham Court road, Hanover square and Bond street in Mayfair. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, in essence, we are beyond the point of no return? Money has already been spent, but the central Government sum to be spent from this point on is very small in the general scheme of things.

[Mr Raynsford]

I agree very much with the hon. Gentleman on both points. First, the funding package involves a range of contributions. Although the contribution from the Government, and Transport for London and the Mayor is important, the business contribution is also critical in supporting the scheme. It would be absolutely wrong if the scheme were put in jeopardy by the withdrawal of any element from any of the parties. Secondly, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that so much work has gone into the scheme already that it would be a total tragedy if its continuation were to be questioned at this stage.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Raynsford]

I shall give way very briefly, as my time is running out.

[Stephen Pound]

This is a subject to which my right hon. Friend brings his usual expertise and passion. I agree with the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) that there is no possibility of a U-turn on the permanent way. Linked to Crossrail is High Speed 2, a matter of great importance to those of us in west London, and we need clarity on this. We need the issue to be resolved once and for all, because people in my part of the world, in Perivale, are terrified about what might or might not happen; they just do not know. I urge my right hon. Friend, in pressing the Minister, to seek clarity on the funding for Crossrail, because this is not just about Crossrail; it is also about HS2.

[Mr Raynsford]

I hear my hon. Friend’s concerns about HS2, but I shall not be diverted on to that issue, because the debate tonight is about Crossrail. However, I certainly want to see the clarity that he has called for in his usual trenchant way.

As the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) rightly said, business is contributing to the construction of Crossrail through a supplementary business rate, as well as through direct contributions from the City of London, Canary Wharf and, in the case of Woolwich, from Berkeley Homes, which reached an agreement in 2008 under which it would take responsibility for building the station box. It has already undertaken some £5 million of design work on the station. My understanding is that Berkeley Homes and Crossrail are still discussing the precise terms that will enable the work to be carried through successfully, but that they are near to agreement.

Against this positive background, it has been a cause of concern to hear less than wholehearted support for Crossrail being voiced in recent months by some spokespersons for the parties now in government. In a radio interview during the election campaign, the Conservative spokeswoman for London, the hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening), repeatedly refused to commit to Crossrail. Since the formation of the coalition Government, there has been repeated media speculation that the Government might seek substantial cuts to the Crossrail scheme or delay its implementation. I am well aware that one should not necessarily believe everything one reads in the press, but when one of the sources expressing concern about the Government’s intentions is the Conservative Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, it is hardly surprising that speculation is rife.

For that reason, I wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport on 20 May, and I was pleased to receive a reply this morning—no doubt prompted at least in part by the knowledge that the subject would be raised this evening in the House. I welcome the Secretary of State’s confirmation in his letter of the Government’s support for Crossrail, and his recognition of the substantial benefits that will flow from the scheme for the whole of the capital and specifically for south-east London. I imagine that the Minister will want to re-emphasise some of those points this evening.

I also welcome the Secretary of State’s acknowledgement of the efforts that have been made over the past year to make the Woolwich station more affordable to the developer, and the constructive role that the London borough of Greenwich has played in this process. Nor do I in any way disagree with the Secretary of State’s wish to ensure that the scheme is delivered cost-effectively and that it delivers value for money. Rob Holden and his team at Crossrail, who I believe have performed exceptionally in bringing the scheme to its current stage, are rightly looking at options for value engineering and for cost savings through good project management and risk management.

However, I am concerned that the Secretary of State’s letter leaves room for uncertainty on a number of counts, and I would welcome clarification from the Minister—either tonight or by letter, if that is easier—on the following points. First, are the Government committed to the whole Crossrail scheme, comprising the central London line and the links through to Maidenhead in the west, Shenfield in the north-east and Abbey Wood in the south-east? There has been speculation that those links might be cut off to save money, which would be an entirely false economy as the scheme only makes sense as a whole. Indeed, a former Conservative Transport Minister, Steve Norris, put it well when he said:

“If you are going to cut Abbey Wood or Maidenhead, you might as well shelve the whole lot. It only makes sense to dig the tunnel if you do the whole scheme. It’s like planning to buy a new car without an engine”.

Does the Minister agree with her predecessor?

Secondly, there has been speculation that the Government might seek to cut costs by reducing the scope or specification of the Crossrail scheme. I hope that the Minister can go further tonight than the Secretary of State, who was able to say in his letter only that

“no decisions have been taken on any such options”.

As I am sure the Minister will understand, it would give a great deal more comfort and confidence if we were assured that no reductions in the scope or specification of the scheme were under consideration.

Thirdly, on Woolwich station, will the Minister confirm that, providing Berkeley Homes and Crossrail reach agreement on the basis for Berkeley to build the station box within the principles agreed in 2008, the Government will ensure that this station is included in the scheme?

Finally, while I understand that there may be a case for re-phasing some of the works within the overall timeframe for construction, can the Minister assure me that the Government remain committed to the 2017 completion date for the whole scheme and will not seek savings by delaying or deferring any parts of the scheme?

It is in everyone’s interest to see this hugely important project delivered as planned, on time and within budget. I hope that the Minister is able to set our minds at rest by giving the clear assurance I am seeking that the new Government are as committed as their predecessors were to Crossrail and will work tirelessly with its co-sponsor, the Mayor of London, to secure this outcome.

18:15

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mrs Theresa Villiers)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) on securing a debate on this very important topic. I first became a supporter of Crossrail around 10 years ago in my former role as one of London’s Members of the European Parliament, but my involvement has been brief in comparison with the right hon. Gentleman’s long track record. I am sure that everyone will join me in paying tribute this evening to his long and distinguished record of campaigning for Crossrail in general and for Woolwich station in particular.

It is a great honour for me to address the House from the Government Dispatch Box for the very first time. I also count it an honour that my debut here today gives me the opportunity to focus on a project that is so important not just for south-east London but for the capital as a whole, and, as has already been pointed out, for the whole of the UK economy. I reiterate, and warmly welcome, the right hon. Gentleman’s statement on the benefits of Crossrail, which he so eloquently set out this evening.

Crossrail received support from both the coalition partners before the election. That support has been carried through to the formal coalition agreement setting out our programme for government, and the new Secretary of State has made it clear that we are committed to Crossrail. Crossrail is under way: it is happening, it is being built, spades are in the ground, and no decisions have been taken to change the scope of the project.

Our challenge is to deliver an affordable world-class railway. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that the Department for Transport is working hand in hand with Transport for London, the Mayor and the leaders of the Crossrail project to secure that result. That is why Crossrail Ltd, the company tasked with delivering the project under the leadership of Terry Morgan and Rob Holden, is undertaking the full range of work to ensure that the scheme remains affordable, on budget and on time.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s question about the timetable, I am sure that he would not expect me to take the pressure off those delivering the project; it is my job to hold their feet to the fire and ensure that they deliver on time. It is vital to ensure that each element offers value for money. Indeed, hon. Members familiar with basic project management techniques, as I well know the right hon. Gentleman will be, will appreciate that this work is essential good practice for all construction schemes—and Crossrail is no exception.

I can assure the House that real progress is being made on Crossrail. There are already around 2,000 people working on the project. Last month saw the first anniversary of the commencement of construction work on the Canary Wharf station, which is now progressing ahead of schedule. Enabling work, as I think we all know, is very visible at numerous sites around London, including at Tottenham Court Road, Paddington, Liverpool Street and Bond Street stations. Further work is about to start on the ticket hall at Farringdon. Much of the land needed for construction has already been purchased. Less visible—but, I say to the House, no less important—are the efforts Crossrail Ltd is making to develop detailed designs and plans for different parts of the project. Work is also under way on how services will be operated and how best to integrate them with the rest of the capital’s transport network.

In these difficult times it is more important than ever to ensure that every element of the scheme is tested and retested for value for money. To put it simply, we owe it to all those funding the project, to the business contributors and taxpayers of today and to the fare payers of tomorrow to do all we can to keep this project affordable and to deliver the best value for money. Working closely with the Mayor and the Crossrail team, it is the Government’s duty to ensure that every pound invested is well spent and delivers maximum value.

[Mr Mark Field]

I entirely endorse what the Minister has said about the need to secure maximum value for money—we would all agree with that—but has not one of Crossrail’s difficulties been caused by the publication of headlines referring to £15.9 or £16 billion, when in reality the central Government element of the expenditure has been considerably less than that? Earlier in her speech the Minister talked about spades in the ground, but as she will recognise, it is rather more than that. Over £2.5 billion has been spent on compulsory purchase and on works already undertaken. Does she agree that, although this does not detract from her central argument about the need to ensure that there is good value for money in the future, we are, in a sense, beyond the point of no return?

[Mrs Villiers]

My hon. Friend has made a strong point. We need to concentrate on the work that is going on, rather than on the speculation and scare stories that have appeared in parts of the London media.

The work under way at Canary Wharf station already provides a clear example of innovative engineering techniques that have offered significant savings without compromising delivery. We need to learn from that example when delivering other key elements of Crossrail. I know that Crossrail Ltd is committed to the highest standards of procurement practice to bear down on costs and ensure that the project remains affordable, and that must continue to be a key goal for the Crossrail team as progress is made towards letting contracts later in the year.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I welcome the Minister to her new position, and congratulate her on her appointment. Some of us expected to see her as Secretary of State—but hey, she has plenty of time, and I am sure she will get there in due course.

The Minister referred to the building of the station at Canary Wharf. My understanding is that Canary Wharf undertook the funding of that development. This reinforces the point made by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field). The private sector has put its money where its mouth is. The question that my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) and other Labour Members have been asking is whether the Government are as committed as the private sector.

[Mrs Villiers]

As I have said, we support Crossrail and are committed to it. The project is going ahead. It is vital to ensure that all assumptions about the risk that the scheme involves are tested rigorously by Crossrail Ltd to ensure that those risks are properly identified and reflected in cost estimates, and so that sensible steps can be taken to reduce them. The latest innovative value engineering techniques have the potential to reduce costs significantly, and Crossrail Ltd has already been able to identify 18% savings in overall indirect costs through measures such as reducing administrative and staff costs and renegotiating IT contracts.

[Stephen Pound]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. She has been extremely generous, and I echo others in welcoming her to her post. I think that the least we could do is consider opening a new station adjacent to Charing Cross, perhaps in Villiers street.

Does the hon. Lady agree with one of the central points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford)—that Crossrail is not just about London but about the south-east, and the national economy? Does she agree that it is a driver for economic growth and expansion?

[Mrs Villiers]

I entirely agree that Crossrail will be a hugely important driver for economic prosperity, not just in the capital but throughout the United Kingdom economy.

Energetic work is continuing to find more efficiencies, and I am sure all Members will accept that the principles I have described are basic elements of good project management and simple good housekeeping.

Let me now turn to the important issues raised by the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich about Woolwich station. I am well aware—as, I am sure, are all who have followed the twists and turns of Crossrail’s long history—of the pivotal role that he has played. He fought a long and successful campaign to add a station at Woolwich to the Crossrail Act 2008. As he said, such a station could deliver significant regeneration benefits to his constituents and to south-east London more widely.

Let me make absolutely clear that I recognise the importance and magnitude of those benefits, that I hope we can find a solution, and that the Department and I are working hard with Transport for London in trying to find a way forward. However, a clear agreement was reached that the costs of building and fitting out the station would be borne by the private sector. That agreement limited the taxpayer contribution to the money saved because a station at Woolwich would reduce costs, given that some of the work originally included in the overall project would no longer be necessary.

In short, the plans to include a station at Woolwich have always depended on contributions from the developers who stand to benefit most from it. That was the case when the last Government took the decision to add the station to the Crossrail Act, and it remains the case under the new Government. It is abundantly clear that the debt crisis left by Labour has placed intense pressure on the public finances, so we cannot default to a position where a shortfall in the promised private sector funding for the station simply pushes up the costs for the taxpayer.

[Mr Raynsford]

While I understand entirely the basis on which the agreement was reached in 2008, does the hon. Lady recognise that what has happened subsequently in the housing market has inevitably impacted on Berkeley Homes, the developer, whose contribution is critical to delivering this? While not asking for public contributions, I did specifically encourage flexibility on the part of the Government, to make it possible to reach an agreement with Berkeley Homes that is affordable for the company. The Secretary of State agreed in his letter to me that that was the Government’s objective. Will the hon. Lady tonight confirm that they will try to get an agreement on that basis?

[Mrs Villiers]

I want to set this out very clearly. The private sector contribution was pivotal to the station getting the go-ahead when the decision was made to add it to the Act, and it remains so. The Government cannot offer additional taxpayers’ money over and above what has been agreed within the current funding programme to replace the shortfall in the private sector contribution that Berkeley Homes promised to provide. However, we can seek flexibility in other areas, as the Secretary of State outlined in his letter.

Both the Department for Transport and Transport for London stand ready to help broker an alternative solution among interested parties to try to address the funding problems. Both the sponsoring bodies have been in extensive discussions with Berkeley over the past year, to seek a way to enable the company to honour its commitments. They have written to me only today with more constructive ideas. Naturally, one of the most significant of those interested parties is the London borough of Greenwich. In this regard, it is important to assess whether development opportunities around the station and the alternative funding that they might generate have been fully explored.

I know that Greenwich council is actively engaged in the issues that we have discussed this evening. It is now important for all of us who care about Crossrail to assess thoroughly the possible alternative funding sources that could be available between the interested parties if Berkeley Homes does not step up to the plate and deliver what it promised. Therefore, while I cannot promise additional funding from the Department and the taxpayer, we do stand ready to try to help the interested parties find a solution to enable Woolwich station to go ahead. The right hon. Gentleman can have my absolute assurance on that.

I would like to mention briefly some of the wider issues that the right hon. Gentleman raised about transport in his constituency. He warmly welcomed a number of the recent improvements, and it is worth noting that several important programmes in recent years have benefited his constituency, such as the refurbishment of the East London line as part of the London overground network, new interchanges with the tube and bus networks, and the extension of the docklands light railway, which the right hon. Gentleman described with such eloquence.

I thank all Members who have taken part in the debate, especially the right hon. Gentleman. I believe that it has provided a valuable opportunity to consider important issues around the Crossrail project in general and its impact on his constituency in south-east London in particular. After long years of waiting, the commencement of work on Crossrail was warmly welcomed, particularly within the business community, where Crossrail has always enjoyed strong support. The CBI recently made it clear to the Secretary of State that it is pleased to see progress continuing under the new Government.

I should like to take this opportunity, on behalf of the Government, to thank the Canary Wharf Group, BAA plc, the Corporation of London and its members for the considerable financial contributions that they are making. I am sure that we would all like to express the same gratitude to the other businesses in the capital whose rate supplements are providing a hugely important element of the funding package.

This project has the potential to deliver significant economic, social and environmental benefits for the capital and for the country. Those benefits will be felt well beyond the areas directly served by the new line and its stations. The challenge facing all of us who are interested in Crossrail is to ensure that costs are kept down. That means engaging in an active, energetic pursuit of best value for money procurement processes, urgently seeking ways—

18:30

House adjourned without Question put (Standing Order No. 9(7)).

Written Ministerial Statements

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Written Statements

Thursday 3 June 2010

One NorthEast Regional Development Agency

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

I wish to announce the appointment of the new chair of the board for One NorthEast Regional Development Agency (ONE).

I have decided to appoint Paul Callaghan as the chair of One NorthEast Regional Development Agency.

Paul Callaghan will commence as chair designate, to ensure continuity from 14 June 2010 and take up post as chair from 16 August 2010.

The appointment will be until 13 December 2012

The appointment has been made in accordance with the Commissioner For Public Appointments code of practice.

I have placed a copy of Paul Callaghan’s biography in the Libraries of both Houses.

ECOFIN

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Written Statements

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)]

The Economic and Financial Affairs Council was held in Brussels on 18 May 2010. The following items were discussed:

Ministerial dialogue with EU candidate countries

Ministers held their annual economic policy dialogue with the Finance Ministers and Central Bank representatives of the EU candidate countries: Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey. The Government support the conclusions agreed, which acknowledge the progress achieved by candidate countries in stabilising and transforming their economies.

Follow up to the 9 May extraordinary ECOFIN

ECOFIN held an extraordinary meeting on 9 May to address financial stability in Europe. Ministers from the previous Administration agreed a comprehensive package of measures including a European financial stabilisation mechanism of up to €500 billion with parallel support from the IMF. Ministers also expressed a strong commitment to ensuring fiscal sustainability and enhanced economic growth in all member states, and agreed that plans for fiscal consolidation and structural reforms would be accelerated, where warranted. They underlined the need to make rapid progress on financial market regulation and supervision, particularly in derivative markets and on the role of credit rating agencies.

As a follow up to the extraordinary meeting, Ministers took note of additional consolidation measures outlined by Spain and Portugal in their 2010 and 2011 budgets. The Commission will evaluate these measures in June within the framework of the excessive deficit procedure.

Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFM) Directive

ECOFIN reached a political agreement on the AIFM directive to establish a framework for monitoring the risks posed by alternative investment funds while allowing fund managers to market their funds throughout the EU single market. In a statement in the minutes of the Council, the Council notes the concerns expressed by some member states on certain aspects of the presidency’s proposed general approach, in particular as regards to the third-country provisions. It invites the presidency to start negotiations with the European Parliament on the basis of this general approach, taking into account the concerns expressed by member states.

Draft 2011 budget

The Commission presented its draft 2011 budget, including a total of €142.6 billion in commitment appropriations (+0.8% compared with 2010) and €130.1 billion in payment appropriations (+5.8% compared with 2010). For many member states, the EU has agreed that national budgets should be cut to meet consolidation targets and bring deficits under control. The Government believe that the proposed increases in the EU budget must therefore be reduced and a freeze in spending should be considered before the UK can give its agreement.

Economic policy guidelines

ECOFIN debated a draft recommendation on broad guidelines for the economic policies of the whole EU and for member states, aimed at implementing the Europe 2020 strategy for jobs and growth. The draft recommendation, together with a draft decision on guidelines for the employment policies of the member states, forms integrated guidelines setting a framework for structural reforms to be carried out by the member states. These will return to ECOFIN in June for agreement before being endorsed by the European Council on 17 June.

Enhanced economic co-ordination

Ministers held an exchange of views following a presentation by the Commission on enhanced economic policy co-ordination in the euro area and the EU as a whole. This formed the basis for further discussions at an EU task force chaired by President Van Rompuy on 21 May, where representatives from the 27 member states discussed the measures needed for an improved crisis resolution framework and better budgetary discipline in the EU.

The Government agree that one of the key lessons of the crisis is that ex ante surveillance of economies needs to be improved at both the domestic and European level. As a single market, co-operation and co-ordination must be maintained among all member states. The Government will be an active participant in this debate but have made it clear that when it comes to national budgets, the first port of call is not the Commission but national Parliaments.

Fiscal frameworks

ECOFIN adopted conclusions on fiscal frameworks promoting the strengthening of national fiscal frameworks by sharing best practice, regular assessments, peer review and credible fiscal bodies at the national level. The Government support the conclusions, which are fully in line with the announcements made on domestic fiscal reform, including the creation of the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Financial stability and crisis management

The Council adopted conclusions on EU crisis prevention, management and resolution in the banking sector. The UK supports the conclusions, which outline a number of short to medium-term priorities for developing common national tools for use in a cross-border financial crisis. ECOFIN will continue to discuss these principles in advance of legislative proposals in 2011.

Preparation for the G20 Finance Ministers

The Council discussed the 4-5 June meeting of G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors in South Korea. It endorsed terms of reference setting out the EU position for the meeting.

Commission financial services work programme

Commissioner Barnier presented the work programme for financial services legislation over the coming months.

Lunch

Ministers held a joint lunch with the Finance Ministers of the EU’s Mediterranean partner countries to discuss implementation of the Euro-Mediterranean Investment and Partnership Facility (FEMIP), and agreed joint conclusions endorsing ongoing close co-operation between the EU and its Mediterranean partners to facilitate economic growth and stability.

Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

The Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council will be held on 7 June 2010 in Luxembourg. I shall represent the United Kingdom.

The main item of the agenda will be a policy debate on the employment and social inclusion aspects of Europe 2020, the new European agenda for the next 10 years; and in particular, the employment guidelines and social inclusion target. Her Majesty’s Government are still considering the proposals for a Europe 2020 strategy but there are some significant reservations about the implications of the proposals, including the balance of competence between member states and the European Union. On that basis I currently propose to agree to the target but to maintain a reserve on the guidelines.

The presidency will seek political agreement on a proposal for a Council regulation extending the provisions of Regulation (EC) No 883/2004 and Regulation (EC) No [...] to nationals of third countries who are not already covered by these provisions solely on the ground of their nationality. The UK is not opted in to this regulation and I do not propose to intervene.

The presidency also will seek political agreement on a proposal for a Council decision on the position to be taken by the Community within the Association Councils established by the agreements with Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Israel. The UK is not opted in to these decisions which cover social security provisions with the six countries. We have significant concerns that the proposal goes beyond the original provisions and extends social security coverage in a way we find unacceptable. I intend to make a brief intervention at the Council which reiterates the UK concerns.

The presidency also will seek four sets of Council conclusions—on adequate pensions and social inclusion; new skills for new jobs; advancing Roma inclusion; and active ageing—and a Council resolution on a new European disability framework for adoption. I am prepared to accept these, on the basis that they are all non-binding and therefore not contentious.

There will be a progress report on the proposal for a Council directive on implementing the principle of equal treatment—anti-discrimination—between persons irrespective of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation.

Under any other business, there will be information from the presidency on the equal treatment between men and women engaged in an activity in a self-employed capacity. The Italians will raise also, as an information point, their ideas on simplifying the delivery rules of the European social fund (ESF). There also will be information on conferences held under the Spanish presidency and a presentation by the incoming Belgian presidency.

House of Lords

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

Thursday, 3 June 2010.

11:00

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Wakefield.

Introduction: Lord Wei

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

11:00

Nathanael Ming-Yan Wei Esq, having been created Baron Wei, of Shoreditch in the London Borough of Hackney, was introduced and took the oath, supported by Lord Strathclyde and Lord Bates, and signed an undertaking to abide by the Code of Conduct.

Introduction: Lord Sassoon

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

11:13

Sir James Meyer Sassoon, Knight, having been created Baron Sassoon, of Ashley Park in the County of Surrey, was introduced and took the oath, supported by Lord Brittan of Spennithorne and Baroness Noakes, and signed an undertaking to abide by the Code of Conduct.

Several noble Lords took the oath or affirmed.

Energy: Nuclear Power

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

Question

11:20

Asked by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proposals they have for the development of nuclear-powered generation in the United Kingdom.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Energy and Climate Change (Lord Marland)]

I thank the noble Lord for his Question. The Government are committed to allowing the construction of new nuclear power stations, provided that they are subject to the normal planning process for major projects and receive no public subsidy. The Government will continue to work through the Office for Nuclear Development to drive progress in all areas needed to bring this about.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord for his Answer. I congratulate him on his appointment and wish him every success in the future. Given that the loan that the previous Government proposed for Sheffield Forgemasters, a critical part of the nuclear supply industry, is now in jeopardy; and given that the coalition agreement sets out that a Conservative Minister will propose the energy national policy statement to Parliament, a Liberal Democrat spokesman will oppose and Liberal Democrat MPs will abstain, can the Minister give the necessary assurance to an industry that is now uncertain about the Government’s intentions?

[Lord Marland]

I thank the noble Lord for that question. At this point, I will draw the attention away from me for a moment and pay tribute to him as a former Minister. His work in the Department of Energy and Climate Change was fantastic, and he gave us a lot of time in this House to debate issues, for which we are very grateful. By the way, he is rightly held in great affection and respect by the department, so I thank him for that. I am not sure that I want to thank him for his questions, because there were two or three of them.

On the first question, the loan was made to Sheffield Forgemasters in the run-up to a general election and in the midst of a recession when many businesses were being forced out of business by their banks and some businesses were pushed to the brink. I am sure all noble Lords would agree that this loan needs to be considered and reviewed in the commercial light of day and the recession that we now face and that we need to consider whether it is the best use of taxpayers’ money. I assure noble Lords that this will be done in consultation with our department.

The noble Lord’s second question—I thought he had asked only one question at the time—relates to the wonderful coalition that we have with our excellent friends from the Liberal Democrat Benches. I pay tribute to them, as we are in that season—the early stage of our Parliament when we are being nice to everyone—for their support for the nuclear commitment.

[Lord Ryder of Wensum]

My Lords, in view of the fact that our future energy resources are in a dire state, will my noble friend please explain precisely why nothing has happened over the past 13 years?

[Lord Marland]

Perhaps the former Minister ought to answer that question. There needs to be a huge amount of catch-up. The lights are meant to be going out in 2017, and there is a big task ahead of us to get this country prepared to supply electricity. I assure noble Lords that this Government are fully committed to that process.

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on his appointment, but must immediately tell him that he must produce better replies to Parliament than his first reply to my noble friend Lord Hunt. To congratulate the Liberal Democrat members of the coalition on their commitment to nuclear generation is turning reality on its head in the light of what my noble friend Lord Hunt said and what we have all read in the coalition programme. Will the Minister now answer the question and assure this House that the statement that the Liberal Democrats are free to oppose and to abstain in votes on this is not a process of benign neglect of the imperative of nuclear generation for this country?

[Lord Marland]

As the noble Lord knows, the Conservative commitment to nuclear is very strong, and before the end of the month we will be putting to the House a coalition Statement on our plans. I will leave it at that, because I think that enough has been said.

[Lord Elis-Thomas]

I, too, congratulate the Minister on his appointment and his response to the House so far. I can bring him some consolation that division of opinion on the nuclear industry is not confined to the coalition in the United Kingdom: it also applies to the coalition in Cardiff. Does he accept that there is a huge reservoir of workforce in the north-west of Wales who are highly skilled in the nuclear industry, both in Ynys Mon, at Wylfa, and in my Assembly constituency of Meirionnydd, at Trawsfynydd; and that these people deserve a clear answer—that there is a future for them in the nuclear industry generating in that region?

[Lord Marland]

The very short answer is: yes, there is. The great thing about the development of nuclear power stations is that it will create much-needed jobs in these difficult times.

[Lord Taverne]

My Lords, does the Minister recognise that there are several of us on these Benches in this House who do support the nuclear programme and who have no regrets about the concessions made by the Liberal Democrats’ negotiators in the coalition agreement?

[Lord Marland]

I thank the noble Lord very much. That is very reassuring.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

Will the Minister be a little more specific in his answer to my noble friend’s question relating to Sheffield Forgemasters? As chairman of the Nuclear Industry Association I should tell him that there is widespread concern across the industry not so much about the lack of government commitment but about the fact that they are not sending out the positive signals quickly enough. Evidence of that would be an early statement on the Sheffield Forgemasters’ loan. Will he give us a time by which such a statement will be given? Will it be at the end of this month, will it be before the Summer Recess, or will it be in this grand Statement that he has promised us? This is a specific issue on which action is required very early in order to enhance and reinforce the UK supply chain.

[Lord Marland]

I am very grateful to such an eminent expert in these areas for his question—which I felt was a little harsh. I thought that I was very clear in what I said about Sheffield Forgemasters. It is a matter for the Treasury, which is giving it due consideration and consultation. No doubt it will opine on the matter in the very near future. It is important that the matter is deliberately debated and that a decision of some consequence is made. This is not something to be frittered in the wind.

Health: Dementia

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

Question

11:27

Asked By

[Baroness Greengross]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are their plans to implement the National Dementia Strategy.

[Baroness Greengross]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as a member of the advisory committee on dementia research.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)]

My Lords, dementia is one of the most important issues we face as the population ages. We are fully committed to improving the quality of care for people with dementia and their carers. We will accelerate the pace of improvement through a greater focus on local delivery and accountability, and empower citizens to hold local organisations to account.

[Baroness Greengross]

I thank the noble Earl for that encouraging reply. How will the Care Quality Commission be strengthened and aligned with the strategy so that it can support the development of better quality social care, particularly for dementia? As I understand it, there are plans to stop the star rating system in favour of a new registration scheme.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the Care Quality Commission is revising its current quality rating system for adult social care and is working closely with the adult social care sector to develop a more user-friendly system that provides people using services with the information they need to make decisions about their care. That is absolutely in tune with the work being done in the department on driving up quality standards in dementia care. Better information for people with dementia and their carers will enable individuals to have a good understanding of their local services, how they compare with other services and the level of quality that they can expect.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, will the Government maintain the e-learning packages developed in palliative care to enhance end-of-life care for people with dementia across health and social care, and will they respect the agreement that those packages should be rolled out in Wales? I declare an interest as the palliative care lead for Wales.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, it so happens that only yesterday I received a briefing on the e-learning programme, and I am well seized of the value attached to it by the royal colleges in particular as well as many other professional bodies.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

Does the Minister agree that respite care is extremely valuable, but can he say what help there is for people whose dementia has developed into violence? What can be done for those who wish to keep such patients at home, but find themselves in a very frightening position? Can they be given any respite?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, my noble friend has raised an important issue, and one which we are giving consideration to. We recognise fully that breaks from caring are one of the top priorities for carers in terms of the sort of help they want. Supporting the physical and mental well-being of carers by giving them breaks obviously enables them to do their job more safely and effectively, and can keep families together. But where violence intrudes, it is often an intractable problem. I hope to be able to give my noble friend more details once we have given this area the thought that it deserves.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, we are at the beginning of the second year of what is in fact a five-year dementia strategy, which is what the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, referred to in her Question. Some £150 million was earmarked for the first two years of the strategy. Is that £150 million safe, particularly the £90 million for 2010-11, and do the Government have plans to implement the rest of the five-year strategy?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the answer to the specific question about whether the money is safe this year is yes, but we want to ensure that the strategy is sustainable over the following three years. We will do that principally by driving up quality standards through a tariff for dementia patients, by better regulation of providers and by better commissioning of services, including public health interventions. Alongside that, as I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, we plan to provide better information to people with dementia so that they have a good understanding of their local services, and local organisations will be expected to publish how they are delivering on those standards.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, the strategy is set out in an ambitious and sophisticated document that says that it is not just for five years, but that:

“There is no expectation therefore that all areas will necessarily be able to implement the Strategy within five years”.

I wonder if, even at this early stage of the coalition Government, my noble colleague has been able to identify whether all 17 objectives are to be carried forward at the same time or any priority areas that might be moved forward more quickly.

[Earl Howe]

We are looking at the implementation plan at the moment. I say to my noble friend that there are perhaps four key dementia priorities for us. One is promoting awareness and early diagnosis and referral; the second is the care of people in hospital; the third is the care of those in care homes; and the fourth is a reduction in the use of anti-psychotic medication. That is not to say that the other objectives are trivial—by no means—but we think that these will yield the most tangible results in the shorter term.

[Lord Laming]

My Lords, does the noble Earl accept that we are all familiar with frequent reports of research into other diseases, but much less so with research reports into dementia? Will he keep in mind the importance of developing more effective research into this growing problem?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, we will be giving increased priority to dementia research. The work of the Ministerial Advisory Group on Dementia Research, in which the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, is playing an important part, is key to that. The group is time-limited but very focused. We anticipate that once it has completed its work the dementia research community will be better positioned to compete successfully for available funding opportunities.

Immigration

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

Question

11:35

Asked By

[Lord Corbett of Castle Vale]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government why they decided not to contest the judgment of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission on 18 May that two men considered a “serious threat” to national security could not be deported to Pakistan.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Neville-Jones)]

My Lords, to appeal further there must be present an arguable material error of law in the judgment. The decision of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission was studied closely by officials and the Queen’s Counsel and no such error was found. Consequently, there were no grounds on which to contest the decision. However, departments—including, notably, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—continue to pursue the circumstances in which it would be possible to return these men to Pakistan.

[Lord Corbett of Castle Vale]

My Lords, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission decided that these two terrorist suspects—they were never charged—could not be deported to Pakistan because of that country’s abuse of legal and human rights. Does that not reinforce what was said to be the Government’s determination to repeal the Human Rights Act? If that is the case, does it have the enthusiastic support of the Liberal Democrats?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I can recognise wedge-driving when I see it. I do not think that there is a commitment on the part of the coalition to repeal the Human Rights Act. We are certainly going to look at the possibility of a Bill of Rights which is in conformity with the obligations that we have under the Human Rights Act.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

What will the coalition do about control orders, of which the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrat Party and the judges were so critical in recent years? Now that it has responsibility for the lives and safety of the people of this country, what will it do when there is the apprehension of individuals who there is good reason to believe are terrorists; who cannot be deported because of our adherence to the European convention; and against whom the evidence to secure a conviction cannot be produced in court for good reasons of national security?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, there are two parts to that question. In the particular case we are looking at, I can assure the House that appropriate safety measures have been taken in respect of the individuals concerned. As for control orders, the House may be aware that the coalition has a commitment to review their use. I cannot go further on what the outcome of that review will be until such time as we have conducted it. However, it is clear that we would like to reduce our reliance on such measures as is consistent with the security of this nation.

[Lord Dubs]

Would not one way of reducing dependence on control orders be to look again at the question of intercept evidence? Will the Minister indicate whether the coalition is looking at the possibility that intercept evidence might be used in our courts?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, as the House will be aware, the Chilcot commission is conducting its work but has not yet finished it. I have had discussions on this and I am quite satisfied that the serious work being done by the Chilcot commission needs to be concluded. As the noble Lord knows, we would like to be able to introduce intercept evidence but we have to await the outcome of that work. We will come back to the House.

[Lord Avebury]

In the SIAC judgment to which the Question refers, was there not a substantial discussion of the risk that these two people, if sent back to Pakistan, would be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment and that therefore it would have been a breach of the ECHR? However, did not SIAC also add that if the two people who went back voluntarily were not subjected to treatment of that kind, the question of whether the two individuals the subject of the Question might be deported could be revisited?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, the individuals who returned voluntarily did so many months ago, before the hearing. That fact is relevant to the subsequent consideration of the individuals referred to in the Question. The fact that they returned and were not ill treated was one of the reasons for the Government considering that Nasser and Khan would not be ill treated on return. However, the court took the view that this was not sufficiently reliable in their case. The ability to return the two men can be revisited if circumstances change, and we are working on creating the circumstances in which that might be possible.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, does not the issue whether these two individuals should be deported raise a number of fundamental questions about the way in which national security is to be pursued? First, had intercept been available as evidence, would it have provided a different route for dealing with the individuals? Secondly, do the costs associated with the regime being put around the individuals represent the most efficient way of managing individuals who are considered a severe threat to the UK?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, those are very good questions. I shall not trespass on the hypothetical question of whether it would have been different had we had intercept as evidence. It is clearly a relevant issue, which is one of the reasons why we want to explore its availability. As for control orders, cost is clearly one element in considering what we need to do to keep the people of this country safe. The efficiency of the regime is also an element. We are considering precisely those issues in our review of control orders.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak, but the Minister’s answer raises a number of questions. First, when will the control order study be finished? Are we looking at something that is fairly rapid? The next relates to the resources being used to look at subjects of interest. There is a difficult balance to be struck between the cost of control orders and the cost of doing it in other ways. I am concerned that, as the CSR comes galloping down the track towards us, we can ensure that we have the money required for surveillance of the subjects of interest. As the Minister well knows, it is a very close-run thing. I want to be sure that that money will be protected.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, the Government will not—I repeat not—put the safety of this country at risk. As for the noble Lord’s question on the review of control orders, I can tell your Lordships' House that we are looking at it now; it is an issue for the present. I cannot tell your Lordships exactly when the review will be completed. It is more important that it is done properly than that it is done very quickly.

Prostitution

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

Question

11:42

Tabled by

[Lord Dholakia]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will review the law on prostitution so that people who work together in a house for their own safety are not thereby subject to prosecution.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lord Dholakia, and with his permission, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, we are studying closely how police forces are enforcing the law and how courts deal with the matters brought before them. We are also considering how to deal with the lessons learnt from the recent terrible events in Ipswich and Bradford. We are committed to tackling exploitation and harm caused to those involved in prostitution. All local agencies must work together to ensure the safety of the women involved.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, on the first occasion that my noble friend has appeared at the Dispatch Box to answer a Question, perhaps I may warmly congratulate him on his appointment. In the light of Miss Claire Finch being acquitted by Luton Crown Court at the end of April of running a brothel with three other women at her home in Bedfordshire, will the Government encourage the CPS to issue guidance to police forces on the undesirability of prosecuting the hundreds of other women in similar situations? Given that it is 10 times riskier for prostitutes to work on their own, will the Government invite stakeholders such as the English Collective of Prostitutes and the Safety First Coalition to a consultation on how women engaged in providing sex services can be safeguarded, including an examination of the law in New Zealand, where it is lawful for up to four people to work together in the same premises, as my noble friend Lady Miller has reminded your Lordships on frequent occasions?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his good wishes. On the question of consultation and the organisations that he referred to, yes, we are in listening mode and we will be very pleased to have further discussions with him. As I said in my initial reply, we have studied what the courts were doing with cases brought before them. That will also affect the development of future policy.

The 2009 Act was first implemented on 1 April. At the moment, we must see how it beds down. As it stands, it is for the decision of local police forces, but there is a lot of learning to be done about how to respond to these issues and I hope that that will continue to be so at both national and local level.

[Baroness Kingsmill]

My Lords, I wonder whether the Government have any plans to curb the demand side of the sex industry, as well as the supply side.

[Lord McNally]

As the noble Baroness is aware, that was very much the thrust of the 2009 Act. We shall see whether the Act causes a drop on the demand side. Having done a quick crash course on these issues, I do not believe that there is a silver bullet for this. As noble Lords know, some countries such as Sweden go for the demand side, while others such as Holland go for decriminalisation. The department is looking very carefully at the experience of countries abroad in how to deal with this as well as at how various experiments in approach in this country are progressing and what impact they are having on this problem.

[Baroness Trumpington]

My Lords, will the Government legalise brothels on health grounds, as has been done in other countries? I am not sure whether I am up to date, but my long-held views have certainly been shared by the Women’s Institute.

[Lord McNally]

That is a daunting endorsement, which any Minister would have to ponder. But seriously, this is a matter that we have to look at and on which we must develop policy. We must get away from talking about “the game”. In fiction we see the “happy hooker” and “belle de jour”, but this is not “belle de jour”. This is squalid, dangerous and criminal, and we must approach it as a society with that in mind. I assure my noble friend that we are looking at the experience of countries that have taken a different route and will learn the lessons from them in developing our policy.

[The Lord Bishop of Lincoln]

My Lords, can the Minister comment on the fact that a great deal of the incentive towards prostitution is driven by drug addiction? Can we have an assurance that one way in which to deal with this issue is to ring-fence the current provision of rehabilitation facilities for those dependent on drugs who are likely to end up in prostitution or, indeed, to see that provision enhanced against a background of public service cuts?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, any commitments on ring-fencing are made at one’s peril, but I am aware that the three issues that come up time and again in any study of this problem are drug dependency, homelessness and unemployment. Any programme that will help women out of prostitution must address those issues. The briefing that I have received tells me that the work of faith groups in helping in these matters and helping women caught up in prostitution into rehabilitation has been very significant.

[Baroness Stern]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister to his post. I am sure he accepts that street prostitution is very dangerous and that not all street prostitutes could work from premises, even if they were legal. Is the Minister aware of projects in place to help prostitutes to be safer and to work with the police to take to court those who rape and assault street prostitutes? There are two of these projects, one in Bristol and one in Liverpool. Will he find out about them, perhaps invite those who run them to come and see him, and then take a view on whether it would not be worth increasing the number of such projects?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I could not agree more. Both those projects were referred to in my briefing and I am aware that the department is in discussion with those local authorities. There is a strong sign that local authorities, the police and the courts are talking to each other and co-operating; there is also a lot of first-impression evidence that where that co-operation takes place women are able to get out of prostitution. What is more, on the other side—I think this was in the 2009 Act as well—we are going to go against the perpetrators, not only those who buy sex but those, particularly in organised crime, who make vast profits from it.

Hybrid Instruments

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

Standing Orders (Private Bills)

Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit Limited (PARBUL)

Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST)

Membership Motions

11:50

Moved By

[The Chairman of Committees]

Hybrid Instruments

That a Select Committee be appointed to consider hybrid instruments and that, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following members together with the Chairman of Committees be appointed to the Committee:

L Campbell of Alloway, L Grantchester, L Harrison, L Luke, L Quirk, L Sandberg, L Swinfen,

That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers and records.

Standing Orders (Private Bills)

That a Select Committee on the Standing Orders relating to private bills be appointed and that, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following members together with the Chairman of Committees be appointed to the Committee:

L Geddes, B Gould of Potternewton, L Luke, L Naseby, L Palmer, V Simon, B Thomas of Walliswood,

That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers and records.

Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit Limited (PARBUL)

That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following members be appointed to the Board of the Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit Limited (PARBUL):

B Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury, L Brabazon of Tara, L Naseby, L Paul.

Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST)

That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords be appointed to the Board of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST):

L Oxburgh, L Sutherland of Houndwood, L Taylor of Warwick, L Winston.

Motions agreed.

Arrangement of Business

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

Announcement

11:51

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, at a convenient point after 12.30 pm, my noble friend Lady Neville-Jones will repeat the Statement on the Cumbrian shooting incidents. As there are 49 speakers signed up for today’s debate, if Back-Bench contributions were to be kept to seven minutes the House should be able to rise this evening at around our target time of 7 pm.

Queen’s Speech

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

Debate (5th Day)

11:51

Moved on Tuesday 25 May by Earl Ferrers

That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:

“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, it is with a great sense of humility and honour that I rise to open the debate today. When I had the privilege of working in government earlier in my career, I conceived a lasting respect for the work and wisdom of your Lordships’ House. Whatever the future holds for me, that respect is something I shall never forget.

I start by welcoming the noble Lords, Lord Hall of Birkenhead and Lord Kakkar, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford. They, like me, will be making their maiden speeches in today’s debate and I greatly look forward to those. I fear that your Lordships, having endured my own effort, will look forward even more keenly than we already are to hearing those who are to come. I also thank my noble friend Earl Howe, who will be closing today’s debate.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford and I seem to be linked together. We were introduced to your Lordships’ House on the same day. We discovered that we shared the same surname and, owing to some confusion in the Pass Office last week, we briefly shared the same wife. I know that the Church of England is inclusive, but that was perhaps carrying inclusivity a little far.

Entering this House and becoming a Minister at one and the same time is doubly daunting. In my department I follow the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who started the last Parliament with a similar challenge. If I am able to meet that challenge with a fraction of the skill and dedication of the noble Lord, I will feel that I have served this House and Government well. I am particularly grateful to all those noble Lords on all sides who have greeted me so warmly and given me such generous advice this last week. I am acutely conscious of the depth of experience and knowledge in this House and I will endeavour always to listen and to learn.

Returning to Whitehall after a gap of some 16 years, I am struck by how much seems familiar. The quality of officials in public service and the advice they give seems to me to be as high as ever. In many ways, the rhythms of Whitehall feel much the same. Only perhaps in the expected speed of response to the pressures of the media is there a noticeable change. There seems to be less of a place for the pause for thought in public life. I am not sure whether that is progress, but it certainly underlines the importance of the full and careful scrutiny of legislation that is the work of your Lordships’ House.

Like many people who care about education, my mother was a teacher. I grew up thinking that there was nothing more important than education, that teaching was a high calling and that books and learning have the power to transform lives and set people free. I still believe that today. I therefore consider myself very fortunate to have the chance to play some part, alongside so many others in all parts of this House, in trying to extend to others the kind of opportunity that I was lucky enough to enjoy.

Today’s debate brings together four issues: education, health, welfare reform, and culture. All are vital to a strong society and a prosperous future for individuals and for our nation as a whole. If we are to secure Britain’s success, we must give people the skills and opportunities that will lead to personal success: a good education, decent healthcare and the chance for people to get on. In all our endeavours, we must strive to close the gap that sets the most disadvantaged in our society apart from the rest.

At the heart of the programme of legislation set out in the gracious Speech is the principle of trust. By trusting people—teachers, doctors, parents, patients—we hope to improve services and deliver more freedom, more fairness, and more responsibility. Her Majesty the Queen underlined those core principles in her gracious Speech, and set out a comprehensive programme of reform to uphold them.

A health Bill will strengthen the voice of patients and the role of clinicians in the NHS. We will allow doctors, nurses and other health professionals to make more decisions about the management of day-to-day care and services. The Bill will seek to place GPs firmly at the centre of the commissioning of care, and I am personally pleased to see the wheel come full circle, having worked at the Department of Health in the late 1980s for the then Secretary of State, Mr Kenneth Clarke. We will give more choice and control to patients over their care, and the Bill will secure on statute an NHS free from political interference.

Work is the best route out of poverty. We must therefore make sure that people see a link between work and reward. We cannot have a situation whereby someone who gets a job and moves off benefits is actually worse off in work.

The current system is also very complicated: there are 30 different types of benefit, four government agencies and a £3 billion cost of fraud and error. We will therefore introduce a welfare reform Bill to simplify the benefits system and give people a greater incentive to work. People will be supported into work, but there will be sanctions for those who are deemed capable of work but refuse available jobs. We will also review the timetable for increasing the state pension age and legislate if the current timetable is deemed by the review to be no longer appropriate.

It is also important to invest in those areas of business, culture and innovation that will help Britain to remain economically prosperous. We will therefore support investment in new high-speed broadband internet connections, to be rolled out across the UK. We will ensure that BT and other infrastructure providers allow the use of their assets, through which the fibre-optic connections can be delivered. This will reduce deployment costs, increase availability of the connection and open up the market to new providers.

It is above all in our schools that the task of building a fairer, more fulfilled and more responsible society must start. Despite the best efforts of successive Governments and despite some progress, it is still the case that half of all pupils do not get five good GCSEs, including English and maths. Since the first OECD PISA international league tables were published in 2001, the UK has fallen from eighth to 24th in maths, from seventh to 17th in reading and from fourth to 14th in science. Improving standards in schools must be our immediate objective.

Academies have a proven track record in transforming schools in difficult circumstances into high-performing centres of excellence. At GCSE in 2008 and 2009, academies saw double the national average increase in results. Last week I was lucky enough to visit Mossbourne Academy in Hackney. There, an inspirational head teacher and sponsor have transformed what was previously regarded as one of the worst-performing schools in the country. Last year, 95 per cent of its pupils achieved five good GCSEs, and earlier this year Ofsted rated the academy as “outstanding” in every category.

More schools should have the opportunity to enjoy such freedoms if it would best serve the needs of their pupils, so we have introduced a Bill on academies to give all schools the opportunity to apply to become an academy, including—for the first time—primary and special schools. All schools which have been rated “outstanding” by Ofsted and which want to apply will be fast-tracked through the process. However, I stress that the purpose of the Bill is primarily permissive, not coercive. We intend to invite schools, their head teachers, governors and others involved with the school to take up this opportunity. In due course we also intend to work with failing schools to transform them as well. Although the Bill enables this, it is for the slightly longer term. In those cases where a school is in real difficulty, the Secretary of State will have the power to require the local authority to relinquish control of the school and free the school to appoint a head with a proven track record in excellent leadership and school improvement.

In support of these reforms we will introduce further legislation to improve school standards, reduce bureaucracy and give schools more freedoms. However, delegation of responsibility to the school and the classroom must be supported by clear systems of accountability. Therefore, in a second education Bill we will simplify the current framework for assessing schools’ performance. We will work with Ofsted to establish a new framework which will scrutinise four core areas of a school’s performance, rather than the current 18. We want to concentrate on what is really important, namely the quality of teaching, the effectiveness of leadership, pupils’ behaviour and safety, and pupils’ achievement.

Children cannot learn properly in a disorderly environment. Currently, more than 1,000 pupils are excluded for physical or verbal assaults every day. In 2007-08 nearly 18,000 pupils were suspended for attacking an adult. Only 950 of those pupils were excluded. That is not acceptable. Pupils should not have to suffer disruption caused by the bad behaviour of others, and teachers should feel confident in enforcing discipline. We will therefore give teachers wider powers to search pupils for items which disrupt learning. We will remove the bureaucratic restrictions around the use of search and detention powers. We will clarify teachers’ powers on using force, strengthen home-school behaviour contracts and abolish independent appeal panels to ensure that decisions about exclusions rest with the head, which is where they belong.

Raising standards, lifting aspirations and tackling behaviour are crucial. That will help all children but, above all, it should help those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, who have suffered the most. Figures published two weeks ago showed that bright children from the poorest homes are seven times less likely to go to top universities than their wealthier counterparts. That is not acceptable. We will introduce a new pupil premium, which will direct resources to those children from deprived backgrounds who need them most. These wider reforms, such as the pupil premium and establishing a new generation of free schools run by teachers, charities and parents, should they so wish, will be set out in a White Paper to be published later this summer.

In conclusion, the reforms set out in the gracious Speech will give more freedom to professionals to get on with doing their jobs unhampered by bureaucracy; more freedom for teachers; more freedom for doctors; more freedom for nurses; more control for people over their own healthcare; and greater incentives for people to work—in short, more trust to our professionals and more choice for our citizens. The principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility are principles greatly prized in this House. They are the principles which shape and inform the gracious Speech and the legislation I have set out today. I look forward to listening to the debate today on these important issues.

12:05

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Hill, on a tremendous maiden speech and welcoming him to this House. As he recognised, he joins a small but elite club of Peers who have made their maiden speeches from the Dispatch Box, such as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, to whom he very kindly and generously paid tribute. As a former chief political secretary to John Major, the noble Lord has some soul mates here—perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton, a great educationalist, and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who only a few moments ago was firmly planted on the noble Lord’s own Front Bench. I would love to be a fly on the wall when these three get together to share a cup of tea, as is the tradition in your Lordships' House. But, truly, I welcome the noble Lord to our House. He brings with him a distinguished career in politics and business. He was educated at Highgate School and Trinity College, where he read history. As we have heard, he knows his way around Whitehall, having acted as an adviser to three government departments—employment, trade and industry and health—before joining No. 10, where he was political secretary. The noble Lord wrote an account of life at No. 10 at the time of the 1992 election entitled, Too Close to Call. Noble Lords should beware as there may be another one in the pipeline entitled, Coalitions and How They Fall.

It is a great honour to be a Member of your Lordships' House and a huge responsibility. I know that the noble Lord fully appreciates that responsibility. He has committed to listen to this House, which I welcome. In spite of the apparent age of its Members, this House cares very much about young people. We care particularly about vulnerable young people, children with special needs, children with no families of their own, young offenders and young people with no jobs. As the noble Lord is well aware, there is a great deal of wisdom in this House. I am glad to hear that he plans to make great use of it.

I, too, look forward to the maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Hall of Birkenhead and Lord Kakkar, and of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford. My noble friend Lady Thornton will address health and culture and I will focus on education. I will touch on welfare but my noble friend Lord McKenzie, who has much more expertise on this issue than I, will also focus on it.

I stress that Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition have grave concerns about the coalition Government’s welfare proposals. Given all the Government’s talk about fairness and social mobility, it is breathtaking that one of the first things that the Tory-Lib Dem Government have announced is massive cuts to youth jobs programmes. Labour believes that it is vital to help young people into work, especially as we are facing such challenging economic times. It is extremely worrying that already we are seeing the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats breaking pre-election promises to keep up support for Labour's future jobs fund. Future jobs fund jobs are real jobs, paying at least the minimum wage and lasting at least six months. The Labour Government promised funding for 200,000 jobs through the future jobs fund. More than 118,000 of these jobs have been confirmed for individual organisations, with 80,000 more pledged and bids and plans under way.

In previous recessions under the Conservatives, youth unemployment continued to rise for years after the end of the recession, but it had already begun to fall under the Labour Government after this recession as a result of extra support, including the future jobs fund. When Labour left office, there were around 40 per cent fewer young people signing on than under the Conservatives in the recession of the 1990s, and well over half of young people on JSA are coming off within three months. This is something that the Government must support.

I agree with the Minister that driving up educational standards in schools is a goal that we can all share. While children and families may no longer be in the title of his department, I hope that the Minister will also commit himself to working to give every child the best start in life, and to break down all the barriers to the progress, safety and well-being of all children in this country. Where the coalition Government get it right and act to open up opportunities to do more and to drive up standards for all, they will have our support.

The most pressing question in our debate today is that of education funding, and the impact on schools and children's services of the Government’s rush to cut the deficit. During the election campaign, it was clear that there were two different approaches. I admit that the children and teachers of our country have rather more to thank the Liberal Democrats for than they probably realise. Let us be clear that for the past two years, the Conservatives were unable, in opposition, to pledge to match Labour's commitment on education spending for 2010-11, let alone for future years. Only the NHS and international development were protected from the cuts planned for an incoming Conservative Government. I am reliably informed that it was only the intervention of the right honourable David Laws, in the days after the general election, which saved the day and secured ring-fencing for schools spending in 2010-11. However, with the shortest government honeymoon in history already over, and the right honourable David Laws no longer at the Treasury, will the Liberal Democrats continue to have the same impact on education spending that they promised? I hope that they will work hard for that.

In office, the Labour Party achieved a great deal. The noble Lord was very generous about our achievement with academies, and I am sure that the Government will recognise this as they go forward. We doubled spending per pupil; recruited 42,000 more of the best teachers; launched the biggest school building programme since the Victorian era; and achieved the highest standards and best results ever in this country, with more young people going on to college, university or apprenticeships than ever before. It is a record of which we can be extremely proud. Even in the current tough financial climate, when we need to get the deficit down steadily, we made a commitment last December with the Treasury to raise spending above inflation for schools, Sure Start and 16 to 19 education, not just for one year but for three years to 2013. That was our commitment to education.

While we were in government, we were clear about our commitment to education, but so far the coalition has been rather silent on what will happen to schools funding next year and the year after, let alone how it will pay for the proposed pupil premium and its new academies and free schools. This is a real challenge for the coalition.

The key question for today is where the money is coming from. I do not see how the coalition can pay for its announcements of more free schools and more academies without cutting deep into the budgets of all other schools to pay for them. Even the settlement negotiated by my right honourable friend Ed Balls called for tough efficiency savings totalling more than £1 billion over the next three years simply to prevent the cuts to front-line services—and that was without thousands of new extra schools and academies and the many thousands of extra, surplus places that that will require. On top of that, the Government have to find money for the new pupil premium that they have promised.

Where will the money come from to pay for the policies set out in the gracious Speech? Already parents, teachers and pupils are being told that their long-awaited new school building may not come about. We are in the dark about the future of school-building projects around the country, many of which have had months of work done and thousands of pounds spent on them.

We have all heard the coalition Government’s commitment to find £670 million of cuts from the Department for Education to help to reduce the deficit this year while protecting the front line only in 2010-11. Even here, there is no detail of where the money will come from. We made it clear that difficult decisions would have to be taken and set out in painstaking detail the first instalment of where those savings would be found, but we were given the impression by the incoming Government that they believed that the DCSF, as was, was teeming with so much waste that funding £670 million of cuts in the department would be painless. We need to know what those cuts will be, but the Government have still made no announcements to Parliament; they have just released a few select details to the Press Association, suggesting that school transport and one-to-one tuition may be for the chop.

The Government have also given no clue about how the £1.2 billion of planned local government cuts will impact on children’s services this year. What about social work reform? What about early intervention? What about safeguarding our children?

We need to know where these cuts will fall that are designed to reduce the deficit and pay for the pupil premium, the new free schools and the new academies over the next three years. Will the Government scrap the extension of free school meals? Will they scale back on one-to-one tuition and the Every Child a Reader programme? Will they cut education maintenance allowance? What about the budgets for disabled children, children in care, youth services, school sport and school music? Will the coalition scale back on the offer of 15 hours of free nursery education for two year-olds? We need answers and we need them soon.

We know that, on education policy, the Government have been divided right from the start. In April, Sarah Teather, the new Minister of State at the Department for Education, described the free schools policy as “a shambles”. She went on to say:

“Unless you give local authorities that power to plan and unless you actually make sure that there is money available … it’s just a gimmick”.

It is not just the new Minster of State who needs to be persuaded that the new schools policy is not an uncosted shambles. It will be no surprise to noble Lords to know that we on this side of the House have serious reservations about this Government’s education policy. It is reported that the Secretary of State for Education has written to 2,600 outstanding schools inviting them to become what he calls academies. They are to be told that they will get extra money from the funds that are currently spent paying for special needs, school food and transport and shared facilities such as music lessons, libraries and sports facilities. There is a good argument for successful schools being given more managerial autonomy and flexibility, provided that that is on the basis of fair admissions, fair funding and a recognition of their wider school improvement responsibilities. However, at no point does the coalition explain the impact that this may have on the other local schools. Where our academy policy gave extra resources and flexibility to the lowest-performing schools, the new Government are proposing to give extra money to favoured schools by taking money away from the rest. Where our academies went ahead with the agreement of parents as well as local authorities, the new Government propose to abolish any obligation on schools to consult anyone at all—parents, local authorities or anyone else. Where we brought in new external sponsors including universities to raise aspirations, the new Government are abolishing the requirement to have a sponsor at all. Our academies were non-selective schools in the poorest communities. The new Government will, I suspect, end up with academies disproportionately in more affluent areas. For the first time, there will be selective academies.

This is not a progressive education policy for the 21st century. It will not break the link between poverty and deprivation but will entrench that unfairness even further, with extra resources and support going not to those who need them most but to those who are already ahead. My real fear, however, is that this will result not just in chaos and confusion, but in deep unfairness and a return to a two-tier education policy as the Government’s chaotic free-market experiment unfolds.

I am not the only concerned person. Chair of the Local Government Association, Dame Margaret Eaton—soon to join the government Benches, I believe—has put on record her concern, saying:

“Safeguards will be needed to ensure a two-tier education system is not allowed to develop”.

These concerns are widespread in local government and across the school system. We will return to these issues in greater detail in the coming weeks. Will schools that do not become academies pay financially for those that do? Will the admissions code apply to those new academies and be properly enforced? Will academies co-operate, as now, on behaviour policy, or will the Secretary of State allow higher performing schools to exclude pupils as a first resort? How, without any role for local authorities, Ofsted or children’s trusts, will the Secretary of State step in if things go wrong in what will potentially be a massively centralised education system? Can we now be reassured that disadvantaged children will not lose out disproportionately by the resources from wider children’s education services being transferred away from local authorities as high-performing schools opt out and take the money with them?

These are important questions, but I make it clear that we will be a constructive Opposition. We will probe, question and challenge, but I hope that we will also agree from time to time. As I said at the start, I welcome the Minister to his position and congratulate him on his maiden speech. There are so many questions yet to be answered, but the new coalition government education policy really has some way to go. Most importantly, how will it be paid for? I, with my opposition Front-Bench colleagues, very much look forward to debating with the Minister in the future.

12:23

[The Lord Bishop of Chichester]

My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I echo the noble Baroness’s welcome of the noble Lord, Lord Hill, to the House. I congratulate him on becoming a Minister and thank him for a fine and engaging maiden speech. We look forward to hearing much from him.

It is a fine aspiration to strengthen the voice of patients and the role of doctors in the National Health Service. On reflection, it may actually be two aspirations. It seems that a certain caution may be required when one reads that the National Health Service is to be both “patient led” and “led by clinical decision makers”. It is important to ensure that these become, as a far as possible, a single aspiration rather than two competing aspirations.

The Government's background note suggests that the reference to doctors is shorthand for front-line medical staff more generally. It is good that the role of nurses is specifically mentioned. Less welcome, however, is the absence of a mention of other front-line health workers, whose increasing recognition as members of multidisciplinary teams has been a notable sign of the progress made over the past decade.

Human health and well-being, including better clinical outcomes, require a whole approach in which doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, psychologists, chaplains and social workers all play key roles. The 1996 Department of Health document, Standards for Better Health, requires healthcare organisations to co-operate with other agencies to ensure that patients' individual requirements are taken into account and that,

“their physical, cultural, spiritual and psychological needs and preferences”,

are met. So we await with interest discussion and clarification of what is meant by, and who is included in, “front-line workers”.

It may be worth pointing out that a chaplain often serves more patients directly each week than any other single healthcare professional working in a hospital. Although his or her role may not usually be immediately life-saving, neither is the everyday work of most doctors, nurses and allied health professionals. In any case, life-saving is not all that is meant by good-quality healthcare. I hope that Her Majesty’s Government will assure us that chaplains are valued within the National Health Service as front-line staff.

In his preface to National Standards, Local Action, published in 2004, the then chief executive of the National Health Service and Permanent Secretary of the Department of Health, the noble Lord, Lord Crisp—Sir Nigel Crisp as he then was—wrote of the importance of,

“giving the individual—the patient, service user or client—more power to improve their care and drive the whole system”.

He also quoted the striking expression the “expert patient” which had acquired considerable currency, and some criticism, since being coined I think by Sir Liam Donaldson some years previously.

Greater patient voice is obviously to be welcomed, provided it is recognised that it is not easy for all to have or find a voice—such as the unborn or those with severe learning difficulties, mental health problems or dementia. Just as strengthening the role of doctors must also mean strengthening the role of other front-line health workers, including chaplains, so too strengthening the voice of patients must imply allowing a wider advocacy on behalf of patients by family, friends and carers.

Of course, empowering patients and their advocates is meaningless unless they are enabled to make more informed judgments about their needs. I was very grateful for what the Minister said in answer to a question about dementia earlier. It is very important that the Government should explain carefully how genuine patient empowerment will be implemented. This must include not only giving people more say over their own treatment, but also recognising the contribution that those who are receiving or have received care through the National Health Service can make to the formulation of policy and the oversight of delivery at every level whether local or national.

It is also important to know how changing policies will impact on current inequalities in healthcare provision and outcomes, whether those inequalities are geographical or based on resources and wealth. Enthusiasm for local action must always be in the interests of the highest standards for all. At a time of financial stringency, it is also essential to ensure that those with the greatest need receive particular attention. Special care must be taken to avoid any suggestion that some people are less valuable than others or that the chronically or terminally ill, the disabled and the elderly are, or are ever allowed to feel that they are, a burden on the rest of us.

It is also important to avoid simplistic attacks on administrators, contrasting them unfavourably with front-line staff. Although the National Health Service, like many other institutions—dare I say the Church of England?—has often been over-administered, good management and administration are essential for any organisation. Serious consequences follow when those delivering services are undermined and undervalued. Pushing more and more management tasks on to front-line healthcare staff is dangerous. Not only are they not equipped for those tasks, but if much of their time and energy is spent on managing, that must detract from their ability to deliver front-line care. Managers are a very easy target, but a scattergun approach to management reform could lead to greater problems and greater inefficiencies within the National Health Service.

My final point concerns targets. Although some targets encourage a box-ticking culture and approach, others, if evidence-based and tested against outcomes, can undoubtedly contribute towards the health and well-being of the population—for example, those stipulating waiting times for appointments and treatment. Of course targets can be abused, but it is important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

12:30

[Lord Hall of Birkenhead]

My Lords, it is an enormous privilege to be addressing your Lordships’ House for the first time. I thank many Members of this House, especially the noble Baronesses, Lady D’Souza and Lady Young, and the staff here, for the warmth of their welcome and their patience in dealing with so many questions from me not just once but sometimes for a second or third time.

This moment has another significance for me. As a journalist with the BBC, one of my first tasks was working on the then experimental radio broadcast from here from both Houses of Parliament, sitting crammed in very hot Portakabins beneath Cromwell’s statue. That experience gave me a genuine and long-lasting admiration for the quality of the work done in this House. I was therefore very proud that on my watch running the BBC's news services we were able to see the first television pictures of the business of Parliament come from this House. I was also delighted to establish BBC Parliament as a channel by which anyone, wherever they were, could watch, understand and feel a part of our democracy. When I look now at how that channel and the internet have developed, I am optimistic about the possibilities for engaging more people in the work that is done here—I do not need to tell anyone in this House just how important that is.

I have had the great good fortune not just to have had a career in broadcasting but also, for the past nine years, in the arts, working at the Royal Opera House and, for the past nine months or so, as the first chairman of the Cultural Olympiad board. The arts and, more broadly, the cultural sector in this country, are enormously successful. Just look at some of the numbers. The top eight tourist attractions in the UK are national museums and galleries. Heritage and arts are cited by more than eight out of 10 tourists as being the reason that they come to the UK. The Society of London Theatres announced box office receipts for last year topping £0.5 billion. That is a record number of people going to see plays, musicals, opera and dance. We see vibrant cultural landscapes all over the country in, for example, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow and Gateshead. There is now, perhaps more than ever before, a thirst and desire for culture and the arts. That is as we come out of a deep recession. Perhaps that is because we need what the arts and culture can give us even more when times are tough.

The financial investment which makes that extraordinary success in the arts and culture is relatively modest. The investment in the Arts Council, for example, is 0.07 per cent of total public spending. In other words, I have worked it out as being about 17p per week per person. That investment makes money too. To take my place of work, each £1 of public subsidy generates nearly £3 through ticket sales, sponsorship, commercial activities such as selling DVDs or relaying performances to cinemas. We are typical of arts organisations up and down the country. For example, the Manchester International Festival enjoys a public subsidy of £5 million, yet the value that it contributes to the economy of Manchester as a whole is more than £30 million. Look at plays such as “The History Boys”, “War Horse” or “The Pitmen Painters”, workshopped and created in our subsidised theatres and then taken out into the commercial world both here and overseas. Public investment is the seed corn, the risk capital, which allows that creativity to happen.

Public investment also encourages private investment, be it from companies, trusts or individuals. That is why I am much encouraged by the new Government’s commitment to giving still greater incentives to philanthropy and looking at ways in which gift aid may be made more effective for both parties. Much more can be done to help organisations large and small, in London and away from London, but neither is increased philanthropy of itself the whole answer. In this country, we have a funding model which is a mix of the public, the private and the commercial, and it works. If you look across the Atlantic, the American model of dependence on fundraising for the arts has led to organisations big and small across the nation closing down in the recession or being severely curtailed. Consistent, steady funding of the arts in this country over the past decade or so using that mixed funding model has contributed enormously to the success that we are now all enjoying.

Of course, the beneficiaries of that success are not just our audiences or our visitors. For me, one of the most rewarding, inspiring things about working in the arts has been seeing the impact that they have on young people. On a recent visit to a school, a year 10 student who had been working with us on a project came up to me and said, “Now I can put your organisation on my CV. How cool is that?”. That is what arts organisations are doing in schools all over the country. We are giving young people the opportunity to get started, to have that light-bulb moment to inspire them, the moment when they can know what they want to do, have belief in themselves and what they can aim for in a career, what they can achieve to make a contribution to our society. There is nothing more important than that.

We have another chance to set out what we can and are doing here on a world stage. In 2012, the eyes of the world will be on us and the Cultural Olympiad will have a finale in a festival across the nation from 21 June to 9 September. I hope that what we put on in that festival will be of a scale and ambition greater than that for any previous Games and will leave a legacy in several significant areas. Because of the vitality and strength of the arts, culture and heritage in this country, I believe that we are better placed to do that than any other nation in the world. Well before then, I look forward to playing a part in the deliberations and work of your Lordships’ House.

12:37

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure for me to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hall, on his maiden speech. We go back a long way together. He had the unenviable task in the Thatcher years for being responsible for the news services in the BBC when Denis Thatcher felt that the BBC was a bunch of pinkos. When I became Home Secretary, he was the director of news, and I was able to see the scrupulous way in which he ensured a fair balance in the presentation of news. After that, he became the director of Covent Garden. If you think that the BBC is a nest of prima donnas and vipers, the opera world is a swamp. It is due to his calm governance of the opera house over the past few years that it has been very successful not only artistically but financially. He reminded us that having been involved with the BBC and the opera house, he is a master of subsidy. Now that subsidies are to be slashed by this Government—I trust and expect—he will have ample opportunity to speak in our House on these matters in the coming months.

I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Hill. We, too, go back a long way—back before he became the head of John Major’s think tank at No. 10. I am glad to tell your Lordships that he has always been passionately interested in education. Not only was his mother a teacher, he has a daughter at university—this Government are full of Ministers who look much younger than they are—so he is engagé as a parent in education. I am particularly glad that he is attached to a department: he is a Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Department for Education; he is not a floater. That means that we will have his full attention on education, which is to be welcomed.

I should declare two interests. I am the chairman of the Edge Foundation, which is the largest charity in the country devoted to practical and vocational education, and of the Baker Dearing Trust, which promotes university technical colleges. I receive, of course, no remuneration from either charity.

I refer the House to the statement made by David Cameron and Nick Clegg on 20 May, which set out the programme for this coalition. It included this sentence:

“We will improve the quality of vocational education, including increasing flexibility to 14-19 year olds and creating new Technical Academies as part of our plans to diversify schools provision”.

I welcome this enormous endorsement for the colleges that Ron Dearing, before he died, and I have been promoting for the past three years: university technical colleges. When we met three years ago, Ron was alive. We decided that the one thing missing from the education system in England was technical schools. We had them in the 1950s and 1960s, but they were closed and became comprehensives. They were closed because people thought they involved dirty jobs and greasy rags and everybody wanted to be the school on the hill, so they fell victim to English snobbery. Germany did not make that mistake; it kept its technical schools and that is one of the reasons why Germany is still a great industrial nation. The latest report states that German technical schools are now more popular than German grammar schools.

We wanted to reinvent them in different ways. Why did we want to reinvent them? The CBI has just produced a report stating that 42 per cent of employers want our education system to provide high quality vocational options. Why do they want that? Because 77 per cent of employers in manufacturing say that they cannot employ people with higher skills. It is our history. Over the weekend, I dipped into Correlli Barnett’s book The Audit of War to remind myself about the history of radar. Radar was invented in the mid-1930s by Watson-Watt and by Professor Cockcroft and Professor Lindermann at the Cavendish and Clarendon laboratories, but we could not put it on enough planes, boats or airfields in the 1940s. HMS “Coventry” was sunk in 1942 for lack of radar. Radar was invented in 1939 for introduction in 1941. There were eventually 200 handmade sets in 1943. We should learn from history—it is the same with Afghanistan. We have not learnt from history. It is the lack of a technical force backing up our engineering graduates and our inventiveness. If you talk to engineering bodies, they say that we are producing enough engineering graduates, but the trouble is that graduates have to deskill in order to do technicians’ jobs because the technicians are not there. If we are going to have nuclear power stations, high-speed rail links, broadband and a green economy producing jobs, we need technicians.

University technical colleges are different from technical schools in two important ways. They are for 14 to 19 year-olds. Fourteen is a much better age to select children for skilled education than 11, which is too early. Ironically, when the Board of Education met in 1941 to decide the pattern of education after the war, it said that 13 or 14 should be the age of selection, but we chose 11, and it was a mistake. At 14, children select themselves. They know what they want to do. That is the first important difference. The second is that universities back university technical colleges, which means that their status is elevated for students and their parents.

We have three off the ground already. Aston will open in 2012, Walsall, in the Black Country, will open next year because it is converting an old school, and Greenwich was approved just before the election. The private JCB Academy will also open this year. It wants to be a UTC with 500 pupils. At these schools, youngsters will start at 8.30 am with a hammer, a saw, a drill or some welding equipment in their hands and acquire skills. In the afternoon, they will do English, maths, Science and IT for GCSE. The important thing is that the mind and the hand are trained under the same roof. The previous Government tried to make diplomas work. They got off to a poor start. In a comprehensive school, youngsters doing diplomas have to do three days in school and then take a bus to the local college. On the fourth day, they go either to school or to college. It is no way to do it. The previous Government were right to identify the 14 to 19 curriculum, but it requires 14 to 19 institutions.

I am glad to say that these schools count as academies. The pattern is this: Balls said he wanted five; Michael Gove, before the election, said 12; the team that I put together is now handling 23 applications, and I hope that in the course of this Parliament at least 100 of them will be established. They will begin to transform education in our country because our comprehensives are full of youngsters who at the age of 14 want to follow not an academic course but a course that gives them high quality skills. These colleges will do that.

They have the support of all parties in the House including, I am glad to say, the members of our coalition—I see the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, is smiling. I persuaded David Laws to support it, so I am sorry he has left the Government, but there we are. I hope that the Government will embrace these colleges. I am due to meet the Minister and the Secretary of State. We want a strong commitment to these colleges and for some of the money that is going to academies to go to these colleges. They will be an enormous contribution to the education system of our country.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, as indicated on today’s list, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, will repeat a Statement at a convenient point after 12.30 pm. This may be a convenient point. The debate on the Address will resume after the Statement.

Shootings: Cumbria

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

Statement

12:44

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Neville-Jones)]

My Lords, with permission, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. The Statement is as follows.

“I know that the whole House will want to join me in sending my heartfelt condolences to everybody touched by yesterday’s tragic events. In particular, our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of those who were so senselessly killed and injured in the shootings.

We also send our thoughts to the honourable Member for Copeland, who is in Cumbria today. He represents communities that have been touched by tragedy too many times in recent years, but they are strong communities, and I know they will bear these sad events with dignity and fortitude.

I would also like to pay tribute to the police and emergency services. In my short time as Home Secretary, I have been struck by the bravery, professionalism and sense of duty that police officers demonstrate every single day. Yesterday, the men and women of Cumbria Constabulary, aided by the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, neighbouring police forces and other emergency services, showed these qualities in abundance. They have the support and admiration of the whole House as they go about rebuilding the lives of people in Cumbria.

I spoke yesterday to Chief Constable Craig Mackey, and we talked again this morning. He has told me that his force is now conducting a full and thorough investigation to find out exactly what happened, how and why. More than 100 detectives have been assigned to the task. Their investigation will look into Derrick Bird’s history, his access to firearms and the motivations for his actions.

As I said yesterday, while the police investigation is ongoing, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on any details beyond what has been released by Cumbria Constabulary, but I would like to tell the House what I can. Twelve people were killed yesterday, in addition to Derrick Bird.  There were 11 casualties who were being or have been treated in hospitals in Whitehaven, Carlisle and Newcastle. Of those, four are stable, four are comfortable and three have been discharged.   The police are confirming the identity of those who died and names are being released by Cumbria Constabulary as and when formal identification is confirmed and the immediate family informed. More than 30 family liaison officers have been working throughout the night to formally identify the 12 people who were killed and to notify their relatives.

The police investigation is being led by a major incident group from the police headquarters in Penrith, and there are 30 different crime scenes. Derrick Bird’s body was located in woodland near Boot at around 1.40 pm. No shots were fired by police officers. At this stage, the police believe he took his own life. Two weapons were recovered by police and are being examined by forensic experts. They are a shotgun and .22 rifle fitted with a telescopic sight. Derrick Bird was a licensed firearms holder. He had held a shotgun licence since 1995 and a firearms licence for the .22 rifle since 2007. I can now tell the House that the police have confirmed to me that his licences covered the firearms seized yesterday.

I will visit Cumbria tomorrow so that I can meet Chief Constable Mackey and other senior officers in person and make sure that they have all the support they need to complete their important work, but I can also announce today that I will, if necessary, provide additional funding for Cumbria Constabulary through the police special grant facility. I have spoken this morning to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government who has asked his department’s emergencies management team to contact the local authorities involved to see what support and assistance they need. My right honourable friend the Minister for Civil Society will talk to charities working in Cumbria, and is looking at ways to provide them with extra support at a time when their work will be vital in helping the community to recover.

Undoubtedly, yesterday’s killings will prompt a debate about our country’s gun laws. That is understandable, and indeed right and proper, but it would be wrong to react before we know the full facts. Today, we must remember the innocent people who were taken from us as they went about their lives. Then, we must allow the police time to complete their investigations.

When the police have reported, the Government will enter into, and lead, that debate. We will engage with all interested parties, we will consider all the options, and we will make sure that honourable Members have the opportunity to contribute. I will talk to my right honourable friend the Leader of the House about the best way to ensure that Members have such an opportunity before the Summer Recess.

Mass killing as we experienced yesterday is fortunately extremely rare in our country, but that does not make it any the less painful, and it does not mean that we should not do everything we can to stop it happening again. Where there are lessons to be learnt, we will learn them. Where there are changes to be made, we will make them. But, for now, let us wish the injured victims a speedy recovery, remember the 12 innocent lives that were taken, and pray for the families and friends they leave behind”.

12:51

[Lord Brett]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement made by the Home Secretary in another place, and I am sure I speak for the whole of this House when I say that we join the Home Secretary in sending our condolences to all those who are affected by this tragedy in west Cumbria.

A number of noble Lords live in the county of Cumbria—the noble Lords, Lord Henley, Lord Judd, Lord Inglewood, Lord Clark of Windermere, Lord Dubs, me and others—and we have seen at first hand the resilience of west Cumbria in the face of the devastation of last year’s floods, the tragedy of the loss of young people’s lives in a major road accident a week ago, and now this tragedy. We also share the Home Secretary’s admiration for the speedy response of the emergency services and the police yesterday to a wholly unplanned and unforeseen tragedy. It is a tribute to them that the Civil Nuclear Constabulary and the Lancashire and Cumbria constabularies could work so quickly together, undoubtedly reassuring the natives of Cumbria in that very difficult situation.

The co-ordination at that stage has proved to be wholly successful. Hopefully that will continue. I note the comprehensive nature of the Home Secretary’s Statement and that, if necessary, additional funding will be made available. It seems to be almost beyond doubt that it will be. The 100 detectives who are being deployed from Cumbria, and perhaps from elsewhere, on this case alone will dig deep into the reserves of that relatively modestly sized police force, and the news that the local authorities will also be offered assistance is welcome.

Some questions need to be asked, but I am not sure that now is the time to ask them. Basically, the only question that comes to my mind immediately is that there are health checks by doctors when people apply for licences to own shotguns and so on, but are people who go on holding those licences adequately supervised afterwards? After all, the incidents that have occurred have not happened immediately after a licence was offered and accepted by an individual. I hope that those questions will be dealt with as the policy inquiry fulfils its task and, as the Statement says, as the Home Secretary and the Government inquire into this further.

The resilience of west Cumbria is being tested, and the Home Secretary’s visit tomorrow will be appreciated. I understood from listening to the Statement in the other place that the Prime Minister will also go. That will give great comfort to the people. I also join in the tribute to Jamie Reed, my honourable friend the Member of Parliament for that area, who manfully and most effectively stood up and represented his constituents in the floods and now has that task again.

Basically, our task here today is one of solidarity with the people of west Cumbria. As the noble Baroness said when she repeated the Home Secretary’s Statement, these tragedies are few and far between but we must learn the lessons. At this moment, however, our thoughts go out to all those who are affected, as does our sympathy for the relatives of those who were injured and killed.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his sympathy for those who have suffered. I am sure that he expresses the sentiment of the whole House, to which I add my own. Hutton Roof is in Cumbria, so I too have connections with the county and feel this loss personally.

The noble Lord is quite right that this is a small force with a big task ahead of it. As he rightly said, the Government will make sure that it has the resources necessary to carry out that task, and we will look, as I have said, at the lessons to be learnt, but the House will probably agree that we should not draw conclusions precipitately. As he also rightly said, the resilience of west Cumbria is being tested. I thank the House for the understanding that has been exhibited. I have no doubt that we will hear more when the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have visited in person.

12:56

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, as someone who lives just a few miles from where these terrible events happened, may I say how much the solidarity of the House will be appreciated in the community? I thank the Minister for the messages that she has sent. Of course our primary consideration must be the people who are affected, those who have died and those who have been injured.

I am also glad that the Minister has emphasised so strongly the terrific role played by the Cumbrian police. They are a small force that is, thank God, not frequently confronted with events of this magnitude, and the way in which they have stretched themselves to meet it is highly impressive, but we need, particularly in modern times, to look very closely at whether they have all the support and equipment that they need for all eventualities. Without in any way being alarmist, I make the point that this is particularly important in an area with such security sensitivity around the nuclear industry on the west coast. This cannot be ignored in the considerations and assessments that are being made. I noticed that the gates of Sellafield were closed yesterday for a while, which underlines the point.

In a small, closely knit community, the shock and psychological impact cannot be overestimated. It is particularly sad that this has happened when the community is still grieving over the horrible school coach crash of just a few days ago and still recovering, albeit a few miles away from this incident, from the worst effects of the dreadful flooding last autumn. This is a great deal for a close-knit community in Cumbria to bear, and the county will need all possible support. In saying how much the support of the Government and the House will be appreciated, and how great the needs are, I must say that the resilience and courage of the people of Cumbria are very special. I am constantly challenged by the spirit of the people of Cumbria, and I am someone who after nearly 20 years in Cumbria is still firmly regarded as an offcomer there.

I hope we can all bear in mind that this incident has emphasised that sanity and rationality are very fragile. In all that we do in politics, how we nurture sanity and rationality in human affairs must be central to our considerations.

[The Lord Bishop of Lincoln]

Perhaps I may associate these Benches with the sentiments expressed this afternoon. These events challenge very much the whole culture of a community and the place of faith in the way in which we interpret the vulnerability of our humanity. Such events expose the nature of our humanity, sometimes at its most raw, but also, as noble Lords have testified, at its very best. We pay tribute to the people of Cumbria, who have already demonstrated in recent tragic events their capacity to pull together, to grow together and to move forward together. We are confident that they will do the same as a result of the tragic events of yesterday.

On behalf of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle I pay tribute to the way in which the public services, particularly the police and the health service, responded to these events and the way in which they have chosen to work in partnership with faith communities in the areas affected. He has worked with his ecumenical partners to ensure that the resources of the churches and faith communities are made available in fullest measure to those most affected by what has happened. Today, as has been already said, it is for us not to look at some of those other questions which will no doubt need to be addressed as a result of such eventualities, but simply to offer our thoughts and prayers to those affected and declare on these Benches the solidarity of the faith communities with all those who seek to bring support, encouragement, succour and relief to those damaged by these events and the communities wherein they live.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, it seems trite to say that our thoughts are with the people in the area who have had these blows following so many others. For myself, I do not think that I can get my mind into the place where theirs must be. I absolutely understand the point made by the noble Baroness that we must not be too precipitate, but on this occasion we have to frame our points as questions. Therefore, does she appreciate the concern of many of us that when the review takes place, the needs of the mental health service, which for so long has been something of a Cinderella in our health service, are very much up there as part of the considerations?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and the right reverend Prelate have made points on which I think that we all agree; that is, primarily, at the moment we need to think about the situation of the people of Cumbria and the resilience that they are having to show in considerable adversity. Not only was there the recent bus crash, but previously there was devastating flooding. This goes to the heart of close-knit communities which may not be particularly prosperous, where recovery is a long process, both materially and physically. Our hearts go out to them and the House will want to continue to express its solidarity with the people of Cumbria.

The noble Baroness also raised a relevant point. We do not know precisely what was in the mind of the perpetrator of these acts. Whether we shall get to the bottom of that is not clear. But the National Health Service certainly has to pay as much attention to mental health as it does to physical.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on the measured response to this extremely tragic incident and hope that we do not react too quickly. I am a little concerned by the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, on whether the local police were properly equipped to deal with this. If that resulted in large numbers of armed police in Cumbria, I could see accidents happening, which would be extremely regrettable. I am one of the few people who voted against the ban on handguns after Dunblane. At that time we pointed out that many more guns were held illegally than were held legally and did not think that a ban on legally held guns would make any difference. That has been proved tragically right, in that handgun crime has risen inexorably ever since Dunblane.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, to add to what has just been said, I am sure that we should not be precipitant. Obviously, we need to draw conclusions when it is right to do so. The time will come possibly after we have had a report from the chief constable and the Home Office has had a chance to consider it. Then we can look at the next steps. If it is necessary to do more on the firearms front, although I think that we should be cautious about changing the law yet again, we will look at that.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, I have no doubt that in the next few days and weeks there will be shrill cries from tabloid editors for immediate action. I know that the Government will steel themselves against the temptation to surrender to any such demands. I associate myself with the most sober and sincere views expressed in every part of the House in relation to this appalling tragedy.

This is certainly not the time to come to any decision, but when the police report has been fully considered and analysed, will the Government give thought to setting up an in-depth inquiry to consider whether, of the scores of thousands of persons who hold firearms and shotgun licences, and those many thousands who apply for them and sometimes do not manage to obtain them, there is some screening method that could point to certain areas of danger? In other words, are there factors that cast their long shadows before them? I am sure that the Government will give full consideration to that.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, this is a very interesting idea on the part of the noble Lord. We will certainly take that away. As everyone in your Lordships' House knows, we have strict firearms laws, which are probably some of the strictest in the world, and there are relatively few licensed firearms holders. Of course, that is a separate issue from the number of weapons that may be in the country illegally. Whether it will be right to take the whole question of the basis on which people hold those licences further is a matter that we will consider when we get the report and can see the circumstances of the episode.

[Lord MacKenzie of Culkein]

My Lords, everyone is touched by the horror of what happened yesterday in Whitehaven. Perhaps those of us who have connections with that part of the world feel it even more so. I lived in Whitehaven for a number of years. Some of my children went to school there. I trained as a nurse at West Cumberland Hospital, which treated many of the patients who were tragically injured yesterday. As a theatre nurse there I participated in major incident planning, but in our wildest dreams one could not have envisaged anything like what happened. Our hearts go out to everyone concerned.

While I accept entirely that a knee-jerk reaction would be completely senseless, does the Minister share my concern, or perhaps my distaste, at the gun lobby rushing to the airwaves yesterday seeking to limit any possible review of gun licensing and the holding of these weapons?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I entirely agree that it was highly inappropriate.

[Lord Inglewood]

As the Minister said, mass murder as we experienced it yesterday is fortunately extremely rare in our country. It is also extremely rare in all countries. Does she agree that the issues that this tragedy in my home area has thrown up require consideration, bearing in mind that many of the arguments deployed more generally in respect of guns, gun crime and safety from gun crime may not necessarily be pertinent?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, I take the point made by the noble Lord. It is not only the general proposition that we have to consider but also the local circumstances. Clearly, we need to know a great deal more about the background to this before it is sensible to draw conclusions for the whole country.

[Lord James of Blackheath]

My Lords, I wonder whether we should ask official sources and the press to consider a possible amendment to a word that appears in statements on our screens at the moment. After two former tragic events, an aircraft crash and a railway crash, I have found that the use of the word “incident” is hugely offensive to local communities. For others, it talks down the significance of what has befallen them. It would be far better if the screens said “Cumbrian shooting tragedy” or just “Cumbrian shootings”. That would be less offensive, and I think that we should send a message to the outside world.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I am sure that the House will take note of what the noble Lord has said.

Queen's Speech

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

Debate (5th Day) (continued)

13:10

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I start by offering my congratulations to the two new Ministers at the Dispatch Box today and indeed to the noble Lord, Lord Freud, whose areas of responsibility are covered in the debate. I acknowledge the two excellent maiden speeches and look forward to two more. I intend to focus my remarks on the labour market and benefit proposals in the Queen’s Speech.

Our starting position—hitherto shared around this House, I believe, if our recent debates on welfare reform are a benchmark—is the centrality of work, good work, as a means for people to stay out of poverty, improve their self-esteem and well-being, and meet their aspiration for a fuller life. It follows from this that we support a system in which nobody should be written off and which helps people get into work or move closer to the labour market—that is, a system in which people are better off in work than on benefits; one that places reasonable conditions on individuals to take up or prepare for work when they can and supports them when they cannot; indeed, a system that is built on partnership between government, employers, local authorities and providers, including the third sector.

That is what changes to the benefits system, including tax credits, have been about since 1997, why worklessness has fallen and why the action that the Labour Government took has prevented a big increase in inactivity during the current recession. It is why fewer people are on inactive benefits now than in 1997 and why we halved the number of people on tax and benefit rates of 90 per cent plus. But you do not have to take my word for it. Indeed, it was the noble Lord, Lord Freud, himself who stated in his 2007 report that:

“The Government has made strong, and in some respects, remarkable progress over the last 10 years. The New Deals … have been enormously successful”.

Given this assessment of our approach, it is shocking to see that one of the earliest acts of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition has been to withdraw support for the Future Jobs Fund, in breach of pre-election promises, axing some 40,000 jobs for young people this year alone.

The coalition promises us an investigation of the benefits system to simplify it in order to improve incentives to work. This is not the first such investigation and no doubt it will not be the last. No doubt we will see the re-emergence of our old friend the iron triangle. However, as we debated earlier this year during the passage of the Child Poverty Act, we need to be cautious about the simplistic application of an economic model that looks at the relationship between the level of benefits, the earnings break-even point and the rate at which benefits are withdrawn—and especially about conclusions which suggest that benefit levels have to be reduced to maximise work incentives. Simplification of the benefits system is a worthy objective, but we know that, if it is done fairly, it costs money. I would be interested to hear about the resources that have been secured from the Treasury for this end.

We have heard from Ministers about plans to reassess everyone currently on the old-style incapacity benefit according to the work capability assessment. This was already in hand with a major programme to assess 10,000 people each week in addition to handling new claims. Is it proposed to continue with this migration process at the pace originally proposed or at a different rate, and what are the resource implications? Of course it is not just a case of assessing customers in receipt of incapacity benefit. We recognised that whatever progress had been made, more had to be done to tackle long-term worklessness. That is why we proposed back in March further changes to the assessment, with new help and stronger conditions to accompany them. The introduction in 2008 of the work capability assessment and ESA marked a new beginning in how people were assessed and supported, focusing on what people can do rather than what they cannot.

Concerns have been raised in this Chamber, most notably by the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, about how accurately the WCA assesses individuals, and more recently it has been challenged by Citizens Advice Scotland. So I urge the coalition Government to proceed with the improvements identified following an internal review of the WCA, and in particular for there to be greater recognition of fluctuating conditions within the assessment, to expand the support within ESA to cater for those with certain communications problems and those with severe mental health conditions.

As for sanctions, we will have to unpick the detail from the rhetoric, but I had a sense of foreboding last Sunday when I thought I heard the Secretary of State say in an interview that sanctions were not being properly applied or, indeed, being applied at all. In part as a result of arguments advanced in your Lordships’ House, we secured in primary legislation the recognition that good cause for acts or omissions includes the availability of childcare and a person’s health conditions, physical or mental; that victims of domestic violence should have extended exemptions from JSA conditionality; and that JSA and ESA agreements and action plans must have regard to the impact on the well-being of any children. We have otherwise secured that parents with young children have the right to restrict their availability for work to school hours. I take it that all of these are sacrosanct. If not, we will look to make common cause with all those who supported and pressed us on these matters.

There is much else to keep us occupied in this agenda: the creation of a single welfare-to-work programme, the realignment of provider contracts, and progress on the DEL-AME switch. The devil, of course, will be in the detail. If the effect of all this is to make progress on ending child poverty—I welcome the commitment, and it will be interesting to see what targets are used in that endeavour—to help more people into sustained employment, and to support those for whom escaping poverty through employment is not practical, the agenda will have our support. If not, we will challenge it rigorously.

13:17

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I make this speech for the first time from the government Benches, in the first coalition Government for many years. Coalitions are commonplace in local government and are nothing to be afraid of, and this one has been welcomed by at least two-thirds of the population. It is only a pity that some of the more vicious national press lags behind public opinion. I therefore congratulate my noble coalition partner, the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Oareford, on his new role and his maiden speech. He will find that we, his partners on these Benches, will play our part in helping to guide the elements of the coalition agreement through this House. In listening to one or two of the speeches over the past few days, the image has been brought to mind of the apocryphal Japanese soldier who staggers blinking out of the forest several years after 1945 under the impression that World War 2 is still under way, unaware that peace has broken out. I am not one of those; the war is over, long live the peace.

So let me start my comments on children and schools by welcoming some important policies from the coalition agreement. First, I am delighted that we will scrap ContactPoint, change the rules on collecting and storing DNA, and ensure that children are no longer fingerprinted in schools without their parents’ permission. But could I ask the Minister whether the erection in public places of the notorious mosquitoes, which make a high-pitched noise which only children can hear, will also be banned unless there are very good public interest reasons for them? They are discriminatory and restrict the freedom of movement of law-abiding young people, and have been condemned by many organisations that speak for children, as well as by children themselves.

I also welcome the commitment to the overseas aid target on which so many of the world’s most vulnerable children depend, and the coalition Government’s continued commitment to ending child poverty by 2020. This policy was one of the best actions of the former Government. I am also pleased that the Government have stated their continuous support for Sure Start, another of the previous Government’s achievements for children.

Noble Lords may recall that I have always regretted the reduction in the health visitor service. Health visitors, as a universal service, avoid any stigma for the family visited, are trusted by mothers and are a useful signposting mechanism to other services. Therefore I am delighted about our commitment to increase their numbers. However, I am keen that we get the balance right. The Sure Start peripatetic outreach workers have done a valuable job in reaching those families with multiple problems who other services have found hard to reach. I want to be sure that the new health visitors will be trained to reach out into the community, identify problems and direct the appropriate services towards families. At a time of economic belt-tightening, we need to make every pound work hard, and early intervention provides the best value for money.

One of the declarations of which the coalition can be most proud is that children will no longer be detained for immigration purposes. This was an unnecessary blot on the record of the previous Government, who did so much for children, and got in the way of this country implementing fully its duties under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Every step towards full implementation of the convention is a step in the right direction.

On criminal justice, I welcome the proposal to conduct a full review of sentencing policy to ensure that it is effective in deterring crime and reducing reoffending. The rate of reoffending, in particular among teens and early 20s, is appalling. The evidence for the effectiveness of rigorous community sentences and restorative justice initiatives is compelling. So many young offenders have themselves been failed by society and need treatment, therapy and education to get them back into useful lives. I hope the evidence from these initiatives will be taken seriously in the review. I also hope it will consider the evidence for restoring the age of criminal responsibility to its pre-1998 age of 14.

In the section on the NHS I find little about children’s health, apart from the welcome reference to children’s hospices, which do such a wonderful job. What concerns me is the lack of any reference to child and adolescent mental health services. I am aware of the financial problems the Government have inherited but I would urge Ministers to consider the long-term financial savings that could result from early intervention for children with mental health problems and personality disorders. Emphasis on child poverty and family support can avoid some of those problems but we still need to improve what has been a Cinderella service. If we do, we will reap financial as well as human benefits.

Time does not allow me to say much about schools but I shall get my opportunity to do that on Monday. I have already pointed out the educational disadvantage of many young offenders, for example, so it is vital that all our children get the best possible education we can provide. Despite the economic problems, the Government have declared that schools will not suffer and neither will 16-to-19 education. Indeed, the commitment of my party to providing the financial premium needed to enable children from the most deprived backgrounds to overcome their disadvantage is one of which I am most proud. I am delighted that our coalition partners have agreed that this cannot be done without a commitment to that funding promise. It is for the long-term future of our country, as well as a basic human right for our children.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, asks where the money is coming from. It really is breathtaking when the Opposition shoulders no responsibility for where the money went. We will be coming to the Second Reading of the first of two education Bills on Monday, so I shall not say much about academies here. However, I will be playing my part in ensuring that the objectives of the Bill are achieved without jeopardising the coalition’s declared intention of providing the very best for the most vulnerable children. Their welfare as well as their education is of paramount importance—and that includes those with SEN, disabilities, those in public care and young carers. We have to look very carefully at the possibly unintended consequences of the structural reforms that are proposed to ensure that no child is left behind as we improve schools.

Both our parties have often said that we should trust the professionalism and dedication of teachers. However, there is currently excitement and concern among teachers and heads about the Government’s plans and we must ensure that these concerns are taken into account. If we are to enable schools to improve, we can do so only with the commitment and energy of our teachers, and so it is vital that we listen to them.

I commend this programme of government to the House and I will work with my partners to ensure that, as usual, legislation leaves this House in a better state than when it came in.

13:24

[Baroness Greengross]

My Lords, everyone in your Lordships’ House will welcome the Government’s intention to push forward the reform of health and social care and, in the case of social care, the establishment of an independent commission on the funding of long-term care and the breaking down of barriers between health and social care funding to incentivise preventative action. The greater rolling-out of personal budgets to both older and disabled people and carers will give more control and purchasing power, and the increase in direct payments to carers and better community-based provisions to improve access to respite care will also be warmly welcomed.

As for the health Bill, no one will argue that a sustainable national framework for the NHS which supports a patient focus on outcomes and delivers on the commitment to reduce bureaucracy by strengthening the voice of patients and the role of doctors is not a good thing. I hope that eliminating the top-down structural approach will make doctors and nurses accountable to patients and their carers, rather than to layers of NHS management. However, while welcoming this new accountability and patient focus, and supporting the reduction in bureaucracy, I speculate just how the removal of one quango layer, the strategic health authorities, and their replacement by another, the NHS board, will improve things in the short term. The expanded roles of both Monitor and the CQC should go some way to assuage those concerns, but we need more detail as to exactly how these agencies will work with the new board and I hope the Minister will be able to give us a little more information about that.

While welcoming the fact that the Government are also going to prioritise public health, I look forward to more detailed plans for this area, which I hope will emerge before too long. Whether this Government are able to tackle the economic and social determinants of poor health and reduce health inequalities will be a test of whether they can work effectively across departmental boundaries, something which, sadly, eluded their predecessors.

Often it is older people, in particular, who can find themselves on the front line of experiencing health inequality at first hand. An unacceptable variation in the quality of dementia care on general wards in hospitals across England, Wales and Northern Ireland was identified in a recent Alzheimer’s Society report. Dementia patients with an accompanying physical condition are staying far longer in hospital than those people who go in for the treatment of a physical ailment alone.

Health inequalities, however, are experienced not only by older people but right across the life course. The Healthy Ageing across the Life Course programme, funded by the New Dynamics of Ageing programme, shows that childhood social conditions, as well as adult social conditions, have a long-term impact on physical performance. However, Professor Marmot’s review into health inequalities, Fair Society, Healthy Lives, published earlier this year, reminded us that while health inequalities are traditionally regarded as a problem for the NHS, the NHS is but one player in this task. We must also address the social determinants of health, the housing and neighbourhoods where people live, education, income, standard of living, occupation and working conditions. Clearly the NHS cannot tackle these issues alone; central and local government departments, the third sector and the private sector, as well as individuals themselves, have a key role to play.

The big question is whether we are willing to invest for the future in a fairer society in which we can all enjoy a fuller and healthier life. For some people, particularly older people, the impact of the economic downturn on pension funds may mean that they will have to remain in work longer. Therefore, the proposed removal of the default retirement age must be accompanied by a concerted drive by government, employers and agencies to tackle stereotypes, to extend flexible working opportunities to all workers, and to meet the health, caring and work needs of people who are 50 and over so that they can remain economically active without it being detrimental to their health.

Most well intentioned observers would support the vision described in Our Programme for Government of a reformed health and social care system that puts people in control of their lives. While we all realise that this Government have to find radical, practical and affordable solutions to the issues that we face, the challenge will be to oversee the fair delivery of this reform in this era of new politics, responsibility and opportunity.

13:30

[The Lord Bishop of Guildford]

My Lords, I must first express my sincere gratitude for the personal welcome that I have received from all sides of the House, especially from the Minister this morning—and especially now that our respective wives have been sorted out. To this, I add my most sincere thanks to the officers and staff of the House. I thank especially Black Rod, who briefed me just a day before his tragic illness, which I know your Lordships' House most deeply regrets.

It is, however, with a certain sense of surprise that any Bishop of Guildford stands before this House, as an examination of Hansard for July 1927 would reveal. The creation of my diocese of Guildford out of the ancient diocese of Winchester, together with that of Portsmouth, had been discussed for many years in the earlier part of the past century. The creation of a separate diocese of Guildford, comprising the county of Surrey excluding its eastern corridor but including north-east Hampshire, was aimed at what was interestingly called at the time “better shepherding” and “spiritual efficiency”. The church, like the constitution of the realm, continually changes and develops as circumstances require. After its safe passage through the Church Assembly and the other place, the then Bishop of Winchester, Theodore Woods, newly translated from Peterborough, introduced the Church Assembly Measure into your Lordships' House. But an unexpected and eloquent ambush was executed by the then Bishop of Durham, Hensley Henson, which would have had fatal consequences had not the swiftest tactical action been taken by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, who successfully proposed an adjournment. Two weeks later, after a long debate and with powerful support from the Archbishop of Canterbury, your Lordships' House was “Content”, but only by a margin of 10 votes, that there should be such an entity as the diocese of Guildford. I stand before you.

I begin here because a debate concerning culture should take into account the importance of knowing our history. I know that the Minister, originally a historian, will support that—in a different vein, I refer noble Lords to the earlier comment of the noble Lord, Lord Baker. To understand who we are and where we are to go, we need to know where we have come from. This is true of communities and society as well as individuals and indeed a diocese.

The diocese of Guildford includes within its boundaries two excellent university establishments, the University of Surrey and Royal Holloway College, the latter a pioneer of women’s university education, with particular strengths today in the creative arts and in interfaith relationships and chaplaincy. The University of Surrey—I speak not only as a member of court but as a personal friend of the former and present vice-chancellors—has recently rejoiced in the opening of its Surrey Sports Park with world-class facilities, not least for swimming and pre-Olympic training. It includes training and sports facilities for the disabled, including world-class sportsmen and women with disability. It is an important development. Another recent development there has seen the association of the Guildford School of Acting with the university. At the University of Surrey, we are further engaged in an innovative, multi-faith centre where people of all faiths will be able to pray in their distinct sacred spaces but also to meet together, eat together, discuss together and work together—faith and academy working together to enhance social capital and cohesion. At Woking, incidentally, also in the diocese of Guildford, we have the oldest mosque in the country. In Guildford, there flourishes a fine school of contemporary music; at Oxshott, at the other end of the musical scale, is the Yehudi Menuhin School; and at Farnham there is the University for the Creative Arts. Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre is well known, and Woking’s New Vic Theatre hosts National Theatre productions and Glyndebourne on tour. Also in Surrey, uniquely for this country, is the Wintershall Passion play.

I must also mention fine museums throughout Surrey, particularly the awardwinning Lightbox in Woking—presently offering a Walter Sickert exhibition—and the Watts Gallery at Compton, where Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport recently graced its restoration “topping out” ceremony. I particularly commend the Watts Gallery’s community outreach programme, as befits the memory of the painter GF Watts, who had a very serious social conscience.

One of the most interesting observations that I made when I moved to the diocese of Guildford five and a half years ago was of the Surrey social conscience. In the cathedral there is a memorial to the Jarrow marchers of the depressed 1930s and the Surrey collection for them. In fact, Surrey and north-east Hampshire were relatively poor before the coming of the railway. That, I know, takes a little bit of believing. There was of course a vein of prosperity running through the county: the wool trade. As I stand in your Lordships' House, I am reminded that the arms of my see include no fewer than 12 woolsacks. With the railway, Surrey, in the words of Arthur Mee, became London's nearest neighbour and we became commuter-land for Waterloo and the City of London. Today, we lie between the airports of Gatwick and Heathrow, and Surrey has become a global, multinational commuter-land. This does not mean that there are no pockets of deprivation within Surrey and north-east Hampshire. Researched evidence of this can be found in the report, Hidden Surrey, commissioned by the Surrey Community Foundation, of which I declare I have the honour and responsibility to be a member.

In this debate, I would be remiss if I did not draw your Lordships’ attention to that considerable heritage of which I as bishop, with the clergy and lay people of my diocese, have some responsibility for: the parish churches of Surrey and north-east Hampshire. Guildford's cathedral, by Edward Maufe, has been unduly neglected, but no longer do people speak of it disparagingly as akin to a power station—in any case, cathedrals ought to be power stations. Pevsner rightly speaks of the cathedral’s interior as “luminous”. In that interior sings a cathedral choir of national excellence and space is also regularly inhabited by local musicians such as the Guildford Symphony and Philharmonic Orchestras with their choruses, as well as national orchestras.

Pevsner, it has to be said, spoke of Surrey as “doubly unlucky”. He meant by that its contemporary proximity to London and its ancient remoteness from anywhere else, thus its comparative paucity of grand architecture. But he rightly excepted its ancient village churches and surrounding houses. In networks today made up largely of metropolitan and global commuters, the village green and the parish church, not to speak of the disappearing pub and post office, are important icons of human continuity and community. They are for all the community. But such a precious built heritage is enormously costly to maintain—I speak now of the parish churches rather than the pubs. About £110 million a year is spent annually simply by the Church of England on keeping up listed places of worship, to which local congregations contribute two-thirds. This is a good working partnership. Nationally, as well as in Surrey, the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme, which refunds the cost of VAT on repairs to all such buildings, has been enormously important in maintaining the fabric of these churches, open for all. Three recent grants in Guildford diocese were concerned with additional community facilities. The scheme is due to end in March next year, with no replacement in sight, which seems like a curious blindness to the contribution of faith communities to the wider culture and well-being of society. Some years ago, the bishops in the West Midlands were invited to scrutinise a draft regional description of cultural activities. Church buildings did get a perfunctory mention, but its drafters had forgotten the Three Choirs Festival, the oldest cultural festival in the country. I urge Her Majesty's Government to avoid such partial blindness in respect of a continuation of the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme.

In conclusion—and speaking of seeing—I offer four ways of seeing the diocese of Guildford. There is the magnificent view of Surrey and north-east Hampshire from the Hog's Back, but do not stop too suddenly on the dual carriageway. There is the extraordinary view of the North Downs from Newlands Corner, with range after range of hills beautifully composing themselves like a Claude landscape. Alternatively, although I am not sure that I can recommend this, an excellent view can be obtained, if only momentarily, at 200 feet up on the rollercoaster at Thorpe Park. My recommended choice is from the top of the tower of Guildford Cathedral, with views over the downs as far as Epsom to the north-east and Hampshire and Sussex to west and south. This last vantage point I shall be happy to arrange a visit to, should any noble Lord so desire.

Should today’s debate overrun its scheduled timing, I beg the indulgence of your Lordships' House and the Minister if I leave in the early evening to be at an engagement leading a service of worship for Corpus Christi at one of my parish churches.

13:41

[Lord Colwyn]

My Lords, I am delighted to be able to congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford on his warm-up from my noble friend Lord Hill of Oareford and for his interesting and informative maiden speech. I welcome him to the Bishops’ Benches, despite the lack of space. Many of us here will welcome his publicly declared belief that this House should be preserved as a revision Chamber for legislation and that serious thought should be given to our constitution, electoral system and your Lordships’ House. He has recently celebrated 40 years as a priest and was secretary for ecumenical affairs at Lambeth Palace for the late Lord Runcie from 1981 to 1989 before being appointed a canon of St Paul's. He became Bishop of Guildford in 2004. He is a supporter of the ordination of women and is in favour of women bishops. He has been highly critical of the EU and its remoteness from ordinary people. I have a feeling that the right reverend Prelate will enjoy himself in this House. His intervention in today's debate on the Queen's speech is particularly appropriate, as he is known to Her Majesty as Clerk to the Closet. It is his task to present newly appointed bishops to Her Majesty the Queen. We shall look forward to hearing from the right reverend Prelate in the future.

I intend to speak briefly to support both my dental and my musical colleagues. Dentistry is at another crossroads. The decisions made in this Parliament to transform the delivery of NHS dentistry will be extremely important. We have been left with an unfinished reform following the 2009 Steele review. We must grasp this opportunity if we are to improve the oral health of the nation. However, the challenge of reforming dentistry—to deliver a better system both for patients and dentists—comes at a time when tough financial decisions are to be made across all Whitehall departments.

The previous Government started to clear up the mess of dentistry, much of it self-inflicted, but there remains much for the new Government to do. I take this opportunity publicly to welcome the coalition Government's commitment in their programme for government. The agreement states that,

“we will introduce a new dentistry contract that will focus on achieving good dental health and increasing access to NHS dentistry, with additional focus on the oral health of schoolchildren”.

The acknowledgement of dentistry in this document is very positive and much needed. Despite an overall improvement in the oral health of the nation over the past 30 years, problems persist. As I have mentioned before in this Chamber, by the age of five, more than 30 per cent of British children suffer missing, filled or decayed teeth. In some parts of the country, as many as three-quarters of children are affected. Oral cancers, one of the conditions that dentists play a crucial role in detecting, are becoming increasingly common. There has been a 41 per cent rise in the number of cases of mouth cancer in the past decade and, in the last year for which the figures are available, 1,851 people died as a result of the disease.

Alongside the challenges of oral health promotion and NHS dentistry, general dental practitioners face mounting challenges in the management of their practices. The creation of the Care Quality Commission, with which both NHS and private dental practices must be registered by the end of March next year, foists a further layer of regulation on dental practices. Although registration is due to open in October, the registration fee is still not announced.

Requirements for decontamination are also changing, in the form of the Health Technical Memorandum 01-05: Decontamination in primary care dental practices. The profession is seeking clarification of the evidence base for these changes and has called for a review by NICE. The question is whether the changes offer the genuine reassurance to patients that make investing in them worth while.

Pressing challenges remain, but I believe that we have the opportunity to complete the unfinished reform and change the way in which NHS dentistry is delivered in England so it is more preventive, increases access and delivers good oral health. The challenges are threefold. First, the Government must complete the unfinished reforms, learning from the mistakes of the much criticised 2006 contract—in particular, avoiding the failure properly to pilot change. The contract was so disastrous that it initially saw access fall dramatically. Only in the past six months has access climbed back to the level it was at in 2006. I am delighted that the Government have committed to pilot any changes. Secondly, we must pursue consistently high-quality commissioning of primary dental care. Some PCTs perform well, but many have room for improvement. They must be properly supported in their work, particularly by ensuring that they employ or have access to dental practice advisers and dental public health expertise. Thirdly, there must be a commitment to tackling oral health inequalities to close the unacceptable chasm which exists between those with good and poor oral health as highlighted in the British Dental Association's general election manifesto, Smiles all round. I therefore welcome the announcement in the Queen's Speech that the voice of patients will be strengthened to improve public health alongside actions being taken to reduce health inequalities. The coalition has made it clear that dentistry is a priority. The task now is to work out the detail with the profession, to deliver real change for patients and dentists.

I have a few words to say about music. I hope that the coalition will be able to make a clear statement on the situation over the Live Music Bill, which was widely supported but failed to survive the last few days of the previous Administration. A widely criticised recent DCMS live music report claimed that overall live music is “thriving”, but acknowledged that this was not the case for smaller venues. However, the “thriving” conclusion was not based on any direct measure of performances, but relied instead on indirect evidence—an 11 per cent increase in live music licence applications, an apparent 20 per cent increase in the number of professional musicians, and a modest increase in self-reported gig attendance and Arts Council participation data. The last time that the DCMS surveyed actual performances in venues like bars and restaurants was in 2007. This showed a 5 per cent fall in performances after the Licensing Act came into effect in April 2005, measured against the benchmark of the 2004 pre-Act MORI survey which found that the majority of premises had had no music at all in the previous 12 months. This did not stop DCMS from calling it a flourishing live music scene.

The Live Music Bill, which would give licensing exemption to gigs for fewer than 200 people, reintroduce the “two in a bar” rule that allows one or two musicians to play with either minimal or no amplification and exempt hospitals, schools and colleges from requiring licences for events where alcohol is not being sold, should be reintroduced to Parliament as soon as possible. I believe that the Home Secretary, Theresa May, will be reviewing the 2003 Licensing Act and I urge her to consider separating entertainment licensing with an exemption for small gigs from alcohol licensing.

Grouping those two licensable activities together may have seemed a neat administrative solution, but it has seriously harmed live music in different ways, first by significantly reducing the number of places where musicians can work and radically increasing bureaucracy and, secondly, by creating the wholly misleading impression that live music is first and foremost a danger to society—as dangerous as alcohol. That is not only offensive to those who care for live music; it suggests that, as a nation, we have surrendered to petty officialdom.

13:51

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Hill, on his appointment. His really is one of the best jobs in Government, and as long as he can withstand the surfeit of good advice from former education Ministers who are in this House he will do very well. I am sure that he will enjoy it. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hall, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford on their maiden speeches. It was a delight to listen to them and I also look forward to their further contributions.

New Governments are always inevitably about change; that is what the electorate has asked for and invited, but inevitably there is some continuity as well. I very much welcome the fact that, from what we have already heard from the coalition Government, many of the most successful initiatives of the past Labour Government—Teach First, schools supporting other schools, Sure Start, early years, federation and clusters—will still find a home under this Government. I also welcome one or two policy announcements that I have heard. In particular, on technical schools—or colleges or academies, as they seem to change their name as the policy develops—I congratulate the noble Lord on the work that he has done with our former friend on this. They are a change for good and I would certainly offer my personal support from these Benches in any way, as he knows that I have done so far. I am delighted that they, too, have found a home. I also welcome the review of the accountability framework, which is long overdue. I suspect that only a Government new in office could do that, not one who were part way through.

I want to concentrate today on the main themes of the education part of the Queen's Speech: academies, free schools and teacher control of the curriculum. Unusually, we have another opportunity on Monday to discuss the first Bill, so I shall not go into detail now. Rather, I shall look at some of the underlying principles that have been seized and which shape the education part of the Queen's Speech debate. At the start of their term in office, I suppose that every Government will have to decide what are going to be their levers of reform. In what will they place their trust to bring about the changes they want to see, and which they have promised the electorate?

This coalition Government have made two key errors—quite serious and fundamental errors—in those early decisions. From the Queen’s Speech and the speeches that we have heard so far, we can see that they, like many other Governments, have seized on two things to guide their reforms. First, there is structural change, changing the legal status of schools and their governance and, secondly, embracing independence—in this case, freedom from local councils or a nationally prescribed curriculum. We have now had more than five decades of continuous change in education. We should be able to look at the evidence of what works and build on that, rather than having this pendulum which swings from one set of policy ideas to another.

There is no evidence at all that structural change leads to successful education reform, yet politicians always go into structural change as a first and last refuge. You can list the types of secondary schools that we have had from 1945 onwards, from secondary moderns and grammars to communities and academies. Some of them have appeared more than once; they fade and come back. Despite what the Minister said, there is no evidence that academies are successful schools, but they are not a failure, because it is not the status or structure of a school that will determine its success.

There are many good academies and I pay tribute to them. I, too, pay tribute to Mossbourne Academy, which is mentioned more than any other school in both Houses of Parliament, yet I also look at the rest of the London schools. Most of the 100 secondary schools in London that receive from Ofsted the category of outstanding schools are not academies but local community schools. In Tower Hamlets, of the 15 secondary schools in the most deprived borough in our country, five are categorised by Ofsted as outstanding. Let us pay tribute to them. Not one is an academy; they are all community schools. I welcome and praise academies where they are successful, but there are failing academies. There are academies in special measures. In the south of England, there is an academy which has just been returned to local authority control because it is not successful. Changing the legal status of a school will not transform the opportunities for its pupils and the young people there.

The same is true of independence. The Government are confused about who runs schools. As Margaret Eaton, the Conservative LGA chair, has said, “Councils don’t run schools”—they run themselves. Many of the freedoms that are now going to be offered to the new swathe of academies are mirages or illusions of freedoms. Many are already on offer for all schools, no matter what their status. One reason that they tend not to take and embrace those freedoms is a fear more of Ofsted than of the local authority.

It is time that we did indeed build on the evidence of what works, and every bit of evidence—none more than some research that came out of the University of Bristol in the past few months—shows that the key to individual success is the quality of teaching and of leadership within the school. The research from Bristol shows that the difference in performance between the top 25 per cent of teachers and the poorest 25 per cent can amount to 0.5 per cent of a difference at GCSE. That is why there are good and poor academies, good and poor local authority schools, good and poor church schools; it is because they are not all blessed with excellent school leaders and teachers.

When a new Government come in, they choose the levers that they will depend on to lead their reform over the following years—the flag-bearers of what they want to do. I am disappointed that this Government have chosen structural change and illusory freedom. They should have chosen to say, “The quality of teaching is what will make the difference and our policies will serve that end”. The quality of teaching makes the most difference to the children from poor backgrounds and disadvantaged areas. I look forward, over the coming months, to hearing more about government policies that will help with that. So far, I am afraid that I am a little sad that this Government have almost reinvented the wheel, by seeking one more change in governance and in school status, with some more academies in the hope that that will bring about the reform that we all need. We should learn from research and from the evidence of what works. That does not lead us to more academies, with local authorities being squeezed out of the provision of education.

13:58

[Lord Kakkar]

My Lords, it is with great humility that I beg your indulgence on this, the first occasion on which I address your Lordships’ House. In the few weeks since my introduction, interrupted by the general election, I have enjoyed the warmest of welcomes from so many noble Lords and Baronesses, for which I am most grateful—as I am for the courteous, kind and thoughtful help that I have received from numerous members of staff, including the Clerks and the dedicated Doorkeepers. My happiness in making this speech is tempered by thoughts for Black Rod, who was particularly kind to my family at my introduction and whom I have had the chance of seeing, most recently yesterday evening, in hospital. I know that all our thoughts are with him and his family.

I also express my particular thanks to my supporters: the noble Lords, Lord Higgins and Lord Patel, and the Convenor of the Cross Benches, the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza.

I could not let this occasion pass without recognising the role of the House of Lords Appointments Commission in my being here. Its thorough interrogation to which I was subjected was without doubt the most demanding and insightful of my professional career to date.

My emotions always run high as I enter the House. I never cease to be amazed by the history that attends our deliberations and the vital role that your Lordships play in ensuring that potential legislation enjoys rigorous scrutiny, so that the best possible laws may join the statute book for the benefit of all our people. That this important work is conducted in such a decent, thoughtful and selfless fashion, calling upon a wide range of scholarship, expertise and, above all, experience, makes this House truly unique.

Nor do I cease to be amazed that I find myself among your Lordships, something I could never have imagined on 7 December 1977 when, as a schoolboy, I made my first visit to this House, on which occasion I was filled with awe, excitement and a passion for our nation’s democracy, debate and political discussion. The educational outreach programmes conducted by your Lordships are invaluable, and I hope to be able to contribute to these to help enthuse future generations of schoolchildren about the important work of your Lordships and about what is done in this House and how it forms a cornerstone of our much cherished democracy.

My professional life outside your Lordships’ House is as professor of surgical sciences at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, part of Queen Mary College in the University of London, and consultant surgeon to University College Hospital. I also have the privilege to be director of the Thrombosis Research Institute in London, a world-leading centre dedicated to better understanding the problem of blood clots and how best they can be prevented and treated.

In the practice of medicine and my interest in thrombosis, I follow my father, a professor of surgery, and my mother, an anaesthetist, who came to our country in 1961 to complete their medical training. They were part of a substantial wave of immigration from India made possible because of a national consensus, long held, that has ensured opportunities and advancement for immigrant communities willing to integrate and contribute broadly to British society. What excitement there must now be among all British citizens of Indian origin on learning in the gracious Speech about the Government’s desire for enhanced partnership with India, a wonderful opportunity for this vibrant community to contribute to securing broader opportunities for the entire nation.

In many ways, consensus and institutions define our national character. It is about one of our great national institutions, the one in which I continue to have the privilege to practise as a surgeon and about which I must therefore declare my interest—the National Health Service—that I would like to speak to your Lordships today. Like any great institution, the NHS cannot and must not be taken for granted. It needs to be nurtured, nourished and pruned thoughtfully and sensitively where necessary but, above all, respected.

The gracious Speech indicates the Government’s desire to enhance the voice of patients and strengthen the role of doctors in the National Health Service. These are indeed important ambitions, and are made recognising the nation’s serious fiscal challenge, a situation that will dominate the way that all public services can be delivered for years to come.

Time and again, Governments have felt an obligation to turn to the question of NHS reform. Why is this necessary despite substantial investment, a dedicated and talented workforce and its unique place in the nation’s affections? Why is it that the care received by patients, and their experience of it, varies so considerably; that patient safety and dignity can still regularly be jeopardised; that we have not been able to define models and pathways of care that successfully cross the barriers of the hospital and general practice environment; that we are still witness to some shocking inequalities in health, none more so than those experienced by the homeless; that we have failed to develop a sustainable public health strategy; and that we are often unable to successfully disseminate and rapidly adopt innovation and the findings of medical research for the benefit of our patients? So much has been achieved, yet there is so much more that we need to do if we are to retain a sustainable National Health Service for the benefit of all. The nation’s continuing commitment to the NHS offers both opportunities and important challenges to the medical profession.

All life is a journey, and in my own as a clinical practitioner and academic I have learnt so much about the dignity and resilience of human beings, but also about their frailty and insecurity. It is with this in mind that individual practitioners must deliver healthcare, at a time when both patients and relatives are at their most vulnerable. Beyond the delivery of care to our patients, however, clinicians will have to direct their current skills, and develop new ones, to help ensure that the very best possible gains in public health can be achieved, and that we facilitate the most effective use of the public funds available for healthcare to deliver maximum societal gain.

This is an impressive challenge, but one with which my own profession must fully engage, and I am sure it will, through providing clinical leadership. Indeed, in its report, Future Physician: Changing Doctors in Changing Times, the Royal College of Physicians of London recognises this to be a critical issue and an obligation for the medical profession. However, there is an important distinction between leadership and management in the NHS, a distinction that needs to be clearly understood so that the development of true leaders across both primary and secondary care can become enshrined in the way that we nurture the careers of our most able clinicians.

Leadership is never easy, and clinical leadership will require healthcare professionals to engage with difficult decisions. How can resources be most efficiently utilised? How can the delivery of care be safe and effective while always ensuring that patients are treated with dignity and humanity? How do we ensure that advances in medical research and innovation, once proven, are rapidly adopted for the benefit of our patients, communities and society more broadly?

To effect change, partnership will be essential—partnership between patient and doctor, academic and clinician, hospital doctor and general practitioner, and of course Government and healthcare professional—always focused on the best that we can achieve for our patients while working to ensure that the precious and generous funding available for healthcare provides maximum benefit.

Despite being one of our country’s most cherished and important institutions, the NHS, like all healthcare providers around the world, faces immense challenges. With ever increasing costs on the one hand, and both the delivery of care and the nation’s health failing to meet expectations on the other, courage will be required to secure a sustainable NHS for the benefit of our people. The forthcoming health Bill offers the opportunity to ensure clinical leadership and partnership within the NHS. The expertise of your Lordships’ House will play an important role in achieving that. I thank noble Lords for having given me the opportunity to speak.

14:08

[Baroness Andrews]

My Lords, it is my great pleasure to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, on an excellent maiden speech and in particular on his passionate advocacy of the NHS and patients; that is most welcome in this House. He knows that he joins a galaxy of talent among our noble medics, but we have never before had a specialist on thrombosis. He spoke about leadership, and I understand that he leads the only multidisciplinary programme in the area of cancer-oriented thrombosis.

I made the mistake of printing out the noble Lord’s list of publications. Several hours and reams of paper later, I can vouch for his industry as well as his expertise. In addition, thrombosis affects us all, and he will be listened to most attentively in this House—particularly, I suspect, from the Front Bench, which spends hours sitting still. We look forward to his expertise.

The noble Lord is also clearly a man of action as well as a tremendous, internationally renowned expert, a deadly combination that puts fear into Ministers. I am sure that we will welcome whatever contribution he has to make in the future.

I also welcome the Minister for Education to the Dispatch Box, and all the maiden speakers who have spoken so eloquently today. Not wishing to be left out, I will claim that I, too, am a maiden speaker. I am speaking from the Back Benches after a long period of exile to the Front Benches; I am speaking in opposition, which is an interesting angle; and I am speaking on a topic on which I have never spoken before but shall return to. It is a sort of cygnet song. I refer to the historic environment and the buildings and places which frame our lives, experiences and memories.

As one of the quartet of policies that we are discussing today, it is a useful and beautiful link between them all. It makes us feel better; it creates jobs and skills, and nurtures experience; and it opens doors to our history. Both the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford in his terrific speech and the noble Lord, Lord Baker, spoke about the importance of history—of knowing ourselves and knowing our country. I think here also of how we frame so much of our cultural activity in our great buildings. For example, in Belsay Hall at the moment there is a magnificent exhibition of contemporary art. This is one of English Heritage’s properties. I must declare an interest as chair of English Heritage.

I want to focus on this area of policy for serious reasons. At a time when we face one of the greatest tests as a country—to rebuild our economy and protect our communities—we must realise, simply, that we must exploit all our resources: our knowledge, our skills and our wealth. In adversity nothing could serve us better than to make more of our historic assets. Sadly, those assets now face significant and new risks. If we are to maximise the possibilities of our historic environment, we need to understand the scope, source and scale of this wealth. Heritage is the main stream of our tourism industry. Four out of 10 people who come here say that they do so because of our heritage. Accounting for £2.6 billion from international tourism and a further £5 billion from domestic tourism, as an economic asset it is just below agriculture and well above motor manufacture. It creates jobs. Between them, the private and public sectors of heritage provide 270,000 jobs and they are not just in the south-east. They are also in those remote and rural areas of the country where options are so few. It has the capacity to grow and become an even greater source of national reputation and wealth.

In short, we are looking at what could become part of the national recovery programme. That is why I am delighted that we now have a dedicated Minister who will combine his responsibilities for heritage with those for tourism. Improving our world heritage site at Stonehenge, which is of global significance and requires a setting which is worthy of that, will form part of the Olympic celebration. We also welcome the Secretary of State’s assurances that the National Lottery will be reformed and funds returned to the four original good causes, including the Heritage Lottery Fund. That means more strategic support for heritage, which is very welcome.

The Government have also made it clear that they want local communities and local authorities to take more control of future services and assets. In some ways they are building on what the previous Government did by putting local assets into the hands of local people to use for community benefit. There is nothing more potent, more local and more important to people than the place where they live. It does not matter whether it is the Sussex Weald or Victorian terraces. This is a Government who want us all to get involved and this is how people do so. Nothing is more evident than this in the big society. Organisations such as the Heritage Alliance and the new Civic Voice will give every encouragement to that.

I hope that, in the decentralisation and localism Bill, a presumption for sustainable development will not turn into a short cut to development at all costs. That would be simply a recipe for disaster. A third asset is the fact that our historic places are, by definition, sustainable resources—far better to invest in them than to let them decay. It is far better that the parish church of which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford spoke so eloquently becomes a post office or shop than for it to be redundant and unused. I firmly support his appeal for the Government to maintain the VAT exemption on church buildings, which is incredibly important.

The Government need to be alert to this and to the cost benefit. Some of the best and most sustainable examples of social and economic regeneration and success in recent years—places such as Weymouth and Blackpool—have been successful because they are built around their heritage. That must continue. I would suggest that it is a good argument for why a regional funding capacity should continue, so that it can step in where national and local authorities can fail.

The case that I am making must be made now in the context where the risks to this extraordinary heritage have been increasing in recent years. The recession has had a major impact on our ability to protect historic places. Investors are more risk-averse, and owners and developers find it difficult to borrow money. Decay leads to dereliction and disaster. Once you have lost a building—think of the Euston Arch—you cannot recover it. It is not like shutting the door on a room in an art gallery. That risk is accelerating, particularly in relation to our industrial and cultural heritage. Local authorities are losing skilled staff, including conservation officers and planners—the people who guarantee that the places where we live are the best they can possibly be. That context—the financially challenging times that we live in and the accelerating risks—reinforces the case for greater heritage protection and the need for the Government now to provide time for a heritage Bill which will reduce red tape, simplify the system and increase our ability to protect buildings and places at risk. The cost of not doing that will be the huge bills of dereliction and social diminution in the next few years.

I end with this thought: this country leads the world in the care and protection we give the historic environment. People from Moscow, Naples and all over the world come to see how we have done it and to learn from us. Other countries are waking up to what they have already lost. If we do not send the signal that this matters to us, we will lose not only culturally but economically. We will also lose our leadership, which is so important to the rest of the world. Nothing could be further from the truth than that this does not matter. Failure will carry an extremely high price.

14:16

[Lord Rix]

My Lords, it was just over 18 years ago that, during the debate on the gracious Speech, I made my maiden speech from this side of your Lordships’ House, from this very Bench, flanked by Lord Allen of Abbeydale and the noble Earl, Lord Snowdon. I must say that the House was somewhat better then than it is today.

I made reference then to the labels—often unacceptable and hurtful—which apply or have applied to people with a learning disability. I was then the chairman of Mencap, but for the past 12 years I have had the honour to be that society's president. I am delighted to report that, during this time, opportunities and quality of life for many people with a learning disability have improved considerably. As an example, the closure of overcrowded, austere and remote institutions—comparable to prisons rather than hospitals—has been particularly welcome, and ensures that more people with a learning disability are no longer hidden away, out of sight and out of mind, but are able to enjoy the benefits of living in their own local communities, making friendships and forming relationships. This is a thoroughly good thing and we must build on this progress.

It would be remiss of me if I did not place on record my personal appreciation of the work of successive Governments and pay tribute to all those who have helped to make this happen. The extent of this progress is reflected in the different tone of language and terminology used with respect to people with a learning disability over this time. At the time of my maiden speech the term “mentally handicapped” was used, but the term “learning disability” is more suitable for the modern day. However, since it can be confused with “learning difficulty”, no doubt the label will change yet again. But in many respects the use of language is the easy part. There is still a great deal more progress to be achieved if the 1.5 million people in our country with a learning disability, and their families and carers, are to be fully empowered and enjoy the opportunities of living independently, along with dignity and respect, and if the scourge of bullying is to be totally eliminated.

I take this opportunity to congratulate all noble Lords who have been appointed to the coalition Government and wish them every success in their new roles. The single biggest challenge facing the coalition Government—reducing the public deficit by reducing public expenditure—also poses a considerable threat to the quality of life experienced by people with a learning disability, their families and carers. I strongly urge the coalition Government to recognise this threat and ensure that people with a learning disability do not become the unintended victims of centrally driven, yet locally delivered, “efficiency” savings. Those who can afford it the least must not be expected to pay the most.

Twenty-two separate Bills were set out in the Queen's Speech, but I shall refer only to those which have the greatest interest from my point of view. The welfare reform Bill aims to simplify the benefits system while increasing incentives to find work. Many people with a learning disability want to enjoy the benefits of going to work and living more independently but, due to ever-present prejudice and discrimination, are unable to do so. Latest government statistics reveal that while 48 per cent of all disabled people are engaged in some form of paid employment, for people with a learning disability this figure is just 10 per cent. Regrettably, this figure has remained at this level for the past 10 years. I seek assurances from the coalition Government that the welfare reform Bill will be used as an opportunity to abolish much of the bureaucracy that prevents people with a learning disability from getting a job and that it will instead provide the support and assistance that will help empower them so that they can have an even greater control over their own lives.

In the area of education, the gracious Speech referred to a couple of Bills: one, the Academies Bill, will introduce legislation to enable more schools to achieve academy status; and the other, the education and children's Bill, will act as a companion piece to the Academies Bill. I recognise the coalition Government's aim of driving up standards and increasing choice in education and the opportunities provided by greater freedom to be more innovative and creative in delivering education on the ground. However, I seek assurances that, as a consequence of these greater freedoms, children with a disability and their parents will also have the opportunity to enjoy the promised benefits and advantages of receiving their education within an academy or a so-called free school. Due to the seven-minute time limit, I have had to cut many of the things that I wished to say about education. However, I am glad to say that the Academies Bill, which is due to have its Second Reading on Monday, has been able to house all the notes that I wished to speak on now.

The final piece of legislation referred to in the gracious Speech on which I wish to comment is the health Bill. The coalition Government's aim is for the voice of patients and the role of doctors to be strengthened in the National Health Service. I welcome the Government's intentions to devolve greater power to patients and hope that this will lead to a reduction in the health inequalities often faced by people with a learning disability when they attempt to access healthcare in the NHS. Mencap’s widely regarded Death By Indifference report and the subsequent inquiries highlighted the tragic experiences faced by six people with profound and multiple learning disabilities and the reasonable adjustments that healthcare professionals must make in order to listen to a patient’s family and not make assumptions about a person’s quality of life and health just because they have a disability.

In conclusion, I hope that the new coalition Government are successful in delivering their stated aim of promoting freedom, fairness and responsibility. With those guiding principles at its core—most notably fairness—I very much hope that people with a learning disability can feel that they too have a stake in this Administration and that it will help them to live more independent, free and prosperous lives. Whether that be in the fields of welfare reform, education, health or even culture, I look forward to working with the new coalition Government to improve the lives of people with a learning disability and their families and carers. For the past 18 years, successive Governments have done their best in this regard. I cannot believe that a coalition Government cannot do even better.

14:24

[The Lord Bishop of Lincoln]

My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to join others in paying tribute to the new Minister. I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, with whom I have locked horns once or twice in the past. I was very grateful for her speech and for the maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Hill, Lord Hall and Lord Kakkar, and of my noble friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford.

I speak as chair of the Church of England’s education division. That is not insignificant in so far as the Church of England possesses 5,000 church schools within its family and is the largest single provider of academies. Therefore, we read with interest the coalition’s programme for government and the upcoming Academies Bill. Like others, I will restrain myself from commenting in detail on that Bill until Monday when we will have the chance to address it in rather more concise detail.

The Church of England—I think that I speak on behalf of other faith communities in this respect—continues to see itself as co-operating with the coalition Government in trying to push forward education standards in this country. However, noble Lords will probably gather from what I am going to say that we are perhaps not yet ready for coalition with the new Government. We need to see a lot more detail and to tease out a little more of what is proposed in the upcoming Academies Bill, in the White Paper and in the Bill on education which is proposed for later in the year. Suffice it to say that coalitions, as we all know, entail compromises, but they also entail tensions. Tensions can be creative or destructive. In relation to the topics from the gracious Speech on which we are focusing today, I identified at least three tensions that could turn out to be creative or destructive. We must wait and see. The first of them is that I read into the programme for government, as expressed in the gracious Speech, two takes on what we mean by welfare which go to the heart of the equality issue. We have seen equality widen in our society in recent times, and so to address that issue, and to do so within the context of a debate on welfare, is vital.

On the one hand we can see welfare in individualised terms, on the other we can see it in institutionalised terms. By individualised, I mean when we adjudge that a person who is poor, unemployed or marginalised is poor, unemployed or marginalised because of the kind of person and individual they are, their character, where they have come from, their background and their context. If we individualise welfare in that way, we end up with some of the proposals which are now before us in terms of carrot and stick. You provide benefits on the one hand, and you introduce sanctions on the other, because what you are about is trying to manage individuals into better places. We see evidence of that in what is before us.

However, we also see evidence of what I am describing as institutionalised welfare; that is, when we adjudge that if a person is poor, unemployed or marginalised, it is not so much about them necessarily but about society itself and how we institutionalise equality in many of our assumptions, not to mention in much of our legislation. Therefore, if we are going to address welfare on an institutionalised basis, that is when we get into enhancing benefits—simplify them by all means, but enhance them—and you end up with a major premium placed on, for example, progressive taxation. We see in what is before us—perhaps it is the influence of the Liberal Democrats—an emphasis on institutionalised welfare and a response that needs to be systemic rather than targeted on individuals. There is a tension there. It will be interesting to see whether they cancel each other out or whether they prove to be fruitful for being combined in coalition.

The second tension that I detect is between the two takes on competition. On the one hand, we have competition that can be summed up by the well known phrase, “catch me if you can”. That is when the best inspire and encourage the rest. We see evidence of that in much of the rhetoric that surrounds what is now coming our way: for example, partnering between academies and less well achieving schools. Clearly that is about catch me if you can: “I am doing well and I am going to work with you to inspire and encourage you, too, to do well”. On the other hand, there is another form of competition, which is “devil take the hindmost”, where the best leave the rest behind. Noble Lords will probably be familiar with the well known story of the two businessmen who find themselves in a jungle clearing and see a lion about to pounce. One businessman panics and stands there, petrified. The second calmly opens his briefcase, takes out a pair of trainers and starts putting them on. The first businessman says: “What are you doing? You cannot run faster than a lion”. The other replies: “I do not have to: I only have to run faster than you”. I see some evidence of that understanding of competition in what is in front of us, and what we will be discussing on Monday and thereafter. At the moment, free schools look as if they are more like devil take the hindmost than catch me if you can. Does the one cancel out the other? Let us wait and see. Perhaps they will be enriched by appearing together in coalition.

The third tension that I detect, and will speak briefly about, is between the two takes on accountability. Central control is in there. The Academies Bill—which is very short, with 16 clauses—refers to the mostly new powers of the Secretary of State no less than 20 times. That says to me that quite a lot of control is becoming nationalised. On the other hand, we have a good deal of evidence of devolution to subsidiary bodies, and local influence becoming very important, particularly in parental choices around free schools. Again, there are tensions between the two takes on accountability. I look forward to seeing whether they turn out to be creative or destructive.

There is much for the Church of England to welcome in what the coalition Government are proposing. The pupil premium is welcome. So is less micromanagement and regulation. It was good to hear from both the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, about more trust for teachers. We are very pleased to see the continued respect for denominational schools, which may be paid the compliment of other schools becoming more like them in ethos, values, quality and contextuality.

We have worries about where the money is coming from. If the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, thought it was inappropriate for the Labour Benches to ask that question, perhaps she will not be quite so offended if I ask it. Where is the money coming from? Who is responsible for strategic planning? Will the poorest areas benefit or fall further behind? What about the coasting schools that are neither outstanding nor failing? What about governance, especially in relation to protecting the religious character of schools and ensuring the role of parent governors? What does “inclusive” mean in relation to admissions? As has been said before, it looks as though free schools are likely to work best when they are least needed.

Will the tensions cited prove to be creative or destructive? We hope and pray for the former; and the Government can count on us to be reliable and constructive partners in this brave new world of new politics, new brooms and new opportunities.

14:33

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I add my welcome and congratulations to the new members of the government Front Bench, and look forward to jousting with them both today and next Monday at Second Reading of the Academies Bill. I congratulate also those who have given excellent maiden speeches.

A new political dawn; a new style of government; a new shape to politics; youth at the helm; old ways banished to history; the legacy of previous Administrations overcome, set to rights and relegated to the past; radical solutions called for—I could go on. I am describing 1997, not 2010. Is it the case that things only got better? In one respect at least, clearly not: in one respect, the elections of 1997 and 2010 have a depressing similarity. They both observed a guilty and impotence silence on one of the major issues of the day: demographic change. If noble Lords do not know what that is, they should look around now. We on these Benches exemplify and embody demographic change.

In the campaign, despite the fact that this is a major issue, comparable to that of global warming, there was no significant word from any major party. Noble Lords may recall that, in the early months of this year, there was a flurry, if not of activity, then at least of words about this matter. New initiatives on care of the elderly—one aspect of the problem—burst like bubbles on the surface of a simmering volcano. Much hot air was expended in this House in March, debating a late but ill-conceived government Bill on the subject; but at least and at last, we thought, the matter was back on the agenda. So we turned eagerly to the public debate during the general election that was to follow—and there was nothing. Despite all the hot air and the promises of the importance attached to the topic, there was nothing. That is the first eerie similarity between 1997 and 2010: an issue of major significance kicked into the long grass during the election.

The second eerie similarity is that apparently this is not a matter for discussion in polite hustings society, and certainly not in front of the electorate; and so we had to live with it. However, optimistic as ever, some of us awaited the proposals for legislation in the Queen’s Speech: and our reward was a commission:

“A commission will be appointed to consider a sustainable long-term structure for the operation of social care”.

My first, irreverent thought was, “This is a joke”. My second irreverent thought was, “If this is a joke, I have heard it before, 13 years ago”. The same proposal was made on a major issue: let us have a commission. Perhaps this reminds noble Lords of something. I look at the promise in the coalition document, Our Programme for Government, that the commission will report within a year. The same promise was made—and fulfilled—in 1997; but here we are, 13 years on, back at the starting line. This is incredible. It is also unacceptable.

A group of well meaning and doubtless well minded individuals will consider and report, for that is their remit. What then? There is no promise that the Government will make some decisions, or that a Bill will be presented to this Parliament. We have had groups of well meaning people in significant number over the past 13 years considering and reporting. Even the royal commission and its appendix offered two, or two and a half, solutions. There followed an IPPR report, at least two reports from Rowntree, and two, including Wanless, from the King's Fund. We have had lots of consideration; of considering and reporting there has been no shortage. Of action there has been none—at least none in England.

Do we need a commission? Probably not. Most of the main options for funding are already in the public arena. A competent civil servant could summarise and present them to Ministers within a week. However, if we are to have a commission—which seems inevitable—I will offer two or three proposals for what it could helpfully contribute to the decisions that many of us hope will come out of it. The first—this is a major task to be done in due course—is an analysis of all the streams of funding that go unco-ordinated in to this black hole. This would include the enormous sums already spent by local authorities and the health service on the needs of older people. It would look at attendance allowances, housing benefit, disability benefit and contributions to the cost of care in both cash and kind from private sources and private individuals. These are unco-ordinated and I have no doubt that better co-ordination would produce better care and a more effective use of the resources that we already spend.

Secondly, we could do with an analysis of the policies and practices of the devolved Administrations, each of whom take a different position from that taken in England. If we looked at those, we might learn something both about mistakes and about what works. We also need a plan to integrate health and social care spending across the country. This is the question that we always duck—it is too hard and the civil servants will not like it—but it has to happen if we are to have competent and efficient care. Lastly, as was emphasised in the debates here in March, we need a scheme to enable the portability of benefits from one part of the country to another.

If all this were part of the work of the commission, it would help the Government to lay effective plans to deal with the implications of demographic change. These implications have not gone away in the past 13 years and they will not go away in the foreseeable future. They have to be faced. Despite what some say, I have no illusions about affordability here or, for that matter, in Scotland. I accept that we are in different financial times from those in 1997 and 1998.

In conclusion, I ask the Minister two questions. First, will he give Members of this House opportunities to comment on the remit to be given to the commission? We want to know what it will do. Secondly, can he assure us that the commission will face the big questions and that thereafter the Government will act, whether in agreement or disagreement? We need to move forward; 13 years is too long to wait.

14:41

[Lord Fowler]

My Lords, I congratulate the maiden speakers on their contributions, all of which were of a very high standard. I particularly congratulate my noble friend Lord Hill of Oareford on his speech. We worked together in the 1992 election, when we travelled the length of the land with John Major. We braved egg throwers on the south coast and a near riot in Bolton. Some people say that it was a surprise that we won that election and that there must have been a secret ingredient. Modesty prevents me from claiming too much about our effort in that campaign, but my noble friend certainly had a major impact. I say to him sincerely that it is very good to see him in this House. I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Howe on his appointment as a Minister. He did some fantastic work in opposition—no one was more effective—and it is extremely good to see him on the Front Bench.

In the time available for speeches in this debate, there is just the opportunity to leave a visiting card, but my purpose is to emphasise the vast importance of public health policy in fighting disease in this country, an issue that is dealt with in the coalition Government’s priority programme. This country used to have a proud record in this area, but our efforts in recent years have not been so distinguished. That is a vast pity because, if you can prevent disease, not only is that good for the individual but it is also self-evidently valuable for the Exchequer, which can avoid the cost of expensive treatment.

At the weekend, I was listening to Harry Evans, the legendary editor of the Sunday Times. Talking of one his campaigns, he said: “If something bad is preventable, why not prevent it?”. That is not a bad lesson. Let me give just two examples of disease and death that can be prevented. The worldwide toll for HIV/AIDS and for hepatitis B and hepatitis C runs into hundreds of thousands, if not several million. Just in case anyone should believe that this affects exclusively countries overseas, let me give some figures. In the United Kingdom, the number of people living with HIV will soon go through the 100,000 mark. There are somewhere between 250,000 and 460,000 people living with hepatitis C, while the latest estimate is that 326,000 people are living with hepatitis B in the UK. The result, in the case of hepatitis, is that increasing numbers of people are dying from liver cancer and end-stage liver disease as a result of viruses that can be prevented or treated. That is the tragedy.

Unhappily, the crucial link between all these conditions is that they are often undiagnosed. People do not know or find out after the damage has been done. The majority of people affected by hepatitis B are undiagnosed, while half those with HIV are diagnosed late, which means that that they do not get the treatment when it is ideally needed. This also means that the infection can be passed on by people unaware of what they are doing. Taken together, this represents a major public health issue.

In this respect, the position has changed radically since I was doing the health job at the end of the 1980s. For example, HIV need not now be a death sentence—we now have antiretroviral drugs that will preserve life—and the same goes for the other two viruses. It seems to me that the chief priority now must be testing, so that knowledge can lead to action. Self-evidently it is in the interests of the individual concerned to have access to treatment and it is in the interest of public health generally that disease is not spread.

We need to adopt a frank and open policy in warning the public and advising them of the position. We should not be too nervous about putting over a public message. In 1986 and 1987, we tried an entirely open approach with our “Don’t Die of Ignorance” campaign. I do not say that there were not concerns about that public education campaign, which involved advertising on television and posters. I remember a reservation from a very influential figure—none less than the Prime Minister herself. In March 1986, I was sent a minute that said:

“The Prime Minister has emphasised that she still remains against certain parts of the advertisement. She thinks that the anxiety on the part of parents and many teenagers, who would never be in danger from AIDS, would exceed the good which the advertisement might do”.

My private secretary was told:

“Your Secretary of State will now wish to consider how to proceed in the light of the Prime Minster’s firmly held views”.

I think that one can hear the authentic voice of No. 10 coming through. In the event, we went on with the campaign. We formed a special Cabinet committee to oversee it and the result was that we had very few complaints from the public. That is the significant point. The public are sensible and mature on issues of this kind. If they think that there are good public health reasons for a campaign, they will support it.

That is important when considering the issue of migration into this country from countries where, for example, the incidence of hepatitis B may be greater than it is here. I am talking about migration not just from Africa but from Asia and eastern Europe. A group of consultants wrote to the Times at the end of last month proposing the screening of people coming here from high-risk countries. That is an altogether sensible point.

Lastly, there is one other important step that we can take. For hepatitis B, there is a vaccine; it can be prevented. If only that was the case for HIV/AIDS there would be rejoicing throughout the world. Most other countries in the European Union have a policy of 100 per cent vaccination against hepatitis B. We do not. We follow a policy of vaccination of selected groups, which self-evidently is not working. In 2002, the previous Government published a paper entitled Getting Ahead of the Curve. Unfortunately, that did not happen. By 2010, the incidence of hepatitis B has not reduced; it has almost doubled.

There is a challenge here for the new coalition Government, who now have the ability to put some of these things right. It is an opportunity that we should take because a strong policy on public health is capable of delivering immense benefits to this country.

14:49

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

My Lords, it is a privilege to speak in this debate and to follow hot on the heels of three Bishops and three maiden speakers. The three speeches that we heard earlier offered the promise of so much more as the years go by, and I look forward to that very much.

Perhaps I may get on the bandwagon and wish the new Government well in their administration of our public affairs. We have hinted at places where there might be tensions in the future and have argued that those might be creative or destructive. We should all hope that they are creative, and I am sure that we will be responsible in siding with all good proposals for government.

When I came to your Lordships’ House, I was offered the possibility of sitting on the Cross Benches or on these Benches. I did not hesitate, as I am a product of the welfare state. I am viscerally proud to take my place among the ranks here, where the very measures that gave opportunities to people like me were generated. However, when faithfully following my peers through the appropriate Lobby, I felt closest to objecting to the point of view of these Benches when I came under the influence of the siren voices of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Sharp, who sadly are not in their places right now but who, in their dogged work for a decent educational system, in their advocacy of the insights, for example, of the Tomlinson report and in many other ways, introduced commonsense notions and noble aspirations for the whole field of educational provision in this country. Now that they are no longer on the bridge but travelling steerage under the new arrangements, I hope that their voices will continue to be heard, for they stand for so much from which all of us can learn.

I speak today and declare an interest as vice-chair of the trustees of the Central Foundation Schools of London. We have a secondary school for boys in Islington and one for girls in Tower Hamlets. The Minister recently visited an academy in Hackney which is sandwiched neatly between our schools. Although our schools are not academies, they are “satisfactory”/“making good progress towards outstanding” and certainly need their own kind of attention alongside the now more fashionable academies that we will be speaking about again on Monday. Just one insight from each of those schools will suffice and then on Monday it will be to pastures new. I have already heard quite a list of speakers whom I shall see again on Monday.

With regard to the boy’s school, I was not present to hear the gracious Speech, nor was I able to follow it on television, because I was locked into a conclave with five other governors of the boys’ school as we reached the conclusion of a process that has given us a new headmaster.

I want to speak for governors as we view the prospect of free schools and of greater autonomy for schools and for heads and teachers to form their own curriculums and so on. We had to find seven governors. One had to withdraw because of his business commitments. All were in full-time work. We took a whole day to shortlist the candidates from 22 to seven. We had to spend the whole of Saturday morning being trained by head-hunters in interviewing—God help us!—and then two full days from eight in the morning until 4.30 in the afternoon and from 10.30 in the morning until 6.30 in the evening going through the rest of the process. I simply draw to your Lordships’ attention just how much this demands of governors now. If it demands more of them in the future, then I ask that the point of view of governors and the likely consequences for them be taken seriously into account.

On this occasion, we could not have done our work without two people who sat with us throughout our deliberations. First, we have a foundation and therefore a little resource and, with a couple of schools which are voluntary-aided, we were able to pay for the services of a rather good head-hunter, who kept us on track. Secondly, we invited from the local authority an expert without whose help and wider view we could not have done our work efficiently or properly. Therefore, we must not rubbish local authorities as we find our way forward. Free schools are good in principle and they sound well, but there are lots of people on whom lots more demands will fall. Of course, in better-off areas governors able to provide that quality input will be easier to find. However, in the boroughs that I am talking about they are very difficult to find, and I hope that that figures in the calculations.

At the girls’ school in Tower Hamlets, where a large proportion of our intake comes from the Muslim community—because a girls’ school is very attractive to that community—we want to bring two separate sites together on to one site. A considerable amount of energy, time and money has been committed to finding a way, with the borough of Tower Hamlets, of taking advantage of the Building Better Schools for the Future programme. There have been delays, which have not been of anyone’s particular making but delays there have been, and now everyone is afraid that, with a new Government, the commitments entered into will not be honoured. We are afraid to put more energy, time and money into the scheme if there is a risk that they will not be honoured.

Therefore, perhaps I may ask a very direct question, to which I hope to hear an answer today—and if not today, I shall ask it again on Monday. Will the commitments entered into by the Central Foundation Girls’ School with Tower Hamlets be honoured and will the Building Better Schools for the Future programme come to pass in that borough? It will not do for the Government to say that that is asking for too much too soon because they have only just got into office or that they will set up a commission to look at it or something along those lines. I know that speed is possible. Cuts are happening at once. I know that academies can be formed this September if they meet the necessary criteria. The Department of Health already has on its website a government health warning: “Everything you read here is the previous lot’s. Wait for our lot to come on and then you will see the truth”. I know that speed is possible and so I ask for a speedy response. It will help a lot of people who have real angst. Will arrangements already entered into, where a great amount has already been invested, be honoured or not? I should like to hear the answer to that question.

14:57

[Lord Elis-Thomas]

My Lords, in following my eloquent compatriot, the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port—or Porth Tywyn, as it also says on the signpost—I, too, congratulate both Ministers on their appointments and, indeed, the noble Lords, Lord Hill of Oareford, Lord Hall of Birkenhead and Lord Kakkar, on their maiden speeches. I also congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford, although I am not yet sure, in our changed arrangements for sitting in this House, whether it is the right reverend Prelate and his colleagues who have joined the Liberal Democrats or vice versa. Perhaps we will find out in due course.

I read the document, Our Programme for Government—or perhaps I should say Your Programme for Government; in any case, the coalition programme—with great interest and then I went through it with increasing admiration. I particularly welcome the candid final paragraph of the foreword by the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, in which they describe how three weeks ago they could never have predicted the publication of such a document. They said that after the election,

“there was the option of minority government—but we were uninspired by it. Instead, there was the option of a coalition in the national interest—and we seized it”.

I, of course, want to add that there is more than one national interest in this multinational state of the United Kingdom. However, having presided over two minority Governments and two coalitions so far in Cardiff Bay, I have no doubt which arrangements are better for Wales. I believe that this coalition will be good for the United Kingdom and the development of its constitution.

Declaring my interest as Presiding Officer of the National Assembly, I welcome the devolution health warning which appears on the final page of the document, stressing the full support of the Government for the,

“devolution of powers to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales”,

and the fact that:

“The Northern Ireland Executive, the Scottish Executive and the Welsh … Government make their own policy on their devolved issues”.

I would like to take advantage of today's debate to place on record my appreciation of the new constitutional relationships which have been established already between the Secretary of State for Wales in another place, Cheryl Gillan, and myself and the National Assembly, and my appreciation of that special relationship which has perhaps been established with the Prime Minister following his recent visit to Cardiff.

In this gracious Speech debate, I want to speak briefly on culture and media. I welcome the clear commitment to introduce measures to ensure the rapid roll-out of superfast broadband across the UK and to introduce superfast broadband in remote areas at the same time as in more populous areas. That would be of great benefit in the many not-spots that we have in rural areas throughout the UK, particularly in Wales. I was also impressed by the indication that the Government are prepared to consider using part of the television licence fee which is supporting the digital switchover to fund broadband in areas that the market alone will not reach.

However, I want to press the Government on one thing today. I am not clear how the commitment in the culture and media section of the programme to enable partnerships between local newspapers, radio and television stations to promote a strong and diverse local media industry, will apply to the situation in Wales and especially to the commitment that was entered into by the previous Government on the independently financed news consortium proposals. It seems to me that, so far, the priorities of the new department of heritage do not coincide with the declared priorities of the old DCMS and I would like to question that this afternoon. I do not speak for Ulster Television, which was awarded the preliminary agreement to develop a service, but, of course, I have been very impressed, as many of us have been, with its proposals. All of us who know the broadcasting systems in the UK were impressed by the integrated commercial newsroom delivering television, video on demand, radio and online news which UTV has in Belfast and throughout the north. We strongly support the commitment to develop something similar for Wales.

As someone responsible for communicating messages on behalf of the National Assembly, I am concerned that in a recent poll it emerged that 60 per cent of Welsh citizens in the sample received their information on the devolved Government and on the Assembly from local television. It is hardly appropriate in a pluralist context—I hope it is a pluralist context for broadcasting—that only the BBC provides such a service. Do this new Government intend to pursue this policy further, a policy which has the support of the Welsh heritage Minister, Alun Ffred Jones, as he stated quite clearly in the Assembly on 11 May?

I welcome the commitment made by the Minister in his opening remarks to investment and innovation. He will be aware that an investment of £300 million in the Welsh economy is being made by broadcasters; we want that to continue and to be enhanced. I draw to the attention of the new department of heritage a report by Ian Hargreaves, entitled The Hearts of Digital Wales: a review of creative industries for the Welsh Assembly Government, which was published in March this year and the proposals therein for a digital board and a creative industries board. Two important windows of legislation face us in this Parliament: the expiry of the current ITV licence in 2014 and the renewal date of the BBC charter in 2016. As a veteran in this House and another place, I see other colleagues here who have been involved in broadcasting and communication legislation. We must take full advantage of this opportunity to increase diversity nationally and regionally within the United Kingdom. Some of us want to see single licences for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in any ITV structure.

My final request to the Government, to which I am sure they can adhere before the end of the debate, is to ask them to look at the future of S4C. In the Hargreaves report there was a proposal that there should be a review of S4C. Now is the time for co-operation between the new department of heritage here and the Ministry of Heritage in Wales. Co-operation across devolved and non-devolved areas and broadcasting is a fine example of that. I shall not follow the call made by that distinguished broadcaster Geraint Talfan Davies recently that the responsibility for S4C, including its funding, should be transferred to the Welsh Government—it is not up to me to make devolution policy on the hoof. Collaboration in future planning and a review of the role of S4C in relation to other broadcasting authorities within Wales and within the UK will be very appropriate at this time. In saying that, I wish the heritage Minister and Ministers in education and health well in the development of their policies. I wish the coalition well. From one coalition to another, albeit with a different party makeup, I wish our coalitions well.

15:06

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my colleague from Wales, a fellow Celt. He made his view strongly on coalition politics and his good wishes for the future of this coalition are well made and well received. We are grateful for that. His knowledge of such matters and the time and energy he has devoted to the development of his own community in Wales is well known and we take that endorsement from him extremely well and we thank him for it.

I endorse the tributes paid to the four maiden speakers. I look forward to hearing further from them all. I had a relationship with the noble Lord, Lord Hall, when I was Chief Whip in another place and he was in charge of BBC news. We had many ups and downs together, most of which he won, but in spite of that he will be a welcome addition to this House.

The view from the steerage seats, as the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, described them, is different. I am very impressed by the choreography of the new coalition. In a very short space of time, it has responded to the nation's needs. Noble Lords who have spoken in this excellent debate have indicated that there are problems about trying to determine the detail. There are also problems about constructive tension, but there was no alternative in terms of the nation's needs. To someone like me who is a natural sceptic, the fact that the partnership has got as far as this speaks volumes for the people who have been putting the Government together. I wish them well and I shall do what I can to sustain them.

If the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, thinks that people like my noble friends Lady Sharp and Lady Walmsley and myself will stay quiet, as we are sitting in the steerage seats, he has another think coming. I look forward to yelling from the cheap seats, as appropriate, and I hope to start today.

My speech is in two halves: the first half will say that we, as a country, are broke and the second half will argue for invaluable investment which the Government cannot do without. Most speakers have said that in more guarded terms. The creation of the coalition is exciting and gives a fresh look at some of the nation's problems. There is obviously frustration. I anticipated the frustration of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland; I could have written his speech for him as I anticipated exactly what he would say because I was there with him in 1997. But we now have a commission which will take a year, and if it does as well as his did, it will be a year well spent. However, we should be further on by now.

On a broader scale, climate change and ageing are two fundamentally important challenges for our nation—never mind who is or has been in government. We have major problems. Ageing affects not just healthcare but everything. We should be planning for the eventuality that we know is coming in the next 10 to 15 years in a much more detailed way. I hope that when the coalition gets its feet under the table, it will have a chance to do that, not just expedite long-term care, on which I agree that it is essential that we act as soon as we can.

I am not an expert on climate change, but I listen to the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Rees, and others and am frightened by what I hear. I try to look after my own carbon footprint, but as a nation we will have to learn to live differently. It is a function of government to try to provide the leadership that wins that change. If we do not do that, if we do not succeed, we will not only be poorer as a nation economically, because we will miss some of the green economy changes that are within our grasp if we plan properly, but we will find that our lifestyles are being challenged in a way that we cannot control. That may not be an integral part of the Queen’s Speech, but over the course of this Parliament, we cannot ignore it.

On the deficit, we have been told: “There is no money”. I do not think that the public are yet tuned in to what is about to happen. We will get a better idea of that in the Budget, but we will not know until the Comprehensive Spending Review what will be the public service changes—the extent to which things will be different. There are two ways to react to that. You can salami slice everything in front of you or you can look at things differently. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, who has a lot of knowledge and expertise about these things, made an excellent maiden speech last week. His point was that we must start thinking about doing public services differently—not just more cheaply and with less money, but differently—and use the opportunity of the deficit. We could carry the public along with us, but it is a big job that we have not started yet.

We are not just living in reduced circumstances as a nation—that is a mild way of putting it—there is a huge amount of indebtedness in the households of the United Kingdom. Compared to our sister European nations, we have a colossal amount of unsecured debt. At the moment, 9 per cent of our households are in deep debt. That means that they have more than £10,000 of unsecured debt. More than one quarter of our households is in that category at the moment. The combination of our circumstances is daunting. We must try to use the opportunity in a creative and innovative way to get out of the hole we are in. We will not be able to determine the detail of what is facing us as a country until after the Comprehensive Spending Review in October. We must then be clear about the investments that we need to make to get long-term change. There will need to be some tactical changes to respond to the urgent financial circumstances of the moment, but we must separate what is tactical to deal with that from what is necessary in the very long-term. My noble friend Lady Walmsley and others on the Liberal Democrat Benches have shown passion about the essential element of education to get a better skilled workforce and a higher waged economy—we have a low-skill, low-base economy. That is necessary in the long run. We need to invest to save in the long run at the same time as doing the right thing tactically to deal with the deficit in the short term.

Finally—this is where the spend comes in—I turn to my area of interest, welfare reform. I say to the Front Bench of the new coalition Government that I am willing to look radically and fundamentally at welfare reform. Incentivising those who are on benefits at the moment is an essential part of early reform. I will not support anything that hurts the kind of people about whom the noble Lord, Lord Rix, was talking. The disadvantaged and dispossessed should not be expected to carry the can for those changes. I am interested in proposals that are properly invested in, because if you invest in people's success, they can trade themselves out of poverty. The noble Lord, Lord Freud, was the architect of that policy, but he needs the funds from the Treasury successfully to carry out the policy. If he does that, he will have my support. If he does not, I will be watching him like a hawk. This is an important moment for us as a nation; we cannot really see the extent of the problem until after the Comprehensive Spending Review; but I am happy to contribute to debates on all public services, which are so important, in future.

15:15

[Lord Mitchell]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Oareford—the noble Lords, Lord Hall of Birkenhead and Lord Kakkar, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford. Each of them gave a magnificent maiden speech today and it is to our benefit that they join us in your Lordships' House.

My speech is on public health issues, but first I say a few words about education. My interest is that I am chair of an organisation called the e-Learning Foundation. We provide laptops to socially disadvantaged children; we have been amazingly successful in that. My predecessor was my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley. I am stepping down this September and will be replaced as chairman by the Minister's soon-to-be noble friend, Phil Willis.

The Minister spoke about academies and, in particular, Mossbourne Academy. The late Sir Clive Bourne was a personal friend of mine, and it was his amazing energy—when he was terminally ill, I add—that enabled that school to grow. In two years, the old school was demolished and the new school rebuilt, with everything that is involved in setting up a new school. It opened in 2005; five years later, we have heard about its incredible results. His widow, Lady Joy Bourne, continues to be very involved with that school.

I know that everything that the Minister says about academies is true. It is equally true that with the use of laptops in schools we have provided phenomenal results. I encourage him to come to some of the schools using those laptops to see what has been achieved; I would be very happy to take him round.

This afternoon, I want to speak about a subject that I have raised in your Lordships' House several times, but with a new Government it is time to do it again. The subject is the labelling of bottles and containers warning of the dangers to the unborn foetus of its mother drinking alcohol. Briefly, the issue is this. Mothers-to-be who drink risk permanently damaging their babies. This occurs because alcohol in the mother's bloodstream passes to the foetus across the placenta. The foetus, because its organs are undeveloped, is unable to process this toxin, and major damage can occur. Foetal alcohol syndrome disorder is the name given to the complete range of disorders. In its mildest form, which affects one in a 100 live births, it can cause a series of behavioural attributes, such as acute attention deficit disorder. In its most acute form, which affects one in 1,000 babies, its effects are similar to acute brain damage. Simply put, the brain and other organs do not develop. Children with the most severe learning disabilities are affected. Their mental age is retarded and their cognitive abilities are limited. Often, they cannot even tell the time or find their way home. As young adults, they become disruptive and often turn to crime. Many cannot even hold down the simplest of jobs. Whatever their degree of disorder, they become a cost to society.

If today's mood is to cut costs, this is an easy way to do so without any downside. FASD is totally preventable and, if it is reduced, society gains. Knowledge among young women and, indeed, their partners of the damage they are running by drinking when pregnant is lamentably low. No one, least of all me, wants a nanny state; all I seek to do is to raise awareness of this danger. Just as was the case with the linkage between cigarette smoking and cancer, product labelling is a good place to start. Today, because of in-your-face labelling on tobacco products, few people can be unaware of their dangers. I am seeking to do the same with alcohol.

Three years ago, I introduced the Alcohol Labelling Bill into your Lordships’ House. It went through the usual stages and was passed. Then, as is the case with most Private Members' Bills, it died the death when we could not persuade the Government to give it time in the other place. In summary, the Bill said that if the alcohol industry did not abide by the terms of a memorandum of understanding that it had previously signed agreeing to include prominent labelling, legislation would be introduced to make it compulsory. I cannot tell noble Lords how many well meaning Ministers I discussed this issue with. Over numerous cups of tea, they told me that they were on the case, but they needed to complete this survey and that analysis and I could be assured that there would be a successful outcome. There was not.

Go into any supermarket today and examine the bottles. A few have labels prominently displayed, but more than 80 per cent do not. Others have an illustration that the French use. It shows the outlines of an elegant and obviously pregnant woman holding a champagne glass with a diagonal strike going through it. It is very cute, very chichi and very tasteful in a rue Saint-Honoré sort of way, but it has little relevance to the culture of girls on the binge buying cheap cider and vodka at the local supermarket and getting legless as quickly as possible. We see the evidence every weekend in our city centres, do we not? There is nothing very elegant about it. What is more, the illustrations on the bottles I have seen are so small that you would need a magnifying glass to see them.

The Americans have been much bolder on this issue, just as they were with tobacco. Any bottle, can or bar in the United States has a prominent label warning of the dangers to the unborn child of drinking while pregnant. They were introduced in 1989. Here is the stark truth: the alcohol industry runs circles around Governments. It lobbies hard, like the tobacco industry before it. It throws every impediment in front of the labelling proposals. No one seems to have the strength to stand up to it. This new Government have said that they intend to address our alcohol plague. We said the same but, if noble Lords will excuse the pun, I think we bottled it.

My first question to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, who has always been a tremendous supporter of what I am proposing, is will the coalition Government take on the alcohol industry? Will they make labelling prominent, unambiguous and compulsory? If the Government really want to reverse the cult of alcohol, will they consider banning alcohol adverting, just like the Labour Government banned tobacco advertising?

15:22

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, first, I offer my warm congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hill, on his ministerial appointment and on his inspiring opening speech. I also congratulate him and the new coalition Government on the extent to which, like their predecessor Government, they recognise the importance of education as the gateway to a better life for the individual and for the country. That is certainly the case for those from deprived backgrounds. I also commend the new Government’s commitment, particularly in the almost impossible financial circumstances that they have inherited, to continue to pursue the previous Government’s goal of ending UK child poverty by 2020 as well as to continue with free nursery education for pre-school children. Against that background, I shall spend my few minutes on the importance and cost-effectiveness of the earliest possible intervention and support for deprived children and children with special needs.

We should all applaud the previous Government’s important and brave initiative, Sure Start. It is brave in the sense that its value cannot be fully assessed until the children who have benefited from it reach adulthood. Its value has already been seen by our new Government, and, I suspect, especially championed by Education Secretary of State Michael Gove. The Government have committed to continuing Sure Start and to taking it back to its original purpose of early intervention, with an increased focus on the neediest families.

What I particularly admired about the early days of Sure Start was the practical development of an equal partnership between the local community and professionals, whereby each different area had slightly different priorities, thus reflecting local needs. This, I hope, is what our new Prime Minister means by his emphasis on the big society, whereby the responsibility for social cohesion is left increasingly to well run local government in partnership with its own communities. Equally, however, we must make sure that sufficient extra resources and leadership, including adequately resourced third-sector leadership, are concentrated in helping to improve lives and expectations in the most deprived communities.

A commitment that should certainly help the aim of early intervention is the plan to provide more than 4,000 extra health visitors. During my 20 years’ chairmanship of a London juvenile court—in the days when magistrates, probation and social services really did work together—it was always the health visitors who had that early knowledge of which families were likely to need extra support if trouble was to be prevented.

The new Government’s plans to academise a vast range of schools and to increase variety and independence from local authorities are inevitably controversial, but will the Government guarantee, and if so how, that the proposed and certainly welcome significant premium for disadvantaged children directly advantages these children? I hope that the noble Earl will tell me when he replies. Today, only 27 per cent of children who are eligible for free school meals currently get five good GCSEs, compared with the national average of 54 per cent—indeed, 40 per cent of the same group currently fail to get a single grade C pass at GCSE—so the Government will need to satisfy us that those who teach such children in future will be of the necessary calibre to bring them to the required standard.

I declare my interest as president of the National Governors’ Association. I note to my surprise and clearly to that of the association that the role of school governors is hardly mentioned in the coalition’s programme for the government of these schools. Yet it is surely the school governors who will be ultimately responsible for whether such changes are made, and for consulting those in the locality who will clearly be most affected by this. The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, made that very point rather well. One concern certainly needs an answer: will academies be required, as is clearly desirable, to have at least a proportion of governors from the local area, including some parents?

I end on my earlier theme. My enthusiasm for extra resources and early support for children from deprived backgrounds is in essence practical. First, such a young person will have a more equal opportunity to develop their skills and abilities fully and to lead a full and satisfying life in their community.

Secondly, since the cost of each prison place is £45,000, if just one juvenile can be deterred from a potential life of crime, we will save the taxpayer the considerable sums involved when such individuals become serial offenders.

Thirdly, we must hope that the cycle of deprivation which Keith Joseph emphasised some 37 years ago will at last have been broken in such families. The appalling facts are that 63 per cent of boys with a convicted parent go on to offend, and children of prisoners are three times more likely to show signs of delinquent behaviour. Of course, not all these attempts will succeed, and of course some violent offenders must be imprisoned, but the Prison Reform Trust statistics starkly remind us that, when Ken Clarke was Home Secretary in 1992-93, the prison population stood at almost 45,000. Today, it is about double that at 85,000. There are surely more productive ways of spending our money.

15:28

[The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells]

My Lords, I, too, add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hill, on his new office and on his maiden speech. Hope is a fundamental human need. Times of election provide people with the possibility that things can be different. They hope so at least. I believe that the gracious Speech offers some signs of hope, as does much legislation in all governments.

In recent days, the Prime Minister has spoken of his desire to see people happier in this society, which is a laudable aim. But happiness can be ephemeral where hope is not. Hope takes into account reality and seeks to overcome obstacles that prevent its fulfilment. As the philosopher Ernst Bloch once put it, only when hope begins to speak does a hope begin to flourish in which there is no falseness. The role of legislators in a democracy is not to seek to play God, controlling every aspect of human life. Neither, in an increasingly secular society, is the role of government to abolish God. GK Chesterton reminded us that,

“abolish the God and the government becomes the God”,

and who would want that?

I welcome the commitment in the gracious Speech to end the detention of children in immigration centres. I note the answers given by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, in her reply to questions yesterday. We simply must not allow a return to the situation of the testimony of a 14 year-old boy, Wells Botomani, who described in the Guardian his 65 days in Yarl’s Wood as “hell”. His plea to this Government is to,

“think of us children. We do not deserve this treatment. We deserve a future”.

He concludes:

“It is my prayer that the British government shows mercy towards children. Detention for us is hell and detrimental to our fragile minds”.

I believe that the Government accept that. However, turning intention into reality or hope into accomplishment may prove more challenging given the Government’s priority to reduce the economic deficit.

Border police charged with the responsibility of improving immigration controls will come in contact in many cases with vulnerable children. There is a fundamental requirement that such persons should be appropriately trained in the safeguarding and welfare of children. Despite their desire, and the need to make cuts, the Government must ensure that existing and future policy is consistent with this duty, and above all that children are not separated from their families.

I welcome too, in a spirit of hope, the Government's intention to address child poverty. It remains a scandal that little has improved since the publication of the UNICEF report in 2007 on the well-being of children in rich countries. In the report, the UK ranks third from bottom in five of the six categories, including material well-being, health and safety, education, peer and family relationships, behaviours and risks, and, in particular, young people's own sense of well-being.

The previous Government set themselves the task of halving child poverty by 2010. Despite a good start to that policy, momentum was lost. Evidence seems to suggest that, while those falling below the official breadline in 2008-09 decreased by 100,000, the figures effectively rose in the three previous years by twice as much, thus creating a wider gap between rich and poor than in 1997. Again, I ask, with the Government’s priority on deficit reduction, how can the fight against poverty reduction, to some extent, be ring-fenced?

There is much to welcome in the proposed national insurance and welfare Bills. But for child poverty to be eradicated within a generation there is a need not simply for parents and young people to find work, but for children to be able to grow up in households where the earnings are sufficient to lift children out of poverty. In our desire to capitalise on the nation’s human resources, and to provide work for all, we must not allow either oversimplism or dogma to determine policy. I share some of the concerns expressed earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan.

There are many different and often complex reasons why people are not able to work. If vulnerable children are not to be penalised in a benefits system that is conditional, there needs to be adequate support to help adults and young people into work, with measures that address entrenched worklessness. There are real concerns. I refer, as have others, in particular, to the Sure Start programme. Anne Longfield OBE, chief executive of 4Children, said that it is important that the Government have recognised Sure Start centres as a primary means of support for children and families, and that, while of course it is important that Sure Start should target the most vulnerable families in any community, the support of children’s centres is crucial for all families regardless of their social background.

Finally, just as society is more than state and families and includes charities, churches, synagogues, gurdwaras and mosques, so are our children more important than simply mini adults waiting to grow up. Neither are all childhoods the same. There are those experienced in urban and remote rural environments, from multiple families, from different cultures and much else besides. Like each of us, all children are unique. They want to make sense of their lives and be taken seriously. They do not want to be patronised or to be the subject of endless educational experiment. And when they go seriously wrong and become the subject of the law, they want and need to be treated as children, and their total experience of life to date taken into account—not subject to adult courts, however well meaning the attempts to reduce their formality.

Children need to be free to discover jouissance, that association of play and joy which offers an infinite opening out to delight and beyond delight. This means allowing for the development of children’s spirituality. Dr Rebecca Nye has identified the criteria for such spirituality as space, process, imagination, relationship intimacy and trust. Children enjoy silence, with the space to think and to reflect. As Fleur Dorrell of the Mothers’ Union has observed:

“It is not atypical for a child to be contemplating the stars, who made them, and wanting ice cream at the same time”.

Adults may find this contradictory, but children see it as wonderfully connected. Perhaps a lighter point might illustrate this. A nun taking a class put a box of apples on the table and left a note saying, “Take one apple. God is watching you”. She then put a packet of biscuits on the table, and a young person with a quick wit wrote, “Take as many as you like. God is watching the apples”.

In conclusion, let me plead with the Government not to risk the future of children in their desire to balance the books, and not to overlegislate or require too much too soon in the education process. Let hope be fulfilled in such a way that happiness can become possible, and above all, let us end the curse of child poverty in this nation and work tirelessly to end it throughout the world.

15:37

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, perhaps I may say how much I enjoyed the speech of the right reverend Prelate. Its sensitivity and humour were very apparent. I shall be speaking about education in schools. First, I welcome the Minister to his post, and I look forward to discussions with him on issues related to children’s education. I chair the All-Party Group on Children. It has been a real privilege to work in focused harmony on issues related to children across the political spectrum. Much has been done to improve Bills in this House and I look forward to seeing how this will play out within a coalition Government.

I think that the whole House recognises that much good was done under the Labour Government for education: more teachers, the raising of standards, improvements in school buildings and so on. Two education Bills have been listed in the gracious Speech for this Parliament, one of which, the Academies Bill, will be considered in your Lordships’ House next Monday. After a few initial comments I shall focus my remarks on academies and faith schools. Of necessity due to time constraints, I shall simply flag up today some issues for further debate.

It has been said that everyone thinks they are an expert on education simply because most people went to school. Like the noble Lord’s mother, I am a former teacher and I think I know what makes a good teacher and what makes a good school. I shall echo some of the remarks made by my noble friend Lady Morris. A good school has inspiring and inspired leadership from the head and senior managers. A good school has dedicated teachers who understand children and child development. A good school has a strong and recognisable ethos. All this is in relation to academic achievement, sport, the arts and relations within school. A good school promotes discipline—both self-discipline and a respect for rules and boundaries. It does not matter what this school calls itself, it will be recognised as a good school. I visit many types of schools and the good ones are obvious.

None of this is new; in fact most of it is very clear. Governments and inspectorates have a duty to ensure that schools encourage aspiration and provide the means to entitle children to succeed in all aspects of their lives. Children are entitled to academic, cultural and social excellence. For some children, home gives a good start; for others, it does not. I hope the coalition Government will hang on to many of the entitlements set up by the previous Government, such as a guarantee of physical activity schools. I hope this Government will carry out the previous intention to make personal, social and health education a compulsory part of the school curriculum. This, of course, was lost during the wash up, and much regretted that was. I also hope that the coalition will recognise that education does not start with school and that it will support young children and families.

Let me, briefly, talk about the settings in which education may be delivered. I found curious the Minister’s remarks about failing schools being addressed in due course. I would have thought that that issue was very urgent. I know that in the coalition’s programme for government, reform of schools is promoted: more academies are proposed; parents, teachers, charities and local communities will have the chance to set up new schools; more faith schools will be enabled. I am deeply suspicious of all this. While welcoming some measures in the programme such as the premium for disadvantaged pupils—although I wait to see the details of how that will be worked out—I maintain that the majority of parents want a good local school where they are encouraged to feel that the school is part of the community and the community is part of the school. Such schools exist and are shining examples of what I have described as good schools.

Let us look, for example, at academic attainment, one of the stated purposes of academies. Some academies do well; some do not. Figures from 2009 show that achievement in examinations has not improved in academies. I will quote but one statistic: the Government target of 30 per cent of pupils achieving five good GCSEs, including English and maths, was missed in 2009 by 40 out of 130 academies. I have many concerns about consultation with parents, communities and schools. I also have concerns about primary schools which are part of a local network becoming academies, about charitable status and about inspections. The NUT is rightly concerned that the focus of education Bills should be about what goes on in classrooms rather than, in its own words,

“continuing with the expensive and disruptive obsession with structural reform”.

I turn again, briefly, to faith schools, which are likely to increase under the proposed Bills. The British Humanist Association, of which I am a member, has gathered devastating evidence against any increase in the number of faith schools. The dangers seem to me to be obvious: people are worried about the disharmony in society which they may create. We have only to look at Northern Ireland and its history of religious segregation to be concerned. Survey after survey has shown that the majority of people agree that the Government should not be funding faith schools of any kind; that they undermine social cohesion and increase segregation. In the area of Lancashire that I come from, a report on community cohesion in Blackburn with Darwen has recently stated that schools with religious admission requirements are “automatically a source of division” in the town. There is evidence of prejudice in admissions procedures and in the selection of staff. Again, I shall be exploring these issues in greater detail during the passage of the education Bills.

I return to my original thoughts on what makes a good school. The manipulation of structures and systems through academies serves no purpose except to confuse and discriminate. I say again that what parents want is access to a good local school. Good local schools are achieved by directing resources to good leadership, good teaching, good facilities and a curriculum of entitlement for every pupil in every school. It is what parents deserve and what children deserve. I hope that we will examine the education Bills with tenacity in order to improve the lives and aspirations of all children.

15:45

[Baroness Masham of Ilton]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Howe, on his new position; he is more than fitted for it. I congratulate also the new Minister and all the maiden speakers. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for her hard work while in government.

I am pleased that the gracious Speech mentioned that the voice of patients and the role of doctors will be strengthened in the NHS to improve public health, alongside action to reduce health inequalities. Like me, the Minister was unhappy with the closure of the community health councils, with the appalling way in which the health forums were treated—having been set up by the previous Government and then quickly closed down—and with the ineffectual way in which the present LINks system seems to be responding to the needs of patients. How will the Government strengthen the patient’s voice?

Prevention of ill health saves suffering to patients and costs for the NHS. I take this opportunity to bring to your Lordships’ notice two cases which illustrate this. Very sadly, the sister of the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, died recently. She had served her country in an exemplary way and had been Lord Mayor of Westminster. She had been nursed in one of the top London teaching hospitals, but developed a pressure sore because, as a vulnerable patient, she had not been given a pressure-relieving mattress until it was too late. I was told that this had had a devastating effect and caused much unnecessary suffering.

The other case is the brother of one of your Lordships who has had a stroke. One of his legs spasms repeatedly and he needs a splint to stop it becoming contractured. However, he has to wait weeks for an appointment at another hospital. Surely this is not rocket science. If people with stroke and other long-term conditions are kept alive, their aftercare and quality of life should be as good as possible. Delays in treatment can cause long-term problems. I know that the Secretary of State for Health has a special interest in stroke treatment, having been chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Stroke Group. Therefore, I hope that he will improve aftercare.

As nurses have not been specifically mentioned in the gracious Speech, I shall do so now. They are of the utmost importance in the prevention of infections, which is a very important aspect of public health. In some hospitals which had serious outbreaks of C. difficile and MRSA, ward sisters have been given overall control of their wards. The effect has been dramatically to bring down the rate of infections. We have seen in the past failures to take responsibility, passing of the buck and the overriding bureaucracy which stifles initiatives and costs much-needed money.

I am very pleased that public health is mentioned in the gracious Speech. Some noble Lords will remember my questions on PVL CA-MRSA—Panton-Valentine leukocidin MRSA—a potent toxin produced by bacteria from the family staphylococcus which destroys the white blood cells that normally fight infections.

MRSA infections often target elderly people in hospital who have weakened immune systems, but PVL CA-MRSA strains also affect young, healthy people and children within the community. With the Olympic Games coming along, this is an important factor. Because of this, information requires disseminating to primary care providers about the potential severity of this infection, methods for rapid and accurate diagnosis and the need to implement appropriate empirical and definitive treatment regimes is vital. The Royal College of Nursing must be congratulated on its ongoing campaigns against infections and highlighting the need for expert, specially trained nurses who can pass on the information to many other people. Information on trends of infection and the main causative organisms is crucial and requires investment in robust surveillance systems to support this work and, most importantly, to detect any reductions occurring as a result of interventions and work programmes so that good practice can be shared. I hope that the Government realise how important this is and, with the increasing problem of drug resistance, they will take note.

Tuberculosis is on the increase worldwide. What is of great concern is the multi-drug resistant TB. A prisoner in Cardiff prison died of TB this April, but Londoners now account for the largest number of cases in the UK, making up to 39 per cent of the country’s total figure. In 2009, 3,376 new cases of TB were reported in the capital. There is an excellent team of professional healthcare workers who find and treat hard-to-reach people from homeless hostels and prisons. They have a mobile X-ray unit, which travels around. It is getting very old and they need two, but the funding runs out this year. I know that the Minister cannot answer all the questions today from this mammoth debate, but perhaps he can write to me letting me know if NHS London, the PCTs and the Mayor of London, who thinks that it is an excellent facility, will take up their responsibilities and fund two new units and the running costs.

I hope that the Government will put patient safety at the top of the health agenda. There are so many needs but unnecessary disasters must be avoided at all cost. At one meeting that I attended, a registrar surgeon told us that in one morning’s operating list he had two cases of the wrong breast being marked for operation. Another case is that of a new mother who was given the wrong drug in a drip, which killed her. The inquest cited the chaotic drug storage at the hospital and it was fined £100,000. Everyone is a loser. There should be fool-proof systems throughout the country, and no cutting of corners.

15:53

[Lord Elton]

My noble and right honourable friends, whom I welcome to their respective Front Benches, have inherited the most appalling economic situation. We all realise, perhaps at different rates, that it is necessary to cut many programmes to save money and stop spending money that we have not got. If those programmes are counterproductive, that is a very welcome step to take. My right honourable friend Francis Maude was quite right to say in the election campaign that a system that gives someone more money for staying at home than for going out to work needs to be fixed—and so it does. In saying that, however, he evoked a large and vocal sector of public opinion. With the pressure from that, it now rests on my right honourable friend Iain Duncan Smith and my noble friend Lord Freud to reduce the flow of money going through the welfare system. Indeed, let them do so, but they must be aware that the vocal pressure contains a good many misconceptions. Benefit is not in itself unnecessary or bad; it is in fact very necessary and good when it works as it should, preventing honest people from becoming casualties of circumstances that they cannot control. Yet when it does not work as it should, it not only encourages welfare dependence but can cause the sort of casualties that the system is meant to cure.

Perhaps I may illustrate this, and ask your Lordships to put yourselves in the place of a friend of mine whom I shall report as accurately as I can. You are a retired soldier in latish middle age. Your pension is not yet in payment. Your former wife and her children have long lived in a different continent. You have a number of things wrong with you and are assessed as unfit to work. Your entire income consists of your benefits for long-term disability, housing and council tax. You live alone in a one-bedroom council flat. A good deal of your time is given to helping a solitary, handicapped neighbour to manage his dog, his flat and his shopping. You are, not unnaturally, already somewhat depressed. Suddenly, your whole benefit package—your entire income—ceases. In the past you would have asked why, but you are deeply depressed so you live off the favours from people for whom you will do small services, while brown envelopes accumulate and are binned unopened—until Tuesday, 21 May 2009, when, by the grace of God, you open one envelope. The letter inside tells you that in 10 days’ time, at 9 am on Friday 1 June, the bailiffs will remove you and your possessions from your flat, breaking down the door if necessary.

My first question to Her Majesty’s Government is: why, for heaven’s sake, when a tenant does not reply to their letters for month after month, does a housing authority not do what an ordinary person would, in common decency, and send someone round to see if he is all right? That would have saved a huge amount of money let alone anxiety. Of course, computers do not have common decency unless it is programmed into them—we are talking of institutionalisation here.

Your first reaction to the eviction notice is to go round to St Mungo’s to see whether it will find room for you and to make a small pile of essential belongings to take with you—but at last, and with encouragement, you go to your local authority customer advice centre. The lady at the desk is kind, knowledgeable and patient. Your benefit has stopped because the system shows that you are getting working tax credit. You reply that you would not qualify for it and are not getting it in any case. You are asked to prove it. Nobody explains how you can do that, even if your Post Office account had not already been closed. A second lady, equally kind and knowledgeable, joins the first and rings the Department for Work and Pensions, which says that it can only discuss it with you in person, so you speak to it directly, giving your correct address and correct date of birth. “No”, it says, “That is not what we’ve got on our records”, and cuts you off.

The ladies now agree that it looks as if somebody else is getting the money. They advise you to apply again for benefit and to apply to the court for a stay of execution of the warrant. Close to tears, you take the ladies’ advice and go to the local police station to report a suspected crime. You aren’t very welcome. The person receiving you, who is not in uniform, tells you from behind a plate-glass window that if there was a crime you are not the victim and sends you to an airless waiting room, furnished only with a bench. The door, which can only be opened remotely by someone else, closes behind you—and there you wait with nothing but anger and depression to occupy you for one hour and 52 minutes while other, later arrivals are called forward to interviews ahead of you.

Eventually two courteous policemen, having taken lengthy advice, confirm that you cannot be recorded as a victim of a suspected crime. This has taken a total of two hours and 40 minutes. Is that normal? Or could it be that this treatment is because you are black and your obvious accomplice, a do-gooder who wants to see what treatment you get, does not declare himself as a Member of your Lordships’ House? I leave the question in the air, perhaps to be picked up by the Metropolitan Police.

With the welcome help, which I acknowledge, of the then Minister, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, a senior official in DWP agrees to take an interest, accepting the probability of identity theft. Meanwhile, you get and complete the application for a stay of execution and, on Thursday the 30th, less than 24 hours before eviction is due, you get it, somewhat out of breath, into the court office. It costs you £35 and, for someone with feet like yours, it is a £2 bus ride away from home. You, too, are expected to spend money you have not got.

The bailiffs are now temporarily in baulk, but tomorrow you have to persuade the court to leave them there. On that day you learn that DWP’s involvement has enabled your local authority to resume paying your housing benefit. This does not give you spending money but it does pay your rent and offer the prospect of payment of arrears in due course. That is not enough for them, though—they still want you out. Luckily, unlike many, you have been able to obtain the loan of a substantial amount, interest-free, as a subordinate debt. Offered this, the local authority agrees not to object to your application for delay. That afternoon, the court gives you six weeks in which to get things sorted out. Long enough, you think.

How wrong you are. It takes all of that to get from HMRC, which pays WTC, a letter for the court admitting that it had been paying WTC to someone else. Unfortunately HMRC compounds the difficulty by confusing your identity with that of the man who stole it. Eventually, in mid-August, the court orders payment of arrears at £3.25 a week, which in your circumstances is a significant amount, and suspends the warrant. It still hangs over your head today.

I skip a whole nine-month rollercoaster ride of other difficulties till we get to May this year when, reassessed and transferred to ESA benefit, your housing and community tax benefits are automatically stopped. That is how it works. It ought to take six weeks to get them restored but, although you fill the form in at once and it is taken in over the counter at the Jobcentre where you fill it in, it somehow gets lost and the money is not there in six weeks. The suspended warrant is threatened and you are again told that you are going to be evicted.

In fact that friend of mine is still in place, and is now in receipt of benefit, but I ask my noble friend only my second question: can the Government possibly do anything about this, and will they accept any help that I can give them to get it done? I am talking not about that individual case but about the system that allows these things to happen.

16:02

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Howe, on his well deserved ministerial appointment. When it comes to health policy, he is undoubtedly the most experienced member of the health team, having done the job in opposition for over 10 years and seen off several Ministers in that time.

On several occasions I have heard the Secretary of State, Mr Andrew Lansley, speak of his vision for better healthcare, and I have had an opportunity to discuss with him how the quality and safety of healthcare can be improved. I believe him to be concerned about the poor quality of care and to have a genuine commitment to making it better.

The gracious Speech outlined several areas where government legislation is to come. The Coalition: Our Programme for Government outlined several areas of possible health policy changes, many of which I find myself in support of, including the creation of an independent NHS board, a department of public health and a greater voice for clinicians and patients. While we have to wait for the legislative details, I hope, as a Cross-Bencher, to continue to help to improve the legislation in these areas.

While I believe reducing administrative costs in the NHS by a third to be right and possible, I am disappointed not to see mention of specific cost savings in the coalition manifesto. I hope the Government will look again at the role of strategic health authorities, their current size and budgets, and their function, particularly following the creation of the NHS board, and at the National Quality Board, the Care Quality Commission, the role of Monitor, PCTs and other organisations. There is also a need to look at the number of PCTs, which is currently in the region of 152. The number could easily be reduced to 30 or 40 and, given enhanced powers, they would bring efficiency and cost reduction.

The coalition Government’s health programme outlines quality and safety of healthcare to be important in delivering better outcomes. The key driver to achieve this will be the quality of commissioning, so the first and foremost task will be to develop good commissioning for quality and safety. Currently both are woefully done. Commissioners should be expected to promote quality and safety improvement. They should ensure that provider quality accounts—published by healthcare providers—properly reflect the concerns of patients and the public, and are properly scrutinised. Commissioners should provide assurance that the services commissioned are of appropriate quality to detect early warnings of potential decline, and intervene where standards are not met. Commissioners should be responsible for improving the scope and effectiveness of quality and safety. They should also promote innovations, with financial incentives and penalties for patient-safety incidents defined as “never events”, similar to those operated by Medicare and Medicaid in the United States. Poor quality and unsafe patient care is expensive. The key to delivering high-quality, safe care is good documentation, as I witnessed recently in several hospitals in the United States.

The Government also intend to bring in GP-led commissioning and to improve the quality of general practice. I hope that, in doing so, account will be taken of lessons learnt from previous experience of GP-led commissioning to ensure that the prime purpose of commissioning will be to deliver benefits to the patients and efficiency savings; and to ensure accountability of public expenditure. Can commissioning GPs be accountable officers, as CEOs are in NHS trusts and PCTs? Does the Minister agree that greater clarity is required in the respective roles of regulators, commissioners and the National Quality Board in promoting and ensuring quality and safety?

The Government’s commitment to tackling health inequalities is very welcome. However, the key determinants of poor health are economic and social. To succeed will require effective working across several government departments—a key test for the coalition Government. There is in the Government’s programme for health a distinct lack of any mention of public health and preventive health measures, apart from the creation of a department of public health. Could the Minister comment on which policies the Government will bring in to reduce harm related to alcohol, tobacco and nutrition? Increasing obesity, related to the high sugar and fat content of foods, now affects nearly 30 per cent of children. The high salt content of ready-made foods accounts for significant health problems in the older population. What is the Government’s strategy in these areas?

I finish on a positive note. I find nothing wrong in the ambitions of the Government’s health programme. I hope we will now have appropriate legislation and policies to deliver it. Cutting bureaucracy and useless administration, and delivering safe patient care in a safe environment, with more of the care delivered by competent professionals, will—to borrow a phrase that the Minister may well recognise—deliver,

“some of the best health in Europe”.

I hope the Government commit themselves to that.

16:09

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I shall concentrate my remarks on education. The opening words of the gracious Speech state:

“My Government will seek to build a strong and fair society”.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hill, reminded us in his opening speech, that fair society depends a great deal on education. I was rather surprised at how well the coalition of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives managed to put their two education policies together. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, referred to the pupil premium. Some years ago, I travelled with Nick Clegg to Holland to look at the way in which the Dutch funded education. We found that disadvantaged children were given special extra funding which they carried with them as they moved from school to school. The pupil premium was based very much on the research work that we carried out on that expedition and I was delighted to see that it plays a substantial part in the policies which the coalition is putting forward.

I am also pleased at the emphasis that we are giving to rolling back bureaucracy. Both parties agree that schools and colleges—and universities, for that matter—are overwhelmed by bureaucracy. Last year a seminal report was produced by the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee, which found that each year the average head received well over 700 pieces of paper comprising directives and guidance. That is roughly three for each working school day and is an impossible amount to manage. When I inquired of a local comprehensive school head how much time he allocated to interpreting the bureaucracy that he received from the centre to his staff and parents and governors who needed to know about it, he said that on average he thought it took him roughly half the week, which is an astonishing amount of time. The more that we can roll back that bureaucracy and allow our school leaders and teachers to give time to front-line services, the better it will be. It is important that we, as a Government, practise what we preach. It is too easy to talk with one breath of freeing up teachers from bureaucracy and then to declare with the next that they must use synthetic phonics to teach reading.

I confess that I am also somewhat worried at the thought of Ministers laying down the law on what the history curriculum should be, even if they call in eminent historians to advise them. We were very worried by what Stalin and Hitler did to the history curriculums of their countries. I am not suggesting that democratic Ministers would behave like that, but it is important to beware of too much political influence over the curriculum.

The flagship measure of this Government that we shall see within the next week is the Academies Bill. It will not surprise noble Lords on all sides of the House to hear that I have reservations about the Bill as it stands. However, I shall leave my thoughts on the proposals in that Bill until its Second Reading on Monday. I echo the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley. If we are looking to create a fair society, it is very important that we concentrate not on structures but on process. Taking the issue of process somewhat further, one aspect of lessening bureaucracy that is agreed is to change the role of Ofsted. The schools that consistently perform well will be inspected less often and, as the Minister mentioned, the Government are proposing to reduce the number of performance indicators. But in that case it is vital that we use the right measures of performance and it is difficult to know what they are, because any school's performance is also closely linked to its socio-economic profile. Our high-performing schools are predominantly in middle-class areas with middle-class intakes. Poorly performing schools serve disadvantaged populations. It is this gap in performance that both the coalition and the previous Government have sought to close, and will seek to close, so that there is genuine equality of opportunity.

It is no good just whipping the schools to produce better SATs and GCSE results. First we must find a way of compensating those coming from disadvantaged homes for the disadvantages that they suffer; hence the importance of programmes such as Sure Start, and the children's centres frequently associated with Sure Start, which combine education and parenting. Programmes such as Every Child a Reader are crucial because they provide one-to-one tutoring for six and seven year-olds who are having difficulty in mastering reading. At secondary school level, it is very important to find and provide a curriculum that excites and motivates those who at present are often turned off by the overacademic approach of GCSEs. Diplomas were supposed to be the answer to this problem, but I worry that, as currently developed, they are too much of a hybrid, satisfying neither the vocational nor the academic side of education. This is why I am very excited by the prospect of university technical high schools that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, spoke about. They would combine first-class vocational training with dedicated equipment and teachers, but keep open the door both to jobs and to higher education. That seems to be a much better way forward than shunting pupils around from school to college for the odd half day here and there.

Education remains the key to unlocking our potential. The UK must raise its game, both to maintain international competitiveness and to help to build a society that is fair and more at ease with itself. This is recognised within the coalition agreement by the priority given to education, and the ring-fencing of the schools budget. There are real savings to be gained from reducing bureaucracy and concentrating managerial resources on the central tasks of teaching and learning; but let us not waste these gains on fruitless restructuring. Rather, let us give our teachers and school leaders space and time to innovate and excel.

16:17

[Baroness Murphy]

My Lords, I, too, warmly welcome the noble Earl, Lord Howe, to his role on the Front Bench. I am sure that he will forgive me for saying that he has been practising diligently for this role for more than 10 years. We now have a Secretary of State and a Minister leading in the Lords in health who have a solid understanding of health policy. That is a great good fortune for those of us who work in this area. While I suspect that parts of the policy are still a work in progress—social care is probably the fuzziest at present, and I hope that noble Lords were listening to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, on this point—I welcome strongly the direction set down in the gracious Speech, and the indication that we shall now speed ahead to reverse the unhelpful dithering and procrastination of the past two years.

I declare an interest as a member of the board of Monitor, the NHS foundation trust regulator, and chairman of St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London—although not for long, as I am retiring this summer from both roles. The future agenda is exciting, both for improvements in healthcare and for the impact that such policies are likely to have on health sciences education. I welcome and will support the intentions of the forthcoming health Bill. The coalition agreement, based on pre-existing Lib Dem policy and the Conservative Party publication NHS Autonomy and Accountability, is entirely welcome.

First, I will highlight the news that research into the dementias has become a government priority. This is music to my ears, as it is my specialty, and makes economic as well as clinical sense. I look forward to seeing how it will be effected in reality, given the inevitable pressures there will be on research council funding.

I welcome strongly the intention to complete the shift to a health system where decisions are made locally by patients and professionals rather than centrally, to complete the separation of commissioning and provision, to get all hospitals to foundation trust status, to improve the information available on the quality of care so that better decisions can be made and to put the setting of incentives in the system on a more professional basis by establishing an independent economic regulator of health care. For a system of tax-funded healthcare to be sustainable in the long run, we need better incentives and more local decision-making and innovation. These changes will be very helpful for that.

There is now incontrovertible evidence that competition between hospitals and between service providers improves both innovation and health outcomes if the system is well regulated to ensure a financial level playing field and the quality of care is subject to rigorous monitoring and improvement. Too often in the past, the internal market was left to its own devices and subject to central interference. It worked to keep down costs but did not necessarily improve quality. The BMA and other professional bodies have been rightly critical of it. However, recent evidence from the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE and other independent studies by US-based researchers of health outcomes in heart disease treatment in English hospitals have confirmed that a properly regulated market has a positive effect on outcomes, including saving lives—about 400 lives in heart disease treatment. This is especially true when clinicians are in real and powerful leadership roles.

I am sure that we will have many happy hours scrutinising the details as the Bills come before the House. We do not yet know what some of these details will look like. In particular, I do not really understand what the relationship will be between a national commissioning board and local GP commissioners. Finding the best way of organising how we spend £100 billion on healthcare continues to be the most significant unresolved question in the reforms. Commissioning decisions need to be made at a sufficient scale to support the right level of analysis and expertise but also close enough to the clinicians who actually make the spending decisions to influence their behaviour and to reflect local circumstances. How will we prevent groups of GPs from delegating their commissioning to junior administrative staff, as they consistently have done in the past? The benefit of small-group GP fundholding has proven extraordinarily difficult to replicate on a larger scale and I look forward to hearing how that can be done.

How will we get all hospitals to foundation trust status? Only half the acute hospitals and three-quarters of mental health services have so far managed to demonstrate that they are sufficiently financially robust and well governed to stand on their own feet and to operate independently. Strategic health authorities have truly struggled in preparing applicants, so we will need a better approach to help the remaining trusts to get up to the required levels of competence. FT status is not about achieving some label; it is about putting the management and finances of the trusts on a sound footing for the challenges ahead.

Will FTs be subject to Treasury spending controls? If so, this will significantly reduce their freedom from central interference and undermine the intention of the Bill to allow more local decision-making. A way of preventing that would be to adjust the FT regime sufficiently to allow the trusts to be taken off the Government’s balance sheet. We could have, as an alternative to Treasury controls, strong regulation and a clear failure regime to ensure sound finances.

I am challenging the Government to show the kind of bravery that will really move the health service forward. When the Blair Government took office, they had some very good ideas and it is not surprising that the new Government are trying to improve on those good ideas. However, the Blair Government did not implement them quickly enough—it took them five years to get started—and latterly the policy sank into the doldrums, besieged by old party slogans. Although this Government now have the opportunity to act, they must truly get on with it. They cannot improve care directly; only front-line clinical staff can do that, as the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, said in his maiden speech. However, they can provide the structural context in which improvement of care is likely. I disagree that all structural change is unnecessary or unhelpful. Sometimes structural change is necessary to ensure that something completely different is delivered. In this case, I think that we should continue the structural changes that have been begun but do so more quickly. Therefore, I urge the Government to go as fast as they can; it is our health and our lives that are at stake.

16:24

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, with whose speech I largely agree. The Government would do well to take heed of many of the remarks that she and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, have made.

I shall speak today on adult social care and the NHS but, first, I congratulate the two Ministers on their new appointments. As one of the Ministers that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, has seen off, I congratulate him on his strong grasp of health and social care. Even when he was skewering me as a Minister, it was always done with elegance and with a sense of doing so in the best interests of the NHS.

I greatly enjoyed the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hill. It reminded me that it was one of his former boss’s ideas on GP fund holding that I pinched and turned into practised-based commissioning. I have never owned up to that publicly but this seems an appropriate occasion to do so.

I begin by congratulating the Government on administering a speedy coup de grâce to the ill-conceived Personal Care at Home Act. This has removed an important roadblock to achieving sustainable long-term reform in this area. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, I welcome the idea of an independent commission to look into this. I think that we need to dig quite a few people out of rather entrenched positions on some of these issues, and a commission of independent mind might help us to do that. However, it is important that it focuses quickly on the considerable amount of common ground that exists among different shades of opinion in this area. A few of us identified this common ground in March in a pamphlet produced on a cross-party basis with Sir Derek Wanless. I know that Ministers have seen that pamphlet but when we were writing it, it was very clear that there was a large measure of agreement on many issues in this area, and that is something on which the commission needs to build.

It is clear from the public debate so far that total funding for adult social care has to be increased significantly to cope with demography. It is also clear that there has to be a larger contribution from individuals and families who can afford it, rather than from the taxpayer. It is equally clear that risk-pooling through some form of insurance has a key role to play. These points are all well documented and well settled, and we need to build on them. We need to do more—and I hope that the commission will do this—to engage the insurance industry in ways forward in this area.

Before leaving the subject of social care, perhaps I may say a few words about the idea of a national care service. Like all parties, the Government rightly want to achieve more integration of health and social care for the benefit of service users. No one could disagree with that. However, I suggest that a better starting point for improved integration is the local commissioning role, rather than just concentrating on the provider side. This will particularly be the case if GPs are to be more powerful service commissioners in the future. We now need joint commissioning which supports more personal budgets and user choice and which creates greater diversity of service providers. It seems to me that the rather statist-sounding national care service is not self-evidently the best way to achieve this, and we need to look at that idea very carefully before we take it too much further forward.

I turn briefly to the subject of dementia, which has been raised a number of times today. I support and welcome the Government’s decision to prioritise dementia research but I would encourage them to think more widely about whether the current allocation of service and financial responsibilities for dementia between the NHS and social care is right. After all, dementia is very much an illness; it is a disease, and I wonder whether the NHS is bearing its full proportion of the burden in this area. Another look at that might change some of the calculations that the independent commission might have to make in adult social care. I do not have a strong view on that, but it is an area that we should look at again.

Turning to the NHS, the Labour Government’s record on investment in the NHS was outstanding. We recognised that that needed to be done after almost two decades of parsimony in the 1980s and 1990s. I shall not recite all the figures; many in this House have heard me recite them from the Front Bench many times. However, I emphasise one point: the independent evidence from the Nuffield Trust shows that the much maligned targets did a lot to improve services, however much NHS staff disliked them. Before we ditch targets we should consider whether, in a democratically parliamentary accountable system like the NHS, we have a few levers in Richmond House that enable us to satisfy the public that taxpayers’ money has been spent reasonably well.

Latterly—the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, put it very well—my party lost its appetite for NHS reform and certainly lost its appetite for some of the agenda that was promised in the 2005 Labour election manifesto, particularly those parts about more competition and greater diversity of providers to give patients more choice. I am a little hesitant about asking the coalition Government to help to implement that Labour Party manifesto. I notice in the new health Bill that this Government are to make Monitor into a proper economic regulator, a move which I have long supported. This is a good opportunity to ditch, once and for all, the rather misguided idea of the NHS as a preferred provider. A good start could be made by starting with market-testing PCT provider services, which the Department of Health has already said are inefficient and lacking in good productivity. I wonder whether the noble Earl can say whether there will be a review of some of the mergers that have quietly taken place or are in prospect of some of these less than efficient PCT provider services.

There is not time for me to go into any other areas of the NHS. As the new Government tackle the very difficult financial challenges ahead, which the NHS has never faced in its history on this kind of scale, I hope we in this House can settle down and discuss all these changes, which would have been inevitable whoever had won the election, and start doing so in a constructive and non-partisan way.

16:32

[Baroness Emerton]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the noble Earl, Lord Howe, to the government Front Bench and offer him my congratulations on his appointment as Minister for Health. I am sure that his experience, knowledge and wisdom will be invaluable in taking forward the five priorities set out by the Secretary of State for Health and the long list of proposals within the health section of the coalition programme for Government. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hill, on his appointment and his mastery of the subject in his opening and maiden speech. I welcome my noble friend Lord Kakkar to the Cross Benches and congratulate him on his maiden speech. I am sure that his expertise in the area of medicine will be of great benefit to the deliberations of this House.

As I read the coalition Government priorities in the health section, I could not resist casting my mind back to 1953 when I started as a student nurse. At that time the ward sister reigned supreme and the matron was to be obeyed not only by the nurses but also by doctors and administrators alike. In my time, I have experienced six major reorganisations of the NHS, all of which had good points. I agree with my noble friend Lady Murphy that changes of organisational structures are sometimes good, but there are also things which are not so good. The one that stands out and disappoints me is the lessening of authority and accountability of the ward sister and the community sisters through to the director of nursing, both in hospitals and in the community. Therefore, I am delighted to read that:

“We will stop the top-down reorganisations of the NHS that have got in the way of patient care. We are committed to reducing duplication and the resources spent on administration … We will cut the cost of NHS administration by a third and transfer resources to support doctors and nurses on the front line … Doctors and nurses need to be able to use their professional judgment about what is right for patients, and we will support this by giving front-line staff more control on the working environment”.

It important for us to note that professional judgment and working with more autonomy and higher levels of the critical thinking and problem-solving skills are core elements at the heart of the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s review for pre-registration education and the move to the degree, under which the Nursing and Midwifery Council register will from 2013 require all registrants to have a degree. All those standards have a clear synergy with the Government's vision of the role of the future professionals in the NHS. The proposals all echo the recent recommendations of the Burdett Trust for Nursing in Leadership and the Business of Caring, the RCN’s recent work on strengthening the role of the ward sister and the most recent recommendations of the Commission on the Future of Nursing and Midwifery Professions.

I very much hope that the coalition Government will grasp this opportunity to develop and enact those policy statements with the benefit of improving the quality of patient and client care; ensuring that there are clear lines of accountability and authority well-defined and understood from the patient, the client and the public level through to the board level, including enhancing the role of the nursing voice at board level; and being knowledgeable of the wider context of the NHS, conversant with modern nursing practice and measuring clinical outcomes both in hospital and in the community.

It is also important to note that the announced cuts in finance will not exempt the multi-professional education and training budgets and that the current £4.8 billion will be reduced by 10 per cent, most affecting undergraduate and postgraduate education in medicine and dentistry. The £0.8 billion which is used for continuous professional education and national innovations is the most vulnerable. That raises concerns about the Government's ambition to raise quality of care standards and the future shape of the workforce. Balancing the necessary cuts to meet the overall deficits will require the highest quality of medical and nursing professional management skills to ensure a workforce that will protect the safety and well-being of patients, together with the priority to raise the profile of public health, which will require knowledge and expertise so that clinical outcomes of patient experience and safety are met, as well as meaningful health promotion and prevention of disease being developed further.

I refer to two other important issues. The Government have said that they will seek to stop foreign health professionals working in the NHS unless they pass robust language and competency tests—a crucial policy requiring action to change the current interpretation of the EU legislation, the professional qualification directive 2005/36. This prevents regulators from assessing the language competence of EEA professionals before admitting them to the registers. Currently, assessment is left to employers, not the regulators, and ignores the fact that many health and social care professionals are independent practitioners who practise outside the NHS and formal management assessments. The Nursing and Midwifery Council exists to safeguard the health and well-being of the public, and all nurses and midwives on the register should be safe and effective in practice, but the regulator is not permitted systematically to language-test trained applicants, therefore undermining the integrity of the register and presenting a risk to the public. The situation is also confusing to employers, applicants and the public, leading to a potential risk to the health and well-being of the public.

I ask the noble Earl to ensure that the 2012 review of directive 2005/36/EC on the recognition of professional qualifications reflects these concerns. Health and social care professions from outside the UK make a significant contribution to healthcare in this country, but patient safety must always take priority over free movement of labour.

While I share the concern of my noble friend Lord Sutherland about the delay in the introduction of long-term care and the suggestion of a commission, I hope that the Government will quickly take forward the commission and bring forth a sustainable structure of funding for long-term care. The part played by nurses and social care workers will be crucial in establishing the three Ps: prevention, personal and partnership. I should like to add the three Cs: care, compassion and communication, which are all essential ingredients that the public are looking for, especially in the light of the recent inquiry about Mid Staffordshire that demonstrated so clearly unacceptable levels of care. It pointed to the need for a highly competent workforce, high levels of supervision and management within a culture conducive to demonstrating compassion and communication with the flexibility to cross boundaries from health to social service and other partners. There is no doubt that there is a formidable list of proposed policies and I wish the Government well in taking them forward.

16:40

[Baroness Knight of Collingtree]

My Lords, it has been a delightful and somewhat unusual experience to sit here hour after hour today hearing a deluge of praise and kindness showered upon my noble friends on the Front Bench. Every word was said with such meaning. I appreciate it very much and would like to make it clear that we on this side of the House are just as delighted to see my noble friends on the Front Bench in government as members of the Opposition have kindly suggested.

The stated aims of the Government’s new health Bill are excellent. There has long been a crying need to improve basic healthcare for our citizens. I thoroughly approve of doctors and patients being given greater control. There should be devolution of power and responsibility in the NHS. We all understand that there must be management of the hotel side of our hospitals—the laundry, the cleaning and the cooking—but people who know nothing about medicine are not the ones who should be the captains of the hospital ship, as they often seem to be.

Administrators are not the best people to improve bad standards. They are far more likely to sack a whistleblower than to listen to the complaint and try to do better. Even when I have complained about the disgraceful treatment of patients, the reaction has invariably been outrage that I should dare to criticise and flat denials that anything at all is ever wrong with the treatment of patients rather than what I would have far preferred: an apology and a promise to investigate and do better. I have always been very careful to report only cases where I can give names, dates, witnesses, addresses, ages and the hospital where the incident occurred. Your Lordships will have often heard me speak in this House of such cases. Many have been of patients who have been given neither food nor water, or—and I find that this is extremely common—whose food has quite deliberately been placed too far away for them to reach and has then been whipped away untouched with not even the slightest offer to try to help them with feeding. Those who have no one to watch out or speak up for them are in terrible trouble. Some time ago, an elderly man in exactly that situation was actually filmed on TV as he starved and died.

There are many, many cases of patients being treated without care or compassion. Relations often fear to complain, in my experience. Sometimes they say, “Well, he’s dead anyway, we can’t bring him back, and if I complain I will really be in trouble because that complaint will go down against me and my care may suffer when I need it”. One instance has been cited a number of times by many different sources. A patient begs, even screams, for help to get to the lavatory, but is completely ignored and given no help at all. Eventually, helpless, they let loose in the bed, and what happens? They lie in the mess sometimes for hours before anyone comes to wash and change the sheets. Sometimes the excuse is that there is a wait until the next team comes on in the morning, but often no notice is taken at all of their predicament, which is appalling. I have absolutely no doubt that there are still angels among the nursing fraternity—we have some of them in this House—but I am afraid that they are a lot rarer than they used to be.

Only eight days ago, one major newspaper reported two quite separate examples on two quite separate pages of the lack of the most basic standard of care: one in a private home, and one in the NHS. The former was an 84 year-old man who was placed there because his wife could no longer care for him. He had Alzheimer’s and was both deaf and blind. After only one day, the first family visitor to see him found him on all fours, wearing only a nappy and covered with bruises and dried blood. When he was admitted, he had three bed sores. A few days later he had 18, all of which were covered with dirty dressings. He died six days later as a result of no proper treatment for the sores. The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, spoke of a similar case. Sadly, she knows as well as I do that there are many of them. One can only imagine what agony that poor old gentleman must have endured. As his inquest, the coroner ruled that he had,

“died for want of care by those charged with it”.

In the same newspaper on the same day, a journalist wrote of her treatment in an NHS hospital. She had had surgery on her back and had no complaint about that. The surgeon was excellent and the operation went well—that was all absolutely fine—but the standard of nursing care afterwards was abysmal. “On the ward”, she writes:

“I was treated like a malingering bed-blocker … When I asked for pain relief, it was refused. When I asked for help in moving, it was refused”.

One can imagine that after a back operation she had great trouble trying to move. She went on:

“When I asked for a second pillow so I could sit upright, it was refused”,

even though every other bed had two pillows. She asked for help with another extremely painful condition from which she suffered. That help, too, was refused, although by then she was hallucinating and crying from the extreme pain that she was in. I will draw a veil over the rest of her account, and report only the last words that she wrote. She said:

“what happened to me had nothing to do with money and everything to do with mindset”.

I always came to the conclusion that the previous Government believed that the excellence of care could easily be measured by the number of millions of pounds spent on the health service, a point which has been touched on in this debate. That is wrong—I repeat, wrong. It is not how much money is spent, but how that money is used which is so important. That yardstick took no cognisance of the standard of care a patient received.

Our new Health Minister promises that his Bill will focus on quality and the needs of patients, which we have wanted for years. It seems that new Ministers have watched and learnt. How pleased we were to see only yesterday that details would be made clear about how many patients have died from MRSA. I was staggered to see a report that the number was 8,000. Whether that is accurate or not, we shall soon know. Whatever is or is not done, and however many millions are spent on the health service, if the patient’s well-being is not the first priority, the service fails. That message should be framed and placed on the desk or a nearby wall of every Health Minister.

16:51

[Lord Mawson]

My Lords, I should like to add to the deluge of praise. I congratulate the new Government on their success and wish them well in the coming years as they try to develop a working partnership and deliver their programme. I also want to take this opportunity to wish the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, well in his new job and to thank new colleagues for four excellent maiden speeches. I also congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Howe, on his new appointment.

As a result of many years of bringing disparate groups of people together to deliver practical results, I know that the key to partnership is to focus on relationships and not just on new structures, processes and strategies. Focus on the relationships and everything will follow. Ignore them and you will face serious difficulties. My colleagues and I have spent more than a quarter of a century bringing together partnerships to modernise public services so that they are more responsive and fit for purpose in our modern enterprise culture.

I thought that it might be helpful if I shared with the new partnership Government a few lessons that my colleagues and I have learnt at the coalface. It might also help them to put some flesh on the bones of what the big society might look like in practice. Many people are wondering what this piece of marketing means. We all know that it is crucial for a new Government to lay solid foundation stones on which real change and development can grow. Real change is elusive and may not come to fruition until a Government have left office. Effective innovation can take a generation and requires committed individuals to champion it. It is rarely captured in a policy document, written by what my colleagues affectionately refer to as “the bright, young things”. Real change has to be grown and deeply rooted in communities, otherwise, as I suspect that new Labour is discovering, it will be blown away like the sand when the first gust of wind comes along.

What are the lessons? How do you create a big society and lift the game in education, health and welfare? First, I would suggest that this Government support organisations that already have a successful record of reforming public services. Do not reinvent the wheel, but build on what works. They should back success and learn from their many years of detailed practical work. Do not, as new Labour so often did, take their best ideas, pass them to the Civil Service machine and exclude these experienced innovators. Let them take the wheel. Support them and enable their efficiency. Do not think that it is now the Government’s job to take control. It is not. They should take the long-term view.

Secondly, we need to question what the overused term “fairness” means. The question to ask is: fairness for whom? If you are seeking to achieve fairness for Karen and her children on housing estates across the country and to improve their educational opportunities or access to health, you must back the best providers with a proven record. It is irrelevant whether they come from public, business, social enterprise or voluntary sectors. However, if you are seeking to be fair in dishing out grants and resources to the voluntary sector, you will do something quite different. Who are you trying to be fair to and why? Life is not fair, and where we began to challenge and question this thinking in east London and embrace not equality but diversity, a thousand flowers began to bloom. “Fair for whom?” is the exam question I leave with the Minister. It is not possible to be fair to everyone.

Thirdly, if fairness is about creating opportunities for employment and improved services, the future must be about enabling environments where business and social entrepreneurs can do business together. These are the new relationships that will reform public services and they are already showing significant success, but this means that some of our cherished ideology will need to be examined and probably dropped. For the last decade, bureaucrats have fed a bureaucracy monster and it is now very large indeed. Often, contracting out has transferred a large government bureaucracy to private sector companies with large contracts—prisons, for example. Then the civil servants have migrated from one large organisation to another. The contracting process seems designed to stifle innovation and risk taking. The role of the new Government needs to be to create a level playing field where new relationships and networks can grow, particularly between business and the social enterprise sector.

Fourthly, I would ask the Minister how he will practically encourage new environments where people “learn by doing”. Will he get his hands dirty by planting the seeds of enterprise in the fertile soil outside the comfortable but dry world of theory? If this new generation of politicians is to gain any understanding of how the real world works in practice, and not hide in the bubble of Westminster, I would humbly suggest that each Member of Parliament should become involved in one project in their constituency to play their part in building the “big society”. Do not pontificate about it: do it. Legislators might then begin to understand the relationship between legislation and practice because attempting to deliver a new school, health centre or service is a practical nightmare nowadays, given the number of contradictory hoops laden with half-baked ideology that practitioners like me have to jump through. The confusion that exists between delivery and democracy is a minefield. The micro is the clue to the macro. Learn from it and gain the public’s respect in the process.

If this Government are serious about empowering communities, Ministers will have to get involved in messy detail. For example, one of the difficulties we face in giving people more professional independence in health is the awkward fact that often doctors do not want to innovate. They have not been trained to think like entrepreneurs and so resist change because they have an entrenched view and an expensive biomedical model of health to protect. This is not just my view, but that of the doctors I have worked with. Can we leave commissioning with doctors? Will they be responsible? It depends on the mindset of the individual doctor.

Finally, the idea that devolving power to local authorities will deliver a plurality of outcomes is not always correct either. Local authorities are not neutral when commissioning services. They often have an aversion to selecting innovative approaches because they do not understand them. Many of their staff have only ever worked in the public sector. They do what they have always done, but change the wording on the forms to please the Government of the day. Look carefully and you will still see the same bodies under new clothes. Local authorities are often the least likely to choose an innovative approach to service delivery, so why are the Government looking to them alone? Could the Minister tell the House what criteria will be used to choose these authorities? How will he select the sheep from the goats? Or, like doctors, are they all as good as each other? Not in my experience.

I wish the Minister well in this time of opportunity. Partnership is a great thing and the present financial crisis is the time to embrace innovation. Never miss the opportunity presented by a good crisis. If you are to deliver, I would humbly suggest that you do not rely on structures or theories, but on people. Back the best people, be they in the business, public or social enterprise sectors, and, funnily enough, you will be fair to everyone.

16:59

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

My Lords, through a very croaky voice—my voice box has just given up, forgive me—and after more than 30 previous speakers, I, too, welcome the noble Lord, Lord Hill, and congratulate him on his maiden speech. However, I particularly want to focus on the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and say how delighted I am that he has received the reward we all hoped he would receive by becoming a Minister on the Front Bench. It has been an absolute joy working with him over the six years that I have been here. So I say to him, “Well done”, and look forward to working with him again in the future.

More importantly, I look forward to him coming to my hospital. I declare an interest as chair of Barnet and Chase Farm NHS Hospitals Trust, which is a two district general hospital trust serving the community in north London. On his appointment, the Secretary of State, Andrew Lansley, picked out my trust as the first one he should visit. From his interest, particularly in our A&E, and the questions he raised with us about the rest of the trust, it was obvious that he had gained a real insight into the services across our two hospitals. We greatly welcomed the opportunity to see him and to have his support.

Shaping the future of healthcare that is safe, of high quality and responsive is a vital component for any government reform in the NHS. In fact, it is enshrined in the NHS constitution that patients must receive the best care possible when they come into contact with our services. Patients, in consultation with their GPs—much of this has been referred to already today—have a choice about where they can receive their care or treatment, and we in Barnet and Chase Farm welcome that. I agree almost totally with the comments of my noble friend Lord Warner about the independent sector because the fact that people have the opportunity to use it makes our services better. I strongly believe that when a choice is offered, people will make sure that they are the ones who are chosen. We certainly do that in my hospital. The decisions patients make are the driving force behind my trust working hard to become the provider of choice, whatever the competition. If the Government are going to work on that principle, all I ask of the noble Earl is that we have a level playing field. That is very important.

We are committed to ensuring that every patient is treated with dignity, compassion and respect while receiving high-quality clinical care. Every time I follow the noble Baroness, Lady Knight, in a debate, I wish that I had said to her the last time, “Please come to my hospital” because the things she tells the House—which I am sure are true—are so heartbreaking. She will remember that we spoke in the House about the red trays. I shared with her our experience of the equipment we use in Barnet and Chase Farm which ensures that people who cannot feed themselves are drawn to the notice of everyone and receive support from either the nursing staff or volunteers; that because their red tray indicates, “I cannot do this by myself”, someone goes along and helps them to do it. We now have red jokes which I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Knight, will be delighted to know. Although we gave patients food, sometimes the water was too far away, and so we remedied that as well. I extend an invitation to the noble Baroness today and I shall make sure that I follow it up.

In my trust, we believe that greater ease of access to healthcare will improve patient outcomes. There is no mention in the gracious Speech of whether the coalition Government will continue with the four-hour A&E access target, from which our patients benefit and which they value. In my trust, in order to achieve the four-hour A&E target we had to go back to the drawing board and redesign the patient pathway so that patients are seen as quickly as possible but by the right clinician. This, too, is much better for patients and, thank goodness, the 12-hour trolley waits are a thing of the past—certainly in my trust. It is interesting that whenever patients talk to friends or relatives when they have come out of hospital, they comment on the quality of their treatment—about their operation being successful, we hope—mostly very favourably, but one thing they are quick to talk about, in the pub or wherever they go, is how long it took to be seen. No matter how good the quality of care was, if they were kept longer than they thought was appropriate, if it was longer than four hours—and four hours is not appropriate any more—they still remember that bit: “It was great but I had to wait”. The focus of some kind of incentive for people to work on that is really important.

We in Barnet and Chase Farm regard the fact that we have achieved “green” on the “traffic-light” indicator for our access targets for so long—together with being “green” for just as long in our quality targets—as a key factor in patients choosing to come to our hospitals. Seeing those quality targets being met, they know that our hospitals are places where they will get both the treatment that they need and the performance that they are entitled to. Perhaps the noble Earl will tell us when responding that the value that patients place on this system is important also to the new Government. I put all the caveats around how we make sure that that happens.

One speaker today has talked about removing the Care Quality Commission. I would plead with the Government not to do that. It is a great improvement on the Healthcare Commission; it is much more proactive; and it makes our trust feel that we will be challenged and that we will be superb in the way we go about our work. Let us combine timely access with high-quality clinical care and sound financial management, which is equally important.

I make this plea for targets not because they are about being achieved at any cost—they are not—but because they are about treating patients well. People who benefit from really good access along with absolute professional care get seen more quickly. In my trust, the introduction of MRSA reduction targets—there has been much discussion of them today—has led to a reduction in MRSA bacteraemia cases every single year. The noble Baroness, Lady Knight, mentioned very high figures. Last year, we had 16 cases in our trust, which we thought was awful. This current year, we have had four cases, with no more than seven predicted by the end of the year. That is a result of the care that we make sure is given to patients. All the nightmare stories that one hears will happen again if people do not take care of their patients. This is another example of how appropriately set targets can provide better care and improved outcomes. It is good for patients. We again urge the coalition Government to hold us all to account in this way.

During this time of change, might I be so bold as to say that we must take care in making any decisions about changing or removing targets? They can and do benefit patients as long as we always have the patient and the quality of the service at the front of our minds, which is absolutely essential.

I conclude by sharing with your Lordships a case study made by the Department of Health on delivering same-sex accommodation, which was a flagship policy of the previous Labour Government. We hope that the new coalition Government will hold on to this policy and push all hospitals into delivering this environment which is so valued and appreciated by patients of both sexes. That is what dignity and care are about.

17:08

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, coming in at number 35 in the batting order, I am surprised to discover that I have something to say which has not been covered already. That does not often happen in a debate such as this; you usually have to quote everybody in front of you.

I shall refer first to the education aspect of the debate. Before doing so, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Hill, to the cross between Alice in Wonderland and Gormenghast which is how I have always regarded the House of Lords. He is welcome as a noble friend—something that I did not expect on 6 May to be saying. I hope that he will carry on in the same vein as that in which he started.

The coalition document refers to assessment for all pupils with special educational needs, which most people involved in the field have concluded is absolutely necessary. It will be important to make sure that we hit targets for improved literacy, for example. The previous Government, to give them their due, did throw resources at this problem and found out that we were not getting to the group of people with such things as dyslexia, which is a special interest of mine. Too many people were still not being identified or treated properly when they got through. The other hidden disabilities are as bad. What usually happens here, as the noble Lord will discover, is that the most extreme cases are dealt with first, provided that you have an articulate parent behind you. That is the absolute iron law. The organisations that do the work behind this are driven by those articulate parents. Dyslexic people from working class backgrounds, who often have dyslexic parents and dyslexic children, end up with people with dyslexia in prison. That would be roughly what I would say about it. We need to ensure that the assessment works and is given the time, place and energy and is made to cover all these conditions. The assessment may be a complicated one that takes several days or weeks, but it must be done in that way. If you miss this target, you will miss an opportunity. I shall come back to this at a later date—probably on a lot of later dates. I think noble Lords are nodding their heads in agreement. It is something that we must look at, and I encourage the noble Lord to engage fully with all the organisations out there. I hope that we can make a good fist of it. There is no right answer, but there may well be a better one in this field.

I turn to the link between culture and health. The noble Lord will not be surprised if I say that the linkage between sports and physical activity and health is absolutely obvious, but government has never really got hold of it. The idea is there, but we do not really correlate the two properly. The coalition document mentions helping sports clubs; something has been done, but not enough. I recommend the Bill that I brought forward on amateur sports clubs, and would like to take credit for all the drafting, but the CCPR would have my hide if I did. We do not give enough support to those taking sport outside school, in encouraging them to take it on after that.

I am worried by one of the other comments in the document that refers to school sports. One thing that we know about sporting activity is that it drops off at 16, 18 and 21. Those happen to be the dates at which people leave educational institutions. If you are fit as a flea at 15 and a fat slob at 22, the NHS ain’t going to get a great deal of benefit. How do you encourage people? I asked the previous Government and the Government before that. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, and I have been noble friends and allies and noble opponents in this House. What is the best form of recruitment devised by all the sporting bodies supported by Sport England to keep people involved? I have had long and in-depth replies but I have never found out the best answer. How can we keep people engaged and active in sporting activity? People will then turn round and say that people can be healthy without playing a competitive sport. One in several thousand may have the motivation to do the 2.3 miles of jogging two to three times a week to keep their weight at the recommended level over a long period of time, but nobody else will. You need an incentive and a reason to get yourself involved; even if it is only to look good on the beach, you need a reason. It is easier to eat chips. The answer will not always be found in eating healthier food. You can get fat eating healthy food and watching TV. It might take slightly longer, but you can still do it. We need to give people an incentive to get involved. Will the Government ensure that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department of Health have regular meetings and discussions about how they can marry these two things together to ensure that there is some real interaction? I know that effort was put in before, but it seemed to disappear somewhere behind the Chinese walls. I do not doubt that many Ministers tried—they probably ended up wasting a great deal of time with my pushing to get this on—but please can they make a move through with a linkage that goes slightly further than Ministers saying occasionally, “Oh, we must do something”. It happens that things fall away occasionally between Ministers who are supposed to meet each other.

If we are talking about protecting school playing fields in this document, please can somebody also address the fact that that battle might have been lost? It took 10 years for the previous Government to reverse their sell-off of school playing fields. Maybe they could have acted sooner, but they did not. They slowed it down, but did not reverse it. I think there was a great announcement, after about 10 years of asking this question, saying, “Finally, we’ve got two more than we had last year”. Can we have a real addressing of the facilities available across the board for people to take on sport? Can we also look not just at school playing fields but at local authority and private playing fields? I asked that several times and it was never measured. Can we look at this in the round?

Finally, on the Department of Health, if we are encouraging people to play sport and take exercise, can the noble Earl, Lord Howe, tell me whether we are doing more about making better sport and exercise medicine available? That is because soft-tissue injuries which are not dealt with properly become chronic, leading to the person becoming less active—indeed, often, to them becoming disabled. It is an absolute fact that this happens. The process is slow; physiotherapy is slow to acquire. Instant treatment often solves problems overnight. Leaving them for several weeks means you have major problems requiring major involvement; I have case studies on that by the barrow load. I will not bore the House with those tonight, but unless something is done to bring these facets together, all the activity around the Olympics and other great sporting events will not achieve anything like it could. I would hope that, on my two questions, both noble Lords will go away and remember that they must talk to their colleagues and to the rest of the House to maintain pressure for this.

17:17

[Lord Morris of Handsworth]

My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the gracious Speech and to those noble Lords who have delivered maiden speeches today—in particular, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, who delivered his from the Dispatch Box.

Unlike previous years, in order to explore the true intention of the Government’s programme it is necessary to read not only the manifestos of the two parties in government but the important document The Coalition: Our Programme for Government. The Government, and indeed the gracious Speech, say that the legislative programme will be based on the principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility. Reflecting on what the coalition’s programme commits to in respect of the National Health Service, I find it to be long on expectations but somewhat short on commitment to its users.

For example, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wall, who has just left her place, pointed out in her question, where is the commitment to guaranteeing maximum waiting times for hospital treatment—the commitment to a maximum wait for an urgent cancer treatment referral, or while in accident and emergency? In the context of the debate in your Lordships’ House, these commitments might sound somewhat pedestrian, but if you are on the waiting list they are vital. Indeed, for some it could be a matter of life or death.

Today, though, I will examine the bigger picture, letting the notion of “freedom and fairness” pass. I want to focus on the principle of responsibility. Tucked away on page 25 of the coalition’s programme for government is a paragraph on the NHS. It says:

“We will establish an independent NHS board to allocate resources and provide commissioning guidelines”.

That statement raises questions and gives no real answers. The creation of an independent NHS board, as set out in that programme, challenges the very principle of political responsibility and political accountability. In essence, the coalition Government are proposing the creation of a superquango to run the National Health Service. What, then, of the promises over a number of years of “no more pointless reorganisations” of the NHS? What of the promise in the coalition programme to reduce the number and costs of quangos? In fact, the proposed NHS board will be the biggest, most expensive quango in the history of the NHS.

The coalition Government will argue that their proposed NHS board will prevent “political interference” but, to many, what has been loosely labelled as such is actually political accountability. Ministers will no doubt say that they want to devolve power, but there is a qualitative difference between devolving power and abdicating responsibility. Ministerial responsibility for the NHS cannot be outsourced or subcontracted to unelected quangos. Ultimately, it is the Government who must be held accountable for the funding and service decisions that shape, influence and affect the healthcare of the nation. Democratic accountability demands that Ministers, as we have seen today, come to the Dispatch Box to be questioned about their decisions on the running of the NHS.

The NHS is a public service that spends more than £100 billion of public money each year. It is an essential front-line public service that makes a difference to the quality of our lives, and we are all stakeholders in it. That is precisely why it is with Parliament that the buck must stop, not with some superquango that does not have to face the electorate or stand at the Dispatch Box.

The proposed NHS board raises a number of fundamental questions, and I hope that the Ministers will give us some answers. Will the board both commission and provide services? Who will own the assets of the NHS? Who will have responsibility for managing and monitoring those assets? How are taxpayers’ interests to be protected and safeguarded? What will the relationship be between foundation trusts, primary care trusts and GP services?

If Ministers really want to improve our NHS and devolve decision-making, I am sure that the best way of doing that is to empower NHS professionals—our doctors, our nurses, our front-line healthcare workers. What the NHS does not need is the creation of a superquango that is unelected, unaccountable and unnecessary.

17:25

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, it is an absolute delight to see the noble Earl, Lord Howe, across the Chamber on the Front Bench. He and I have exchanged views for many years. Sometimes we have disagreed but he has always replied with grace. I also look forward to getting to know the new Minister. I hope he does half as well as the noble Earl; he will then do pretty well indeed.

It is in times of economic constraint that the services to the most vulnerable get lost. It is the most in need—the least vocal—who are diminished. I am sure that this Government will not want to lose sight of those who require our care. Recognising their commitment during the election, in the manifestos and in their speeches, I am particularly grateful for the concern already expressed. Before I move on, I specifically mention the ending of detention of children for immigration purposes. After many years’ service in social care, I recognise that this is a complex issue, particularly since children must not be separated, as the right reverend Prelate said, from their families. The previous Government did much to end this practice. We now look to this Government to complete the task.

Unlike my noble friend Lord Sutherland, I welcome the commission to consider a sustainable long-term structure for the operation of social care. As chair of Livability, a charity providing services for severely disabled adults and young people, I recognise the challenge of delivering excellent opportunities to give individuals maximum choice and freedom with the balancing of cost. I hope the Minister will reassure me that looking for value will not lead to the lowest level of care and quality. People who need our services deserve the best that we can give. That is why the commission is so important in taking a broader look at all those in the social care system. I also hope that during this review the Government will look at simplifying some of the structures that we now have. The uncertainty and additional bureaucracy associated with assessment and care support planning under the personal budget programme—which has led to an industry of people set up to manage people’s individual budgets, taking a top slice—is just one example of added complexity.

Linking this commitment to improving public health and reducing health inequalities, I expect the Government to see the close link between health input through hospitals and medical facilities and practitioners, and the community care provided by those in social care in local authorities and voluntary organisations. For example, Little Hearts Matter is a small charity dealing with children who experience the most severe surgical interventions in heart conditions. I pay tribute to those specialist doctors who have given these children a life through brilliant intervention techniques. However, the children will spend most of their lives in the community, not in hospital, needing support services and follow-up care. I anticipate that the Government will see these interventions on a continuum, rather than as incidents, and support the whole, including the part played by the voluntary sector.

As noble Lords would expect, I now want to focus on children and children’s care services. I am not speaking of education, important though I see it is, because many of your Lordships here will do so. However, I say to the Minister that without emotional stability and family support, children will fail to learn. Again, the two are interrelated. The previous Government said, “Education, education, education”, and I said to them often on the Floor of this House, “Welfare, welfare, welfare, if children are to learn”. As yet there seems to be no clear decision about the long-term plans for children’s local authority services—children’s trusts—but stabilising them is absolutely vital. They are working in a time of unprecedented pressure. Social workers need to know that they are as valued as teachers, nurses, economists and the rest. I did not hear mention of them in the introductory list of the noble Lord, Lord Hill, but perhaps he would like to learn more about their work. I would be delighted to inform him. Why is that? It is because we entrust them with the safeguarding of our children. We leave them with the most difficult decisions. They are damned if they remove children, damned if they don’t and damned to hell if they get things wrong.

Is it any wonder that there is a shortage of these committed individuals? The tragedy of Baby Peter and the media treatment have overwhelmed the service. The workforce is demoralised and service provision is at its tightest. In the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, where I chair the board, the numbers of referrals are higher than at any time in the life of the service, and we are a barometer of what is happening outside in the community. Despite this our unallocated cases continue to be held and reduced, so CAFCASS is doing better than ever through innovative work practices, partnership with judges and the support of the new president of the family courts. Much can be achieved through partnerships and finding new ways of working so long as the children and their families are central to our thinking. However, we, like local authorities, are still failing against our key indicators because our resources simply cannot match the demand. At the heart of all this for all social care services is the serious shortage of skilled social workers.

The one bright hope on the horizon is the report of the Social Work Task Force giving a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rise to these challenges. They are not challenges unknown to the government Benches. When in opposition, the Conservatives held their own review and were positive in their approach to social work. Where is this now? There has been no mention of the Social Work Reform Board and its plans to implement the recommendations of the task force. Can the Minister say where this stands in government priorities?

For many working in social care there is pressure, uncertainty and, for some, low morale, but I do not want the picture to be totally bleak. Social workers, volunteers, carers and others continue to give of themselves day in and day out, and it certainly is not for the pay. New ways of working are being developed. What we need are ways of sharing experience and building on strength. We require a Government with a national vision that can have local implementation. The work needs to be integrated with health, housing and DWP to get the best out of public sector resources and reduce duplication and waste in the processes. It is needed now because the work simply does not stop for a change of government. We look to the Government for a better future for those in need.

17:32

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe]

My Lords, I will focus my comments on the impact of the Government’s programme on higher education. I, too, welcome the noble Earl, Lord Howe, in his ministerial role for health. I cannot think of anyone better qualified in terms of knowledge, commitment and sensitivity. He is also pretty good behind the footlights.

Although I am no longer chief executive of Universities UK, my passion for higher education remains undiminished. I am anxious that investment in higher learning should not be an unintended casualty of the Government’s determination to reduce the deficit. Several proposals in the Queen’s Speech have a potential impact on higher education. Among them are the Academies Bill, the education and children’s Bill and the health Bill. The Government also propose to put a cap on non-EU immigration. I also wish to touch on the dismantling of the system of regional development agencies.

Universities have invested considerable effort and resources into building closer links with schools in order to break down the social barriers that act as a barrier to participation in higher education. This has been supported by the previous Government’s commitment to measures aimed at increasing social mobility. We must take care that the close links between schools and universities are not damaged by the administrative changes that the new Government are bringing forward.

Similarly, not everyone will be aware of the extent to which changes in NHS structures can have a major impact on higher education. Education for nursing and allied health professions in England is provided through contracts with strategic health authorities and universities. The proposals to establish an independent NHS board to allocate resources and provide commissioning guidance will directly affect this link. I urge the Government to ensure that this is borne in mind as the proposals are developed.

On the issue of migration, I understand that the non-EU cap will not apply to students. I warmly welcome this decision. A quarter of a million international students studied at our universities last year. Of course, they make a substantial contribution to the financial sustainability of universities, but their economic impact is a great deal wider than that. They will go on to become the economic and political leaders of the future, taking with them established links to the UK.

Higher education is an international market where the UK can be proud of its leading role. Eighteen UK universities are in the top 100 in the world. The ability of our universities to recruit the best researchers and teaching staff from around the world is a key factor in maintaining this leading position. Any moves that make it more difficult to recruit the best staff can only limit our ability to compete in this global education market.

I turn to the future of regional development agencies. Often, universities are among the largest businesses represented on the boards of RDAs. The economic impact of universities at a regional level is substantial. In my region of Yorkshire, for example, there are almost 28,000 full-time-equivalent jobs in higher education, and a similar number that have been created by secondary means elsewhere in the economy. Universities’ research and innovation can pay enormous dividends in terms of future economic development. I share the concern of university vice-chancellors that we risk damaging the capacity for cross-regional collaboration if RDAs are replaced with bodies that cover much smaller areas, and which perhaps will focus on more parochial concerns.

Beyond the measures outlined in the Queen's Speech, I will address the wider issue of the future funding of higher education. Many arguments that I would put were made by speakers across the House in the excellent debate on higher education initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, on 25 February this year, and I commend these points to the Government. They reflect my concern about the sustainability of our hard-won excellence if higher education faces again, as it did two decades ago, relentless underfunding.

The new Government face a difficult job in navigating the UK to sustained and sustainable economic growth: all noble Lords in this House have acknowledged that. I hope that the Government will recognise the vital role that higher education can play in securing economic recovery. The higher education sector already faces £1 billion-worth of cuts announced last December. The Chancellor's statement of two weeks ago added a further £200 million to the tally. Against this background, the noble Lord, Lord Browne, is conducting a review of future higher education funding and student support. This is the elephant in the room for the coalition; and, given the length of the Session before us, it could become a very restless elephant indeed. We know from the coalition agreement that the Liberal Democrats have an opt-out should the noble Lord, Lord Browne, propose an increase in tuition fees. This is hardly surprising, since virtually all of their Members in another place—including the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills—signed the NUS pledge not to support an increase in fees. However, is it credible to imagine Dr Cable abstaining on legislation sponsored by his own department?

My fear is not the immediate cuts to universities, tough though they will be, but that in the June Budget and the autumn Comprehensive Spending Review, higher education will find itself cut back further in ways that will undermine the teaching excellence that produces the highly qualified people that we so desperately need, and will undermine the world-class research that will give us the best advantage in emerging from the economic doldrums.

I do not know what the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, will be. He is charged with finding a sustainable way to fund universities. If the Government will not fully implement his proposals, universities will not have the freedom to respond to the increased financial pressures that they face, and higher education will not be able to play the role that it could in securing our economic future. I hope that, in replying, the Minister will be able to reassure me on this vital point.

The new Minister for Higher Education, David Willetts, knows the university sector well and is widely respected within it. I, with others, welcome the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Oareford, to this House and to his education role. He adds a further formidable brain to the two that Mr Willetts is said to have. All three will need to be applied to the task if they are to steer our universities through the challenges ahead so that they maintain their world-beating position.

17:39

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Howe, on his new post as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Oareford, for his maiden speech. I shall speak about young people in care and care leavers, but I should like to raise a few points before I do so.

The principles behind the Queen’s Speech were freedom, fairness and responsibility. The noble Lord opened the debate by talking about the need to free up professionals at the front line to do the job that they understand and know how to deliver. That is crucial. A general theme in this debate has been that professionals and users on the front line can make the most difference. We can deliver freedom, fairness and responsibility through teachers, social workers, foster carers and all those other workers.

Listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, I recalled that two months ago the former Secretary of State, Ed Balls, said in Church House that if he regretted one thing from his term in office it was that he did not do more for social workers early on. No matter how often we say that we need to support and develop teachers and social workers on the front line, somehow they manage to slip off the agenda. I pay tribute to the Government’s excellent work in raising the status of teaching, but there is still a long way to go. The noble Lord will recall that, over several years, Finland has been the highest performer on the PISA tables. It is so demanding about who should teach its young people that it rejects 90 per cent of those who apply to become teachers.

The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, talked about social work training and the social work college. I look forward to hearing information about the future of this important new institution. The National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care has over several years provided excellent support to a sector that has very little capacity in working with children with the most complex needs. Paul Ennals, the director of the National Children’s Bureau, started out as a residential childcare worker. Jonathan Stanley, the director of the National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care, which is based at the National Children’s Bureau, was director of the well respected Caldecott Foundation, a therapeutic community for children, of which my noble friend Lord Northbourne was once a trustee. The institution has a great deal of experience in residential childcare, so the Government’s decision to switch funding to another organisation caused some consternation. That may be quite the right thing to do, but I am glad that there is a second opportunity to look at the contract and I hope that the Minister can provide further information on why the decision was made.

I do not believe that we have spoken this afternoon about early years. I remind the Minister that research by Professor Melhuish at the University of London highlights the fact that, working in particular with disadvantaged communities, if one provides good-quality pre-school education, pupils will still be doing well at the age of 11 whether they have gone to a bad primary school or a good primary school. I hope that the Minister will take thorough note of that. I am sure he is aware of the importance of early intervention. There has been much progress with the early years workforce, although there is still a high turnover of staff and the work is still regarded as low-status and is poorly paid. Much more attention needs to be given to it.

The noble Lord referred to unruly children. I hope that soon he will consider meeting exemplary charities, such as The Place2Be, which provides much-needed mental health support to children in primary schools, to the parents of those children and to the teachers in those schools. It has a very good track record in this area and I hope that the Minister will decide to meet its staff soon to discuss their work. Volunteer Reading Help is a charity that provides support to more than 1,000 primary schools, helping children to read. Volunteers trained by the charity work, over a year, with children who are identified by their teachers as having a particular need for support. Over that period, the children benefit not only from improving their literacy but from developing a relationship with an adult. I have visited the organisation’s training sessions and have noted that many of the volunteers are men, so boys who are experiencing life without a father have an opportunity to develop a relationship over the period of a year.

I declare my interests as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Children and Young People in Care, and as a trustee of TACT, the largest voluntary adoption and fostering agency operating in England, Wales and Scotland. I am also a trustee of the Michael Sieff Foundation.

I see that I am running out of time, for which I apologise, but perhaps I may take this opportunity to thank Her Majesty’s Opposition for their huge commitment over many years to young people in care. I recall the Quality Protects initiative, which ring-fenced funding for children in care. I also recall the legislation, including the Children (Leaving Care) Act, which introduced new duties on local authorities to support young people, sometimes up to the age of 25, providing them with a personal assistant. There was also the Children and Adoption Act, which introduced a right for children to have an advocate when making a complaint—something that was very much welcomed in the sector. In addition, there was the Children and Young Persons Act, which introduced a duty on local authorities to secure an appropriate range of placements for these children. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and her predecessors for the commitment that they showed in that role.

I ask the Minister how the Government will build on those achievements. I know that there has been some concern that, despite all the investment, the outcomes for these children have not improved as we would have wished. Professor Jackson was the academic who first alerted us to the way in which we had, over many years, failed these children in terms of their education. Two weeks ago, she told me that the admission rate to university for these young people has moved from 1 per cent to 9 per cent—an increase of 900 per cent. Although that is far below what we would want and what is acceptable, clearly progress has been made. Indeed, although these children’s GCSE results are still not where they should be, they are at last beginning to follow the rate of improvement experienced among the general population. Therefore, the work invested in the past is beginning to pay off, but how will the Government build on that?

The previous Government introduced two pilots to enable young people to stay with their foster carers past the age of 18. Will the Minister consider how that might now be progressed and how such an arrangement might be made available to all young people in care? There is a shortage of 10,000 foster carers in England and Wales. Perhaps the Minister would care to write to me about how that will be addressed.

Many Peers among the Opposition have been strong champions of looked-after young people over the years. I shall briefly speak of the work of Timothy Loughton MP who, fortunately, has been shadow Minister for children and families for several years. He has built relationships with NGOs working in this area; he is well respected; he has visited Denmark and seen children's homes there and the excellent model of social pedagogy operated in that country; and he has several children's homes in his constituency of Brighton and Hove. It is reassuring that he now has an office within the children and families section of the Department for Education. We cannot expect too much given the budgetary constraints, but it is encouraging, especially as he chaired the committee on the excellent report on social work, No More Blame Game, to which my noble friend Lady Howarth of Breckland referred. I am encouraged that the Government are talking about freeing those at the front line to do their job. Of course, they need to be equipped to do that job. Through teachers, social workers, foster carers and early-years' workers, fairness, responsibility and freedom for our citizens will be delivered. I am grateful to the Government for taking these matters so seriously.

17:50

[Lord Inglewood]

My Lords, this time of the day is not the moment for long introductions. However, I endorse the remarks previously made about my noble friends on the Front Bench and I congratulate the coalition on having put them there.

This afternoon's debate could perhaps be politely described as a bag of liquorice allsorts. I intend to confine my remarks to the culture bit of the package. In so doing, I declare an interest as chairman of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art, although I shall draw on some of my other interests which are declared in the register.

As your Lordships will know, this country is one of the world’s cultural centres; and as such it is not only a great cultural bonus for all of us who live here, it is also an extraordinary generator of inward spending from abroad and a raiser of revenue for the Government. In that context it is interesting to note, as some noble Lords may know, that a number of the Gulf states are building up large museums and cultural centres in anticipation of the end of their oil riches, to encourage visitors in the future and to generate income.

In this Chamber, as everywhere in this country, there has over recent weeks and months been much debate about public expenditure. We sometimes seem to overlook the fact that, in certain circumstances, public expenditure is a kind of clearinghouse between those who enjoy something and those who actually produce it. Let me give an example. I live near the English Lake District, and I am both a hill farmer—among other things—and president of the Cumbria tourist board. Visitors come to the Lake District to look at the fells. If the fells were not grazed by sheep they would be covered in birch trees and the visitors would not come. If there is no money in farming, the land will not be farmed, and that in turn would destroy the tourist industry. Of course, in practice, it is impossible for those who come to visit the locality to pay the producers of the landscape they come to see directly. The paradox that emerges is that the by-product has become more valuable than the principal output of the underlying activity.

In many ways, the same can be said of museums. It goes without saying that we are living in economically difficult and hard times, and we have to recognise the problems that that poses. However, it is also important to recognise that our museums and—particularly, but not exclusively—our national collections in London are enormous generators of public revenue. How we as a society respond to the cuts and the way in which the Government impose them must recognise that.

Another paradox is that you cannot successfully set out to create a good attraction, in precisely the same way as you cannot set out to make yourself happy by deliberately trying to achieve it. That became apparent to me when I was doing some work for Carlisle cathedral. People do not go to Carlisle cathedral because it is an attraction; it is an attraction because it is Carlisle cathedral. The way to underpin that important economic part of our society is to ensure that it retains its level of excellence, to ensure that it remains the best.

Part of the way to achieve that is to ensure that acquisition budgets do not simply evaporate. There are two reasons for that. First, our national institution collections are permanently evolving. If items leave this country, the chances are that they will have gone for ever. If the money to prevent that is not to come directly from the public purse, we must find other ways of leveraging that money. That is why I and my committee very much welcome the emphasis on philanthropy in this area, which was first raised and debated more widely by the outgoing Government and has been emphasised by the new Secretary of State in the past few days. In parallel with that, there is the evolution of the Heritage Lottery Fund, which will have increased funding. In order to make philanthropy work in this country in the way that will be essential for our institutions in the years to come, it is important that the tax reliefs available for those who support those institutions are extended—particularly to capital gains tax and, I suggest, to income tax. The douceur to encourage people must be extended in the same way.

Secondly, the rules about reserved benefit need to be changed. If anyone else was to, say, build a new wing to the Tate Gallery at a cost of several million pounds, it would be galling to find that if you wanted to hold a party there once it had been completed, you would have to pay tax on any value which happened to have been conferred on you over the sum of £500. That is not the way to achieve philanthropic giving. We must ignore the sirens who say that this is all some kind of “toys for toffs”. In society, you have to decide what you want. There are and will continue to be rich people in this country. If you think about it carefully, the point about being rich is that you have more money than other people. If you have more money than other people, you can spend it the way you want. We should aim to achieve a system which encourages rich people to spend money on things which are in the public interest, rather than to be merely self-indulgent. In that way, we can have our cake and eat it.

I am fully aware that to an economist, some of my remarks may sound rather flaky and woolly, although I rather doubt whether JM Keynes would have shared that view. That does not alter the fact that if you look at national institutions and museums from a bean-counting perspective, I dare say that the monetary investment in our national collections is one of the best investments that the country has ever made. “Ah!”, you may say, “but of course they will never be sold”. That is probably true, but equally an awful lot of money is spent by the public sector on things that no one else would ever buy—such as the IT system in the Rural Payment Agency.

In the economic predicament that we now face, difficult choices have to be made, but I believe that on our national collections, we must take the long view and concentrate on ensuring that when again we reach the sunny uplands of economic prosperity we do not find that we have debased our inheritance and relegated ourselves to the second division. Acquisition and maintenance are the two long keys to sustainable excellence. It is important that they are not subsumed to shorter-term, more populist claims sung to more populist tunes. As I say to my children, the easy solution is almost invariably the wrong one.

In conclusion, to go back to Keynes, who, you will remember, said that in the long term, we shall all be dead, I add my rider that the collections will still be alive on future generations.

17:59

[Lord Macdonald of Tradeston]

My Lords, as the financial crisis grinds on, noble Lords on all sides of the House now accept that public spending must be reduced, but today many of us plead for our favoured causes. Following on from the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, I will also argue that public spending in support of Britain's cultural sector is a sound economic investment.

Over the past two decades, the rapid growth of our creative industries has been one of the UK’s proudest achievements. The creative sector is driven by imagination and flair—from architecture to advertising, across the media, from fashion to computer games—and Britain has undoubtedly got talent. Most of that talent works through small companies, and their artistry is often combined with an unabashed entrepreneurial zeal. An outstanding example of this is in television where government policy in the 1980s helped to create hundreds of independent production companies. I trust that the Minister can assure us that the public service output of our television channels, which is so widely admired abroad and enjoyed at home, will be protected by the coalition Government, particularly in areas such as regional news and current affairs in England and, most crucially, in the devolved nations of the United Kingdom.

Over the past decade, our creative industries have grown almost twice as fast as the rest of the UK economy. The sector employs about 2 million people, and the UK’s creative exports total £16 billion a year. The contribution made by our creative industries to the UK national economy is now greater by proportion than that in any other country. We are world leaders when it comes to creativity. London, in particular, benefits from being an entertaining, edgy cultural capital. Its creative industries employ about 800,000 Londoners, and Mayor Johnson asserts, with regard to tourism and job creation more broadly, that:

“London’s cultural environment has become a significant factor in its competitive advantage”.

Cities outside London have also flourished in our cultural renaissance. In Brighton, where I now live, May is a month-long festival and music, theatre, arts and media, along with a lively club scene, attract the tourists and keep Brighton buzzing throughout the year. Since the incomparable Edinburgh festival was founded some 60 years ago, the growth of festivals in small towns and every large city has been quite remarkable. Today, the largest creative cluster outside London is in Manchester. Back in the 1980s, Granada Television set about transforming the derelict warehouses around its television station by the River Irwell. The wonderfully anarchic Madchester phenomenon transformed the local music scene. The Commonwealth Games regenerated another rundown area and left Manchester City a world-class stadium in which to compete with Manchester United. In addition, we now have an excellent Manchester International Festival, as the noble Lord, Lord Hall, highlighted in his splendid maiden speech. There is also the Lowry arts centre. Most importantly, MediaCityUK in Salford is now nearing completion. It will become the BBC’s new production centre in the north, with 2,500 staff jobs being transferred from London.

As the metrocentric BBC strives to make itself more British, Glasgow too is benefiting from the transfer of BBC production to Scotland. Scotland at last gets a fairer share of UK programme-making to match its licence fee contributions. I hope that the Minister will confirm the Government’s support for the BBC’s policy of creative devolution. Noble Lords may recall that in 1990 Glasgow was the least likely candidate for the role of European city of culture. Like most Glaswegians, I was pretty sceptical. However, in the 20 years since, cultural activity has been a key element in a remarkable regeneration. Glasgow still has its legacy of industrial and social problems, but they are eased by its 3 million tourists spending £700 million a year. That success was repeated in Liverpool in 2008 when, as European capital of culture, it attracted 10 million visitors and had a reported income of £750 million, which was a very welcome boost in these hard times.

Three years into the current financial crisis, cultural budgets are obviously under increasing pressure. Private sponsorship has held up better than expected, but it fell about 5 per cent in 2008 and is likely to have dropped again last year. The budget of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is now also under pressure. When the Chancellor announced his £6 billion of public spending cuts, £88 million was lopped off the DCMS budget. It was just 4 per cent, but it might be only the start. The Arts Council of England’s budget is a central concern for that most important funding engine, encouraging creativity up and down the country. It is a respected and well run organisation that has sensibly trimmed its own administration costs in recent times. The Arts Council, like other bodies, suffered when the income from the National Lottery was diverted to fund the Olympic Games, and I would welcome the Minister’s confirmation that the lost shares of lottery funding will be restored to the arts, to heritage and to sports sectors post-2012.

Many in the creative industries were encouraged by the enthusiasm for the arts which Jeremy Hunt, the new Secretary of State at the DCMS, and his junior Minister Ed Vaizey expressed in opposition. Will the Minister therefore assure us that the new team at the DCMS will do its utmost to protect our highly successful but inherently fragile creative industries from further damaging cuts in public support?

18:05

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

My Lords, your Lordships' House is extremely fortunate in the two Ministers who have arrived on the government Front Bench. We all know that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, has for many years followed health matters with scrupulous and impressive attention to detail. No one could be better qualified, and it is marvellous to have him in his post. It was also a great pleasure to hear the maiden speech by the noble Lord, Lord Hill, from the Front Bench this morning. I think that we can look forward to serious engagement on a wide range of extremely difficult topics.

I will make one undertaking at the beginning of this speech; I will not plead for the protection of a particular area of expenditure. I have my favourites and my interests, and I have a long university career behind me, but I am not going to plead for those. I looked at what would be at the head of the queue, and it is of course the Academies Bill, so I decided that I would focus on the issues that legislation in that area will raise. We expect to hear, and a first reading of the Bill suggests that we will hear, quite a lot about governance. I strongly support better governance and more independence for schools, with the caveat that we must all realise that more independence means that some will do a less than ideal job. We cannot expect greater independence to have uniformly good effects, but it will have better effects, and that is its justification.

The topic on which I want to say something today is not directly about governance but about the concepts of accountability and assessment that are ancillary to governance. Rather too often, systems of accountability undermine the independence that governance supposedly secures for institutions, and systems of assessment can undermine our educational aims for pupils. Of course accountability and assessment are both needed, but we need intelligent accountability and intelligent assessment, and in these matters more is not always better. That is why I have a suggestion for noble Lords on the Front Bench as to where savings might be made.

I will give two examples of defective accountability. When at breakfast I mentioned the theme on which I would speak today, my son, who is a governor of a very poorly performing primary school in Tower Hamlets, remarked that the governors of that school are accountable for 98 school policies that run to 100 or so pages of A4. He commented that if they did nothing but review those 98 policies every two years, as they were required to do, they would do absolutely nothing else. That is a reasonable example of a defective form of accountability. Requirements of this sort seemingly delegate but actually confer a quite illusory independence that obstructs other activities. The test in taking forward academies is that we do not undermine their independence and the education that they might offer by imposing forms of accountability that obstruct them.

My second, and unfortunately far from local, example is the system of assessment by which pupils, teachers and schools now find themselves held to account. Pupils and schools are judged on the scores achieved in SATs, at GCSE, at AS and at A-level. These are used not solely for educational purposes, which might be their proper use, but to construct league tables with very heavy implications for the futures both of pupils and of schools. This form of assessment becomes a rigid and educationally distorting form of accountability.

We hear that academy status is to be available to the best schools. Behind that phrase “the best schools” lurks of course a system of accountability and in this case perhaps a system of accountability that is in part based on pupil performance and league tables. But if merit is to be judged by pupil attainment, schools will continue to be hyper-incentivised to push limited forms of educational attainment. Gaining academy status will not lead to real independence for schools.

I remember talking to the head of an independent school which was very close to the top of the league tables when AS-levels had been introduced a few years before. I asked her whether it had had benefits for pupils. In her judgment, it had not. It had reduced the educational attainment possible in the lower sixth by cutting into teaching time and requiring a relentless focus on less demanding—indeed, quite often terminally boring—examined content. More generally, the system incentivises schools to push those subjects where A grades are more easily obtained.

I rather naively commented that, given the position of her school, she could refrain from entering pupils for AS-level. Her reply has stayed with me. She said, “With parents like mine, I can’t. They want every point that is available”. Systems of assessment can undermine the independence even of independent schools. If they are used for ranking schools in the future, the independence which the coalition Government seek will be undermined because all schools will be driving their pupils across the same hurdles. Even if those hurdles are not very high, there are a lot of them. More passes is always regarded as better. Another generation will be subjected to Stakhanovite quantities of exams, rather than being given plenty of teaching and an interesting and thoughtful education in which skills are assessed by exams and by examiners who are permitted to use their judgment and are trusted.

For too long the assessment tail has been wagging the education dog. I hope that the Government can be bold enough to see that serious judgments of quality cannot be based on test scores. If schools are to have greater independence, they must be free to teach more and to examine less, to emphasise skills, including skills in academic subjects, more. I greatly welcome the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who is not in his place, about technology colleges for 14 to 19 year-olds, but we need to free schools to concentrate on skills in academic subjects, not merely on the imparting, memorising and regurgitation of information—you may say factoids. We need better skills in languages, maths, science and writing. At A-level, pupils deserve to be offered an exam system in which reading beyond the syllabus is valued and celebrated, and not penalised as it has been by the examination system. There is a long way to go and I wish the Government well.

18:14

[Lord Rea]

My Lords, like all other noble Lords I welcome the appointment of the noble Earl, Lord Howe, as Health Minister. I am only sorry that he did not get the top job. He certainly deserves it and he would have done it very well. I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Hill. I am gratified to hear his support for professional independence.

The main problem facing the National Health Service is how to keep front-line services up and running, and improving, as the coalition has pledged, at a time of great financial stringency. This means that the health service needs to be scrutinised and monitored even more carefully to identify inefficient or wasteful methods of working. It is important that if any quangos or other health-related organisations are to be abolished, as has been mooted, public health, or the effective functioning of the National Health Service as a whole, is not impaired. For instance, were NICE to be wound up, a valuable evidence-based resource would be lost. Can the noble Earl give the House any information on the Government’s thinking here? There are those in the pharmaceutical and food industries who would like to see the end not only of NICE but also of the Food Standards Agency, which provides vital science-based public health guidance. I am sure that the noble Earl recognises the unique value of these two agencies, but can he reassure us that the Government will reject any pressure to close them or restrict their activities?

A good start in looking at where efficiency might be improved can be made by reading the final report of the House of Commons Health Select Committee of the previous Parliament entitled Commissioning. It will be the present Government’s duty to respond to it, which I guess will happen in a month or two, but I would be interested in any preliminary thoughts the noble Earl might have about this hard-hitting but constructive report. Some members of that Select Committee were, like Members on these Benches, the Liberal Democrats, all the health professions and the universities, strongly opposed to the creation in 1990 of the internal market, particularly without a pilot study. However, it is now here and has become even more entrenched under the last Government, which carried on much as Kenneth Clarke might have wished. This is without any objective evidence that the internal market is beneficial except in the creation of bureaucracy and opening the door to the private sector. According to the Centre for Health Economics at York University, the percentage of NHS expenditure on administration has risen from less than 5 per cent in 1990 to 13.5 per cent. The Department of Health is rather shy about revealing this figure, although I gather that it commissioned the research. That percentage rise means that at today’s costs we are spending £8.5 billion more than we would have had the administrative costs remained constant at 5 per cent.

The great majority of NHS expenditure is now channelled through primary care trusts. Acute hospital trusts receive the bulk of the funds disbursed, around 70 per cent or more. I would be grateful if the noble Earl could give me the latest data on the proportion. PCTs have little control over these powerful organisations which tend to lean on them to give them what they ask for. But of course they provide critical care for life-threatening conditions and are target-driven to reduce waiting lists. I do not say that in any derogatory way; it is a fact and it is necessary. It is therefore difficult for PCTs to decrease or stop funding hospital services, some of which may in fact have become redundant.

Paragraph 95 of the report states that,

“there is a seeming perennial imbalance of power between providers and commissioners”.

One solution to this would be for acute hospital trusts to have an entirely separate funding stream, as suggested in Volume II at Ev 135 of Commissioning by Professor Andrew Street, also of the York University health policy team. This would allow PCTs to concentrate on what is really their role, providing good-quality community-based care.

“World Class Commissioning” is a rather grand title. But consider the finding of the Select Committee at paragraph 108 of its report:

“Weaknesses, due in large part to PCTs’ lack of skills, notably poor analysis of data, lack of clinical knowledge and the poor quality of much PCT management”.

There are other highly critical paragraphs. It is worrying that the great increase in administrative costs since the introduction of the purchaser/provider split 20 years ago is largely spent on funding a system which has such major deficiencies.

Two findings in the report which seem crucial concern the lack of clinical knowledge by administrators and the involvement of clinicians in the commissioning process, and the lack of skill in gathering or analysing complex data to guide rational decision-making. If the current system of PCT commissioning is to be retained, more medical and nursing input is needed, as my noble friend Lord Darzi said on many occasions, and as have the royal medical colleges and several noble Lords who have taken part in the debate today. A more meaningful use of practice-based commissioning, which so far has achieved very little, would see GPs, as well as consultants, in an advisory role at the highest level—and therefore with clout—as part of PCT commissioning teams.

Information on population needs and hospital activity should be made more meaningful and be processed more expertly. The outcomes of referrals and procedures need to be measured and assessed, again as my noble friend Lord Darzi said repeatedly, and not merely counted as episodes of activities—referrals, discharges and so on. Payment by results, apart from creating difficulties in predicting the costs of care, is a misnomer; it does not relate to the quality of care received but only to easily counted processes.

To cut swathes of administrative staff—30 per cent has been suggested—without first ensuring that the quality of the commissioning process is improved will lead to less effective care and might well increase rather than decrease costs. Constantly to bring in consultants to do the job is expensive and weakens the National Health Service, which should instead build up its own expertise.

Apart from the major burden of carrying the costs of acute or foundation hospital trusts and community health service care, PCTs have to fund a number of uneconomic, and sometimes redundant, independent sector treatment centres which they were obliged to engage, as well as meeting the heavy recurrent costs of paying for PFI or LIFT projects, which were brought in as part of the prevailing gung-ho culture of “buy now, pay later, even if it costs more” that underlies our parlous economic situation.

Finally, I would like the noble Earl to explain how the stated coalition policy of allowing access to any chosen GP regardless of place of residence is going to work. This could result in a two-tier service with local residents not being able to get an appointment to see a popular GP with whom they might be registered. This would undermine the basis of good primary care in which a practice looks after a defined population.

18:23

[Lord Williamson of Horton]

My Lords, I am still here and I intend to speak today on health and, in particular, on mental health. I welcome the noble Earl, Lord Howe, to the Government and recall that we had amiable and effective co-operation on mental health issues during the previous Parliament—we often agreed—so I am hopeful today.

Although there were no specific legislative proposals on mental health in the gracious Speech, the Government have indicated some forthcoming changes in the health field which may have repercussions for mental health. It is also evident that because the amount of financial resources for health expenditure is limited and is going to be under serious pressure, mental health is certainly not exempted from the pressures in the period ahead. Indeed, it may be under greater pressure than provision for physical health.

We do not have to legislate and re-legislate time and again to achieve the best results, but it is important that the Government should have a clear idea of their priorities, even if the implementation rests, as it does in many health areas, with the health authorities at local level. I am glad to see specific priority given in the coalition programme to research on dementia, and to see reference in paragraph 25 to “talking” therapies, both of which are important matters.

What, then, are the priorities for action on mental health in this period of strong pressure on the public finances? First, health authorities should try as far as possible to carry through the implementation of improvements to care decided on in the Mental Health Act in the previous Parliament. These include better provision of advocacy for those people, particularly young people, who are caught up in mental health problems which they do not always understand, and the provision of age-appropriate accommodation in mental health units for young persons and children. These changes resulted from amendments to the Bill in this House which I believe the noble Earl, Lord Howe, supported. I congratulate Lancashire Care on opening in April new facilities to provide age-appropriate accommodation for the young exactly as Parliament wished. I acknowledge at this point the efforts of the previous Labour Government, particularly the Ministers in this House, in carrying through the Mental Health Act. They perhaps needed a little prodding, but they did a good job none the less. Secondly, I share the view of Rethink, the largest voluntary provider of mental health services in the United Kingdom, which supports more than 48,000 people every year through its services and support groups. The areas which it considers crucial are: access and investment; criminal justice; and stigma and discrimination.

On access and investment, NICE produced as recently as 2009 updated guidelines on how schizophrenia should be treated, which individual NHS organisations should try to follow through. Currently, some of them are struggling, and it is clear from the very recent report of the all-party parliamentary group that this continues. Contrary to some misunderstandings, a first onset of schizophrenia in many cases never recurs. In other cases, its impact can be much reduced by various treatments and rehabilitation achieved. We know that cognitive behavioural therapy—CBT is a rather easier way of describing it—has a significant effect on treating schizophrenia. This issue now arises because of the extremely long waiting times for access to this treatment. The average in the whole kingdom is between five and seven months—in some cases, of course, it is much longer because that is the average figure. Waiting times are a significant factor affecting engagement with therapy. They affect the effectiveness and the uptake even when therapy is later received. Despite the economic climate, an improvement in waiting times should be the objective.

I make my plea for mental health services because we know that the pressure on them is likely to be disproportionately strong. In his letter of 1 April to foundation trusts, Stephen Hay of Monitor, the independent regulator, pointed out that mental health providers face a different set of risks from those in the acute sector. Historically, during periods of financial pressure in the healthcare system, expenditure on mental health activity has fallen more rapidly than expenditure in other areas. Mr Hay was quite right to draw attention to revised, downward financial assumptions, but we in Parliament can rightly stress the importance of some elements of mental health treatment, as do I.

I wish to say a word about the large number of people with severe mental illness caught up in the criminal justice system without much-needed treatment. In a powerful speech in the debate on the Address last week, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, pointed out the mess that we are in as a result of the overload on our prisons and the very high cost to the taxpayer. One of the most evident features of the problem is the very large number of prisoners who have some form of mental problem at any one time. At any one time, about 10 per cent of the prison population have serious mental problems and 30 per cent of female prisoners have had a psychiatric acute admission to hospital before they enter prison. I urge the Government to act on the recommendations in the excellent Bradley report, and make it a priority to reduce the large number of persons with mental illness in the prison system and divert more of them into healthcare.

Finally, we must keep up the effort to remove stigma and discrimination against those with mental illness. The Time to Change campaign, led by Mind, Rethink and Mental Health Media, is good, but mental health service users consistently identify stigma as an impediment to their overall health and well-being and access to other health services. I have spoken today to press on the Government why we must have priorities for improvements in mental health provision, and I look forward to a favourable reply.

18:30

[Viscount Bridgeman]

My Lords, I join every speaker in this debate in congratulating my noble friend Lord Howe on his appointment. It will be a great reassurance to this House to have the benefit of his experience, which he has built up with such distinction over the past 12 years when we sat on the opposite Bench. The noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, has referred to him seeing off successive Ministers of Health. I suggest that his approach has always been one of constructive engagement.

I shall speak briefly about the hospice movement, in which the United Kingdom has led the world and in which we can take great pride. I particularly honour the memory of Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the movement. I declare an interest as chairman until two years ago of the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in St John’s Wood, London. Unusually, within it is St John’s Hospice, which is part of the same charity on the same site. With those two institutions I maintain close links.

Hospices have suffered under successive Governments from what I might call an “it will be okay on the night” approach. In the case of hospices, that means that any shortfall in funding by government will be made good by the public conscience through charitable giving. Successive Governments have not been slow to realise that this virtually always works. Having said that, it would be churlish not to mention the contribution of the last Government in making available a substantial additional sum for hospices, of which St John’s share was £600,000, applied towards the refurbishment of its in-patient unit. But the reality is that the maximum normal contribution by central government to running costs is 50 per cent of the total, so in every case the shortfall of a minimum of 50 per cent of total running costs has to be made good by fundraising, which is a drain on hospices’ time with limited staffing resources, which could more productively be put to other uses. In the case of hospices, there is no national tariff and some hospices receive significantly less than 50 per cent. St John’s is fortunate in receiving government funding at the upper end, and its case is not untypical, in that it must have separate negotiations with each of seven primary care trusts to which it has contracted. This, too, is a considerable drain on limited personnel resources. The remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, who is not in his place, on the contraction of primary care trusts, will read very well with many hospices.

All this is in marked contrast to those hospitals that are acute care providers where there are national tariffs for a variety of procedures. St John’s is leading the way in London on a north-central network comprising hospices and PCTs whose aim is to agree a local tariff. I hope that that will encourage the Government to roll this out on a national basis. A further encouragement to the Department of Health will, I hope, be the example of Wales, where a funding formula has been agreed across the Principality. I make a further plea to the Government to introduce rolling three-year contracts, which will enable hospices to plan strategically and deliver sustainable high-quality end-of-life care for all.

I turn to the last Government’s plans, which I welcomed, for a national end-of-life strategy that lays much emphasis on the need for patients to identify with their doctor or nurse the preferred place where they want to die. That depends on adequate resources being available. St John’s is fortunate in that three out of the seven PCTs to which it is contracted—namely, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and South Brent—make available such resources. Unfortunately, patients in many other PCTs do not have the same opportunities for excellence in care, and for some of those people the stark and only choice is between a nursing home and dying on a general nursing ward.

The importance of being given the choice to die at home, with friends and family around, cannot be overstated and the difference between those PCTs that are able to support home carers and those who are not is, indeed, marked. Patients need real choices in care, in their place of care and in the way that they receive care. The vast majority of patients wish to live independently until they die, and this can be achieved by good, patient-sensitive, hospice-at-home services, supported in many instances by excellent organisations such as, dare I say it, St John’s and the Marie Curie nursing service. I emphasise the need for a level playing field and ask the Minister to eliminate what is, effectively, a postcode lottery as it applies to hospice at home.

I have received much help and advice from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, who cannot be here today as she has a medical engagement. She has asked me to raise with the Minister the matter of education in palliative care. Her concern, which I fully share, is that palliative care should be taught in all nursing schools at undergraduate level, as it now is in all medical schools in the United Kingdom. There are increasing pressures on the curricula in both medical and nursing schools, but if we do not teach the next generation how to care for those who are ill and nearing death, the standard of care will slip back as new graduates flounder. They risk picking up bad practice from those older practitioners who have never been taught proper pain control and other fundamentals of care. Do the Government plan to ensure that a comprehensive palliative care module should become a statutory part of all the proposed new nursing degree courses, since such education is the foundation of good care for patients?

I take this opportunity to welcome my noble friend Lord Hill, not only to his appointment to the Department for Education but for his masterly and, if I may say so, superbly delivered speech. May I also take this early opportunity to bend his ear? Hospices get no help from the universities for the considerable expense which they incur in training young doctors, in marked contrast to the general practitioners who get paid for having them. Therefore, this is indeed addressed to both my noble friends on the Front Bench: may this anomaly not continue to fall between two departmental stools?

18:38

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I, too, join in warmly welcoming the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Hill, to their new posts. I remember the noble Earl when he was a Minister the first time around. People have mentioned that he has seen off a number of Ministers while he was in opposition; I firmly recall the battles that he had with the noble Countess, Lady Mar, and will merely mention sheep-dip to him. Such issues will no doubt reoccur.

I shall talk about pensions. Post-Turner and amid both the financial and longevity crises, as the number of pensioners will have doubled by 2050, we need a new, all-party pensions settlement—led, I hope, by the much respected Steve Webb. My assumptions, which I hope the House will share, are that we wish to continue reducing pensioner poverty, that we wish to reduce means-testing and to encourage people to save for their retirement, and that we can put together a settlement which is relatively simple, fair, easy to understand, affordable and—because it is based on consensus—has staying power. Yes, I believe it is possible. If your Lordships will allow me, I shall sketch the outlines of such a settlement.

The first essential is a new state pension similar to the NAPS foundation pension. I very much welcome the new Government’s commitment to the earnings link of the basic state pension next year. That is much to be welcomed—well done. However, almost 50 per cent of pensioners may face means-testing to close the gap between that state pension of £97 a week and the pension credit figure of £132 a week. That means that any modest savings cost you 40p in the pound in lost pension credit, so unless you have a pot of some £50,000 floating you off pension credit altogether—the average pot is half that, at £26,000—it is simply not worth saving, so people do not. Sixty per cent of all pensioners have savings of less than £10,000.

What to do? People on low incomes or on credits simply cannot save their way off future means-testing. Pension credit has rescued hundreds of thousands of pensioners from retirement poverty, which is wonderful, but at the price of too high a hurdle for working people to save. But there is an alternative, and I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I urge a proposal outlined in my recent pamphlet, A New State Pension, to which the Minister, Steve Webb, was a contributor in his previous incarnation.

Put into one pot the state pension, the state second pension capped at 2020—this is key—and the £8 billion or so that we are now going to be spending on pension credit. Then, within the same broad cost envelope, you can pay all pensioners with a 30-year record of national insurance—some 90 per cent of them, in due course—a new state pension of £132 a week, at or fractionally above the means-tested pension credit level. That would mean a state pension that, as of right through the NI system, would lift most pensioners out of poverty and out of means-testing.

Few would need pension credit unless they had special needs. NEST, the new auto-enrolment scheme, would be safe from mis-selling because, unless you were on housing benefit, you would get every penny of value from it. Removing annuitisation at 75, which I greatly welcome, would also be safe because even if a few individuals did blow their pots on cruises or whatever, the new state pension would still lift them clear of means-tested benefits, so it would be up to them and not us. Incidentally, I would be happy to see their children inherit any residual pot, provided, of course, that it was ring-fenced for their own pension solely and was subject to IHT so it did not become a tax loophole. Above all, with a new state pension at or above pension credit level, we would make it pay to save. As they stand, private pensions are high-risk for small savers because of the benefits trap. A new state pension would remove that risk at a stroke.

The first step, therefore, is a new state pension, a foundation underpinning all else that we need to do. The second step is to make pension saving attractive. Over half the workforce are not contributing to any pension scheme. One way would be to ensure early access to at least the pension tax-free lump sum. At a stroke, that would turn the pension into a lifetime savings account, proposals long and rightly espoused by the government party. Why is it OK to use the lump sum at 55 to build a conservatory, but not at 45 to save your home from repossession? If modest savers knew that 75 per cent of their savings was ring-fenced for retirement but the other 25 per cent was available as an accessible savings slice, then women, the low-paid, young people and the self-employed might save for the first time.

Over and beyond a new state pension and early access to a pension slice, we also need to connect ISAs and pensions more intelligently, as a forthcoming pamphlet from Michael Johnson of the Centre for Policy Studies, familiar to Members opposite, argues most effectively; it will be called Simplification is the Key. Pensions, as your Lordships are well aware, attract tax relief on the way in, while ISAs attract it on the way out. However, five out of six higher-rate taxpayers become standard-rate taxpayers in retirement. You could reduce tax relief on pensions to the standard rate and save, even after the 2009 and 2010 Budget changes, some £3.5 billion. However, if pensions, like ISAs, were tax-exempt only on the way out—that is, on payment—you could probably save closer to £8.5 billion a year and build a simplified, attractive retirement package.

Please do not say that this would destroy pension savings. ISAs, which are tax-exempt only on the way out, already attract more money than pensions every year, even though there is no employer’s contribution to them and, therefore, they represent less obvious value. Such integration would work. There would be a new state pension, early access to pension savings, greater integration of ISAs and pensions, and no compulsory annuitisation at 75. What is there not to like? It is fair, flexible, simple, supportive of women and the low-paid, and it could even save rather a lot of money.

18:45

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, several noble Lords have observed how the eloquence, elegance of presentation, experience and commitment of the noble Lords on the Front Bench add greatly to the positive prospects for governance in this new Parliament. The maiden speeches of the noble Lords and the right reverend Prelate also bode well for this as a thoughtful, engaged and reflective new Parliament.

It is a new Parliament and a new Government, but also a new type of Government and Parliament. It was interesting to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, and my noble friend Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope speaking about those of us from the Celtic fringe, who have some experience of these questions. This is one of the marvellous things about our great United Kingdom: it is not all one country with one set of experiences. There are some of us who have experience of fairer forms of voting, which bring different ways of forming Governments. It is interesting now that many of those who said, “We can’t have proportional representation because it will bring coalition government”, now discover that first past the post may also—not only on this occasion, but perhaps in the future—bring coalition government.

One of the things that has interested me and several colleagues from Wales and Scotland is that it is clear that the institutions here at Westminster and in Whitehall, and many of those who are involved in them, have not yet quite understood what coalition government is. It is not merger government. It is not even a political marriage. It is coalition government in which parties bring their own sets of principles and ideas and decide that they will contract to work together for the better of the country. They do not, on that basis, give up either their principles or their policies. Anyone in this Parliament who thinks, for example, that Mr Martin McGuinness and Mr Peter Robinson no longer want to see, on the one hand, a united Ireland, or, on the other, a more united United Kingdom, clearly does not understand much about either the peace process or the politics of my part of the world. If they are sent to the Northern Ireland Office, they will find it a rather rude awakening.

Those of us on the Liberal Democrat Benches have Liberal Democrat principles and policies. We believe that—together, on this occasion, with our Conservative colleagues—we can see those brought into operation. It was gratifying to listen to noble Lords on the other side of the Chamber making clear that they had observed that this Government indeed have a different set of policies than would have been the case had they been wholly a Conservative Government or wholly a Liberal Democrat Government. That is all to the good. It is all part of the new approach to politics that we are seeing develop over time. We saw it in the approach of the previous Labour Government to a number of matters, and we see it going further.

Having heard my noble friends, Lady Walmsley, Lady Sharp, Lord Addington and Lord Kirkwood speak about education, children, sport and welfare, I want to concentrate on health, as it is very close to my heart and experience. I have just retired after working for 30 years in the health service, particularly in mental health. My wife is a pathologist; my brother is a dermatologist; my sister-in-law is a paediatrician; my brother-in-law is a general practitioner; and my sister and her husband are scientific officers in a medical laboratory, so I have some insight into the way the health service works.

The previous Government were undoubtedly committed to achieving fairness in healthcare. They put substantial amounts of money into organising and reorganising healthcare to try to get a good outcome. However, I am afraid that there was a modest outcome and the morale of professionals working in the health service was remarkably low. I give an example. John Reid moved from the Northern Ireland Office—he moved through different ministries—and spent some time in healthcare. He had a notion, which he shared with the previous Conservative Administration, that half the consultants were out on the golf course most of the time. Therefore, he required all consultants to produce a diary showing what they did every half hour for a month, so that he and his colleagues could then clamp down on these lazy fellows and girls who obviously were not paying attention to what they were doing. The result was that consultants began to discover that they were doing far more work than they were contracted to do. They decided that if the Government were going to treat them with suspicion and say, “We will pay you only for this and this”, they would drive a hard contract and reduce their commitment to working only the hours for which they were contracted. The result was a health service contract for consultants that cost the Government more and reduced output, and doctors, who were paid more, having lower morale. It was not that the Government were not committed to fairness—they were—it was a matter of how people were handled and a belief about the way that things work.

Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg have said that this Government will operate on the basis of freedom, fairness and responsibility. Nobody is going to stand up in your Lordships' House and say, “I am against fairness”. We are here because we genuinely want to see a fairer country. However, fairness does not come from the top down through imposition; it comes through freeing and inspiring people. Of course, there is a need for an element of regulation. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, knows very well that I have been working on regulation in psychotherapy for some time. I am sure that he is awaiting the letter that he will get from me in the next week or two which asks if we can have a chat about how regulation in the psychological therapies should move forward. I am not against regulation at all. However, it has to be done in such a way that people feel that they are valued and are not being pushed away from their professional commitments. That is why one of the things that appeals to me about the approach that the coalition Government are taking is that they are saying, “We are not only going to try to work together in this way but we are going to try to give responsibility back to professionals”.

One of the disastrous things that occurred in healthcare happened as a result of it becoming a question of managerial approach and a business ethos. Businesses never produced healthcare in the first instance; it came out of voluntarism, faith communities and professionalism. When you turn it into a business, you eat away at some of the key commitments that people have to this work. They do not do it for the money, but they are not going to do it if they are not paid. They want to make a commitment to people and to feel that it is valued, and they want to feel that those with whom and for whom they work are part of the world which they inhabit.

One way that the Government can get rid of a lot of the funding that is not going to front-line services is by reducing the degree of managerial input and returning a lot more decision-making to clinicians of all kinds—not just doctors—and to patients. We can start this new Parliament not by giving over many of the achievements of the previous Government but by building on the possibility that we can have real change for the better in our politics and in all the areas of work that we have been speaking about today, not least in healthcare.

18:55

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I apologise to the House and to the noble Lord, Lord Hill, for listening to his maiden speech from below the Bar. I begin by offering my congratulations to the new Government and Ministers. Like my noble friend, I wish that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, had got the top job in his department. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hill, welcome him to his place on the Government Front Bench and congratulate him on his outstanding maiden speech. I also extend my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, who is now health whip—a job that I filled happily for a year or so.

It is a rum old world: many noble Lords from both parties opposite, and on this side, will share that sentiment. I was thinking about the rumness of it all and wondering how the conversations are progressing between the Minister and his new whip with regard to tobacco regulations. About a year ago, the noble Baroness and I made common cause against the noble Earl: so we shall see where that ends up.

We have had an excellent and wide ranging debate, with four maiden speeches of great quality. In all cases, I am happy to agree with noble Lords that we can look forward to all the maidens’ future contributions of distinction to the work of this House. The noble Lord, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, is a long-standing friend whose speech made me think what a great champion he will be in discussions about the arts and heritage in this place. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford, in his evocative descriptions of his diocese, made me realise that we need to organise a charabanc trip there. The presentation of the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, showed that he will add greatly to the medical expertise of this House. I am also very pleased to learn that the noble Lord will join the Lord Speaker's outreach programme, of which I can modestly claim to be a veteran. It is an invigorating and humbling experience on every occasion when I go to speak to children and young people in their schools. I wish the noble Lord well and hope that he will enjoy it as much as I do.

My noble friend Lady Morgan spoke to the parts of the gracious Speech that addressed education and welfare. She was amply supplemented in her remarks by our noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton. It remains for me to say only that I agree with every word that both of them said. I commend the contributions both of my noble friend Lady Hollis, who has given the noble Lord a brilliant pension scheme—we look forward to his comments on that—and of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, who I sense will make a career of keeping his Government on their toes in these matters. It remains for me only to add a word of advice to the noble Lord, Lord Hill. The Government insist that they are about fairness, about closing the gap in achievement and about raising standards. All that they have to do to achieve this is to listen to the wise words of my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley. Instead of relegating failing schools that need extra help and resources to the bottom of the list for attention and help, they should put them first, before outstanding schools that are doing well under present circumstances.

I turn to culture, media and sports. The gracious Address was largely silent about this important area of national activity, except for the commitment to high-speed broadband internet connections. That subject was well addressed by the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas. My noble friend Lady Andrews added her voice to the championship in this House of heritage, tourism and the arts. The noble Lords, Lord Hall and Lord Macdonald, illustrated well the national benefits of the media, arts and heritage in creating wealth and jobs and in enriching the quality of life for millions of people. The arts and heritage play an important part in our economy, accounting for 10 per cent of our national economic activity. My right honourable friend Ben Bradshaw and his team—Margaret Hodge, Gerry Sutcliffe and Tessa Jowell—left this area in very good shape.

It is clear to me that this Government intend to turn the clock back in their approach to the arts. It is disappointing that—I am sorry to say this to the noble Lord, Lord Hall—the arts institutions have already had a budget cut of 3 per cent this year, despite promises from the Government during the election campaign. It is particularly disappointing that the Arts Council was singled out for a bigger cut of 4 per cent this year. As the BBC’s respected arts editor, Will Gompertz, has pointed out, this creates a precedent that could see arts institutions across the land being asked to realise assets such as bank savings and buildings to fund their activity in lieu of government grants. Responsible saving and budgeting are being punished and to date the Secretary of State has refused to rule out taking the same approach to other arts institutions, so watch out Royal Opera House. I ask the Minister when we will know about this.

While we welcome the Government’s commitment to increase philanthropy, they have gone quiet on moves to encourage philanthropy through the tax system. I am depending on the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, to chase them on this matter. The Secretary of State has said that he intends to write to the 200 biggest philanthropic donors thanking them for their contributions. I am sure that they will be grateful and perhaps even flattered by this attention, but I suggest that the message might be seen as a little hollow when the Secretary of State’s first contribution to the nation’s great arts heritage has been to cut funding.

On the Olympic Games, the brilliant custodianship of my right honourable friend Tessa Jowell has ensured that this month’s report on progress says that the 2012 London Olympics are on time and on budget. The Government have inherited much in arts and culture; they have inherited something that was working and working well. They need to provide reassurance that the budget cuts that they have proposed will not have an impact on the London Olympic Games in 2012.

I now turn to health. The House would expect me to look at the manifestos of the partners in the coalition Government, the coalition agreement and the gracious Speech, as well as, of course, the words of the partners in the past, to see how the Government will attempt to reconcile some interesting and occasionally diametrically opposed points of view. Let us start with the name of the Department of Health. The Conservatives said:

“We will turn the Department of Health into a Department for Public Health”.

It is a small and relatively unimportant promise to break immediately, but what does it presage?

Here are some of the Conservative promises that do not appear to have survived the coalition negotiations. The Conservatives promised to scrap all central NHS targets relating to clinical processes, but now they do not seem so sure. They promised to end “pointless” reorganisations of the NHS, but now they are about to embark on a massive new NHS reorganisation. They promised to reduce the number of unaccountable quangos, but they are turning the NHS into a new quango. They promised a voluntary insurance scheme to pay for residential care, but they have dropped that. They promised to protect the disability living allowance and the attendance allowance, but they have suddenly gone very quiet on that. I know that government involves compromises—it is a lesson that the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are perhaps only just beginning to learn—but who would have thought that one of the benefits of coalition government was that you never needed to look at your manifesto again?

It is important to put on the public record at the start of this Parliament that Labour has left the NHS in its strongest ever position. In 1997, the discussion was about whether the NHS would survive at all; today in 2010, the NHS is substantially rebuilt and renewed. I do not apologise for repeating the figures: waiting times are at an all-time low; infection rates are right down; patient satisfaction with the NHS is at an all-time high; there are 44,000 more doctors and 89,000 more nurses; waiting lists are down by over half a million; and 3 million more operations are done per year. Also, we have seen the biggest hospital-building programme in the history of the NHS, with 118 new hospital schemes completed. As George Osborne might say, we did fix the roof while the sun was shining.

That did not happen by chance. In the teeth of opposition—from some, if not all, of the Benches opposite but particularly from the new Secretary of State—we took the decisions that have left the NHS in this position. I put the Minister on notice that we shall be watching closely the Government’s decisions and the effect that they have on the NHS. I urge the Minister’s Liberal Democrat colleagues to do the same, because they supported many of our changes and they, too, will be held to account for what happens next.

Of course, where we support the work of the Government, the noble Earl can expect my support. He and I have a history of co-operation and friendship, which, for my part, I intend to continue.

I read the new Government’s coalition agreement with great interest. I am astonished that the document seems to have been signed off by the now Secretary of State, who, in opposition, promised over and over again to,

“scrap all centrally-imposed targets relating to clinical processes”.

Perhaps one of the Secretary of State’s new officials told him that his plan to remove targets which have helped to deliver so many improvements for so many patients was “very bold, Minister”—but perhaps not.

Therefore, we await the detail, and of course we have no doubt that any detail will be presented to Parliament before it is published elsewhere. Reports have already suggested that the four-hour accident and emergency target and the 18-week referral to treatment target will be scrapped. I think that the Minister needs to come clean with this House. Are his Government going to change those standards? Are they going to keep the 18-week target? Are they going to back down or keep the two-week target for cancer and the four-hour accident and emergency target? Not only does this House need a direct answer; so, too, do millions of patients.

However, not everyone will be unhappy about the ditching of targets. The Financial Times has already reported, on 18 May, that:

“Private hospitals are expecting a rise in business if, as expected, the Conservatives go ahead with their promise to scrap Labour’s waiting-time targets”.

That choice of going private is one that many patients will remember. Before targets were in place, patients had a choice: wait in the NHS or pay and go private. It is something that we changed, and I am proud of that. I ask the Minister what mechanism the Government are going to use to ensure that waiting lists do not rise. With hospitals encouraged to make savings, what will the mechanism be to ensure that savings are not made by making people wait, as the party opposite has done in the past?

Can the Minister also tell us what will happen to NICE? What will happen to the investment that we proposed for cancer diagnosis? Just before our Government left office, we announced £200 million a year in funding for new diagnostic equipment for cancer. Can the noble Earl tell me whether that target will be met, or has this money been diverted into the Secretary of State’s cancer drugs fund? Can he tell me which is most likely to save more lives: investing in early diagnosis or investing in cancer drugs unapproved by NICE? Can he also explain what relationship the new cancer drugs fund will have with NICE?

The Government have promised that the health budget will rise but they have also promised to make savings. Can the Minister say by how much the budget will rise? In opposition, the new Secretary of State managed to do two things. He complained that deprived areas did too well out of the NHS budget at the expense of areas with less deprivation but more older people, and he called for a change in the funding formula. At the same time, he called for more of the health budget to go to deprived areas in the form of a health premium. It was impressive, to say the least, to complain that deprived areas were overfunded and underfunded at the same time, but I wonder how that feat might roll out in government. If we take the Secretary of State’s words at face value, which PCTs will gain and which will lose?

Another promise that seems to have been forgotten is the one made repeatedly by the Prime Minister, when he was leader of the Opposition, that he would have “no more pointless reorganisations” in the NHS. It now seems that the Government are planning one of the biggest reorganisations in the history of the NHS, with not only a new independent NHS board but, according to the Health Service Journal, the abolition of strategic health authorities. I am not sure that the Secretary of State is adopting the right way to deliver a reduction of costs by encouraging members of strategic health authorities to resign in protest. On that basis, it could take some time. The new Prime Minister once asked the question: are serious political issues too important to be left to unaccountable quangos? He has given his answer. The job of allocating the NHS budget is too important to be left with his Health Secretary. My noble friend Lord Morris hit the nail on the head with his analysis on this matter.

I turn to social care. Noble Lords will not be surprised to learn that I was disappointed to see that the Government have decided not to take forward free personal care at home for those with the highest needs. I am sure that I am not as disappointed as the elderly and disabled people and their families and carers who stood to benefit from the legislation. I should like to join with Carers UK in asking the noble Earl what has happened to the £420 million of funding and what is it now being used for. What about the £130 million that was earmarked for reablement and what has happened to the commitment, supported across the House, for the delivery of portability of care packages to those most seriously disabled?

I was less disappointed that the Conservative proposal to create a new private insurance system to cover the costs of residential care has been dropped. It seems to have bitten the dust. That was a policy whose sums never added up.

The Government's new proposal of a commission on long-term care is certainly better than the old Conservative policy, and we will be happy to support that commission's work. I hope the Minister took note of the job application of my noble friend Lord Warner to serve on the commission, as he is definitely very well qualified to do so. I recommend the White Paper which we launched just before the election as a blueprint that that commission might consider.

At the end of this Queen’s Speech debate, I wish to make some general remarks. I want to mention the economy because it is important to put such general remarks on the record. Our Government made the Bank of England independent and that was opposed by the Conservatives. We took tough decisions to get our national debt lower than that of France, Germany, America or Japan before this global financial crisis began. Our Government led the worldwide effort to stop global financial collapse into recession and into depression, in the face of bitter and wrong-headed opposition from the party opposite. Although the Government may now pray in aid the loyal support of the Governor of the Bank of England and the German finance ministry in advocating immediate and deflationary spending cuts to reduce the deficit faster this year, he and his Chancellor are out of step with worldwide opinion and run grave risks with our recovery, our jobs and our vital public services.

We shall be holding this new coalition to account, make no mistake about it. We shall take our responsibilities as a loyal Opposition seriously to probe, to question and to challenge and we shall use the tools at our disposal to do so. I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Hill, when he said that he felt nothing much had changed since the last time he was in his position. Government in 2010 is not the same as the Government which the Conservative Party left in 1997. There are different terms of engagement these days. I have no fears for the noble Earl, Lord Howe, as a model of transparency and accountability, but he may need to have a quiet word with some of his fellow Ministers.

We have had four days of wonderful, illuminating and considered debate. In closing, I congratulate all noble Lords on their contributions today and on the other days of this debate, particularly the maiden speeches that we have heard from new Members of your Lordships’ House and the speeches by the maidens at both Dispatch Boxes. Your Lordships’ wisdom and eloquence bodes well for our future debates.

19:13

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)]

My Lords, this has been a wide-ranging and most fascinating debate, marking, as it does, the conclusion of our deliberations on the gracious Speech. Having been given the privilege of responding, I can begin by expressing my appreciation for the congratulations extended to me and to my noble friend Lord Hill from around the House. I also thank all noble Lords who have spoken so well and so eloquently. Chief among those have been our four maiden speakers, who have provided us with truly splendid contributions. The first of those came from my noble friend, who referred in brief to the Government's programme for health.

In health, as in education, our desire is simple. It is to see standards driven up in response to those who are closest to the delivery of the service: the professionals and, in the health service, the patients whom they look after. Those are the people whom we wish to empower. In fulfilling that wish, we shall move away from centrally imposed targets which focus simply on process in favour of quality standards linked to results. Those quality standards will be defined by reference to clinical evidence. We will commission for quality care. We will pay for performance. We will put the patient at the centre of care by giving him information and choice, and we will encourage health and social care providers to be more efficient and effective at delivering quality and good value. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Wall, that that does not mean that providers will no longer be held to account. Good regulation matters very much, but it has to be meaningful regulation.

That is a far-reaching programme. One of the key steps in setting the NHS free from central diktat will be the creation of the autonomous NHS board. I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for his remarks in that connection. The board will allocate resources; it will provide commissioning guidance; and it will support GPs to commission services on behalf of their patients.

For the first time, the NHS will be led not by politicians but by clinicians, who will be fully accountable for what they do. Despite the huge investment in the NHS in recent years and the improvements that we have seen—which I am the first to acknowledge—the fact is that costs have risen, productivity has fallen, bureaucracy has increased and outcomes have simply not kept pace. In many of the common cancers, our survival rates are the worst in the OECD. We are on the wrong side of the average in western Europe for infant mortality and for premature mortality from lung cancer and heart and respiratory disease. People are more than twice as likely to die from a heart attack in the UK than in France.

We want our health outcomes to be among the best in Europe—indeed, among the best in the world. To achieve that, we have to set doctors, nurses and midwives free to do their job. It is a sobering statistic that the system now demands in the order of 250,000 separate data returns from trusts every year. We have to reduce that burden dramatically and trust the professionals on the ground to judge what is right for their patients.

If we are to match the best health outcomes in the world, we will have to improve our public health services alongside the NHS. That theme was pursued by the noble Baronesses, Lady Greengross and Lady Masham, my noble friend Lord Fowler, the noble Lords, Lord Kakkar and Lord Patel, and others. We will have to invest in prevention—to keep people healthy and prevent them getting ill in the first place. To do that, we shall give local communities greater control over public health budgets, with payments linked to the outcomes that they achieve. We will work more closely with local NHS organisations, local authorities and the voluntary and private sectors, and we will take more targeted action to reduce health inequalities.

That is where our health premium comes in. Like the pupil premium, it will directly tackle disadvantage and reduce inequalities, and it will make for a much fairer approach to public health. In the coming weeks, we will be publishing a White Paper which establishes our long-term strategy for reform of the NHS and we plan to introduce a health Bill in the autumn.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester spoke about the NHS workforce and asked who was included in that term. He was right to give me a prod on that. We will give all NHS doctors, nurses, allied health professions and other health professions back their professional autonomy. They need to be able to use their professional judgment about what is right for patients. He asked me specifically about chaplains. We very much value the work done by NHS chaplains, who play an important part in providing high-quality spiritual care services to patients and staff, and we are committed to ensuring that patients and staff in the NHS have access to the spiritual care that they want, whatever faith they may have.

The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, asked about Monitor, which was also raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, who also asked me about the NHS board. In short, by creating an independent NHS board, we will make sure that funding decisions are made on the basis of need, that commissioning decisions are made according to evidence-based quality standards and that resources are allocated appropriately. We propose to develop the role of Monitor to establish an economic regulator with responsibility for ensuring that patients have access to essential services and that the money invested in the NHS achieves maximum value. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, was right in all that he said on that issue.

My noble friend Lord Colwyn, as he customarily does, spoke about his own subject: dentistry. We will introduce a new dentistry contract that will focus on achieving good health and increasing access to NHS dentistry. At this stage, we need to review the details of the system that we have inherited. Once we have done that and have talked to the profession and patient groups, we will announce the details of the reforms that we are proposing.

The noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, spoke about foetal alcohol syndrome, a subject about which he and I have spoken many times in the past. We want to improve labelling so that people are more aware of the amount of alcohol in drinks as well as of guideline limits. We want to see the necessary improvement in labelling information through a voluntary approach if we can, but we will consider all responses from the consultation that closed very recently—I think on 31 May—before we make any decisions on that matter.

The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, chided the Government for setting up a royal commission on long-term care. He rightly pointed out that we have had many papers on this subject, not least the royal commission that he chaired in such a distinguished way. I simply say to him that this is an urgent matter. We are not pressing the reset button, as it were, on reform of long-term care. It is a hugely challenging issue, and the independent commission will consider the evidence and information gathered through the public debate over the past few years. We know that we must reform social care on a sustainable and long-term basis. A number of options have been put forward for funding a reformed system, so we just have to build on all this work and keep up the momentum of change. I welcomed what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said on that subject.

The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, asked about the patient voice. We are going to give the public a strong and independent voice though Health Watch, which will be a statutory body with the power to investigate and support complaints. I hope that this will be music to the ears of my noble friend Lady Knight. Locally, we will strengthen the patient voice by having directly elected members of the public on the boards of PCTs. That will ensure that boards are balanced between locally accountable individuals and technical expertise. We will publish detailed data about the performance of healthcare providers online so that everybody will know who is providing a good service and who is falling behind. We will measure our success on the health results that really matter, such as improving cancer and stroke survival rates and reducing hospital infections.

The noble Lord, Lord Patel, asked me about preventive health measures, including those relating to alcohol, tobacco and nutrition. Lifestyle-linked health problems like those and the spread of infectious diseases are leading to soaring costs for the NHS. We will provide separate public health funding to local communities that will be accountable for and paid according to how successful they are in improving their residents’ health.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked me about targets. The service priorities for the NHS have to be based on evidence about their benefits for patients; that is, they should be focused on the outcomes that they achieve, rather than on chasing nationally mandated targets with incomplete clinical justification. We are going to remove the politically motivated process targets. I am looking at the list that we have inherited from the previous Government with a view to ensuring that any targets that work against better patient care are removed at an early opportunity.

The noble Baroness asked me about creating a department of public health. The coalition agreement is not the entire sum of our policy, and we will announce further information in due course. As I have indicated already, we are committed to taking action on public health and encouraging behaviour to change, to help people to live healthier lives.

The noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, asked about foundation trusts. I apologise for being so brief, but can say that we are considering a number of options for all NHS providers to become foundation trusts, taking into account many of the issues that she rightly raised. We want to resolve issues of efficiency, issues of clinical sustainability and an explicit assessment of quality, as those are affecting the flow of trusts becoming foundation trusts, as she well knows. This is not easy, but we are determined to make progress.

The noble Lord, Lord Rea, criticised the purchaser/provider split, particularly in relation to the costs of running a commissioning system. I should say to him simply that before we created the division between purchasers and providers, we did not have an accurate idea of how much anything cost in the NHS. That was a very basic lacuna in budgetary control and service planning, so the split has been a helpful feature of our health system at a time when value for money is more important than ever.

The noble Lord also asked about the workability of patients being able to choose their own GP. We believe that patients should be able to choose their own GP practice and not have an arbitrary set of rules that dictate where they can register. If people want to be able to register near their work or near their home, or with a practice that offers better service, they should be able to do so. We know, incidentally, that these problems persist mainly in our most deprived communities, where patients have historically had less choice, yet these are the areas with the greatest health needs.

My noble friend Lord Addington asked about getting the population involved in sport—a subject on which he is a renowned expert. As part of delivering a health legacy for the 2012 Olympics, the legacy action plan aims to make 2 million more adults in England active by 2012-13 and will be measured by the number of adults aged 16 and over who participate in sport or undertake some form of physical activity.

My noble friend Lord Bridgeman spoke about hospices, which play a very valuable role in end-of-life care, particularly for cancer patients. The coalition’s programme for government included a commitment to introduce a new per-patient funding system for all hospices and providers of palliative care. I am sure he knows that the responsibility for setting standards in palliative care training for nurses sits with the professional regulators, but I shall ensure that his remarks are brought to the attention of the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

My noble friend Lord Fowler spoke about the prevention of HIV and hepatitis B and C. These are priorities for us. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation considered the hep B vaccination last year and concluded that a universal programme would not be cost effective in the UK, but I note all that he said.

In view of the number of speakers in this debate, I hope that the House will allow me to take a little longer than I might otherwise take. We have had a curtailed debate on the gracious Speech, and I think that those who have spoken would like to hear what I have to say, although I will inevitably have to be brief.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, made a powerful speech focusing in the main on education funding. She was especially worried about damage to front-line education because of spending cuts. There will have to be savings, but we plan that the savings will be made from reducing waste and cutting the cost of quangos. We have announced that schools, Sure Start and spending on 16 to 19 year-olds will be protected from any in-year spending cuts. Any efficiencies made within schools, Sure Start and 16 to 19 year-olds’ education will be recycled within their respective budgets.

We are not back-tracking on one-to-one tuition. Front-line funding for one-to-one tuition is protected. The first quarter payment for one-to-one tuition for schools has been made this week in line with Standards Fund allocations. That funding will allow schools to provide up to 600,000 tuition places in primary and secondary schools. Although it was part of an overall budget identified for tuition by the previous Administration, it is not part of funding for the front line.

The noble Baroness also asked from where the money would come for new schools and academies. Decisions about the level of funding available to set up and run new schools will be dependent on the outcome of the spending review in the autumn. I cannot be of greater help on that at the moment. I do not agree with the noble Baroness that our policy will entrench unfairness or create a two-tier education policy, as she indicated. That concern was raised in various ways by the noble Lord, Lord Rix, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. We are committed to helping all children achieve their potential, which is why we will introduce a pupil premium and will ensure that extra money follows disadvantaged pupils. This will make sure that it is more attractive to establish new schools in areas of disadvantage and that schools with significant deprivations get more money even in less deprived parts of the country. Schools that recruit and retain disadvantaged children will know that they will receive additional funding to help them meet their needs. It will be for head teachers to decide how best to meet those needs, but they might, for example, use the money to attract the best teachers, to reduce class sizes or to provide extra tuition.

The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, asked about the calibre of teachers. The single most important determinant of a good education is for every child to have access to a good teacher. Our aim is to improve the quality of the teaching profession. As an example, I would cite the Teach First initiative. We also want to create Teach Now to build on the Graduate Teacher Programme and to look for other ways to improve the teaching profession, particularly in terms of attracting more science and maths graduates to be teachers.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, in her thoughtful speech indicated that in her view there was no evidence that structural change led to successful reform or better results. We can see the evidence from academies which have shown a 5 percentage point increase in the proportion of pupils achieving at least five GCSEs at A* to C grades, which is double the average national increase of 2.5 percentage points. As regards non-academies, I have no hesitation in paying tribute to those that are outstanding, and I do not believe that any of my ministerial colleagues would either. The recent announcement allows all schools the opportunity to benefit from the additional freedoms and flexibilities of academy status, with those rated outstanding being fast-tracked through the process.

The noble Baroness made the very good point that teaching and leadership are the most important things. I agree with her on that. A key principle behind the partnership of the coalition Government is trusting professionals, which is why the Government will give them more power and control and will trust them to get on with the job. Many school leaders have already shown a keen interest in gaining academy freedoms.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford, spoke about reducing bureaucracy in schools. We are committed to freeing all schools from unnecessary bureaucracy so that they can focus on their core purpose of raising standards for all children. We will shortly outline a package of proposals for how we intend to reduce bureaucratic restrictions placed on schools.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln asked about free schools and how they would drive up standards for everyone. Free schools will be established to meet parental demand. They will be open to meet that demand wherever it exists. The introduction of free schools will make sure that parents get what they want in these schools and will act as a spur to improvement in other schools. I have already mentioned the pupil premium in this context.

My noble friend Lord Baker spoke compellingly about university technical colleges, a subject also referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. Technical academies are likely to build on the university technical colleges model which we have been developing with my noble friend and the Baker Dearing Educational Trust. We are working on three pilot projects in Birmingham, Walsall and Greenwich. Those are progressing well, but they are unlikely to open before 2011.

The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, spoke about school governance and particularly the role of school governors. I would say to him that, from family experience, I recognise all too well how hard school governors work. They give their time and energy to serving on governing bodies. It is true that their duties can be demanding, but a well-organised governing body can spread its workload, as I am sure he knows, by setting up sub-committees. He asked me to comment specifically on the future of Building Schools for the Future commitments, especially in relation to the Central Foundation Girls’ School in Tower Hamlets. The Department of Education has not yet taken any decisions on Building Schools for the Future, and they will be announced in due course.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bath and Wells asked about the composition of boards of governors in academies. Our current model articles of association say that academies must have one local authority governor and at least one parent governor, but Ministers have not yet made a decision about the composition of future academy governing bodies. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, spoke about children’s services, which she does so well. The Government recognise the challenges that local authorities face in delivering really effective children’s services. When Ministers have evidence that a council is not discharging its accountabilities to an acceptable standard, the Government will want firm assurances that the local authority involved has the determination and the capacity to turn its performance around. We do not want to interfere unnecessarily in local authorities’ improvement processes, but in the most severe cases where councils fail to improve, we will not hesitate to consider using our statutory intervention powers.

The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, said that there was too much assessment and testing. We are committed to external assessment and will review how the KS2 tests operate in the future. Schools, as she well knows, do not have to narrow the curriculum to achieve good test results, although I was very interested in all she had to say on that theme. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, asked about physical and personal education. These are important areas and the evidence available to us from Ofsted and the conclusion of the Macdonald review is that the quality of PSHE teaching is highly variable. The current policy is that all young people should receive a comprehensive programme of sex and relationship education to give them the knowledge and skills to make safe and responsible choices. High quality PSHE is a core theme of the Healthy Schools programme.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, talked about Sure Start and health visitors. The coalition agreement commits the Government to refocus funding from Sure Start peripatetic outreach services and from the Department of Health budget to pay for 4,200 extra Sure Start health visitors. We believe that our new approach to early years services and the profile of the Sure Start health visitor role will prove very attractive. The noble Baroness also spoke about child poverty, as did the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bath and Wells. We are very focused on this issue. The position we have inherited means that we are not on track to meet the 2020 target, and we will need to consider carefully what action is needed to make real progress in this area. The right reverend Prelate also asked about the commitment to end child detention, and I refer him to the Question on the subject answered by my noble friend Lady Neville-Jones this week.

The noble Lord, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, asked about funding for the arts, and he is right that more than half of this funding comes from public sources. The vast majority of government funding for the arts is of course via Arts Council England. The rest comes from private sources, including the earned income of people who attend events and venues. But as a general point, putting the economy back on its feet and restoring the nation’s finances are in the interests of all our sectors, and that is the prime task of this Government.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford, in his excellent speech, addressed the issue of the churches needing repair. The Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme, which makes grants equivalent to the VAT incurred, is expected to make grants of around £15 million in 2010-11. However, a decision on the scheme’s future beyond the end of this year is pending. As he will know, though, other funding is available from various sources—the Repair Grants for Places of Worship Scheme, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Churches Conservation Trust.

The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, spoke very powerfully about heritage protection. I pay tribute to the work of English Heritage in protecting the historic environment and to her as its chair. We are currently considering options for legislating in this area. In doing so we are mindful that extensive consultation on reform of the heritage protection system has taken place over the past decade and that a programme of non-statutory reforms is now nearing completion.

My noble friend Lord Colwyn spoke about live music. There seems to be evidence that the Licensing Act 2003 has not created the growth in live music that was hoped for, and we cannot ignore public opinion out there, especially among musicians. We believe that there was much to commend in the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, but we want to consider the options carefully before deciding how best to support live music.

The noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, asked about broadband. The UK has made a start on the deployment of superfast broadband but we want to go further. Steps are now in train to reduce the cost, and that could make a significant contribution to availability and open the market to new players. As regards S4C, there will be a reduction in its budget from DCMS for the current year of £2 million. S4C has said that it will endeavour to ensure that this reduction will not directly affect services to viewers.

The noble Lord, Lord Rea—I apologise, I am a little out of order—asked me about NICE and I forgot to address his question. I assure him that we believe that NICE has an important long-term role in assessing the clinical efficacy and cost-effectiveness of new treatments and safeguarding taxpayers’ money.

Moving very briefly to work and pensions, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, asked whether the Government would continue his party’s reforms to the operation of the work capability assessment. The Government take seriously the importance of correctly assessing fluctuating conditions and ensuring the accuracy of the WCA. We are currently considering the department-led review of the WCA and its recommendations. Do we plan to continue the timescale for reassessing those people on incapacity benefit set out by the previous Government? We will be testing and learning from the small-scale trial which will run from October 2010; full migration will not begin until April next year and is expected to take place over a three-year period.

The future jobs fund has not been abolished. We will continue to fund the bids already approved, which will mean that more than 100,000 people are likely to get jobs, but we will not accept any new bids for funding and we will tighten up the way in which contracts are managed.

My noble friend Lord Elton asked me whether I would talk to him about identity fraud. I shall be very happy to do that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, in an extremely powerful and compelling speech, spoke about pensions and savings. There are obvious attractions to introducing a single pension which wraps up the existing three elements of the state pension system, as she suggested. However, I think she will agree that significant issues would need to be addressed before such a system could be introduced, including costs and transitional issues such as what happens when a person has been contracted out of the state system. However, as the noble Baroness acknowledged, the Government have already brought forward the restoration of the earnings link to April next year. If I may write to her about the other points she made, that would probably be appropriate in the circumstances.

The noble Lord, Lord Rix, spoke powerfully about employment support for disabled people. I agreed with so much of what he said. The single work programme will offer targeted, personalised help for those who need it most. We want to give people who have been so-called “written off” the opportunity to work and contribute, and the reforms will aim to promote employment and tackle poverty.

It has been impossible in the available time to answer every question posed. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for that, but I undertake to write to those noble Lords whose questions remain unanswered.

Our programme for health, as for education and welfare, has at its heart the concepts of trust, fairness and empowerment of the citizen. The role of government is to create the conditions which will make those concepts a reality. As we debate these important matters over the weeks and months ahead, my ministerial colleagues and I look forward to garnering the wisdom of this House in exactly the way that has proved so valuable to countless Governments who have preceded us.

Meanwhile, I am able with pleasure and a good deal of pride to commend the gracious Speech to your Lordships.

Motion agreed nemine dissentiente, and the Lord Chamberlain was ordered to present the Address to Her Majesty.

House adjourned at 7.46 pm.