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Oral Answers to Questions
(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)
1. If he will discuss with his French counterpart joint UK-French procurement of medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles.
The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
I am sure the whole House will wish to join me in paying tribute to the Royal Marine who died in Afghanistan last Thursday. His family and friends are in all our thoughts and prayers at this very difficult time for them. We are very fortunate to have such men in our armed forces.
I will be discussing a range of issues when I next meet my French counterpart. I would expect the subject of unmanned aerial systems to be among them.
Mike Crockart
I thank my right hon. Friend for his response, but what assurances can he give me that the progress made by the UK recently in technological advances in UAV research, which have been particularly effective in the fight against improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan, will not be lost owing to budget cuts coming up in the Ministry of Defence?
Dr Fox
Both Britain and our key partners have defence aerospace skills and technologies that we wish to maintain as sovereign capabilities. As part of assessing any procurement system—we have made no decisions—the impact on critical UK aerospace skills and capabilities will be considered in the strategic defence and security review, as well as in the upcoming budgetary rounds.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
But is the Secretary of State aware that the French are thinking of buying in the Reaper drone from General Atomics because their EADS also is so far behind in producing this kind of essential new weapon? After reading your interesting interview in The Independent today, Mr. Speaker, I wonder if you are aware of the report by two French Deputies exactly on drones, produced last December in the French National Assembly—a 90-page specialist report by a Socialist and a Conservative MP presented to the French Ministry of Defence? Do we not need such input from MPs to try to help the Secretary of State as he makes decisions?
Dr Fox
I am always open to the help offered by the right hon. Gentleman. Perhaps one day we will find a use for it. We are indeed in discussions with the French about joint procurement, but a decision by the French to join Predator would not necessarily preclude them from joint procurement in the future with the United Kingdom on long-term solutions.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
2. When he plans to publish the results of the Trident value-for-money study.
The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
The Ministry of Defence’s work on the value-for-money study should be completed at the end of this month. The findings will go to the Cabinet Office, and will then be considered by the National Security Council. The council’s conclusions will inform the strategic defence and security review and the comprehensive spending review, which will be published in the autumn.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I thank my right hon. Friend for his answer. Will the results of the value-for-money study include plans on the infrastructure that supports our deterrent?
Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)
Given that Trident is costing us perhaps £1 billion or £2 billion every year, and an estimated £96 billion over its entire lifetime, does the Minister agree that we should listen to the military figures who are increasingly saying that it is not necessary and counting it as something to be considered in the comprehensive spending review?[Official Report, 19 July 2010, Vol. 514, c. 1-2MC.]
Dr Fox
Ultimately, it is up to the Government to decide what the policy should be. There is a wide range of advice, military and otherwise. The House came to the conclusion that it did in 2007 on the basis that we believed that that was a cost-effective way for this country to go forward with a nuclear deterrent. We know that abroad there are a number of countries trying to develop nuclear weapons. We do not know what will happen between now and 2015—the time scale for the Trident replacement programme—and we cannot play fast and loose with Britain’s defences.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
3. What recent progress has been made on the reform of NATO.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Gerald Howarth)
In 2009, NATO agreed a series of measures to improve working practices in its headquarters in Brussels, and a new defence planning process better to help allies develop, acquire and maintain the capabilities required for the full range of NATO missions. Work to reform NATO’s resource management, rationalise its agencies and streamline its command structures is also under way, and should be agreed by the NATO summit in Lisbon in November.
Bob Stewart
Will the new structure that is in place in NATO be altered again so that we get better results from our operations out of area, particularly in Afghanistan?
Mr Howarth
My hon. and gallant Friend makes a very good point, and at the NATO Defence Ministers’ summit last month my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary made it clear that command structure reform is a key priority for the United Kingdom and for the alliance, because NATO’s structure is too big and static, and too much is simply not geared up for the missions that we are undertaking, such as in Afghanistan. The House might like to ponder on the fact that, significantly, NATO did not employ elements of its command structure in any meaningful capacity in Afghanistan; instead, it put together a bespoke operation.
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
As the role of NATO in Afghanistan is increasingly criticised and the threat of terrorism here comes far more from our own disaffected Muslims than from the Tora Bora mountains, is it not rather bizarre that from on high we have heard recently that there are likely to be cuts in our counter-terrorist units here while we continue to sacrifice the precious, heroic lives of our young people in an unnecessary and unwinnable war against the Pashtun tribes?
Mr Speaker
Order. I know that in the reply from the Front Bench the hon. Gentleman will of course refer to the reform of NATO.
Mr Howarth
I have quite a few challenges, Mr Speaker, but that is one that I am not entirely geared up to meet in the light of the observations and question from my hon. Friend. His views are well known and I have a huge admiration for him, but I have to tell him that I am not responsible for the resources that are devoted to counter-terrorist operations. None the less, I can tell him that there is a very clear view from the Government Front Benchers here that the mission in Afghanistan is a NATO mission. It is not an American mission; it is not even an Anglo-American mission. It is a NATO mission, and it is extremely important that that mission succeeds.
Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)
4. What estimate he has made of his Department’s expenditure on military equipment in 2010-11; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Peter Luff)
The Department’s current planned expenditure on the procurement of military equipment—excluding urgent operational requirements for Afghanistan—for the financial year 2010-11 is £6.6 billion, of which £5.5 billion is capital expenditure. In addition, planned expenditure on the associated military equipment support costs for the financial year 2010-11 is £6.3 billion, of which £1.6 billion is capital expenditure.
Claire Perry
Will the Minister confirm that he has digested fully the lessons of the Bernard Gray report, which was suppressed by the previous Government and, when released, suggested that £2.5 billion was being wasted on procurement procedures? When will he update the House with the new procurement procedures?
Peter Luff
I congratulate my hon. Friend on a very sensible question. Labour’s record on debt and financial instability makes that challenge even more important than it already was. I have digested the lessons of that very important report, the strategy for acquisition reform continues, and I hope to report to the House at a later date.
Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)
The Government recently made a commitment to publish regional and national defence expenditure statistics and then, within days, reneged on it. Does the MOD have any commitment to equitable defence spending throughout the UK?
Peter Luff
If Scotland accepted the case for the nuclear deterrent, the hon. Gentleman’s argument would be a lot more impressive.
Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con)
It is good to hear about the Department’s planned expenditure and, particularly, from my hon. Friend. Last year, on 20 July, the Ministry of Defence published its accounts, which set out the planned expenditure, and for the third year running those accounts were qualified. Will they be published again this month, and will they be qualified again this year?
Peter Luff
They will be published at a very early date, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend’s Committee will take a very close interest in them when they are.
Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)
In December last year, I announced £150 million to improve the capacity of our counter-improvised explosive device teams in Afghanistan, and, as that is the highest threat level that our forces face, expenditure was kept under review. Recently, the Prime Minister announced another £67 million for the same purpose, and I welcome that, because it is really needed. However, will the Minister clarify the situation? The Prime Minister has repeatedly said that that £67 million will double the number of counter-IED teams. Is that true?
Peter Luff
The £67 million is intended to provide enhanced protection for our teams in Afghanistan and additional mine-detecting equipment, and to procure working dogs—a very effective part of counter-IED work.
Mr Ainsworth
I understand that, and it is welcome. That is exactly what I put in place when I was doing the job that the hon. Gentleman and his team are doing now, and I kept that need under review. However, is it all new money, and will it do what the Prime Minister repeatedly said it would? He said in terms, “We are doubling the counter-IED teams.” He cannot double the counter-IED teams for £67 million. Let us have a straight answer.
Peter Luff
The right hon. Gentleman is understandably concerned, as this is about a very important threat to our armed forces. I can tell him, however, that the difference between this Government and the previous Government is that we have found the money that is crucial in dealing with this threat, and lectures on new money or old money come very ill from him. In the past, commitments were made for many things, but we are actually going to find the money and deliver this vital tool for our armed forces serving in Afghanistan.
Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)
5. What plans he has for future support for cadet forces.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)
The Government remain committed to the cadet movement, the origins of which date back 150 years. It is one of the oldest and most successful voluntary youth organisations in the world. The strategic defence and security review is looking at all areas of defence, and it would be wrong to speculate on its conclusions.
Charlotte Leslie
I thank my hon. Friend for his answer. Will he join me in paying tribute to the Avonmouth and Filton sea cadets in my constituency, with whom I actively work, and to the volunteers who give up so much of their lives for these organisations? Can he assure me that they will continue to have Government support, since the role they perform is so valuable and they do not always perform it in the best of facilities?
Mr Robathan
I can certainly reassure my hon. Friend that I pay tribute to those organisations. The cadet movement is extremely important; as I said, it is one of the most successful voluntary youth organisations in the world. It has been somewhat under-appreciated in past years, and we very much hope that it will now raise its levels of appreciation. Indeed, tomorrow I am going to the march-past and parade in the Mall to celebrate 150 years of the cadet movement.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
During the series of Government cuts that we all face, will the Minister consider whether buildings belonging to the Government that are being closed could have a future life in providing headquarters for the cadet movement? Many cadet forces are struggling to find accommodation, and there could well be small offices or equipment stores that they could use. Will he look at that, please?
Mr Robathan
I would be very happy to look at it. The Government welcome any submissions, from wherever, about broad or individual cases such as those that the hon. Lady mentions. We cannot prejudge the results of the SDSR, as she will understand, but I would, by all means, be grateful if she would make a submission on individual or general cases.
Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Con)
I am lucky enough to be the Honorary Colonel of Nottinghamshire Army Cadet Force—a famous fighting unit. We provide almost 60% of our soldiers—cadets—as recruits for the regular Army. Sadly, too many of these individuals are going to Lincoln and Nottingham Army careers information offices and finding that they are being turned away having been told that there is a delay of at least nine months, and in many cases 12 months, before they can join the regular Army. I do not find that acceptable.
Mr Robathan
Nottinghamshire Army Cadet Force is very privileged to have my hon. Friend as its colonel, and I know that he will do very good work for it given his gallant past in the Army.
Regarding recruitment, at the moment the Army, in particular, is almost exactly at full recruitment levels, and there are therefore no places available. However, as my hon. Friend will know from his past experience, these things change literally by the month. I hope that the keen cadets from Nottinghamshire will continue to come forward, and I hope that we can find places for them in the Army. However, especially when we are considering an SDSR, I am afraid that we cannot swell the Army just because there are excellent recruits coming forward; we look forward to seeing them.
Mr Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow) (Lab)
6. What his plans are for the future of the aircraft carriers programme.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Peter Luff)
As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, we are in the process of carrying out a strategic defence and security review within which all aspects of the defence programme, including the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers, will be examined. The impact on any specific equipment projects will be announced following the conclusion of the review in the autumn.
Mr Hepburn
I thank the Minister for that reply, but urge him to stand by the Defence Secretary’s pre-election comments and statements saying that these particular carriers were of urgent and vital importance to Britain’s defence. May I urge the Minister to give full steam ahead to these projects and invite him to meet me at my constituency shipyard to discuss the matter further?
Peter Luff
I would be delighted to meet the hon. Gentleman in his constituency and look forward to doing so on a mutually agreeable date. However, he will understand that with a strategic defence and security review going on, it is impossible to give the type of commitment that he seeks. I wish I could, but I cannot.
Diana R. Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
7. What recent discussions he has had on alternatives to the Trident nuclear deterrent.
The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
The Government are committed to retaining a minimum nuclear deterrent based on Trident. We have commissioned a review to scrutinise existing plans to renew the deterrent, to ensure value for money.
Diana R. Johnson
Have the Liberal Democrats put forward their alternatives to Trident as set out in the coalition agreement, and if so, what are they? They kept very quiet during the general election about what they were.
Dr Fox
I am responsible for a lot of things, but the Liberal Democrats’ answers on specific points of policy are a matter for them, not for me. The coalition agreement is very clear that although the Government have set out their policy, the Liberal Democrats are very good at coming forward with their own particular solutions, as I can make clear to the hon. Lady.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
In the inexplicable absence of any Liberal Democrat on his feet, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether he agrees that as an alternative to Trident, the idea of putting nuclear-armed cruise missiles on Astute class submarines would be more expensive and less effective, would put the submarines at risk and, because one cannot know what sort of warhead is on a cruise missile until it has landed, could start world war three by accident? Does he agree that apart from that, it is a great Liberal Democrat idea?
Dr Fox
I am unlikely to be tempted down that route.
As the House will know, when we considered the entire issue in 2006 and 2007 we looked at options for other systems, including cruise missiles, silo-based missiles and air-launched weapons. Those other options were discounted due to effectiveness and cost. That analysis has not changed, and alternative systems will not be considered as part of the value-for-money review.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
8. What steps he plans to take to improve the standard of armed forces accommodation; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)
The coalition Government place a high priority on the welfare of service personnel and their families. We will look at whether there is scope to refurbish the armed forces’ accommodation from efficiencies within the Ministry of Defence.
Natascha Engel
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that answer, because as he is fully aware, the Labour Government put aside £3 billion to improve the living accommodation of the armed forces. Has that money been ring-fenced to protect it from the 20% Treasury cuts?
Mr Robathan
The last Administration may have put aside a great deal of money, but they did not say where it was coming from, and indeed the money did not exist. As the hon. Lady will know, we are living with the serious economic and financial conditions that the last Administration put in place. In the SDSR we will prioritise the needs and accommodation of defence personnel and their families.
Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that as well as being extremely important to the regular armed forces, accommodation is also crucial to the reserve forces and cadets? Following the earlier question of the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), may I urge him to examine the remarkable work of Greater London Reserve Forces and Cadets Association in finding ways of saving money by sharing cadet accommodation with a variety of different youth organisations?
Mr Robathan
My hon. Friend has been explaining the situation of the reserve forces to me for a very long time, and as he knows, I broadly agree with him. He makes a very sensible suggestion, and I would be most grateful if he made a written submission. If we can save money and be more efficient, we would certainly be delighted so to do.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
For starters, has the Minister signed off the money for this year? The money is there, and I wish he would not keep peddling these untruths that things are not costed.
The Conservative defence team, when in opposition, gave a high priority to armed service accommodation. The Secretary of State, in The Daily Telegraph last January, wrote:
“Welfare is another major issue that needs to be better addressed. We all too often hear about substandard housing”.
I am sure that Conservative Members, and more importantly members of our armed forces and their families, will expect the coalition to match our funded commitments on accommodation, or are we just to see yet another cynical ploy whereby the Conservatives support the armed forces in opposition with various spending commitments but then cynically withdraw them, as we saw last week with the freezing of armed forces pay?
Mr Robathan
There are such things as parallel universes. We had 13 years of the last Administration and now, after seven weeks, we are accused of failing to address the issues of armed forces accommodation. This is complete nonsense. The hon. Gentleman accuses me of peddling untruths; I refer him to the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Defence Committee, who wants to know about the Ministry of Defence accounts. When we see those accounts, we will be able to judge whether the money was there.
Mr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
9. What his most recent assessment is of the security situation in Afghanistan; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)
We recognise that the security situation in Afghanistan remains very serious. However, we remain committed to protecting the Afghan civilian population and to developing the Afghan national security forces, to enable them to take on the lead for security themselves.
Nick Harvey
There are currently about 119,000 members of the Afghan national army and about 104,000 members of the Afghan national police in Afghanistan. Targets for significant increases in both the army and police, supported by the international community, were agreed at the London conference. I remind my hon. Friend that that target is 171,000 members of the army and 134,000 members of the police by the end of next year. That would take the total security force numbers to more than 300,000.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
A detailed American investigation into the Afghan army reports that a third of this group of drug-addicted mercenaries desert every year and that its members have little or no loyalty to their election-rigging President, their own Government or international Governments. Why on earth do we expect to build a stable Afghanistan on that crumbling foundation?
Nick Harvey
I do not recognise the hon. Gentleman’s description. I visited Afghanistan just two weeks ago and British and American armed forces spoke very well of their Afghan colleagues. Nobody pretends that the situation is perfect, but we are involved in an embedded partnering relationship with the Afghan national army to try to ensure that the highest degree of skill and professionalism continues to grow and develop. We are impressed with what it has done so far; it is increasingly able both to plan and execute missions in its own right, and I have no doubt whatever that we are continuing to progress in the right direction.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I, too, have been out to see the Afghan national army being trained in Afghanistan. My impression is that it has been doing extremely well under the brilliant professionalism of the British instructors. But does the Minister accept that the police are much more worrying and have hugely further to go? The issue is about not just how many there are but the quality of their training. Can we not get more help from the Metropolitan police or other British police forces to help with their training?
Nick Harvey
In recent years, it has certainly been true that there have been concerns about the police not being as good as the army. However, I think that that situation is being rapidly addressed and that there is a tangible improvement in the training being given to the Afghan national police. The Helmand police training centre is based strongly on western models. There is a lot of western assistance in there, and most recent reports say that the quality of police recruits has improved tangibly on what it was like a couple years ago.
Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)
Can the Minister for the Armed Forces help to clear up some of the recent confusion on Afghan policy? The Prime Minister seems to be saying, both in the House and elsewhere, that there is a deadline—that all our troops will be out of Afghanistan by the end of the Parliament, by 2014. The Defence Secretary and Foreign Secretary appear to be saying something slightly different. And we now have Lord Guthrie; I am so pleased to be able to quote Lord Guthrie. He warns us that
“The Army doesn’t want a government that dithers.”
I agree. Is there a deadline?
Nick Harvey
The key to our exit from Afghanistan is that we want to see the Afghans take control of their own security. They are not able to do that yet, but will be better able to do it as time goes on. As they progressively do that, our own troop numbers will come right down and our role will completely change. The process of handing provinces and districts to Afghan control will take place on the basis of an assessment of the facts on the ground. However, the Prime Minister has made it very clear that there will not be British troops in a combat role or in significant numbers in five years’ time. Of course, troops will still be there in a training role, as part of a wider diplomatic relationship like that which we have with other countries.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
10. How much his Department has spent on works of art since 2005.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)
Since 2005, the Ministry of Defence has spent on average around £58,000 a year protecting, preserving and maintaining its art collection. No works of art have been bought by the Department in the last five years.
Harriett Baldwin
Was the Minister as surprised as I was to learn that the Ministry of Defence has some 1,500 works of art, complete with curating staff? Does he agree that the MOD should focus on running our armed forces rather than an art gallery?
Mr Robathan
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that we should concentrate on running the armed forces, but I am sure she would agree that £58,000 is not a huge amount to spend on curating. However, I was pretty surprised to discover that in 2004, £250,000 was spent on Hoque and Cattrell paintings for the foyer of the main MOD building. It seems to me that that money could have been better spent on, for instance, armed forces accommodation, which has was raised earlier.
Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)
Will the Minister therefore confirm whether the Department or the Government have any plans to sell off any of the Government art collection?
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
11. If he will consider, as part of the strategic defence and security review, the merits of the Army returning to RAF St Athan rather than RAF Cosford.
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)
Plans for the defence training review package 1 project remain unchanged, and consequently it is still planned for 102 Logistics Brigade to relocate to RAF Cosford in 2018 under the BORONA programme. Like everything else in the defence world, that is subject to the strategic defence and security review. At this point, no decisions have been taken.
Mark Pritchard
Let me be clear: Shropshire has a long and proud history of working with the British Army, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy, but does it not make sense, given the presence of the excellent special forces support group and 1st Battalion the Parachute Regiment, and indeed the logistic hangars and a very long runway indeed at RAF St Athan in Wales, for 102 Logistics Brigade to return to St Athan rather than to RAF Cosford in Shropshire?
Nick Harvey
My hon. Friend is aware that there were two different proposals in the final analysis for the defence training review facilities: Cosford and St Athan. Those were subject to the most detailed scrutiny to decide which was the better fit for our defence requirements and the decision was that the defence training review should relocate facilities to St Athan. We believe that there is an obvious synergy between that and other work at St Athan, particular in high technology, and a lot of work has already gone into preparing for that move. To change course now, as he suggests, would undo a great deal of investment that has already been made and add considerably to the final cost.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I wholeheartedly endorse what the Minister says. He is a brave man: he has seen off the first of the Tories of the afternoon, and I am delighted that he is sticking with St Athan. Is he prepared to meet a cross-party group of MPs from Wales so that we can feed into the ongoing discussions on the strategic defence review, and so that we can ensure that he understands fully the enormous value of bringing those elements of training together in south Wales, better to support our armed forces, which, in the end, is the single most important thing we can do?
Nick Harvey
I take the hon. Gentleman’s endorsement in the spirit it was intended. He will understand that our concern is to ensure both value for money and that the training facilities that we secure are best fitted to our defence needs. Decisions on progress will be necessary in the course of the next few months, and as part of that consideration and that work, I will be happy to talk to him and to others.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
12. What plans he has for a tri-service military covenant.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)
We are committed to rebuilding the military covenant through the creation of a tri-service military covenant and have identified a number of areas that will allow us to do so. These measures are listed in our programme for government that was published on 22 May. The Prime Minister recently announced the doubling of the operational allowance in Afghanistan, which was an important first step on this road.
Stephen Mosley
It is crucial that we care for our serving personnel, but we must also care for our veterans. What measures will my hon. Friend put in place to ensure that we care for our veterans properly in the future, especially with regard to mental health issues?
Mr Robathan
On the broader issue, I have had two meetings in the past week on the military covenant and its implications. My hon. Friend mentions mental health in particular. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), who is in his place, is considering health issues and will report this summer on all such issues, including the mental health needs of ex-service personnel.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
13. Whether he has considered a timetable for the withdrawal of UK forces from Afghanistan.
The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
United Kingdom forces are in Afghanistan as part of an international coalition. We will take decisions on troop numbers in consultation with our partners.
Derek Twigg
Was the Secretary of State given advance notice of the Prime Minister’s statement in Canada recently that he wanted our armed forces home by 2015, and did No. 10 see a copy of the Secretary of State’s speech before he made it in Washington last week?
Dr Fox
The G8 in Canada in June sent a collective signal that we want Afghan national security forces to assume increasing responsibility for security within five years. 2015 is a full year beyond General McChrystal’s assessment of ANSF capability and it is entirely realistic that we will not have combat troops in Afghanistan at that time.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that any timetable will depend not just on the numbers in the Afghan national army, but on its effectiveness? What discussions has he had about the emerging problems of recruitment and retention, infrastructure and logistics? Are not those matters critical to the effectiveness of the Afghan national army?
Dr Fox
My hon. Friend is correct on all those issues. In fact, the number of the Afghan national security forces has tended to be ahead of trend in recent times. The quality of the training is constantly kept under review and I had discussions in Washington on the subject last week.
Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State agree that the security issue in Afghanistan is really whether we have enough troops on the ground? Even by General Petraeus’s assessment, we have barely one third of those required. Unless and until we can increase that number—and there is no prospect of doing so from any side—the choice will be to expose our troops and the American troops to more danger or, conversely, to expose the Afghan people. In the light of that, will he make a statement about the prospects for the future? Without security we have no future.
Dr Fox
We are seeing an increase in the number of American troops at the moment. As for the UK troops, it is not just the number but the relative force density that is important. That has improved in recent times and there is now a better match between our footprint and the size of the force. That happened under the previous Government and will continue to happen under the current Government until we are satisfied that we have an appropriate ratio.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
14. What steps he plans to take to ensure that injured service personnel are treated in dedicated military wards.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)
Injured service personnel will be cared for in the best specialist hospital ward for their clinical condition. Operational casualties with multiple trauma injuries will usually be treated in the military ward at the new Queen Elizabeth hospital in Edgbaston, but all patients, wherever they are treated, are given the invaluable military welfare, care and support that can contribute so much to their well-being and recovery.
Nick Smith
Will the Government be proceeding with the four purpose-built recovery centres first proposed by the Labour Government?
Mr Robathan
We are indeed proceeding with personal recovery units as part of the Army recovery capability. That was a legacy of the previous Administration, and one that I praise.
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
The Minister will be aware that under the previous Government the Haslar royal naval hospital was the last military hospital to be shut down. We are now at risk of losing another massive employer in Gosport in HMS Sultan, the Royal Navy engineering training school—recently graded outstanding by Ofsted—which could move to St Athan. Has the Minister considered the effect that any such move would have on the local community?
Mr Robathan
I have to confess to my hon. Friend that I have not been looking at that particular issue; however, I am sure that the closure—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] Well, I am awfully sorry, but it is not part of my remit. However, I am sure that, as with everything else, we will be looking at that issue in the strategic defence and security review, and I hope that there will be no unfortunate implications for employment in the Portsmouth area.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
May I pay tribute to the dedicated staff at Selly Oak and to the men and women of Defence Medical Services, whom I had the honour of working with? We owe them a great debt of gratitude, and they include some previously unsung heroes who were rightly honoured in the recent Queen’s birthday honours list. I enjoyed reading about the coalition’s new defence policy in The Sun last week, including the re-announcement of the new military ward at Selly Oak. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has announced that the Army recovery capability, which was fully funded, will be continued. However, can we have an assurance today that Defence Medical Services will be protected in the defence budget, or will we just see cynical re-announcements of Labour achievements, albeit without the funding to go with them?
Mr Robathan
I do not feel that I have been cynically re-announcing any Labour achievements. What I would say is that it is not Selly Oak doing the work any more; it is the new Queen Elizabeth hospital down the road, which is replacing Selly Oak. It is a good hospital, and the scheme was planned and executed—although the facility was not opened—under the previous Administration. I entirely accept that. Indeed, I visited Selly Oak not a month ago, and I think that the care that people receive there is pretty good—it was not so good to begin with, but it is pretty good now. I shall not be cynically re-announcing anything; I shall just be planning on the basis of the coalition’s policies.
Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)
15. What recent representations he has received on arrangements for armed forces pensions.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)
I am just so busy today that I missed that one, Mr Speaker. We have received a number of representations on armed forces pensions, including in relation to the 1975 armed forces pension scheme and eligibility for those who served prior to its introduction; the link to the retail price index; and widows’ and widowers’ pensions for life.
Mr Hamilton
I thank the Minister for that delayed answer. Let me make a plea on behalf of one particular group of people. One important thing about the armed forces is the number of people who extend their terms of reference—who want to extend their period in the armed forces. It is imperative that that is not stopped. When the Minister looks at the review that is currently under way, will he ensure that the extension is protected for that group of armed forces personnel, for whom the pension is an important part of the decision to extend their time?
Mr Robathan
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. I should declare an interest, in that I am an armed forces pensioner—under the 1975 scheme, I think. I am not entirely clear about the question, so perhaps he could write to me with the details, and I will certainly respond to him.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
16. What role he will play in the appointment of a new Chief of the Defence Staff; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
The outgoing Chief of the Defence Staff provides an assessment of his potential successors, together with his recommendation. I then discuss the recommendation with him and my Defence Ministers, before making a recommendation to the Prime Minister. Thereafter, the approval of Her Majesty the Queen will be sought.
Frank Dobson
Once the appointment is announced, will the Government ensure that both the Secretary of State for Defence and the Prime Minister make it clear that they support the new appointment, and do not indulge in the spectacle of competitive briefing, claiming that they were the individual who got rid of the predecessor?
Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)
17. How many defence procurement contracts have been frozen since his appointment.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Peter Luff)
Out of the 57 equipment-related projects that were subject to re-approval as part of the exercise announced by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury on 17 May, two projects—the search and rescue helicopter project, and the procurement of long-lead items for the successor deterrent—have been suspended pending the outcome of urgent ongoing reviews. However, all projects, including those that have been re-approved, are being considered as part of the strategic defence and security review.
Mr Carswell
Does my hon. Friend believe that it is in the best interests of our armed forces that senior officials involved in preparing MOD contracts are regularly recruited to work for the contractor and lobby Government on its behalf?
Peter Luff
Like my hon. Friend, I have severe doubts about that particular practice, and I can assure him that I am watching it very carefully.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
Can the Minister tell the House when he expects to agree the contract signed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) for the A400M, which is built in Bristol and serviced in north Wales? Twenty-two planes with 22 sets of wings are under contract by the Labour Government, but they have been frozen by the Conservative-Liberal Government.
Peter Luff
I wish I could answer the right hon. Gentleman’s question at length, but all I can say is that the A400M, like all other major projects, is part of the strategic defence and security review—the long overdue strategic defence and security review.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
My departmental responsibilities are to ensure that our country is properly defended now and in the future, that our service personnel have the right equipment and training to allow them to succeed in their military tasks, and that we honour the military covenant.
Dr Lewis
Only last August, a top military adviser stated publicly that it would take between 30 and 40 years for us to nation-build in Afghanistan under the present strategy and that there was no question of NATO pulling out. Within the last few days, the same top military adviser has stated that the time has begun for talks with the Taliban and that we could indeed have resolved our mission within the next four years. What does this conflicting advice say about the quality, the coherence and the consistency of the strategy which our Government have inherited in Afghanistan?
Dr Fox
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He will probably remember a former Prime Minister saying that advisers advise and Ministers decide. For the benefit of newer Members, let me say that she was absolutely correct to do so. The Government decide the strategy in Afghanistan. We believe that we are there for reasons of national security, and we believe that we will have succeeded in our mission in Afghanistan when it is a stable enough state to manage its own internal and external security without reference to outside powers.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
T6. On reflection, does the Secretary of State think that the best way to advise of the retirement of the Chief of the Defence Staff is through the pages of The Sunday Times even before the Prime Minister has been consulted or before the Queen has been provided with that information?
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
T2. With defence exports being of critical importance to the economy in Fylde and jobs in the north-west, can the Secretary of State update me and the House on efforts made to drive the export potential of the Typhoon Eurofighter?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Gerald Howarth)
I can tell my hon. Friend that the good news is that the Typhoon aircraft, a formidable piece of kit, is in demand across the world, and there are a number of countries that have expressed serious interest in the Typhoon. I can also tell him that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has already had a number of discussions with a number of interested parties, and that we shall arrange some cross-departmental ministerial visits to promote this very important aspect of our policy.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
T9. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is absolutely essential that the training of the three armed forces should be integrated into one site?
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)
As I said in the earlier part of questions, it remains our intention to proceed as planned, but this, of course, like everything else, is part of the strategic defence review.
Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)
My hon. Friend will have observed that the Secretary of State declined an opportunity to state that he would publish the results of the Trident value for money review. May I urge him to publish the foreign policy baseline, which is the starting point of the defence review, so that the House can have the opportunity to debate the Government’s foreign policy objectives before we are presented with a fait accompli in the defence review itself?
Dr Fox
During the debate on the strategic defence and security review, I set out the foreign policy baseline, as I have on previous occasions, and as the Foreign Secretary also has. It will be considered as part of the debate inside the National Security Council as part of cross-departmental security reviews.
Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)
The Veterans Minister just said that he was redoubling efforts to honour the military covenant and he praised the Prime Minister for doubling the operational allowance, yet he also admitted that he was cutting accommodation, freezing Army pay and making service personnel pay more for their pensions. Will he therefore explain what he means in practical terms by “redoubling” the effort?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)
I have always maintained that the hon. Gentleman is much nicer than his reputation. However, I have not said that we are cutting accommodation. As he knows, the whole country is faced with the appalling economic and financial situation that was left by the previous Government. We are considering all ways of saving money, including a pay freeze across the public sector. However, the spine increases for armed forces personnel will continue.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
T3. The Prime Minister’s announcement last month of £67 million to deal with the threat faced by our troops from improvised explosive devices was most welcome. Will my hon. Friend say what part of that will be for training, which is an integral part of the deal? In particular, will he note the excellent service provided by the International School for Security and Explosives Education in Chilmark in my constituency, which I visited on Friday?
Nick Harvey
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. There is no doubt whatever that high-threat counter-IED operations in Afghanistan are the most dangerous activity undertaken by members of the armed forces. The Prime Minister’s announcement of a further £67 million included £40 million for protected vehicles for use by CIED teams in Afghanistan and £11 million for remote control vehicles. The remaining funds will be used to enhance other critical capabilities in the counter-IED campaign, including enhancements to our military working-dog capability. There are problems with training, which we are doing our best to address. One problem is the inherited shortfall in counter-IED experts, which needs to be addressed as quickly as possible.
Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)
Ministers will be aware that the Royal Irish Regiment is to deploy to Afghanistan later this year and that our armed forces personnel from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales make a major contribution to operational deployment on a continuous basis. Is it not therefore incumbent on the Secretary of State in his review to look again at the distribution of defence expenditure on a more equitable basis across the United Kingdom?
Dr Fox
The allocation of defence spending across the United Kingdom will be determined in the light of what we think are the best decisions for the defence of the United Kingdom. The right hon. Gentleman is correct, however, about the contributions made by our armed forces from different parts of the United Kingdom. They are United Kingdom armed forces. When I meet troops in Afghanistan, they do not ask one another whether they came from Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh or London. They are forces under the Crown and proud of it.
Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)
T4. On the eve of the Turkish Foreign Minister’s visit to London, I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that Turkey is one of our foremost allies in a most volatile region. What steps can his military take to increase our strategic co-operation with Turkey?
Dr Fox
My hon. Friend is entirely correct: Turkey is a very important strategic partner for the United Kingdom, not only because of its geographic location and the countries that border it, but because of other issues such as energy security. I had a long discussion with the Turkish Defence Minister at the NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels a couple of weeks ago, and I intend to see him again in London next week. We intend to continue to discuss issues such as joint exercising, joint training and potentially joint procurement. It is enormously to this country’s advantage to have Turkey onside and looking westwards rather than in any other direction.
Gordon Banks (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Lab)
Will Ministers tell me how effective they consider Vector Aerospace, in Almondbank in my constituency, to be in keeping the UK’s armed forces’ front lines effective?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Peter Luff)
I am delighted to pay tribute to the many defence companies that make such a valuable contribution to the work of our armed services, and I would be delighted to hear more from the hon. Gentleman about the company in his constituency. I know that its work is very valued.
Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)
T5. In view of the constraints on military spending, both financially and in terms of personnel, what help has the Ministry of Defence been asked to give the Home Office in providing security for the Olympic games?
Dr Fox
My hon. Friend has raised an important issue. In the National Security Council, we are committed to a cross-departmental defence of the United Kingdom and defence review. As part of our ongoing discussions, we will continue to discuss arrangements for the Olympics. The Security Minister and I have had a number of discussions on that subject.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
There is a growing public perception that the Trident replacement is being insulated from any kind of scrutiny—including the defence review—while the Government continue to tear conventional forces to bits. I am thinking particularly of the cuts in aircraft, which have already been mentioned. How long will the Secretary of State be happy with that situation?
Dr Fox
There will be no plans for any part of the defence of the United Kingdom until the defence review is completed in the autumn. We will, of course, face a very adverse financial position because of the utter financial incompetence of the outgoing Labour Government, who have left the country with record debts, and, sadly, we will have to make decisions about defence and other Government budgets in that light.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
What steps will the Secretary of State take to reduce homelessness among former members of the armed services? Will he promise to take steps to provide support in regard to mental health and tenancies, and to support those who turn to drugs and alcohol after their time in the armed services?
Mr Robathan
We are certainly concerned about any ex-service personnel who are homeless, but I do not think that we should overstate the case. According to the most recent review, conducted by the previous Government, only 3% of homeless people served in the armed forces, and three quarters of those were over the age of 45. That is not to say that we are not concerned about people over 45, or people under 45.
We will examine the issue as part of the military covenant. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) is examining mental health issues, which do indeed take a long time to come to the fore—typically, about 14 years.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Secretary of State agree that it would be an extremely retrograde step for the cuts in Government spending to sacrifice the new coastguard search and rescue helicopters that are such an important part of front-line rescue services in our country? They would be 30% faster than the Sea Kings, they are fitted with forward-looking infra-red, and they are good at low-flying night-time search and rescue. Surely there cannot be any more front-line expenditure than that.
Dr Fox
The hon. Gentleman is right about the importance of the services to which he refers. They are currently under review, as part of the defence review and our ongoing discussions with the Treasury. However, it does not come well from any member of the former Government to lecture anyone about public finances when we are having to make decisions on public spending against a more adverse financial backdrop than any Government have faced at least since the second world war.
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
Is my right hon. Friend aware of the anger in my constituency because the reverse bidding for the contract for the supply of socks did not work effectively? Does he understand that HJ Hall, which has supplied socks for three generations, lost the contract because it could not make its bids within the existing system, and will he please look into the issue?
Peter Luff
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his vigorous defence of his constituents. I agree that the matter is important, and I should like to discuss it with him further.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
When personnel tragically lose their lives on active service, is there a time limit by which their families must vacate service accommodation? If so, what is the time limit, and what assistance are those families given to find alternative accommodation?
Mr Robathan
I should make it clear that I was not warned of the hon. Gentleman’s question, but I understand that there is no such time limit. However, it is obviously in the interests of families—apart from any other considerations—to move out of service accommodation at some stage. We are examining all these issues because we are convinced of the need to support, especially, the families of brave young men cut down in their prime, and also those who have been injured. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we will provide that support.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Is the Minister aware that the previous Government shut down the Harlow Territorial Army centre? What plans has he to restore Territorial Army morale in Harlow and elsewhere in the country?
Dr Fox
The role of the Territorial Army has been greatly undervalued too often in the past. I pay tribute, on behalf of the Government, to the role that it plays in the security of our country. The specific future role of the Territorial Army, along with the roles of all sections of our armed forces, will be considered as part of the ongoing defence review.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
I am most concerned by what I read in the newspapers about the Taliban’s reaction to the timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. What implications does that have in respect of the issue of the Taliban in Pakistan, and has the Secretary of State had conversations with the Pakistan Government, given the crossover and the sensitivity between the two?
Dr Fox
My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has recently been in Pakistan and has had discussions with the security services there about the importance of the Pakistani Government dealing not only with the Pakistani Taliban but the Afghan Taliban. Unless we see these as a continuum in terms of security, we will not be able to make the progress we want and to achieve the security on the Afghan-Pakistan border that is vital for the security of the people of both countries.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
Following on from the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies), what decisions, if any, have been made about putting money into home-grown defence projects, especially in the Lancashire region?
Dr Fox
The Government intend to look at the value of home-grown defence projects in further consultations about the role of small and medium-sized businesses in the defence industry and the issue of sovereign capability for the United Kingdom. I look forward to my hon. Friend making some very full contributions to that debate when it takes place.
Political and Constitutional Reform
(14 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the Government’s proposals for parliamentary reform.
Every Member of this House was elected knowing that this Parliament must be unlike any other—that we have a unique duty to restore the trust in our political system that has been tested to its limits in recent times—and if anything was clear at the general election it was that more and more people realised that our political system was broken and needs to be fixed. They want us to clean up politics. They want to be able to hold us properly to account.
So the Government have set out an ambitious programme for political renewal, transferring power away from the Executive to empower Parliament, and away from Parliament to empower people. That programme includes: introducing a power of recall for MPs guilty of serious wrongdoing; tackling the influence of big money as we look again at party funding; taking forward long overdue reform of the other place; implementing the Wright Committee recommendations, and taking steps to give people more power to shape parliamentary business; speeding up the implementation of individual voter registration; and increasing transparency in lobbying, including through a statutory register.
Today, I am announcing the details of a number of major elements of the Government’s proposals for political reform. First, we are introducing legislation to fix parliamentary terms. The date of the next general election will be 7 May 2015. This is a hugely significant constitutional innovation. It is simply not right that general elections can be called according to a Prime Minister’s whims, so this Prime Minister will be the first Prime Minister to give up that right.
I know that when the coalition agreement was published there was some concern about these proposals. We have listened carefully to those concerns, and I can announce today how we will proceed, in a Bill that will be introduced before the summer recess. First, traditional powers of no confidence will be put into law, and a vote of no confidence will still require only a simple majority. Secondly, if after a vote of no confidence a Government cannot be formed within 14 days, Parliament will be dissolved and a general election will be held. Let me be clear: these steps will strengthen Parliament’s power over the Executive. Thirdly, there will be an additional power for Parliament to vote for an early and immediate Dissolution. We have decided that a majority of two thirds will be needed to carry the vote, as opposed to the 55% first suggested, as is the case in the Scottish Parliament. These changes will make it impossible for any Government to force a Dissolution for their own purposes. These proposals should make it absolutely clear to the House that votes of no confidence and votes for early Dissolution are entirely separate, and that we are putting in place safeguards against a lame-duck Government being left in limbo if the House passes a vote of no confidence but does not vote for early Dissolution.
I am also announcing today the details of the Government’s proposals to introduce a Bill before the summer to provide for a referendum on the alternative vote system, and for a review of constituency boundaries in order to create fewer and more equally sized constituencies, cutting the cost of politics and reducing the number of MPs from the 650 we have today to a House of 600 MPs.
Together, these proposals help to correct the deep unfairness in the way we hold elections in this country. Under the current set-up, votes count more in some parts of the country than others, and millions feel that their votes do not count at all. Elections are won and lost in a small minority of seats. We have a fractured democracy, where some people’s votes count and other people’s votes do not count; where some people are listened to and others are ignored. By equalising the size of constituencies, we ensure that people’s votes carry the same weight, no matter where they live. Only months ago the electorate of Islington North stood at 66,472, while 10 miles away, in East Ham, the figure was 87,809. In effect, that means that a person voting in East Ham has a vote that is worth much less than a vote in Islington North. That cannot be right. These imbalances are found right across the United Kingdom.
Reducing the number of MPs also allows us to bring our oversized House of Commons into line with legislatures across the world. The House of Commons is the largest directly elected Chamber in the European Union, and it is half as big again as the US House of Representatives. It was never intended that the overall size of the House should constantly keep rising, yet that is precisely the effect of the current legislation—the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986. Capping the number of MPs corrects that, and it saves money too. Having 59 fewer MPs saves £12 million a year on pay, pensions and allowances alone.
On the referendum, by giving people a choice over their electoral system, we give that system a new legitimacy. Surely, when dissatisfaction with politics is so great, one of our first acts must be to give people their own say over something as fundamental as how they elect their MPs. The question will be simple, asking people whether they want to adopt the alternative vote, yes or no; and the precise wording will be tested by the Electoral Commission. [Interruption.]
As for the date of the referendum, in making that decision we have been driven by three key considerations: first—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry to interrupt the Deputy Prime Minister. The statement by the Deputy Prime Minister must be heard with courtesy. If Members want to question him, they will have the chance to do so. The Deputy Prime Minister will be heard.
The Deputy Prime Minister
The first is that all parties fought the general election on an absolute pledge to move fast to fix our political system, so we must get on and do that without delay; secondly, it is important to avoid asking people to keep returning to the ballot box; and finally, in these straitened times we must keep costs as low as possible. That is why the Prime Minister and I have decided that the date for the referendum on the Bill will be 5 May 2011, the same day as the elections to the devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and local elections in England. That will save an estimated £17 million. I know that some hon. Members have concerns over that date, but I believe that people will easily be able to distinguish between the different issues on which they will be asked to vote on the same day.
Our Bill will make explicit provision for the Boundary Commissions to report on more equally sized constituencies and for the process to be completed by the end of 2013, allowing enough time for candidates to be selected ahead of the 2015 election; and we will ensure that the boundary commissions have what they need to do that. That means that, in the event of a vote in favour of the alternative vote, the 2015 general election will be held on the new system, and according to new boundaries. These are complementary changes—the outcome of the referendum is put in place as the new boundaries are put in place, too.
The Bill will require the Boundary Commissions to set new constituencies within 5% of a target quota of registered electors, with just two exceptions: Orkney and Shetland, and—[Laughter.]
The Deputy Prime Minister
The exceptions are Orkney and Shetland, and the Western Isles, which are uniquely placed, given their locations.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry to have to interrupt the Deputy Prime Minister, but the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) must not, however strongly he feels, shriek from a sedentary position in that way. It is very unseemly and, if I may say so, very untypical of the hon. Gentleman, who is normally grace itself.
The Deputy Prime Minister
The two exceptions are Orkney and Shetland, and the Western Isles, which are uniquely placed, given their locations. We have listened also to those who have very large constituencies, so the Bill will provide that no constituency will be larger than the size of the largest one now, and we intend that in future boundary reviews will be more frequent, to ensure that constituencies continue to meet the requirements that we will set out in our Bill.
I understand that this announcement will raise questions from those in all parts of this House, as these are profound changes. Let me just say that, yes, there are technical issues that will need to be scrutinised and approached with care as these Bills pass through Parliament, but ensuring that elections are as fair and democratic as possible is a matter of principle above all else. These are big, fundamental reforms that we are proposing, but we are all duty-bound to respond to public demand for political reform. That is how we restore people’s faith in their politics once again. I commend this statement to the House.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
I begin by thanking the right hon. Gentleman for early sight of his statement. First, will he acknowledge that his proposal today to abandon the 55% requirement for Dissolution following a vote of no confidence represents the first major U-turn of this Government, and it has come in less than two months? Why did he not think before about the impossibility of a Government hanging on after they had lost a vote of no confidence by a simple majority? That would have saved him a great deal of embarrassment. As to his now subsidiary proposal for a two-thirds majority for any other Dissolution, what is its purpose? It is not completely superfluous? Either he is in favour of fixed-term Parliaments as long as the Government of the day enjoy the confidence of this House or he is not.
On the issue of a referendum on the alternative vote system, the House will be well aware that just such a proposal was in a Labour Government Bill and was agreed by this House but not the other place before the election. Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that during the general election campaign he told The Independent that the alternative vote system was a “miserable little compromise”, saying
“I am not going to settle”
for that? Could the Deputy Prime Minister tell the House what has changed his mind?
Let me turn to the question of the date for this referendum. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that he decided on this May date, which coincides with the Scottish parliamentary and Welsh Assembly elections, and local elections in some, but by no means all, parts of England without any prior consultation with the Scottish Executive, the Welsh Assembly Government, the Northern Ireland Executive or—as far as one knows—local government? Will he confirm that none of the four previous referendums held in the United Kingdom—the EU referendum in 1975, and the more recent Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland referendums—has been held on the same day as elections? What is the argument for not following that precedent? Would it not have been altogether more sensible to consult widely on the best possible date and then to add the date to the Bill in due course? What is the argument against that?
The House will be well aware that we not only sought before the election to legislate for British voters to have a choice about whether to have the alternative vote system or to continue with first past the post, but we pledged to do so in our manifesto at the election. So my party is in support of voters having that choice at a referendum. However, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we will not allow that support to be used as some kind of cover for outrageously partisan proposals in the same Bill to gerrymander the boundaries of this House of Commons by arbitrarily changing the rules for setting boundaries and by an equally arbitrary cut in the number of MPs?
There never has been an issue about the need for constituencies to be broadly equal in size. That principle has been embodied in legislation for decades and has all-party support. As it happens, six of the 10 largest constituencies in the United Kingdom are Labour and only three of the 10 smallest are Labour. The right hon. Gentleman has agreed in debates in this House since the election that there is a huge problem, highlighted by the Electoral Commission this March, of 3.5 million citizens who are eligible to vote but are not on the electoral register. If his aim, as he says, is principle and to make the system fairer, why has he said nothing in his statement about how he will ensure that those 3.5 million are included in the Boundary Commission’s calculations about the size of constituencies and how he will get them on to the registers in time for the review?
If the right hon. Gentleman now accepts that there is a case for Orkney and Shetland, with an electorate of 37,000, and the Western Isles, with an electorate of 22,000, to be given special consideration, what on earth are the arguments for natural and historic boundaries elsewhere not to be taken into account by the Boundary Commission and by the legislation? As he claims that he wants to “empower” the people—his word in his statement—is it his intention that local communities should continue to have a right to an independent local boundary commission in their area if those local people wish it? If that is his intention, when he says, “we will ensure the Boundary Commissions have what they need” to complete this huge task by the end of 2013, only two years after this legislation has any chance of getting through, what additional resources and staff will the Boundary Commission be given?
Let me now turn to the right hon. Gentleman’s proposal to cut the number the number of MPs from 650 to 600—the most arbitrary and partisan of all his proposals. Does he recognise that his international comparisons are tendentious in the extreme since virtually every western country has many more proportionately elected representatives below the level of their national Parliaments than we do, whether the other nation is a federal state such as Germany or a unitary state such as France?
As for all the nonsense that the right hon. Gentleman came up with about how under Conservative legislation passed in 1986 the number of MPs has allegedly been rising inexorably, does he recognise that over the past 50 years the total number of Members of this House has increased by just 3% whereas electorates have increased by 25% and that the work load of Members of Parliament and the demand from constituents on them has expanded exponentially? How will having fewer Members of Parliament enable the British people to be given a better service by their Member of Parliament?
Is the Deputy Prime Minister aware that his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, when he gave evidence to his local Oxfordshire boundary inquiry in 2003, castigated the notion that there might be too many MPs? He said then:
“Somebody might take the view that at 659 there are already too many Members of Parliament at Westminster.”
He continued
“I certainly hope that is not the case.”
Was not the Prime Minister right then, and are not he and his deputy completely wrong now?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Before I deal with the questions that the right hon. Gentleman raised, I want to acknowledge, recognise and pay tribute to the fact that he and his colleagues in the previous Government—certainly in the early years—were a party, at one point, of political reform. They introduced significant reforms: getting rid of the hereditaries in the other place; changing the electoral system for election to the European Parliament; and devolving power to Wales and Scotland. Opposition Members have a choice, and I hope that they will take this opportunity to rediscover that spirit of political reform.
I shall respond to the right hon. Gentleman’s specific questions. He suggested that for the Government to listen represents a major U-turn. We listened to the objections raised on both sides of the House to our proposed 55% threshold, and we have acted on them. The inclusion of the two-thirds threshold gives an additional, new power to Parliament. Let us be clear what we are doing with the fixed-term provisions—provisions that his party used to support. We are taking power away from the Prime Minister and giving Parliament more power over the Executive. Surely that is something that he and other Opposition Members would support.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the fact that the referendum will coincide with elections being held on the same day. Is he seriously suggesting that people are incapable of taking more than one decision in a day, or of filling in an extra box to answer yes or no to a straightforward question? That is misleading and patronising at best. He claims that the ambition to have more equal constituencies is “outrageously partisan” and involves gerrymandering. It was the Chartists, back in the 1840s, who first proposed equal-sized constituencies. The Labour party used to believe that votes should have the same weight, wherever they were and whatever part of the country people found themselves in. How on earth can he and other Labour Members brand something as simple as giving fairness to every voter in the country as “outrageously partisan”? This proposal is based on a simple principle of fairness and he should support it.
The right hon. Gentleman cited the figure of 3.5 million unregistered voters, and I agree that something should be done about that—[Interruption.] Something has needed to be done about it for the past 13 years, and we will bring forward proposals to accelerate individual electoral registration, precisely to help to do that.
The right hon. Gentleman asked whether local people would be heard during the boundary review process. Yes, of course they will. He also returned to the issue of the size of the House of Commons. Let us remember that existing legislation—the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986—already suggests that our Chamber is far too large. If we do not change that by capping the number of MPs, that number will just ratchet up and up.
It seems to me that the right hon. Gentleman and the Labour party have a choice. Are they in favour of reform, or of the status quo? Over the past few weeks, the signs have not been very promising. Last week, he turned his back on any progressive reform of our criminal justice system. Every day since the election, he and his colleagues have opposed every measure that we have put forward to sort out the black hole in the public finances that they created. Is the Labour party a party of progress or of stagnation? Is it a party that stands for something, or does it just stand against everything? Is the Labour party in favour of change, or just in favour of itself?
Mr Speaker
Order. A great many right hon. and hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye, and accommodating most, let alone all, of them will require economy in questions and answers.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if a referendum on a major constitutional issue such as voting reform is to be seen as fair, it should not be the case that a mere 50% of those voting on the day should make the decision? Ought there not to be a threshold of, say, 40% of those entitled to vote, as was the case in 1978 in Scotland?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The coalition agreement is very clear that the referendum will be decided on the basis of a simple majority. If we had thresholds for legitimacy, many Members of this House would not be here right now. It is a simple principle that a simple majority should be sufficient to pass the referendum one way or the other, and that is what we will do.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
Does the Deputy Prime Minister accept that if we are to reform our democracy, one of the most important things is that we take not only our people, but our Parliament with us? Will he therefore ensure that there is effective pre-legislative scrutiny of the two Bills that he has proposed and the Bills that are to come? Without that, he is in danger of denying the legitimacy that his proposals will depend upon.
The Deputy Prime Minister
Of course I agree that it is essential that the Bills are properly scrutinised. As the hon. Gentleman knows, given that they are constitutional Bills, every stage of the passage of the Bills will be taken on the Floor of the House, so that every hon. Member can scrutinise these important Bills and have their say in the final shape of the legislation.
Mr Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (LD)
Obviously, I welcome the historic progress towards the alternative vote referendum and the fixed-term Parliaments. May I be a little more parochial and ask a question on the issue of constituency size, as for the past 27 years, under three sets of radically different constituency boundaries, I have had the privilege of representing the largest geographic constituency in this place—just below the 13,000 sq km cap that my right hon. Friend proposes to introduce? Can he confirm that the boundary commissioners will retain the flexibility in the Scottish context that they had last time round for the Westminster boundaries, when they could have opted for two Highland council area seats—that is a land mass the size of Belgium, let us remember—but in fact they opted for three?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I recognise, of course, the outstanding job that my right hon. Friend does across a constituency that is by far the largest in the country. That is why, taking the cue from his constituency, we will specify in the Bill that no new constituency can be any larger than his present constituency—just shy of 13,000 sq km. As for the basis upon which the Boundary Commissions will make their decisions, the exceptions on the face of the Bill will be very limited—for obvious reasons, the two island constituencies that I set out, and the geographical cap in size that I specified. Beyond that, the duty will be on the Boundary Commissions to deliver what we have always intended should be delivered—constituencies that are more equal in size in terms of the number of voters in each constituency.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
If one were to cut the number of MPs but keep the same number of Government Ministers, as is laid down in statute, one would have increased the stranglehold of the Government over the House. If the Deputy Prime Minister is to proceed with the cut, will he undertake to cut the number of Ministers, and if so, could he cut it by 22?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The key question is whether the package of reform increases the power of Parliament to hold the Executive to account. That is the fundamental issue of principle which members of the Labour party, when they were in favour of political reform, used to understand. This package of reform unambiguously puts this Parliament back in the driving seat.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I commend the Deputy Prime Minister for changing his mind on the 55% proposal, but may I ask him to think again about the timing of the referendum? The reason that the Electoral Commission recommends against holding referendums on the same day as elections is not that people cannot decide on more than one thing at a time, but that it leads to differential turnouts, which means that the subsequent referendum is unrepresentative. Would that not be unfortunate on such an important issue?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The Electoral Commission, which the right hon. Gentleman cited, said just last week:
“There are benefits of holding elections and referendums on the same day—for example to encourage turnout, but there are risks associated with combination too.”
What we must do is act in order to minimise those risks and increase the benefit. The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point. There were real problems in the elections in 2007 which, as analysed in the Gould report, raised concerns about combining elections at the same time, but let us remember that as the Gould report demonstrated clearly, the complexity at that time arose from the coincidence of elections to Holyrood and very complex and lengthy ballot papers for the local elections in Scotland. In the proposed referendum, there will be a very simple question to which there is a simple yes or no answer. I think people will understand that that is best held at the same time as they go to vote on other matters, rather than asking them to return to the ballot box on another occasion, at great additional expense to the taxpayer.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Making this announcement and fixing, to use the right hon. Gentleman’s word, the date of the next general election for the same day as the Scottish and Welsh elections totally ignores the strong recommendations of both the Gould and Arbuthnott reports. It sounds to me not like the respect agenda, but actually like the contempt agenda.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I do not recognise that it is contemptuous towards the people of Britain, wherever they live, to give them that opportunity for the first time—an opportunity, by the way, that was first promised by the Labour party in its 1997 manifesto, but never delivered, like so many other points of the political reform agenda that remained undelivered over the past decade. I do not think it contemptuous to ask people—wherever they live in Wales, Scotland, England or whatever part of the United Kingdom—to have their say on the electoral system that elects Members to this House, and to ask them to do so on a very simple yes or no basis at a time when they are voting in any event. It underestimates the people of Wales, Scotland—the United Kingdom—to suggest somehow that they are incapable of deciding more than one thing on the same day.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
That is not the suggestion being made. We all know that voting reform—changing the voting system—is a big deal in here but of very scant interest to the vast majority of our voters. What is the justification for artificially inflating turnout by coinciding the referendum with other elections, when the right hon. Gentleman has yet to receive any formal advice on that topic from the Electoral Commission?
The Deputy Prime Minister
With respect—[Interruption.] It is absurd to suggest that it is artificially inflating turnout by just giving people the opportunity to have their say. There is absolutely nothing wrong with giving people the opportunity to have their say and doing so on a very simple basis, with a simple question and a simple yes or no answer, at a time when people are voting in any event—unless the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that we waste millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on organising it for another occasion. I see no logic in that whatever.
Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
It is a great shame that the Deputy Prime Minister did not have the guts to fight for the best change in the electoral system, and the one in which he once believed and I still do—that is, proportional representation. Would it not be fair to give the electorate a say on that as well as on the alternative vote in the coming referendum? If he couples the alternative vote, which benefits only the Liberals, with a reduction in the number and redistribution of seats, which is designed to hurt the Labour party, is that really democratisation or the biggest gerrymander in British history?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Once again, another Labour Member calls a simple act of democracy—giving people in a referendum the right to have a say about how we are elected to this House—gerrymandering. Only in the weird and wonderful world of a party immersed in the most mind-numbing, introverted leadership contest would that be called gerrymandering. It is simply aimed at one objective: to make sure that our elections are conducted more fairly and people’s votes are of the same weight wherever they find themselves in the United Kingdom. That is an issue of principle which I believe is right, and I hope that when the hon. Gentleman thinks about it he will join the rest of us who want to give people the chance finally to reform our broken political system.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I am grateful to the Deputy Prime Minister for having listened to the views of Back Benchers on the ludicrous 55% proposal, but will he reconsider the answer that he gave to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)? If the right hon. Gentleman’s avowed intent is to give more power to Parliament at the expense of the Government, how can it be right to maintain the current number of Ministers while reducing the number of MPs who hold them to account?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Gentleman. He is a long-serving Member who will always hold any Government’s feet to the fire, and I respect him for that and pay tribute to him—
Mr Speaker
Order. I apologise—[Interruption.] Order. There is simply too much noise in the Chamber. The House must behave in a more seemly fashion.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will also agree, however, that the measures that we have announced today will strengthen the role of Parliament in holding the Executive to account. They will strengthen the power of this House to throw out a Government through a motion of no confidence, and if a Government are not re-formed within 14 days there will be a general election and a Dissolution of the House. That seems to me to be a very significant shift that takes power away from the Prime Minister, which has never been done before, and gives more power to the House. It is something that I hope the hon. Gentleman will welcome.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the Government’s decision to implement Labour’s election manifesto pledge for a referendum on the alternative vote system. Many Labour Members will support a yes vote in that referendum, but we will not support the gerrymandering of parliamentary constituencies. What concrete action will the Deputy Prime Minister take to reduce the number of people—3.5 million—who are eligible to be on the electoral register but are not?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support for a referendum that would allow people to have their say on the electoral system. I believe, none the less, that the boundary changes that we are proposing are perhaps more modest than he and other Labour Members fear. [Interruption.] Well, it is a cut of 7.7% in the number of Members of this House. It brings the size of this House much more into line with existing legislation on what it should be, it starts to bring the size of this Chamber into line with those in other parts of the democratic world, and—this is perhaps part of the answer that I should have given to the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope)—it does not impede the ability of this House to hold Ministers, however many or few of them there are, to account. That package, combined with the additional powers of Dissolution, provides fairness in the votes that are cast and provides more power to this House.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
I am sure that the Deputy Prime Minister has, like me, noticed how the Labour party has mutated from a party that believes in political reform to one that would quite like it, but not now, and not this particular reform. Given Labour Members’ opposition, as with the 1832 Reform Act, to their rotten boroughs being removed, does he see that they have now given up on the idea of one person, one vote of equal value?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I agree. It is quite remarkable for a party that was once proud of its credentials as a movement of political reform now to act with barely disguised paranoia about a perfectly logical approach to redrawing our boundaries and with churlishness at the opportunity finally to have a referendum that would usher in AV, which is a proposal that the Labour party used to make—a party, remember, which back in 1997 fought the election campaign on a manifesto commitment to giving people the right to have their say about how people are elected to this House. This is, yet again, a commitment to political reform that the Labour party has failed to deliver and that we are now delivering for them.
Mr Speaker
May I reiterate the request for short questions and economical replies? A very large number of colleagues wish to contribute, and I would like to enable them to do so.
Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Minister now regret using the term “fix” in the context of the political system? Does he believe that the referendum that takes place—I would support that—will remain simply on the question of the voting system, or might it not also give people the opportunity to express a view on whether they support the programme of increasing VAT and making cuts that the Liberals have endorsed, and allow us to give a verdict on whether we approve or disapprove of the Liberals?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I suspect that I know how the hon. Gentleman might vote in that referendum. No, the referendum question is just on the narrow point of giving people the option to support the alternative vote system, and it will be susceptible to a simple yes or no answer.
Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
I welcome the Deputy Prime Minister’s proposals to equalise the size of constituencies. Does he agree that this is not just a case of giving equal weight to each vote but it is very important in the context of removing an element of bias in our electoral system and making the system that we have much more proportional than it is at the moment?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend. It cannot be right that we can have a situation whereby, as I cited earlier, there are 20,000 more voters in one constituency than in a constituency just 10 miles down the road. That means, quite simply, that the weight of the vote where there are 20,000 more electors is worth less than that in a constituency just 10 miles down the road. It seems to me that it is obvious to most people that that is unfair and needs to be changed.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
As the Member with, I believe, the sixth largest electorate in the country, I am acutely aware, despite having 86,000 electors, that in the most deprived parts of my constituency very large numbers of people are not on the electoral register. There is a huge bias in our system against the most deprived people living in the most deprived areas, and unless the Government do something to get them on the register, this really will be a fix.
The Deputy Prime Minister
But what did the previous Government do for 13 years? Of course we can all agree with the right hon. Gentleman that it is bad and wrong that 3.5 million people are not on the register—he is absolutely right about that—but we will take measures to increase and accelerate individual electoral registration. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I genuinely apologise that I have to keep interrupting the Deputy Prime Minister, but I want to hear him. I want to hear the content of his arguments and his mellifluous tones, and I keep being prevented from hearing him by people chuntering away from a sedentary position. Please do not.
The Deputy Prime Minister
They chunter because they do not like to be reminded that they did nothing on voter registration for 13 years. They did nothing to give people the chance to have a say about how we are elected to this House, or to rectify the unfairness of the way in which votes are distributed across constituencies. If we could work together across parties to deal with these big issues, including ensuring that those who are not registered become properly registered, I would welcome that, but I just do not think it is helped by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) somehow accusing a new coalition Government, who have been in power for only a few weeks, of failing to do something about a problem that his Government did nothing to rectify for 13 years.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has made a brave and courageous statement for a Government who want radical reform. However, does he agree that referendums should not be held on the same day as elections, so that we can have proper debate? Would it not be a good idea to hold a series of elections on that date, and perhaps another vote that was a matter of yes or no?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I hear what my hon. Friend says, but I disagree with him for the simple reason that I do not think that the question that will be put forward will be very complex. Is it a simple choice: do people want to have the alternative vote as the system by which Members are elected to this House—yes or no? I personally do not see why it would be right to incur the additional cost, complexity and delay that would arise if we had the referendum on a separate date.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
We already know that the Prime Minister will campaign for a no vote in the referendum, and many of his Conservative hon. Friends will back his lead. If the Deputy Prime Minister is seeking a yes vote, he will need a lot of support from people such as me—electoral reformers on the Labour Benches. Does he realise that he is not likely to get that if there is a single question on both increasing the size of constituencies and moving to AV? The only way he will get support for AV is by having separate questions on AV and the number of constituencies.
The Deputy Prime Minister
The review of the boundaries will not be subject to a vote in the referendum. The referendum question will simply be on whether people—yes or no—want the alternative vote as the means by which Members are elected to this House.
The hon. Gentleman alludes to the fact that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I will be on opposite sides of the argument. I understand that for the hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members it is difficult to imagine that there might be different shades of opinion in Governments. I read in the newspapers this weekend of a pollster for the Labour party who disagreed with the party but was too frightened to leave the Government because she said she knew that she would be smeared in the newspapers. At least we on these Benches are grown-up enough to be open and relaxed about differences where they exist.
Mr Andrew Turner
Could the right hon. Gentleman assist me by saying how much consultation there has been with either residents of the Isle of Wight or those further afield?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Of course there must and will be consultation with the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, as there will be with constituents up and down the country. I recognise, of course, that he will have particular concerns as he represents an island constituency, but I hope that he will be able to see the virtue of a general principle of fairness and more equal constituencies applying across the United Kingdom, with the exception of the two island constituencies that I referred to earlier.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
I wonder whether the Deputy Prime Minister could give a clear answer to a simple question. Did he or any of his Ministers have discussions with the Scottish Government or any of the Scottish party leaders prior to the date of the referendum being trailed in the press? If he did not, what does that say for the so-called respect agenda for the devolved Administrations?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Clearly, we will be consulting with the devolved Administrations. [Interruption.] I do not think that there is anything wrong with the Government’s putting forward their proposals in the manner that we have. We have been open and transparent about it and moved as fast as we can. We have told the House first; I often hear Opposition Members complaining that announcements should not be communicated to others. We have come to the House at the earliest possible opportunity. The date and all other matters will now be subject to full scrutiny here on the Floor of the House of Commons, as is right for all Bills that have a constitutional significance.
Mr Mike Hancock (Portsmouth South) (LD)
Could the Deputy Prime Minister kindly inform the House about who was consulted about the date of the referendum? If anyone was, what was the response he got? Can he also assure me that there will be legislation before the summer about the reform of the House of Lords, which seems to be sadly lacking in the statement that he has made to the House this afternoon?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I will not repeat what I said earlier about the consultation on the measures that I have described today. As for the Bill for the reform of the other place, I remain determined—we remain determined as a coalition Government—to produce a draft Bill, for the first time in more than 100 years in the debate about reform of the other place, by the end of this year.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
May I ask the Deputy Prime Minister specifically what consultation there was with the First Minister about the issue of the Assembly election and the AV referendum being held on the same day?
The Deputy Prime Minister
It is within the gift of this Government to make the proposal and to come to this House first with the announcement. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways; he cannot criticise us for talking to others outside the House when in fact this time we are doing what he and his Labour colleagues have been saying for weeks—that we should come to this House. That is what we have done and that is the right way to proceed.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister wants to hold a referendum to change the voting system and make a coalition Government more likely in future. Why does he not think that it is worth letting people see for much longer what a coalition Government look like, so that they can make an informed choice on the voting system rather than having the decision thrust on them so quickly? Why the rush?
The Deputy Prime Minister
By the time the referendum is held, people will have had a whole year; I suggest that that is long enough for them to make a judgment, even if my hon. Friend has made an instant judgment himself.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
In 1832, Wales had 32 MPs and a population of 1 million. Now Wales has a population of more than 3 million and there has been only an 8% increase in its percentage of MPs. Is that just?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I am afraid that I do not agree with the right hon. Lady’s assumption that the worth of the House should be judged by the number of Members sitting in it. I do not think that a constant inflation of politicians is a sign of the health of any democracy. I really do not think that a cut by 7.7% of the number of Members in the House is the chilling, draconian measure that she and so many Opposition Members seem to think it is.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister proposes a referendum on how we are elected. He has also proposed an in-or-out referendum on Europe. Is he aware that some of us will vote to give him a referendum on AV only if he gives us the in-or-out referendum?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As the hon. Gentleman knows, the coalition agreement also includes clear provisions for a referendum lock on any further transfer of power and sovereignty from Parliament to Brussels and Strasbourg. That will reassure him and everybody else that that matter will be put to a referendum of the whole country.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
I have heard before the words that the right hon. Gentleman uses about making every vote count, and I supported him, although in that case they referred to a more proportional voting system. However, I would support him in making every vote count in terms of equal constituencies if he could confidently show the House that that would be the result of the changes. In view of the fact that the census will report in 2013 and that he proposes a new registration scheme, what resources has he sought to ensure that everyone eligible is registered, so that we can get genuinely fair and equal constituencies?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As the hon. Lady will know, we need to start with the work of the boundary review as soon as possible in order that it can be concluded in the timetable that we have set out. That is why the boundary review will be based on the electoral register that will be published at the beginning of December this year.
Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement. He will be aware that the boundary between Cornwall and England was set more than a thousand years ago, sadly by conquest. Will the direction that he and the Government give to the Electoral Commission through the Bill take account of such ancient boundaries?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I hear what my hon. Friend says about the boundary between Cornwall and England, although I am sure that many of his constituents would be delighted to know that they are also citizens of England and the United Kingdom. The rule of thumb will be that the Boundary Commission should seek to redraw boundaries according to the simple principle that constituencies should be of a more equal size than they are at the moment, within the parameters that I have described. That will be the predominant requirement on the boundary commissions, and it will be of greater weight and importance than any other considerations.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
On fixed-term Parliaments, does the Deputy Prime Minister agree with the statement that the Prime Minister made during the general election campaign that unelected Prime Ministers ought to face election automatically within six months?
The Deputy Prime Minister
We have been very clear in the coalition agreement that we want to see the introduction of a Bill for fixed-term Parliaments in which exceptional elections will be just that, and so that we will never again be subjected to the pantomime of 2007, when the Government of this country were paralysed by the Prime Minister’s dithering and indecision on whether or not to call an election. The Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have finally put an end to that.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
Will the Deputy Prime Minister confirm that with an approximate 8% reduction in the number of MPs, there will also be at least an 8% reduction in the ridiculously high administrative costs of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority?
The Deputy Prime Minister
IPSA, as the hon. Gentleman knows, is entirely independent.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
We are the only Parliament in the world whose second Chamber is larger than the first, and Labour’s next phase of reform would have addressed that—[Interruption.]
Caroline Flint
Is it true that the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition plans not only to allow existing peers to remain until they die, but to create nearly 200 more peers at a time when they are going to cut the number of MPs?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I am delighted to hear that the right hon. Lady is already talking about the next phase of Labour’s reforms. I wonder what that is. Is it the phase that was in the manifesto in 1997 that was never delivered; the phase about improving individual electoral registration; the phase in favour of a referendum; the phase to devolve power; or the phase to decentralise government in this country?
The Deputy Prime Minister
At the rate the Opposition are going, there is never going to be another phase.
Mr Speaker
Order. It has been a bit broad so far. I gently remind the Deputy Prime Minister that we must focus on the policies of the Government, rather than those of the Opposition.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that it is the responsibility of local authorities to address their record in electoral registration in time for this new electoral roll to be used in his boundary review?
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
As I hope the House knows, I am a supporter of mathematics in all its guises, but to use mathematics as a cover for what is essentially the gerrymandering of constituencies is an insult to mathematicians everywhere. Newcastle has thousands of unregistered voters, and it also has an identity that we want to keep without continual boundary reviews. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that the only votes that did not count at the last election were those of Liberal Democrat voters in search of a progressive party?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I remind the hon. Lady that we all fought the last general election on a boundary review based on the electoral register of 10 years ago. The system is deeply, deeply imperfect. What we are trying to do—and it did not happen in 13 years under the Labour Government—is hold a boundary review, without threatening the identity of Newcastle or any other area. We want it to be done quickly and for it to be established on the simple principle of fairness, with all votes being of equal worth wherever people live in the United Kingdom.
Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) is an excellent constituency MP, thereby demonstrating that he is fully capable of representing 86,000 constituents, contrary to what the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said, and that all of us should be capable of doing the same?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I happen to agree that if the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) can do it with a larger constituency than that envisaged in our Bill, any of us can.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
The referendum has been set for May 2011, but the people of Northern Ireland expect to have two elections on that day already—for the Northern Ireland Assembly and for local government. Do the Government plan to move the local government elections to March, with the referendum and the Northern Ireland Assembly elections in May? That would be two elections in two months. What happened to saving money?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I have been consulting with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point of principle. If we were to do what Opposition Members suggest and parcel out votes on different days, it would not only incur greater expense but devalue the elections that came later in the cycle. Let us imagine having three different votes on three different matters over the course of three months—that would be an act of disrespect to voters in Northern Ireland as it would to voters in other parts of the UK.
Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on an excellent statement. I ask him to look again at one issue—the timing of the referendum. I understand his arguments on cost and convenience to electors, but a further consideration is the perception that the referendum is fair. Holding it on a day when my constituents in London have no local elections, but people in Scotland and Wales are electing their national Parliaments, could lead to a skewed result.
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman raises the question of the date, as many others have. I simply reiterate that it is uncomplicated to ask people to answer yes or no to a simple question on the alternative vote at a time when they are voting on other matters. I do not accept the argument that it is difficult for people to make those different decisions on the same day. I hope that he would also agree that to do otherwise would incur significant additional cost at a time when we are rightly seeking to keep costs down.
Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)
On three occasions this afternoon, the Deputy Prime Minister has been asked about the 3.5 million people missing from electoral registers. On two occasions he has mentioned individual registration. Does he not realise that that will compound the problem and potentially drive the figure up to 5 million or 6 million people? Where is the equality in conducting the review, with all those people missing from the registers?
The Deputy Prime Minister
We have inherited a register from the previous Labour Government. For 13 years, nothing was done about the large numbers of people who are not on the register. We are now looking at the matter urgently. I disagree with the hon. Gentleman that individual electoral registration would not help to deal with the problem if it is done properly, and if it is properly resourced and given sufficient time to be implemented correctly. That is what we will be seeking to do.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
Does the Deputy Prime Minister not agree that, in addition to the three welcome modernising proposals, which give more power to the legislature over Government, more power to the voter and more power to individual MPs, who will have greater authority because a majority of their constituents will support them, the Bill gives us the opportunity to respond to the other fallacious argument—that there is gerrymandering in the Bill—and ensure that we can have a modern electoral registration process that captures everybody in the months before voting, so that there can be no excuse for anybody who wants to vote not being on the list and no argument that the constituencies will not be fair in future?
The Deputy Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is right. Once the synthetic fury about the proposal dies down, I hope not only that Members in all parts of the House will see that the proposal to cap the number of Members of this House at 600 is a sensible one, based on the simple principle of fairness and equality, but that this will be accompanied by greater efforts—I hope that we will be able to work on this across party lines—to ensure that those who want to vote are registered to vote in the first place.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister touched on the malign impact of big money on politics in Britain, a point on which I totally agree. Does he not accept that the only way to control that is to have rigid and low limits on spending at elections and between them, to ensure that Lord Ashcroft and his friends do not buy elections in future?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we should of course strive towards a cross-party approach on party funding, which is something to which this Government will return. We explain clearly in our coalition agreement that we want to pick up from where the cross-party talks on funding reform in the previous Parliament collapsed—and collapsed on all sides—and finally get big money out of British politics, so that the way in which we conduct ourselves and fight campaigns is beyond reproach.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
Is my right hon. Friend aware that preferential voting systems such as AV are used for internal party elections in most, if not all parties in this House, as well as for elections to positions in this House—including your position, Mr Speaker—and that some Members were elected to this House using such systems until 1950? Given that, does he understand why some Members believe that preferential voting is good enough for us, but not good enough for the public?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I agree with my hon. Friend that preferential voting is not as alien a concept as it is sometimes made out to be. All three main parties in the House use a form of preferential voting to elect their leaders—in fact, the Labour party is doing it right now—and a form of preferential voting was used for the election of the Mayor of London. AV is not a proportional system; it is a preferential system, and it is right that people up and down the country should now have their say on whether it should be introduced or not.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
On the issue of Wales, if the Government received a request from the Welsh Assembly under the Government of Wales Act 1998 to delay the Welsh Assembly elections by a month, as is allowed under the regulations, what will the Government’s response be? Is the Deputy Prime Minister ruling that possibility out?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I will of course consult the Secretary of State for Wales, and, indeed, the Secretary of State for Scotland. I know that the Secretary of State for Wales is in Cardiff today. If that request is made, we will of course have to take a decision at that time.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), the Deputy Prime Minister used the argument that people would not be confused about voting on two separate issues on the same day. I entirely agree with him, but if we are going to change the voting system, it must have complete credibility, and there is a real risk that in holding this referendum on a day when there will be differential turnout in different parts of the United Kingdom, it will not have that credibility. Will the Deputy Prime Minister reflect on the fact that if we are going to make this change, it would be in his interest for it to have complete legitimacy?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I hear what my hon. Friend says. I suspect, to be honest, that for those who quite rightly wish to argue that there should be no change to the system, almost any date will be construed in one way or another as being a reason for why the vote should not proceed on that date. My view is that the arguments we have put forward—of cost; of getting on with it, given that we have all recently fought an election campaign in favour of political reform; and of preventing people from returning over and over again to the ballot box—are arguments well made, which I hope my hon. Friend will, over time, share.
Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)
May I be the first Member unequivocally to say to the Deputy Prime Minister this afternoon that he has my full support for a yes vote in the referendum? On civil service reform, does he intend to prohibit the practice whereby Ministers can make political appointments by granting temporary civil service status to members of staff? Will he tell me how many people are currently in that position?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I cannot answer the latter question. I am very grateful, however, for what the hon. Gentleman said at first—that he is keen to provide support for the referendum campaign.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
What consideration has been given to the gerrymandering—an issue raised across the Floor—of postal votes in connection with electoral reform?
The Deputy Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I think there is widespread concern on both sides of the House about the evidence of irregularities in the way postal votes are administered. We are indeed looking at that right now.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
When the Deputy Prime Minister said only months ago that the electorate of Islington North was 66,472 while only 10 miles away, the comparable figure in East Ham was 87,809, was he referring to the position before the general election at which point the Boundary Commission came in to remedy that situation? Does he not think that it was perhaps disingenuous to mislead the House in that way? Does he accept that—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I did appeal for economy in questions and time is moving on; we must progress. I think that we have got the thrust of his question, and we are grateful for it.
The Deputy Prime Minister
The figures I cited were the figures that prevailed at the time of the last general election.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
The Deputy Prime Minister is a student of Germany. He will be aware of what happened in the early 1980s when Hans-Dietrich Genscher betrayed Helmut Schmidt, crossed the floor, and propped up a new Government without the election of Helmut Kohl. Is it his aspiration to be the Hans-Dietrich Genscher in British politics? [Interruption.]
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
It will probably come as no surprise to the Deputy Prime Minister that, in common with other Members, I fundamentally disagree with his arguments about boundaries and cutting the number of MPs, but will he accept that whoever is right or wrong on that argument, it is an entirely separate argument from whether we should change the voting system? Why, then, has he sought to put all this together in one Bill? Does not this appear to be more of a deal between coalition partners than the deal that he should be involved in—a deal with the British people to give them a say on the kind of voting system that they want?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I of course agree that as far as the referendum is concerned, it is purely on the issue of the electoral system. I disagree with the hon. Gentleman, however, that there is somehow no link at all between the electoral system by which Members are voted to this House and the size of different constituencies. In a sense, it seems to me that both these measures are complementary; they work hand in hand to deal with a fundamental unfairness whereby votes in some areas are frankly disregarded while in other areas the worth of someone’s vote is much greater than elsewhere. These measures taken together seek to remedy that.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
I welcome the opportunity for the electorate to have a chance to vote on AV, but does the Deputy Prime Minister share my concern that it gives a second bite of the cherry to minority parties such as the BNP?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I think that the alternative vote system, were it to be introduced, would not be susceptible to the dangers of some other electoral systems of fostering and allowing extremist parties to get a foot in the door of mainstream politics. If it were susceptible to such dangers, I would be as concerned as she is.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister had the audacity to mention the Chartists, who did not believe in taxing the poor, but did believe in annual Parliaments. Will the Deputy Prime Minister tell us the average length of a Parliament since 1867 and why this Government, of all Governments, should last longer?
Mr Speaker
May I ask the Deputy Prime Minister not to read a history book before providing his answer?
The Deputy Prime Minister
This is 20 questions by a historian. The last Government—the hon. Gentleman’s party in government—governed for five years. We are merely legislating—[Interruption.] Instead of setting history questions, why does he not think about why his party, which was once a party of political reform, now seems to be backing off from that long-standing political tradition? It is a great shame that that is happening.
Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)
No matter how much gerrymandering the Deputy Prime Minister does, it will not make one bit of difference in Scotland, because there will not be another Tory who gets elected up there. The biggest issue I face every year is the number and complexity of elections taking place, and the type of elections taking place. Surely the logic is to have a referendum with a multitude of choices, so that people decide once and for all which electoral system to adopt, ending the current plethora of electoral systems.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I agree that the development of different electoral systems for different bodies creates complexities of its own. However, we should not make the best the enemy of the good. We are aiming not for excessive neatness, but simply asking people whether they want to change the system of election to this House to the alternative vote—yes or no. As our political system evolves, the longer-term question, which the hon. Gentleman poses, is whether we should seek greater consistency across different elected bodies’ electoral systems.
Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
If the boundary review goes ahead on the basis of the register in December, it is likely that at least 10% of my electorate will be missing from that register. Contrary to what the right hon. Gentleman said about individual registration, all the evidence suggests that its introduction, especially on an accelerated programme, is likely to make matters worse. If more than 3.5 million people will be missing from the register, all of us in the House need to ask whether that will be good for democracy.
The Deputy Prime Minister
As I said, we have inherited the deep flaws in the register from the previous Government. It is incumbent on all of us, and on local authorities that administer the process, to encourage people to register in the first place. Clearly, with the prospect of the boundary review being conducted on the new electoral register, local authorities and every Member of the House have an added incentive to innovate locally, door to door, to get more people to register in the first place.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
On the issue of recall, does the Deputy Prime Minister consider himself in danger of recall, given the serious wrongdoing he has inflicted on the people of Sheffield, Hallam?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Thanks for the relevant question.
As the hon. Gentleman is aware, the loan pledged by the last Government to Sheffield Forgemasters—an outstanding company about which I suspect I know a great deal more than he does—was announced for political purposes, just before the general election, to allow the then Prime Minister to make a late-night photo-opportunity visit to Sheffield Forgemasters two days before the election, and the Government made that announcement in the full knowledge that they did not have the money to make the promise in the first place. What was cynical—deeply cynical—was for a Government to raise the hopes of people in Sheffield by making promises which they knew they could not afford.
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
In his statement the Deputy Prime Minister mentioned sorting out the influence of big money in politics. Does that include trade union money?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Clearly, any new arrangement for the funding of political parties will need to be binding on all political parties in a consistent manner, and that is what we will aim to achieve.
Gordon Banks (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Lab)
The Prime Minister is already committed to answering questions in the Scottish Parliament on issues of real importance. Can the Deputy Prime Minister tell us when the Prime Minister will go to Holyrood to answer questions about the referendum date?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I think that that is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I am sure that he will reply to the hon. Gentleman’s question as soon as he knows when he will be answering questions in the Scottish Parliament.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
My right hon. Friend and I used to represent a region containing 4.2 million people in the European Parliament, and we now represent constituencies with electorates of roughly the same size. Can my right hon. Friend tell us how large he thinks the electorate would be in the ideal seat?
The Deputy Prime Minister
We estimate, on the basis of calculations that will need to be derived from the electoral register published in early December, that the optimal size will be about 75,000.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Deputy Prime Minister think again about the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope)? If there is a reduction in the number of Members of Parliament but not in the number of Ministers as set out in the Ministers of the Crown Act 1975, there will be an increase in the ratio between the number of Ministers and the number of Back Benchers. Does he understand that point, and will he now address it?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I simply do not accept that there is an imbalance between the number of Ministers and the manner in which they are held to account by a House which will be about 7.7% smaller. I believe that a House with 600 Members will be as well equipped to hold this and, indeed, any other Government to account as the present House is with 650.
Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister seems to accept that chaos occurred both during and following the 2007 election in Scotland, when more than 100,000 ballot papers were spoilt. The Gould report recommended that never again should people be presented with different ballot papers on the same day. The Deputy Prime Minister chooses to ignore that. Can he tell us why? He constantly refers to a ballot paper saying simply “yes or no”. Can he answer “yes or no” to this question? Has he consulted the Scottish Executive?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As it happens, the hon. Gentleman is wrong on a point of fact. The Gould report said very clearly that there was merit in votes coinciding on the same day, but said equally clearly that the way in which the ballot papers were designed in the 2007 election caused enormous confusion to voters. I do not believe that that dilemma will arise for people in this referendum, given the simplicity of the choice and the simplicity of the question.
Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)
Does the Deputy Prime Minister accept that in poorer working-class areas, fewer people register to vote and there is a lower turnout? Does he agree that it is important for those communities to have fair representation?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I accept, of course, that we must all make efforts—as individual Members and, as I said earlier, in co-operation with local authorities—to encourage people to register to vote if they are not already registered. However, I cannot escape the fact that we are having to operate with tools which we inherited from the last Government, and which allowed the wholly unacceptable circumstances in which 3.5 million people are not on the electoral register to occur in the first place. We will do whatever we can in trying to remedy that, but I ask the hon. Lady and other Opposition Members what on earth they were doing for 13 years if they feel so strongly about the problem now.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
If we move forward on House of Lords reform to an elected House, which I would support, will we then subject the poor voters of Brigg and Goole and other constituencies to a referendum on the electoral system for that House too?
The Deputy Prime Minister
In the Bill that we will publish before the end of the year, we will also propose the electoral system by which Members of the other place would be elected.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister has repeatedly suggested that the electoral register was inherited from the last Labour Government, but he also agreed with his colleague, the hon. Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames), that it is within the domain of local authorities to compile the electoral register. Which one is it?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Clearly, the system is one that we have inherited from the previous Government, but equally it is right that local authorities have a statutory responsibility to take steps to make sure the electoral register is up to date. I do not think those two things are mutually exclusive.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Can the Deputy Prime Minister confirm whether the new, reconstituted constituencies will cross current regional boundaries?
The Deputy Prime Minister
They may do, but the intention is that they will none the less retain the key building block of any constituency, which is ward boundaries. We want to keep that building block in place, as it would be simply too complicated to conduct the boundary review on the scale that has been proposed by any other means.
Mr Speaker
Order. We shall now move on to the statement on education funding. I ask Members wishing to leave the Chamber to do so quickly and quietly.
Education Funding
(14 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on education funding.
This coalition Government are determined to make opportunity more equal and to reverse the decline in the performance of our education system relative to that of our international competitors. Over the last 10 years we have declined from fourth in the world for the quality of science education to 14th, from seventh in the world for literacy to 17th, and from eight in the world for mathematics to 24th. At the same time the gulf between rich and poor has got wider, with the attainment gap between students in fee-paying schools and those in state schools doubling. But the action necessary to improve our schools is made more difficult by the truly appalling state of the public finances left by the last Government.
This coalition Government have inherited a national debt approaching £1 trillion, a budget deficit of £155 billion and debt interest costs every year that are more than the entire schools budget. It is no surprise then that the last Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer felt he had to pledge a 50% cut in all capital spending, the last Labour Education Secretary could not make any firm promises to protect schools capital spending in the future, and the last Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury left a letter saying simply, “There is no money left.”
Faced with the desperate mess left by the last Administration, this Government have had to prioritise, and our first priority is raising the attainment of the poorest by investing in great teaching. We know that the world’s best education systems have the most highly qualified teachers, and we are fortunate that the current generation of teachers is the best ever, but we must do better if we are to keep pace with the best in the world.
No organisation has done more to attract brilliant new recruits into the classroom than the charity, Teach First. Since its launch, Teach First has placed hundreds of highly accomplished graduates in our most challenging schools and has helped to drive up attainment in those schools for the very poorest children. We believe that every child should have access to excellence, especially the poorest, which is why we will more than double the size of this programme from 560 new teachers a year to 1,140. We will help recruit hundreds more teachers into areas of poverty, so there will be Teach First teachers in one third of all challenging schools, and, breaking new ground, we will fund the permanent expansion of Teach First into primary schools so that more than 300 superb new teachers will be working in some of the country’s most challenging primaries.
However, while we have chosen to invest in people, there have been alternative submissions on how to make savings in the education budget. The shadow Education Secretary has argued in The Sunday Times that we should be sacking 3,000 heads and deputy heads this year in order to balance the books. I have rejected that advice. While the Labour party’s answer to our economic mess is further undermining the teaching profession, our answer is supporting great teaching. Therefore, in order to clear up the economic mess we have been left, we have to bear down on the waste and bureaucracy that has characterised Labour’s years in office and rein back the projects that have not been properly funded.
Even before we formed this coalition Government and had the opportunity to look properly at the scandalous mess we inherited, we knew that Labour Ministers had no proper respect for public money. The whole process by which the then Government procured new school buildings was a case in point. The Building Schools for the Future scheme has been responsible for about one third of all this Department’s capital spending, but throughout its life it has been characterised by massive overspends, tragic delays, botched construction projects and needless bureaucracy.
The BSF process had nine meta-stages: preparation for BSF; project initiation; strategic planning; business case development; procurement planning; procurement; contractual close; construction; and then operation. Each of these meta-stages had a series of sub-stages. Meta-stage 3—strategic planning—for example, had another nine sub-stages. Step 1 required local authorities to produce a strategic overview of the education strategy. Step 2 required local authorities to produce a school and further education estate summary. Step 5 required local authorities to produce another strategic overview—this time with “detail and delivery”. Step 6 required local authorities to use the school and FE estate summary to develop an “estates strategy”. Only once we had reached step 9—once the Department for Education had given approval—did part 2 of the “strategy for change” become complete. This level of bureaucracy was absurd and had to go.
For those who doubt that money was wasted on the process, I have here just the first three of more than 60 official documents that anyone negotiating the BSF process needed to navigate. This whole process has been presided over by the Department for Education and the quango Partnerships for Schools, and at various times has involved another body, 4ps, and Partnerships UK. Local authorities involved in this process have employed a Partnerships for Schools director, a Department for Education project adviser, a 4ps adviser and an enabler from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment—another non-departmental public body.
Local authorities have also had to set up a project governance and delivery structure, normally including a project board of 10 people, a separate project team of another 10 people and a further, separate, stakeholder board of 20 people. They formed the core group supervising the project. Beyond them, local authorities were expected to engage a design champion, a client design adviser and a 4ps gateway review team—a group of people who produce six separate gateway reviews over the course of the whole project. It is perhaps no surprise that it can take almost three years to negotiate the bureaucratic process of BSF before a single builder is engaged or brick laid.
Some councils that entered the process six years ago have only just started building new schools. Another project starting this year is three years behind schedule. By contrast, Hong Kong international airport, which was built on a barren rock in the South China sea and can process 50 million passenger movements every year, took just six years to build from start to finish.
Given the massively flawed way in which BSF was designed and led, it failed to meet any of its targets. BSF schools cost three times what it costs to procure buildings in the commercial world, and twice what it costs to build a school in Ireland. The last Government were supposed to have built 200 wholly new schools by the end of 2008; they had only rebuilt 35 and refurbished 13. Those schools that were refurbished had to abide by a regulatory regime that prescribed the size and shape of cycle racks and of changing rooms next to showers, and even the precise species of plant allowed on school sites. The cost to each school for just participating in the early stages of the programme was equivalent to the cost of a whole newly qualified teacher. The cost of setting up the procurement bureaucracy before building could commence has been up to £10 million for each local area.
And this expenditure did not guarantee quality. One BSF school was built with corridors so narrow the whole building had to be reconstructed; another had to be closed because the doors could not cope with high winds. One was so badly ventilated that additional mobile air conditioners had to be brought in during the summer, and pupils were sent home. In three other BSF schools pupils collapsed from heat exhaustion, as design faults repeatedly sent the temperature up to 38° Celsius; that is hotter than August in the Sahara. After Labour’s 13 years in power only 96 new schools out of a total secondary school estate of 3,500 schools have ever been built under BSF. The dilapidated school estate that we have today is, alongside our broken public finances, Labour’s real legacy. Far from using the boom years to build a new Jerusalem, the previous Government only managed to fix just under 3% of roofs while the sun was shining.
The whole way in which we build schools needs radical reform to ensure that more money is not wasted on pointless bureaucracy, to ensure that buildings are built on budget and on time, and to ensure that a higher proportion of capital investment gets rapidly to the front line. That is why I can announce today that a capital review team, led by John Hood, the former vice-chancellor of Oxford university, Sir John Egan, the former chief executive of BAA plc and Jaguar, Sebastian James, the group operations director of Dixons Store Group, Kevin Grace, Tesco’s director of property services and Barry Quirk, the chief executive of Lewisham council, will look at every area of departmental capital spending to ensure that we can drive down costs, get buildings more quickly and have a higher proportion of money going directly to the front line.
In order to ensure that we do not waste any more money on a dysfunctional process, I am today taking action to get the best possible value for the taxpayer. I will take account of the contractual commitments already entered into, but I cannot allow more money to be spent until we have ensured a more efficient use of resources. Where financial close has been reached in a local education partnership, the projects agreed under that LEP will go ahead. I will continue to look at the scope for savings in all these projects. Where financial close has not been reached, future projects procured under BSF will not go ahead. This decision will not affect the other capital funding in those areas; schools will still receive their devolved capital allowance for necessary repairs. The efficiencies that we make now will ensure better targeting of future commitments on areas of greatest need.
There are some areas where, although financial close has not been reached, very significant work has been undertaken, to the point of appointing a preferred bidder at “close of dialogue”. There are 14 such cases, in which two or, occasionally, three projects have been prioritised locally as sample projects, to be the first taken forward in the area. I will be looking in more detail over the coming weeks at these sample projects to see whether any should be allowed to proceed.
As we believe in supporting those in greatest need, my Department will be talking to the sponsors of the 100 or so academy projects in the pipeline—those with funding agreements or that are due to open in the coming academic year—which are designed to serve students in challenging schools in our most deprived areas. Where academies are meeting a demand for significant new places and building work is essential to meet that demand, where there is a merger and the use of existing buildings would cause educational problems, and where there is other pressing need, I will look sympathetically on the need for building work to go ahead. But where projects are some way from opening or sponsors can use existing buildings to continue their work, any future capital commitments will have to wait until the conclusion of our review.
That review is made all the more necessary because as pupil numbers rise in years to come we have to ensure that our first duty is guaranteeing an expansion in capacity to meet that demographic growth. Action is urgently needed today because the whole of my predecessor’s Department’s spending plans were based on unsustainable assumptions and led to unfunded promises. In the forward projections that we inherited, the previous Government were relying on taking massive underspends, worth billions of pounds, across Government to fund promises on college places for teenagers and school buildings. That was a fundamentally irresponsible approach to so important an area. Fortunately, in this coalition Government we have a proper relationship between the Department for Education and the Treasury. That is why we have deliberately reduced our forecast reliance on underspends elsewhere and brought our spending into line. In the process, we have kept capital spending within the envelope outlined by the previous Government, so there are no reductions beyond those for which the Treasury had budgeted.
By bearing down on costs now we can ensure that money will be available in the future to help secure additional places, to help the most disadvantaged pupils and to refurbish those schools in greatest need. We have safeguarded front-line revenue schools spending, we have safeguarded front-line spending on Sure Start and we have safeguarded front-line spending on school and college places for 16 to 19-year-olds this year. We have cut spending on wasteful quangos, we have cut the unnecessary bureaucracy which has swallowed up so much money and we have reduced the amount spent on regional government, on field forces and on unnecessary Government inspection regimes; but we have prioritised funding for better teachers, we have invested more in the education of the poorest and we are giving schools greater control of the money that has previously been spent on their behalf. For everyone who believes in reforming education that has to be the right choice, and I commend this statement to the House.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry to say that the Secretary of State significantly exceeded his time, which he will not be allowed to do again. In fairness, I shall also have to allow some modest leeway for the shadow Secretary of State.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
The Labour Government built or refurbished 4,000 schools—the biggest school building programme since the Victorian era—and today is a black day for our country’s schools. It is a damning indictment of this new Tory-Liberal coalition’s priorities and it is a shameful statement from this new Secretary of State, who will for ever go down in history as the man who snatched free school meals from 500,000 poorer pupils and has now, today, in one stroke axed hundreds of brand-new schools from communities across the length and breadth of our country.
Building Schools for the Future was a once-in-a-generation chance to transform the whole local fabric of education—of secondary education, special schools and vocational learning, too. The freezing of the programme that has just been announced is a hammer blow for many hundreds of thousands of children, parents, teachers and governors who will now not get the transformed new school they were promised.
I predicted this day during the general election, and, after weeks of indecision, uncertainty and media speculation that has led to widespread confusion and concern in schools and in the construction industry, too, I am grateful that the right hon. Gentleman has finally made a statement to this House. However, is it not a disgrace that, even now, the Secretary of State has not provided a list of all the schools that will be affected? How can hon. Members on both sides of the House ask questions of the Secretary of State when they do not know which of the schools in their constituencies will be affected? The Secretary of State knows the names of the schools. I believe that he has a duty to tell the House and the country and that he should agree to publish the list now—straight away—so we can give it proper scrutiny.
Let me turn to the some of the detailed issues that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned. On standards, will he confirm that in the recent trends in international mathematics and science study—or TIMSS—England has risen from 25th in the world to seventh in the world and that among 10 to 14-year-olds we now have the highest achievement in mathematics of all European countries in that study? Why cannot he stop running down the achievements of our children and teachers in our schools?
On teaching, does the Secretary of State agree that we have the best generation of teachers that we have ever had? Will he confirm that the previous Government had already invested in expanding Teach First, including pilots for primary schools? Is he aware that it was the leadership of Teach First who warned me that to accelerate the expansion of the programme any faster would put at risk the quality and success of Teach First—a risk that he has just taken in this statement?
On the Building Schools for the Future programme, the National Audit Office looked into the programme last February and said that originally the forecasts were “overly optimistic”, and that local authorities were asked
“to spend more time to improve their proposals, because…it was more important to improve the quality than to accelerate the programme.”
The NAO concluded that the processes for procurement had “significantly” improved and also found that the total capital cost of each BSF school was similar to that of other schools and 17% cheaper than that of previous academies.
In the next year, as the Secretary of State travels around the country opening the 200 new schools set to open under the BSF programme, will he tell pupils, parents, governors and contractors that their school is part of a programme he believes to be “dysfunctional” and a “waste” of money? Or will he withdraw these unrepresentative and vindictive remarks? It is not the bureaucracy that he is abolishing, but hundreds of new schools for children in our country.
As for my record as Secretary of State, some very serious allegations have been made. I have this afternoon written to the permanent secretary at the Department for Education, who was also the accounting officer for the whole time I was Secretary of State. I have asked him to confirm that all capital funding announcements, including those on BSF, were made with prior agreement between the Department and the Treasury in a normal and fully legitimate way and with his full agreement as chief accounting officer and to confirm that if that had not been done properly, the accounting officer would have insisted on a ministerial direction but that no such directions were issued by me and none were requested. If the right hon. Gentleman has evidence that the proper processes were not undertaken, it is incumbent on him to provide that evidence to the House, rather than make these allegations. I hope that he will agree that his permanent secretary must be encouraged to clarify these issues as soon as possible today.
The right hon. Gentleman has chosen today to freeze BSF and to ask one of the Prime Minister’s old university chums to review the whole programme. He has offered no assurance that this review is anything more than a fig leaf, however. Is it not the truth that 750 schools that have not yet signed their contracts will now be told that they will not get their new school building? We need to know how many schools will be affected, where they are, and how much money has already been spent on those programmes. Is it correct, as the Financial Times reports, that more than £1 billion-worth of new undertakings have been signed since the general election? Does the right hon. Gentleman have an estimate of how much his Department will now have to pay in legal and contractual costs associated with those frozen or cancelled contracts? How many private sector jobs does he think will be lost as a result of these decisions?
The Secretary of State says that this decision is inevitable. That is what Ramsay MacDonald said in 1931, and Margaret Thatcher said to the House in 1980 about investment spending cuts. Only a few weeks ago, the Chancellor of the Exchequer told the House in the Budget statement that
“an error was made in the early 1990s when the then Government cut capital spending”
and said that he had decided that there
“will be no further reductions in capital spending totals”.—[Official Report, 22 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 170.]
Is it not the truth that, while I won my battles with the Treasury for rising education spending, the Secretary of State has lost his battle and is now planning cuts of between 10% to 20% to the schools budget? Will he also confirm that his top priority for the spending review will be his free-market schools policy, which will see new schools being built in an unfair two-tier system paid for by cuts to the Building Schools for the Future programme and to the new schools that were promised over the past year or two in the constituencies of hon. Members on both sides of the House?
What we have seen from the coalition today is another attack on jobs, another assault on opportunities and a huge blow to the life chances of children in communities across our country. This was not an unavoidable decision; it is a choice that the right hon. Gentleman has made, and in my view, he has made the wrong choice. I say to every family, every school, every Member of Parliament and every community blighted by this decision that we on this side of the House will fight to save our new schools. We not stand idly by and see this happen.
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the shadow Secretary of State for his questions. As I pointed out in my statement, the number of schools rebuilt under Building Schools for the Future under the previous Government was just 96 out of 3,500 secondary schools. Under this Government, 706 projects will go ahead. It is also the case, as he said, that we know where those school projects are. As hon. Members will know, projects will go ahead in those local authorities that have reached financial close, and I presume that they will know whether their local authority has reached that stage. Every single one of the school projects that is to go ahead will be listed, and every Member of the House and every local authority is being written to today to be told which projects are going ahead—[Interruption.] The Opposition will appreciate that, with more than 1,500 projects involved, many of them needed to be looked at in detail. That is why I will be writing to every Member of the House.
The right hon. Gentleman said that we were going to cancel free school meals. I must remind him that not a single child in receipt of free school meals will lose their free school meals under this Government. That is an unsubstantiated allegation. He also said that he predicted today’s announcement during the general election. However, during the general election, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb) said that we would be looking at Building Schools for the Future, and that we could not guarantee any project beyond financial close. So there was no prediction on the part of the right hon. Gentleman, but there was a grim warning on the part of my hon. Friend that the devastating assault on the public finances over which the right hon. Gentleman helped to preside meant that tough decisions would have to be taken by anyone, whatever the result of the election.
The right hon. Gentleman argues that under the proposals, the private sector will lose out. I have to point out to him that we are sticking precisely to the limits on capital laid out by the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling). If the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) thinks that the proposed level of capital spending is devastating for the private sector, he should have been campaigning against the last Chancellor of the Exchequer before the last election. [Interruption.] Let me rephrase that. He should have been campaigning more vigorously against the last Chancellor of the Exchequer before the last election.
The right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood says that the leadership of Teach First did not back our proposals for expansion. I have to say that our proposals for expansion were negotiated with the leadership of Teach First, who were delighted to see the Government carry forward what the previous Government were not able to do. He says that that is money wasted, and he refuses to back that expansion of Teach First. I believe that investing money in quality teaching in our poorest schools is the right choice for the future. It is interesting that he thinks it is the wrong choice. It is also interesting that the right hon. Gentleman thinks that having gone to a public school and Oxford university automatically rules someone out of making any decision about the future of school capital, in which case he is hoist by his own rhetorical petard.
Let me make it clear that if we compare the improvement in attainment between Building Schools for the Future and Teach First, a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers showed that Building Schools for the Future had little statistically significant impact on people’s attitude and behaviour and there was no firm evidence of improved attainment, whereas Teach First, in a study by the university of Manchester, has been shown to have led to a statistically significant improvement in GCSE results.
The truth is that the right hon. Gentleman made unsustainable and irresponsible promises that he knew no Government could keep. He went around the country saying that new schools would be built, when the Chancellor had pledged to cut capital spending in half. He asks about the reality of his irresponsible spending. In the three years in which he was in charge of his Department, the amount of spending that he was relying on coming from other Departments—the amount of underspend that he was relying on—rose from £80 million to £800 million and now to more than £2.5 billion. That £2.5 billion of unfunded commitments is evidence of scandalous irresponsibility.
If anyone in the House wants an example of a truly damaging decision on school building, I remind Opposition Members what the last Labour Government did with the Learning and Skills Council. Ministers invited scores of schools and colleges to submit building plans, which cost those schools and colleges millions of pounds. Ministers then arbitrarily and without warning cancelled 90% of those projects scheduled to go ahead. When those projects were cancelled, schools’ budgets were devastated and there were holes in the ground—
Mr Speaker
Order. May I gently say to the Secretary of State that I am witnessing something that is, in my experience in the Chair, unprecedented? The right hon. Gentleman must answer the questions that are put to him. He is not supposed to be reading out a previously written script which either was or was not said before. What I want the Secretary of State to do is briefly to respond to each question, and I would like Back Benchers to have a chance to participate.
Michael Gove
I am very grateful to you, Mr. Speaker. The point that I was making is that if we are looking at school building projects and we want to see what scandalously went wrong, we need to look at what went wrong under my predecessor. When he was responsible for the Learning and Skills Council, 90% of projects were cancelled. When he was responsible for education funding, we know that 90% of projects had to be—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry. Let me say to the Secretary of State that the assurance of his gratitude is of no interest to me; adherence to my ruling is. The right hon. Gentleman has had his say. We will now proceed to Back Benchers. I want to accommodate as many as possible, and that requires economy both in question and in answer.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Building Schools for the Future achieved too little at too great a cost, as the Labour-dominated Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families concluded in the previous Parliament. When will the new review team report back to the Secretary of State so that we can have a clearer view of the policy going forward?
Michael Gove
We hope to have an interim review reporting in September, which will tell us how we can make significant improvements in efficiency, which will feed into the spending review. The culmination of that review should be by the end of the calendar year.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
Schools in Liverpool will be devastated by the Secretary of State’s announcement today. When the Building Schools for the Future programme was devised we deliberately decided to focus first on the schools in the poorest parts of the country. He said at the beginning of his statement that his priority was raising the attainment of the poorest. How does the announcement today do that for communities such as the one that I represent in Liverpool?
Michael Gove
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s question and can confirm that four schools in his constituency are unaffected and five have been stopped, but it is my—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. At this point the Secretary of State’s answer is entirely orderly. Let us hear it.
Michael Gove
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s contribution when he was a schools Minister. He will appreciate, as I do, that the most important thing in improving attainment for the poorest is making sure that we improve the quality of teaching.
Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)
Ever since I was a candidate, I have watched local education partnerships—mentioned only briefly—soak up endless time and money. Academy sponsors have come to me in despair because of the amount of money that those bureaucratic layers have soaked up—money that should be going to the poorest. I believe that Labour Members have a concern for bridging the gap between the rich and poor, and I know that my right hon. Friend does. Does he agree that it is a tragedy to see every penny soaked up by local education partnerships, by the papers on his table and by bureaucratic layers, rather than going to those children who most need it?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. In every local authority that has entered Building Schools for the Future so far, the average amount spent on local education partnerships is between £9 million and £10 million. That money should have gone to the front line, into bricks and mortar and into improving education, not into the pockets of bureaucrats.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
The previous Tory Government closed the last 10 pits in the Derbyshire coalfield. Is the Minister going to tell me now that the prospect of two schools at Tibshelf and Shirebrook in that deprived ex-coal mining area has been stopped as well?
Michael Gove
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that some schools in his local authority area have reached financial close, and those that have reached financial close, including Shirebrook, are unaffected.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Is the Secretary of State aware—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I do apologise for interrupting the right hon. Gentleman, but I am hearing from a sedentary position, “Point of order”. May I say gently to the House that points of order follow statements? I have an almost insatiable appetite for hearing—[Interruption.] Order. I have an almost insatiable appetite for hearing and responding to points of order, but everything in its time. The House will want to hear Sir Alan Beith.
Sir Alan Beith
Does the Secretary of State realise that the arbitrary rules of Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme excluded schools in desperate need of replacement in counties such as Northumberland? Will the mechanism that he proposes to use allow for some of those urgent cases to be considered?
Michael Gove
I am very conscious that Building Schools for the Future was constructed, as I have pointed out, in an absurdly bureaucratic way and often meant that schools in real need, such as The Duchess’s community high school in Alnwick, did not receive the funding that quite properly the right hon. Gentleman has argued for. It is hoped that our review will concentrate on ensuring that all schools in need receive the funding that they deserve.
Mr Ivan Lewis (Bury South) (Lab)
Three years ago, within weeks of a Tory-Lib Dem council being elected in Bury, a state-of-the-art school for the most disadvantaged community in my constituency was scrapped. Within weeks of a Tory-Lib Dem coalition Government having been formed in this country, the same school has been denied hope as a consequence of Building Schools for the Future funding being cancelled. Why has the Secretary of State not responded to my request for a meeting of five weeks ago, so that he might hear for himself from representatives of that disadvantaged community about why, if it is to have a future, it desperately needs a state-of-the-art school?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his point; I know that he is a passionate supporter of improving educational standards in his area. I shall be delighted to meet him, and I understand that the school that he mentions is under review. I shall come back to him.
Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that now there should be an inquiry into the abuse of the end-of-year flexibility rules by previous Ministers, under which so much false hope was extended on the basis of commitments that were not properly funded?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. In the past three years the dramatic rise in the Department for Children, Schools and Families’ reliance on end-of-year flexibility has been striking. In effect, the Department was relying on underspends throughout the Government to sustain its own programme, including the so-called September guarantee—the guarantee of school and college places for 16 to 19-year-olds. The agreement that the Department entered into with the Treasury in order to rely on underspends elsewhere is not one that we believe to be either sustainable or prudent.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that for more than 100 years we have had a proud tradition of democratic participation in education and an education system in every local education area? Is he today announcing, finally, the death knell of democratic educational participation in our country?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the many intelligent questions that he asks, but sadly that was not up with the best of them. I am absolutely insistent that we move towards a greater degree of local participation in deciding educational priorities. That is why future capital decisions, instead of being a matter for the bureaucrats who have been responsible for making so many of the decisions in unaccountable quangos, will increasingly be a matter for local communities.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
What total financial savings does the Secretary of State expect for national and local government from cancelling all this unwelcome bureaucracy?
Michael Gove
At the moment we expect that there will be a significant saving of billions of pounds. I will write to my right hon. Friend about the precise sum when we have made our final decisions and determinations on the sample projects that I mentioned, which we are reviewing, and the academy projects, which we are also reviewing.
Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)
When the Secretary of State started his speech, he said that he wanted to make opportunity more equal. He then went on to say that in determining which schools were to get funding, he would give priority to schools where there was a financial close, to academies and to free schools. Will he please tell me why he will not give priority to the 12 projects in my constituency, many of which are designed to provide the additional places that are required because of the additional numbers of pupils coming into the borough?
Michael Gove
I respect the right hon. Lady, who is now Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, but I fear that she may be confusing two things; that is entirely understandable given the complexity of capital funding arrangements. I think that she may be confusing Building Schools for the Future with basic need capital, which will continue to be supplied. I believe that there are four projects in her constituency, not 12, one of which is a sample project that is under discussion.
Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)
Is my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State as appalled as I am to learn that consultants extracted £60 million-worth of fees from local authorities—enough to build three new schools—under the Building Schools for the Future programme? That is yet another example of the previous Labour Government throwing money around like confetti.
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes an impeccable point. The fact that so much money was spent—I would argue wasted—on consultancy rather than on going to the front line marks one of the greatest deficiencies in the way in which the Building Schools for the Future programme was managed.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State accept that, to use his words, the truly appalling legacy was the legacy that was left to a Labour Government in 1997—that of schools throughout Birmingham with leaking roofs and kids getting taught in corridors? Does he also accept that today’s announcement will be a bitter blow for Birmingham, leaving 50 schools in limbo; a bitter blow for the children of Birmingham, who deserve new schools to get the best possible start in life; and a bitter blow for Birmingham’s construction workers, many more of whom will end up on the dole as a consequence of the Secretary of State’s announcement?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question. I appreciate his disappointment and the passion with which he puts his case. As regards the impact on the private sector, as I pointed out earlier, under the projections for reductions in capital spending made by the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West, capital spending overall would have been reduced by 50%; we are operating within that capital envelope.
On the hon. Gentleman’s broader point about the legacy that the Labour Government inherited in 1997, that legacy was a healthy economy, growing fast, and an opportunity to make investment not just in schools but in hospitals. It is a pity that the Building Schools for the Future programme was so bureaucratic that in the 13 years that the Labour Government had, only 96 new schools were built.
Simon Wright (Norwich South) (LD)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement on doubling the number of recruits into Teach First. What other plans does he have to increase the number of great teachers in our schools?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. One of the things that I am most determined to do is reform the way in which teachers are trained by ensuring that we improve and increase employment-based and school-based initial teacher training. That will mean that more great teachers can be trained in the classroom, learn their craft from existing great teachers and continue to improve the quality of education that young people receive.
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
What was markedly missing from the Secretary of State’s quite shameful and inadequate statement was any concern for the future of all our children. My constituency is served by two local authorities, Brent and Camden. Both are facing a serious shortfall in places not only in secondary schools but in junior schools. His failure to give any information to parents, pupils, schools and my local authorities on which schools will go ahead and which will not, and on what funding will be available to provide additional places, was an absolute and utter disgrace.
Michael Gove
I know how passionately the hon. Lady fights for her constituents. She mentions junior schools; she will be aware that junior and primary schools are not covered by the BSF programme, and today’s announcement does not affect the primary capital programme.
As far as secondary schools go, the hon. Lady will know that her principal local authority, Camden, has reached the close of dialogue but not yet financial close. As a result, she will know that there are two sample projects in her local authority area, and they fall under—[Interruption.] I am sure that she will know the schools in her own constituency that are sample projects.
Michael Gove
If the hon. Lady does not know the schools, I regret that, but they are of course the UCL Camden academy and Swiss Cottage special school. Those are the two sample projects in her constituency.
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
While money has, in many cases, been squandered on consultants, pre-procurement processes and wasteful bureaucracy, my constituency has not had a single school built through the Building Schools for the Future programme. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is outrageous that fewer than 200 schools have been built while billions of pounds have been spent?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and the fact that the disadvantaged students of Reading have not received the benefit that they should have done under the school-building programme is one of my concerns, absolutely.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
The Secretary of State said that he would look sympathetically on the need for building work to go ahead where the use of existing buildings would cause educational problems and where there was other pressing need such as a rise in pupil numbers because of demographic growth, both of which are issues in my constituency. Will he confirm that that applies to schools that are currently part of BSF but are not academies and do not intend to become free schools?
Michael Gove
Absolutely, and because Leicester council has reached financial close, I can say that all the schools in the hon. Lady’s area that are part of Building Schools for the Future will go ahead.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I share my right hon. Friend’s concern about the wastage of resources, but I am obviously concerned about schools in my constituency, particularly a special school, Montacute school. Can he assure me that special schools will be given every consideration in the review?
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
Sutton Centre community college in my constituency is in the process of gaining academy status. In order to get that status, it was guaranteed a new building because the college is in urgent need of repair. The Secretary of State says that he wants more academies and wants to help pupils in deprived areas. Will those two principles mean that the new building for Sutton Centre can go ahead?
Michael Gove
If Sutton Centre has either signed a funding agreement or has academy status in the pipeline, it will be one of the projects that is reviewed. I hope to talk to the hon. Lady to ensure that its progress towards academy status is encouraged if it is proceeding properly, but I do not know the specifics of that particular school’s case.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State consider fast-tracking academy status for outstanding schools that were hoping to benefit from the BSF programme? I particularly mention the case of Castle community college in Deal, which, seeing the writing on the wall, is now seeking to be an academy. It is an outstanding school, and I hope that the Secretary of State will give it full consideration.
Michael Gove
I welcome that application from what I know is an outstanding school, and I will do everything possible to ensure that if the headmaster and governing body want to take advantage of academy freedoms, they can do so. With that, there is no additional preferential or other capital spending commitment that I can make. I can, however, reassure my hon. Friend that the Duke of York’s royal military school in his constituency, which is moving towards academy status—in fact, I think it enjoys that status now—and which required extra accommodation for the children of service people, is one of the academy projects that I am most anxious to see go forward.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I am afraid that I do not know the difference between the close of dialogue and financial closure, and the local authority does not ring me up and tell me when they happen. Will the Secretary of State confirm that all nine schools in the BSF programme in Leicester East will remain in it? If there are any financial penalties as a result of what the Secretary of State has said today, will the Government reimburse local authorities that signed contracts in good faith?
Michael Gove
I am afraid that local authorities entered this process under the previous Government and the responsibility lies there. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the difference between close of dialogue and financial close, and I agree that the process can be confusing. It is precisely because the Building Schools for the Future programme was so confusing that we needed to simplify it. As I pointed out to the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), Leicester is a local authority that has reached financial close, so the projects that were slated to go ahead in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency should go ahead.
Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)
Following the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Mr Wilson), I should say that the people of Suffolk had the temerity not to return a suitable number of Conservative Members of Parliament in previous elections and therefore were right at the back of the queue for Building Schools for the Future. They were kept waiting under this inadequate system. Can the Secretary of State confirm when the people of Chantry high school and Stoke high school, who have been kept waiting for many years, might expect some sort of investment? I am thinking also of Holywells school, which is part of the national challenge scheme.
Michael Gove
I am disappointed that Ipswich has had to wait so long as a result of that. I am afraid that schools in that local authority area did not reach financial close. There is an academy in my hon. Friend’s constituency that will form part of our review programme. I am afraid that today’s announcement means that, sadly, Building Schools for the Future investment will not go ahead for Chantry high school.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
Wakefield City high school serves pupils on the Eastmoor estate, one of the most disadvantaged in the country, yet it is one of the top six schools in the country for gross value added. Can the Secretary of State tell us how that school will be served following his triple whammy of cutting the extension of free school meals, cutting local council funding for both capital and programmes for disadvantaged pupils, and today’s cutting of the Building Schools for the Future budget? How does that assist his avowed aim of helping the education of the poorest children in the country?
Michael Gove
I am sorry that the position we inherited meant that the capital investment for which the hon. Lady quite properly argues in her constituency could not be delivered. She should bring up the issue with her parliamentary neighbour the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) and with the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), who were responsible for taking us into the dreadful economic situation that necessitated today’s unavoidable announcement.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Is the Secretary of State aware that Building Schools for the Future spent £20 million on building a school in Essex and that, sadly, Essex county council was forced to close it down six years later? Is he also aware that the BBC quoted a local authority IT officer who said
“lots of money has been spent and nobody seems to know where it’s gone”?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I have lost count of the number of people in the educational world who have made it clear to me that the Building Schools for the Future programme was not managed as it should have been if it was to guarantee the best possible investment of taxpayers’ money.
Michael Dugher (Barnsley East) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State understand the huge levels of concern and anxiety in my constituency and throughout the rest of Barnsley because of his announcement today? He has had a bit of a shocker at the Dispatch Box, so I will try to be helpful. If he has a list affecting my constituents, or others in Barnsley or elsewhere, why does he not put it before the House now?
Michael Gove
I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be aware that his local authority in Barnsley has reached financial close, and for that reason the schools will go forward unaffected. I will write personally to every Member to make it clear to them exactly what is happening in their own constituency. I shall also, of course, be writing to every local authority. I appreciate how seriously Members take this issue, so I presume that most Members will know whether their local authorities were in financial close or at close of dialogue.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
Will my right hon. Friend please tell me how many primary schools will gain a Teach First teacher? Also, how many such teachers will go to middle schools, of which there are two in my constituency?
Michael Gove
More than 300 Teach First teachers will be going into primary schools, and Teach First will be expanding for the first time into every part of the United Kingdom. Hitherto, it has not operated in the south-west of England, but now it will. The Teach First model has concentrated mainly on major cities, but we are consulting Teach First on precisely how it can expand into areas such as the south-west.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the excellent BSF applications from the previously Lib Dem-Tory council in Brent, which were supported at the time by the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), will be subject to the freeze? Could that be why the Minister refused to debate those issues with me at the Brent teachers association last week, and why she looks so bloody miserable today?
Mr Speaker
Order. My tender sensibilities have been gravely affected, but I am more concerned about people in the country, particularly young people. Will the hon. Gentleman please withdraw that unseemly term?
Barry Gardiner
Mr Speaker, I withdraw the unseemly term and replace it with “miserable”.
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend the Minister enjoys debating with the hon. Gentleman at every available opportunity. He will be delighted to know that we want to ensure that the academy that is being opened by ARK in his constituency goes ahead. We also want to ensure that in future, we look to guarantee that future capital spending that might affect his constituency goes to those pupils and schools in greatest need, including primary schools.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
The Secretary of State specifies 14 cases in which he will reconsider so-called sample projects. Can he explain what criteria and aspects he will consider when looking at those so-called sample projects, and what will most guide his decision making with regard to them?
Michael Gove
I want to be sure that the legal and contractual position is secure for those sample projects, and also look at the arguments that have been made specifically to them. There are sample projects in Blackpool that we will want to review. I know that my hon. Friend, as a passionate fighter for education in his constituency and more broadly, will want to ensure that effective representations are made on behalf of his constituents, and I look forward to receiving them.
Malcolm Wicks (Croydon North) (Lab)
How many school building projects have been frozen as a result of the coalition Government’s announcement, and how many of our children are affected by that coalition freeze?
Michael Gove
Of the existing stock of BSF projects in the pipeline, which is broadly just over 1,400, about half have been frozen, and about half will go ahead.
Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that schools such as Todmorden and Calder high schools in my constituency, whose fabric is incredibly poor but which do not currently meet BSF low attainment and deprivation criteria, will be considered in the review?
Michael Gove
I know that my hon. Friend, as a lead member for children’s services in his local authority area, has been a dedicated fighter for improved investment in school fabric, and how disappointing the current BSF process has been for him. I will certainly do everything I can to seek, in the course of the review, to prioritise investment in schools whose fabric has, over the years, become so dilapidated that we need desperately to do something.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State clearly has a list, so could he please stop teasing us and let me know whether the Joseph Leckie school in my constituency is on it?
Michael Gove
Again, I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. It would undoubtedly be helpful if she could tell me whether her local authority is in financial close or in close of dialogue. My understanding is that Walsall has not reached financial close, but I believe that her constituency benefits from an academy project.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
The court of public opinion will judge the shambolic way in which the BSF programme was administered by the previous Government. Does my right hon. Friend have an estimate of the number of teaching hours that were wasted by teachers and schools devoting time to the BSF programme?
Michael Gove
We know that thousands of teaching hours were devoted to it. In many cases, deputy and assistant head teachers had to take time out of school—often for as many as two or three days a week—in order to take part in the procurement process. Time that could have been spent on teaching and learning was instead spent entangled in bureaucracy.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
On Friday I had a meeting with the head teachers and chairs of governors of the six schools in my constituency that were expecting to be rebuilt or refurbished later this year under wave 6 of BSF. None of those six schools was a sample school, and none of them was at financial close, but all of them had proceeded on the basis that this vital investment would be forthcoming. Why does the Secretary of State think that it is okay for some students in my constituency to learn in portakabins?
Michael Gove
I do not believe that temporary accommodation is right for any student if we can do better. The problem that we have is that we inherited a financial situation and the money simply is not there. As the hon. Lady knows, her local authority was a participant in an earlier wave of BSF. There are some schools in Liverpool that have benefited from that earlier wave, but a later wave has not reached financial close and so, regrettably, the investment cannot go into those schools. That is a direct consequence of the economic mess that we inherited from the last Government—and she stood in their support in the election.
Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)
Is my right hon. Friend considering using the staggeringly expensive PFI funding, on which present arrangements are based, when considering future capital spending on education?
Michael Gove
Like me, the hon. Gentleman is sceptical about the way in which PFI operates. One of the problems with the BSF projects is the way in which the PFI programme was managed.
Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)
What does the Secretary of State’s decision mean for school buildings in Rochdale?
Michael Gove
Again, if the hon. Gentleman can let me know whether his financial authority has reached financial close, I will be able to tell him. I will write to him, and a full list of schools is being put in the Library. In Rochdale, I think that all the schools will go ahead.
Mr Speaker
Order. Questions with the brevity demonstrated by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) are an inspiration that others might seek to follow.
Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will be aware of the hard work that the many inspirational teachers in West Suffolk do to wade through some of the bureaucracy with which they have to deal. Does he agree that it is irresponsible to raise hopes of new schools when no sustainable funding is available?
Michael Gove
I entirely agree. It is irresponsible, cynical and poor politics. It was one of the terrible things about the last Government that they raised hopes before the last election knowing that they would not be able to honour them.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will know that I asked him in education questions a few weeks ago about Stoke-on-Trent. My city was in the unique circumstances of being in phase 1 of the process. He said that he would look at the position sympathetically, so can he now give the people of the area, who are anxiously awaiting this decision, a positive answer?
Michael Gove
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s commitment to his constituents. He will be aware that the situation in Stoke-on-Trent is one of the worst examples of the way in which the bureaucracy associated with BSF has delayed necessary investment in rebuilding the school estate. Stoke-on-Trent is one of those local authorities that has reached financial close, so therefore school rebuilding will go ahead—and I hope that it will do so more quickly and efficiently.
Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is curious that Labour Members seem so obsessed with state-of-the-art buildings and so uninterested in the quality of teaching in schools? Will he confirm that our Government will have different priorities?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. It was interesting that the shadow Secretary of State was so contemptuous of the investment in Teach First: it was very revealing of his priorities.
Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)
We are in the absurd position of constantly having to ask the Secretary of State to read from his list. I know precisely which schools in my area have not reached financial close, but I do not know if they have got to the close of dialogue stage. Those three schools are La Retraite, Dunraven and Bishop Thomas Grant. Can he tell me from his list whether they will go ahead?
Michael Gove
Again, I hope that hon. Members appreciate that the confusion that exists about whether schools have reached financial close, close of dialogue or another position is a consequence of the way in which the whole BSF project was designed. Their confusion is a direct result of the bureaucracy. Dunraven school is a sample school, and therefore falls within the group of local authority schools that we will look at. Elm Court, a special school in his constituency, has already opened under BSF. I believe that two other schools have not reached financial close, and I will confirm that in my letter to him. A full list of all schools is being placed in the Library—[Hon. Members: “When?”] It is in the Library now.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
When the review team reports, can the Secretary of State ensure that its recommendations give priority to tackling dilapidation, so that schools such as Carshalton girls school in my constituency can get the works that they need?
Michael Gove
I appreciate my hon. Friend’s determination to ensure that dilapidation forms part of the criteria for our capital review. I can confirm that we want to ensure that those schools that are in the worst state receive the most favourable treatment possible in future, given the constrained financial circumstances in which we are all operating.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
This is an absolute disgrace. The Secretary of State has a list that he is reading from. He could have stated at the outset that the list was in the Library, so that Members could have asked him about what was happening in our constituencies. Can he tell the House whether there are any phase 1 schools for which he has stopped projects and whether there are any phase 5 schools that are going ahead? We need to know what is going on in our constituencies, because we have learned nothing today that was not in the papers over the weekend.
Michael Gove
The hon. Gentleman makes the point that we need to know what is going on in our constituencies. The point that I would make is that inevitably, because of the complicated way in which Building Schools for the Future was arranged, there is confusion. However, I can say that I believe that the phase 1 projects in his constituency—I hope that he will confirm this—of Broadoak, Crown Woods, Eltham Hill and Thomas Tallis are unaffected. The academy base for Eltham Hill is under discussion, but I am afraid that in four other areas the later wave of projects has been stopped because they have not yet reached financial close.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
As somebody who completed their teacher training in a new school that did not originally have enough entrances to get the pupils in, I certainly welcome the common-sense approach to new school design. Does my right hon. Friend accept that it is not just about buildings, but about what goes on inside them, and that there are plenty of schools and authorities throughout the country that did not qualify for BSF? Can we therefore have an assurance that he will ignore the petty, party point scoring from the Opposition? Does he agree that, as we move forward, we need to divert resources to the most needy children in our local communities, and especially those who are excluded?
Michael Gove
I quite agree. My hon. Friend has consistently made it clear that the care of excluded children is one of the most important things on his mind. When it comes to future investment—for example, in pupil referral units or alternative provision—we want to ensure that we do everything possible to bear down on costs and make sure that more provision can be secured for those vulnerable children.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has said that we should know what the situation is in our constituencies, but by having the information in advance, we could have seen what was happening in our regions and the country generally. With hindsight, does he agree that it would have been better to provide that information before the debate, rather than during it, and that this would have been in the interests of transparency, so that we could have had a full statement and full interventions by Members from all parts of the House?
Michael Gove
I take the right hon. Lady’s point, but I have made it clear that there are rules-based criteria by which we have made our judgment, based on whether schools have reached financial close. As the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) made clear earlier, not only was there speculation in the press, but it was also the case that before the general election the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), made it clear that it was unlikely that we would be able to proceed with those projects that had not reached financial close. Once again, I appreciate that the different stages of the Building Schools for the Future programme have led to confusion. However, I am sure that the right hon. Lady, like many other Members who care about their constituents, will be aware of the precise stage that projects have reached in her area and the local authority area that covers it.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that some of the projects that he has put on hold today were in a position to be signed off by the previous Government before the general election? Is it not also the case that the shadow Education Secretary knew a lot more about what would and would not be possible when he was running his Department than he seems to know now, when he is running for his party leadership?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to make the point that there was a mismatch between the commitment to rebuild or refurbish so many schools and what any member of the Labour Cabinet would have known to be the true state of the public finances.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I am assuming that all of the £210 million of BSF money for Hammersmith and Fulham is gone, including the £20 million for Phoenix high school—one of the most deprived yet improved schools in the country, and where the Secretary of State gave the address at the last presentation evening—and the £21 million for William Morris sixth form, of which I should declare I am a governor. But how are we supposed to know all that from a disgraceful statement comprising four pages of point-scoring waffle and one page that is totally unclear? The language of financial close is not the language that our local authorities have been using with us, so will the Secretary of State please not blame us or our local authorities, but instead blame his Government for not even being clear about which school projects they are cutting?
Michael Gove
I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman feels that way. I appreciate that Phoenix school in his constituency—a school that I have visited, as he rightly pointed out—is an excellent school. The language of financial close is not my language; it is the language that has been chosen for Building Schools for the Future. It was the language developed by the Government of whom he was a part and the language used by the shadow Education Secretary.
Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)
Is the Secretary of State disappointed to hear that when I asked why two of the three allowable phase 3 new build projects in Bradford were in schools with some of the highest levels of attainment in the district—instead of in schools serving deprived communities—I was told that raising educational attainment was not a criterion for the allocation of BSF phase 3 funds?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes the very good point that the criteria that govern Building Schools for the Future were not as they should be. The capital review will be looking to ensure that when future money is allocated, a more sensitive set of criteria will form part of that process.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
Over the past five years I have seen nine new schools in my constituency improve their standards of education and behaviour. What can the right hon. Gentleman say to parents who have signed up to send their children to the two proposed academies in my constituency, on the basis that they would indeed be academies on 1 September? Can he confirm whether those projects will go ahead, or do I have to refer to the bootleg version of the list that is now doing the rounds in the Chamber?
Michael Gove
Again, I am grateful to the hon. Lady. Those two academies will form part of the group that we are reviewing, as I mentioned in my statement. It is also the case that Estover community college in her constituency is, I believe, unaffected.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
My right hon. Friend’s passion for teaching is a welcome change from his predecessor’s passion for bureaucracy and financial waste—waste that has cost the taxpayers in Bedford borough council £500,000 on their Building Schools for the Future proposal, with no progress at all made on building. However, as my right hon. Friend is aware, there is a complex change in Bedford, involving a transition from three-tier to two-tier education. Will he agree to have a meeting on that issue?
Michael Gove
I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend and representatives from Bedford.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
I have written repeatedly to the Secretary of State over the past six weeks asking him to confirm the funding for the three Durham academies, in Consett, Belmont and Stanley. I have to say that it is absolutely disgraceful for the information to come out as it has, and it has meant that Members are having to stand up in this place and individually beg for information from the Secretary of State.
Michael Gove
The hon. Lady asks about the two academies. In my statement I made it clear that Consett and Stanley academies—[Interruption.] I will have to write to the hon. Lady about Belmont in due course, but Consett and Stanley form part of our review.
Mr Mike Hancock (Portsmouth South) (LD)
May I first congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement today? I might add that he was far too generous about the bureaucracy, because anybody in local government or schools who has been involved would have been far more attacking than he was. Will he look especially at the two cases in my city—the Priory school and King Richard—both of which are just weeks away from financial closure? If there is a review, may I ask that it take place speedily, so that such schools can get a clear answer? That will prevent several more hundreds of thousands of pounds from being spent, by both the local authority and the bidders for the two projects concerned.
Michael Gove
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his point. I know that the leader of Portsmouth council, Mr Gerald Vernon-Jackson, has also suffered at the hands of the bureaucracy associated with BSF, and I will look as closely as I can to try to help.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Can the Secretary of State tell me what the names are of the schools that could be affected in my constituency? Ernesford Grange and Finham Park are rebuilds, while there is refurbishment at Westwood, Whitley Abbey and Blue Coat. Let me say to the Secretary of State that it is no good referring the issue to local authorities. It is his job to get briefed by his officials who are in contact with local authorities. If he cannot answer those questions, there is something wrong, because I am appalled at the way in which he has answered the questions in the House today, and I have been politics a very long time.
Michael Gove
I thought it was my duty to tell the House of Commons first about the principles that guided this. I made it clear in my statement how we decided that local authority projects that have reached financial close will go ahead and those that have not cannot. I also made it clear where the exceptions would take place and mentioned the reviews that will follow. As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, Coventry South is not part of a local authority that has reached financial close, so the projects there will be stopped.
Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is right to focus on teaching standards and value for money, but does he accept that there are some local authorities that have received hundreds of millions of pounds of public money, while others such as my own have received nothing? Will the review look to address that unfairness and, in particular, will he look at the case of the Quest academy, which takes over from Selsdon high school in September—a very dilapidated building that needs major refurbishment?
Michael Gove
I take note of the school to which my hon. Friend refers, and I will look sympathetically at it.
Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)
Is the Secretary of State aware that it is at the very least disrespectful to Members to make a general statement without informing us about the individual cases that we have all raised with him several times both in writing and orally in the House? As far as Coventry North West is concerned, will either the President Kennedy or The Woodlands—both sample schools and both very near final closure—proceed?
Michael Gove
I have to say that I do not believe that they qualify as sample schools—I will check that information—but they have been stopped.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
I am grateful for the Secretary of State’s statement and for his telling me that both Wilnecote and Belgrave high schools in Tamworth are applying for academy status. Does he agree that we should meet to discuss the former Labour county council’s decision arbitrarily to abolish sixth forms and give them over to one single sixth form? Can we discuss how to unpick that situation?
Michael Gove
I know that my hon. Friend is very concerned about the way in which sixth form allocation has been secured in his constituency. He has already made representations on that. My Department will consider and discuss with him further exactly what we can do to help.
Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)
Only three weeks ago, the Prime Minister promised to do everything in his power to help and support the people of west Cumbria. Will the Secretary of State honour that commitment?
Michael Gove
I will do everything I can to help the people of west Cumbria, but I am afraid that, because financial close was not reached, the projects in his constituency will be stopped.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
During the general election, the Conservative candidate in my constituency made a public statement to the effect that schools due to be rebuilt under Building Schools for the Future would indeed get their funding and that that had been confirmed by Conservative central office. Can I take it from this that the three schools due to be rebuilt in my area will get their funding?
Michael Gove
I think that the hon. Lady falls within one of the local authorities that has reached financial close. I am sure that she will confirm that that is the case and let me know if it is not. As a result, I think that the schools will go ahead. As for any communication during the election, as I say, the Minister of State, Department for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), indicated that we would find it very difficult to say yes to schools that had not reached financial close.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State agree that we need to continue to invest in the science education of our young people, who need to be equipped with the skills they need for the future? If so, will he explain why new academies sponsored by Durham university and a new science campus in my constituency are to be stopped?
Michael Gove
I sympathise with the hon. Lady. I am committed to doing everything I can to support science. I will talk to Durham university about the situation, but I am afraid that Durham was one of the local authorities that had not reached financial close.
Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)
It is obviously important that we are discussing the issue of school buildings, but I fear that members of the public listening to the questions and answers over the past hour might have been left with the impression that first-class teaching and inspirational school leadership play no part in improving children’s life chances. Would the Secretary of State like to confirm that on the Government Benches, we recognise the crucial importance of those things?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes an impeccable point, and I totally agree with her.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
I attended Kenton comprehensive in my constituency under the previous Conservative Government in the 1980s. We had great teachers, but we also had peeling walls, leaking roofs and prefab buildings. On Friday, I was able to attend the opening of the new Kenton school, which is a £33 million investment in the future of Newcastle’s children, made under the last Labour Government. Now I know that this coalition—
Mr Speaker
Order. I apologise for having to interrupt the hon. Lady, but we simply do not have time for preambles at this point. Will she please bring herself to put a question?
Chi Onwurah
Yes, I would like to ask the Secretary of State if he will at least acknowledge that the investment of the last Labour Government will reap real rewards for Newcastle, for my school and for my city.
Michael Gove
I know that in Newcastle, schools are either open or have reached financial close. I have had the opportunity of talking to the head teacher of Kenton school, which I know is excellent and I hope to visit it in the future.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
I regret that we have to obtain information in this way, and I would be grateful if the Secretary of State told me what reassurance I can give to King Edward VII school, which sits both in my constituency and that of the Deputy Prime Minister. As I understand it, it fits the criteria that the Secretary of State described in being a school that has not reached financial close, but on which very significant work has been undertaken in a project significantly to enhance the teaching of STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—which are critical not only to school students but to our economy.
Michael Gove
I believe that Sheffield is one of the local authorities that has reached financial close, so I think that the King Edward VII school is unaffected.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman knows that I quite like him, but may I say that the way in which he has presented his statement today has been nothing but a disgrace? In so doing, he has treated the House and individuals in it with contempt. He said in his statement that the poorest communities will not be affected, but what will be gained in Stanley in my constituency—one of the poorest areas in this country—by reviewing an academy that has the support of the local community and will put in great work to change the lives of thousands of children in the years to come?
Michael Gove
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s kind words at the beginning. I have stressed that academy projects are those that, as we both appreciate, were designed to help children in the most difficult circumstances. If he would like to write to me, we will make sure that we do everything possible to help to support that academy project.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
In the light of the shambolic way in which information has had to be eked out of the Secretary of State today, he will forgive me for pressing him a little further. Can he say that he will honour every penny of the previous Government’s promise on the primary capital programme, including the £12.6 million to benefit three primary schools in my constituency, and the secondary enlargement programme, which, although outwith the Building Schools for the Future project, is vital to the future of education in my constituency?
Michael Gove
I can say that the Furness academy in Barrow and Furness is unaffected. The hon. Gentleman made reference to primary schools in his constituency, but nothing in today’s announcement directly affects the primary capital programme or devolved capital for this year. Obviously, future capital decisions will form part of the comprehensive spending review.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
Hurworth school in my constituency is an excellent school with inspirational teachers and excellent pupils as well. It was down to receive BSF money earlier this year. I want to know whether that funding will still be in place. If not, the school is already close to falling down. It has shown an interest in academy status. Does the right hon. Gentleman think it should still go ahead for that status, given that it is a broken-down school, or does he think that the 650 pupils should move into a disused shop under the free schools scheme?
Michael Gove
I am afraid that County Durham is one of the local authorities that has not reached financial close, but I would encourage all schools that believe that they can make use of academy freedoms to move down that route. We are, of course, encouraging sponsors, with whom we have been in negotiation, to do everything possible not just to transform teaching and learning, but to improve the environment in which children learn.
Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State agree that, whatever his criticisms of the Building Schools for the Future programme, some of which were justified, his announcement today will cast a pall of gloom and uncertainty over areas such as mine, which have yet to benefit from it? Does he also agree that in north-east Lincolnshire, we have particular problems in that we desperately need the new school building as a stimulus to the system and we desperately need the jobs and economic stimulus that that building will bring? It is also an area of high unemployment and under-privilege, which suffers from under-attainment in educational standards. Should not the particular needs of an area such as that be taken into account before deciding to cancel any part of our programme?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his points about the defects in the Building Schools for the Future programme, which shows him being typically bipartisan and capable of rising above party divisions in order to acknowledge such flaws. I also appreciate that in his constituency a fantastic school, Havelock academy, is unaffected by today’s proposal. However, I am afraid that because two schools in his constituency have not reached financial close, they will not receive the investment that he might have hoped for. I appreciate that in Great Grimsby there are problems with educational attainment, and I look forward to working with him to do everything that we can to raise attainment in that constituency.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
You are aware, Mr Speaker, that I have raised this point on two previous occasions with Government Front Benchers. My right hon. Friend the shadow Education Secretary raised it earlier and did not get an answer. The Secretary of State clearly refers in his statement to projects that have not been properly funded, and uses as an example the new school building programme. As the shadow Education Secretary said, however, if we had announced projects that were not properly funded, he would have been asked for a letter of direction from the permanent secretary. Therefore, will the Education Secretary produce the letter of direction confirming what he has said today? Again, under this Government, Halton has been badly affected by terrible cuts—much worse than more affluent areas.
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. My argument is that, because the shadow Education Secretary made spending promises on Building Schools for the Future at the same time as the then Chancellor of the Exchequer was making it clear that capital spending would be reduced by half, those projects were unfunded and unsustainable.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) for doing the job of the Secretary of State and bringing us the documents from the Library. As a result, I now know that four schools in Blaydon will not get support. Are we not seeing the real cost of the Tory Budget? Is it not the truth that the Government are giving corporation tax cuts, introducing a very timid bank levy and doing nothing about tax evasion and avoidance, but the people paying for it are the schoolchildren of Blaydon?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point. I am afraid that Blaydon will not benefit because it falls within one of the local authorities that has not reached financial close. However, two schools in his constituency have already opened under Building Schools for the Future—[Interruption.] In Blaydon. I hope the pupils in those schools are benefiting. They will certainly benefit in future from the expansion into the north-east of Teach First, which will result in supremely talented teachers in secondary and primary schools who can help to raise attainment in his constituency.
Mr Speaker
Order. Before I take points of order, let me acknowledge, without apology, that I ran both statements very long today. That is unusual, albeit, I suspect, not unprecedented, and it certainly should not be regarded as the norm or a guide to what Members can expect. I took account both of the level of interest in the two extremely important matters and of the nature of, and likely interest in, the business to follow. I think that is perhaps worth the House knowing.
Points of Order
(14 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. A Member of the House doing an interview with the BBC at 5.25 this afternoon was given the full list of schools in her constituency on the departmental list. It transpires that that was sent out to the media by the Department at 5.20, but at 5.45 there was still no list in the House of Commons Library. Is that not a shameful way to treat the House? How can Members respond when they are not given the information being given to the press?
Further, at 4 o’clock this afternoon, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury made a written ministerial statement in which he announced a £1 billion cut to the budget of the Department for Education—a cut that was not mentioned subsequently in the Secretary of State’s statement, which was labelled a statement on school funding. How can that happen?
Further, allegations have been made in the House about financial improprieties that happened before the election. I said clearly that there had been no direction, and that everything was agreed with the Treasury. The allegations were then repeated. Can we have chapter and verse and a reply from the accounting officer at the Department before the House rises tonight, so that we can clear up the matter and find out who is telling the truth?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. Matters of procedure, or indeed of process, are matters for me in the Chair. Matters of content of statements are not. What I can say to him, and to the House, is the following. Obviously, I have done, or have had done for me, a little bit of research in anticipation of the possibility of points of order on this matter. “Erskine May”, on page 441, makes it clear that
“a document which has been cited by a Minister ought to be laid upon the Table of the House, if it can be done without injury to the public interest.”
That principle does seem to apply to the list—the document, or documents, in this case. It, or they, should be available to the whole House, rather than just to individual Members when they ask or through correspondence afterwards. I think that the thrust of what I have said is clear.
We had extensive exchanges and considerable dextrousness was required from the Secretary of State for Education. He was asked a great many questions and sought to answer them. It seemed to me a pretty unwieldy process, to put it mildly, for us not to have the documents available at the appropriate time. I have noted what the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) has said about the timing of the passing of documents to members of the media and so on, but before I pass any comment on that matter, I think it is only right to ask the Secretary of State for his comments in response to the point of order and to what I have said.
The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I am grateful to you for your direction from “Erskine May” in that regard. I wanted to ensure that we made a decision based on rules-based criteria, and I hope that that was clear in my statement. It was also the case that a list was placed in the Library of the House. I apologise to you, Mr Speaker, and to the House, if Members feel that the decision to place it in the Library of the House was in any way too slow and in any way impeded their capacity to ask the questions that they properly want to ask.
Mr Speaker
Order. Before I take further points of order—I am happy to do so—let me say that I am grateful to the Secretary of State for what he has said, but there is a response to it. First, I think that laying the documents either upon the Table of the House, to coincide with the start of the statement, or in the Vote Office, would be the proper course to follow in these circumstances. I have put that on the record, so that he can be clear for the future. Secondly, with reference to the question of timing, I wonder whether he can confirm or refute the suggestion that a copy of the list was passed to members of the media while his statement and the exchanges on it were still in progress.
Michael Gove
I am not aware of that because I was here in the House answering questions.
Mr Speaker
In response—I do not want to have an extended exchange with the right hon. Gentleman, and I am grateful for his efforts to co-operate —[Interruption.] Order. If the Secretary of State says that he is not aware—he is a person of his word—I of course accept that he was not aware, but what I would say is that the Secretary of State should be aware of whether something has been passed to the media before the statement is concluded. If he is not aware, it is inevitably possible that something would be passed to the media, as it has been suggested has happened, before the statement is concluded. That would be a rank discourtesy to the House. I have known the right hon. Gentleman for 20 years, and I have always known him to be a person of the utmost courtesy, but it is fair to say that there has been something of a breach of courtesy today.
Ed Balls
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. On your ruling, I told the House five minutes ago that the list was circulated to the press at 5.20. Either the Secretary of State for Education doubts my word, or he should apologise to the House for the list being sent to the media 25 to 30 minutes before it was placed in the Library of the House. Can we also have answers to the question on the allegations about my impropriety? Will he provide a reply with evidence about these allegations of financial impropriety from the accounting officer and the permanent secretary of the Department before the House rises tonight?
Mr Speaker
The shadow Secretary of State has now twice, very clearly, made his point about the timing of the release of the documents to non-Members of Parliament. The Secretary of State has offered a form of apology; whether he wishes to add to that is a matter for him.
As for the other important matter raised by the shadow Secretary of State, namely what he regards as a slur on his good name, I must tell him that, procedurally, it is not a matter for me. It is a matter of debate, and I have a feeling that it will be the subject of continued exchanges between the two titans for some time to come.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I hope you will agree that the House is being treated with contempt this afternoon. One copy of that list was finally put in the Library, and those who were queuing to try to obtain it were unable to return to the Chamber before the end of the statement. That is a complete and utter disgrace. Will you try to find out when it was decided to put the copy of the list in the Library? It is highly suspicious that the Secretary of State did not make clear in his statement that a copy was in the Library; we forced it out of him that it had been done while he was making the statement. Will you also find out, Mr. Speaker, when the copy actually went into the Library? It is impossible for us to question the Secretary of State on what is going on in our constituencies unless we have the details.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, I hope that you will compare the statement with the list that was in the press over the weekend, because the substance of the statement was what was in that list. We heard nothing from the Secretary of State in the House today that had not been in the newspapers over the weekend.
Mr Speaker
The first point that I will make to the hon. Gentleman is this. I think I have already made clear—but let me underline the point—that it is not sufficient simply to provide the Library with a copy of a document. If the document appertains to a matter that is currently before the House, in order to aid and abet Members in their scrutiny duties, copies of that relevant document should be available in the Vote Office, on the Table of the House, or, better still, both.
Secondly, let me say to the hon. Gentleman that we cannot have a continued exchange on every point of detail now. I have, I think, made clear that, whether inadvertently or not—I leave others to judge—the House has been unfairly and discourteously treated. I have made that point extremely robustly, and I do not think that I need add to it at this stage.
As for what the hon. Gentleman said about what was in the media, I am happy to undertake my own reading at an appropriate time. I suggest to the Secretary of State, who is listening to these exchanges—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State may wish to add to whatever apology he has already uttered, but I suggest to him that it would be helpful if he would look into the matter of timing of release of documents by his Department and report back to me, because it is clearly a matter of interest to Members of the House.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I hear what you say about the papers and the sort of apology that we have already had from the Secretary of State, but much of this information was in the media throughout the weekend. Moreover, in a statement earlier this afternoon the Deputy Prime Minister told us that he wanted to come to the House before consulting the Welsh Assembly or the Scottish Parliament, but the date of the referendum on the alternative vote was in all the media last Friday. In fact, it started to appear in the media almost the moment Parliament finished sitting last week. I have a suspicion that the Deputy Prime Minister himself spoke to journalists for precisely that purpose.
I see that the Leader of the House is in the Chamber. I wonder whether you, Mr Speaker, could consult him and the shadow Leader of the House to consider ways of ensuring an end to the practice of briefing the media before coming to the House. Some of us had hoped that when there was a hung Parliament, the House would take more authority than the Government.
Mr Speaker
As I have just been reminded, I have opined on this matter on many occasions, and I may have cause to do so again in the future.
Let me briefly say two things to the hon. Gentleman. First, the appearance in the media of a date for a referendum was the subject of media speculation at the time. There is a limited number of dates that might be considered, and I do not put that in quite the same category as the disclosure of the detailed contents of a statement. Secondly, although I have listened very carefully to the hon. Gentleman—who never raises points of order lightly, and is always very well briefed when he does so—I think it fair to say that one cannot simply act on suspicion. The hon. Gentleman said a moment ago that he suspected that the Deputy Prime Minister had passed material to the media. I must rest content with what I know to be true. The hon. Gentleman has made his point, it is fairly on the record, and I will keep a beady eye on these matters—not merely on a weekly or monthly basis but, as I think he will know, on a daily basis.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am sure it will not have escaped your notice that this is the third apology that we have heard in less than a week, and that two of those apologies have come from Secretaries of State. That must be some sort of record.
Hundreds and hundreds of schools and constituencies have been affected by today’s announcement. It is extremely important. The Secretary of State said that this project had not been properly funded. It is a matter of fact that, if it had not been properly funded, the permanent secretary would have asked the then Secretary of State to provide a letter of direction. Can we not ensure that the Secretary of State returns to the House by 10 o’clock tonight to make a statement on that very issue?
Mr Speaker
I know that my response to his point of order will disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but I must tell him that the nature and quality of statements are for both the Minister concerned and others to assess. They are not, in this instance, a matter of order. There is a genuine dispute, and it is a dispute about which the hon. Gentleman feels passionately. He is entitled to do so, he has put his point on the record very clearly, and I have a feeling that he will share it more widely with those who have recently re-elected him.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Will you require the Secretary of State to come back tomorrow and make a proper statement on this matter? I asked about spending in my constituency, and the Secretary of State did not answer the question. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), who has now given me the answer—all 13 projects have been stopped—but I should not have to ask such questions; I should be given the information here. There was plenty of time for that during the extended session on the statement.
As you will see if you look at the statement, Mr. Speaker, the first four pages are about what the last Labour Government did. It is point-scoring waffle. There was plenty of time for the information to be given, and if it had been given, we could have asked questions based on it. Will you ask the Secretary of State to come and make a correct statement on the matter?
Mr Speaker
I have been very explicit about the parts of the handling of this matter that I regard as unsatisfactory. What we cannot do—or it would not, in my judgment, be a proper use of the time of the House later in the week for us to do it—is rerun the statement.
The hon. Gentleman is a man of great ingenuity and indefatigability, and I feel sure that he will find ways in which to highlight his concerns—if not tomorrow, later in the week or on other occasions. I feel sure that as soon as he leaves the Chamber, he will be dedicating his grey cells to precisely that pursuit.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I dread producing a few facts to cover the Labour party’s synthetic anger, but when I heard that the list of schools was in the Library, I thought it would be useful to go and get a copy. It does raise a complex point of order. We have had a relatively long session on a statement about an important issue. At what time should documents be put in the Library? We should bear it in mind that as soon as they are in the Library they are in the public domain, and can be handed to the media. These documents went to the Library at 17.52. Should documents go to the Library and be available generally at the start of the statement, or at the end of it? That is an important point of order.
Mr Speaker
Let me say first to the hon. Gentleman that his points of order are always important, and that this was no exception. Secondly, let me say to him that I thought I had made this point clear, but if I failed to do, I apologise to the House. My very strong view is that relevant documents should be available on the Table of the House or in the Vote Office, or both, at the start—I repeat, at the start—of a statement, to make it easier for Members to conduct their duty of scrutiny. I hope that that is helpful to the hon. Gentleman and the House.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
Further to the point of order made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), Mr Speaker. Today there was a written statement of the additional £1 billion of cuts in the education capital spending budget, which will further affect hundreds if not thousands of schools that may have already engaged builders to carry out the work. Can we not be given extra time tomorrow in which to question the Secretary of State on this matter, and to drill into the detail of not just the £1 billion that we have lost today, but the extra £1 billion that was snuck out when we were all sitting in the Chamber?
Mr Speaker
The frustration of the hon. Lady is overflowing like Vesuvius, and I entirely understand why that is the case, but what I would say to her, in very short order, is, “No I can’t make that commitment.” She has very eloquently put her concerns on the record, but the reason why I cannot make that commitment is that the manner in which Government make a statement, whether it is written or oral, is a matter for the Government. I understand what the hon. Lady says, and the Secretary of State will have heard it, but it seems to me to be in a different category from the other matters of which we have treated in these points of order exchanges.
If there are no further points of order—if the appetite has been exhausted—we can move to the presentation of Bills. Before we move on, however, may I thank the Secretary of State, the shadow Secretary of State and all Members who took part in what were admittedly somewhat heated exchanges? These are very important issues and they have been fully aired.
Bills Presented
Employment Opportunities Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Mr Mark Field, Adam Afriyie, Mr Douglas Carswell and Mr David Nuttall, presented a Bill to introduce more freedom, flexibility and opportunity for those seeking employment in the public and private sectors; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 17 June, and to be printed (Bill 24).
Drugs (Roadside Testing) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Greg Knight, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mark Pritchard and Mr David Nuttall, presented a Bill to make provision for roadside testing for illegal drugs; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 10 June, and to be printed (Bill 25).
United Kingdom (Parliamentary Sovereignty) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Mr William Cash, Philip Davies, Mr Douglas Carswell, Mark Pritchard, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr Brian Binley, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Mr David Nuttall and Mr John Whittingdale, presented a Bill to reaffirm the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 18 March, and to be printed (Bill 26).
Broadcasting (Public Service Content) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Mark Field, Mark Pritchard, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr David Nuttall and Mr Douglas Carswell, presented a Bill to define public service content for the purposes of public service broadcasting.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 1 April, and to be printed (Bill 27).
Training Wage Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Mr Robert Walter, Mr Douglas Carswell, Mr Brian Binley and Mr David Nuttall, presented a Bill to make provision that persons receiving a training wage are exempt from legislation relating to the minimum wage; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 18 March, and to be printed (Bill 28).
Minimum Wage (Amendment) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Mr Mark Field, Mr David Nuttall and Mr Douglas Carswell, presented a Bill to enable the national minimum wage to be varied to reflect local labour market conditions; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 4 March, and to be printed (Bill 29).
Referendums Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Mark Field, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr Douglas Carswell, Mr David Nuttall and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, presented a Bill to provide for minimum turn-out thresholds for referendums; to impose restrictions on holding elections and referendums on the same day; to facilitate combined referendums on different issues; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 18 March, and to be printed (Bill 30).
Tribunals (maximum Compensation Awards) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Mark Field, Mr Brian Binley and Mr David Nuttall, presented a Bill to enable maximum limits to be established for compensation in tribunal awards for cases involving unlawful discrimination; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 17 June, and to be printed (Bill 31).
Public Bodies (Disposal of Assets) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Douglas Carswell and Mr David Nuttall, presented a Bill to make provision to require certain public bodies to dispose of unused or under-used assets by public auctions; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 17 June, and to be printed (Bill 32).
Regulatory Authorities (level of Charges) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Robert Walter, Mr Douglas Carswell and Mr David Nuttall, presented a Bill to provide for controls on the powers of certain regulatory authorities to impose charges for their services; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 13 May, and to be printed (Bill 33).
National Park Authorities Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Desmond Swayne, Dr Julian Lewis, Mr Mark Field and Mr Peter Bone, presented a Bill to empower the Secretary of State to abolish National Park Authorities; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 1 April, and to be printed (Bill 34).
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman has a lot of reading to do, and we look forward to the results of that.
European Union (Audit of Benefits and Costs of UK Membership) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Philip Hollobone presented a Bill to require the Secretary of State to commission an independent audit of the economic costs and benefits of the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 10 June, and to be printed (Bill 35).
Residential Roads (Adoption by Local Authorities) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Philip Hollobone presented a Bill to require the handover of residential roads built by developers to local highways authorities within certain time periods; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 18 March, and to be printed (Bill 36).
National Service Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Philip Hollobone presented a Bill to provide a system of national service for young persons; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 4 March, and to be printed (Bill 37).
Young Offenders (Parental responsibility) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Philip Hollobone presented a Bill to make provision for a mechanism to hold individuals to account for any criminal sanctions imposed upon young people for whom those individuals hold parental responsibility; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 17 June, and to be printed (Bill 38).
Return of Asylum Seekers (Applications from Certain Countries) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Philip Hollobone presented a Bill to provide for the immediate return of asylum seekers to countries designated as safe; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 3 December, and to be printed (Bill 39).
Apprehension of Burglars Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Philip Hollobone presented a Bill to provide immunity from prosecution or civil action for persons who apprehend or attempt to apprehend burglars; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 4 February, and to be printed (Bill 40).
Taxation Freedom Day Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Philip Hollobone presented a Bill to provide for an annual Taxation Freedom Day to reflect the proportion of tax paid by individuals from their income; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 1 April, and to be printed (Bill 41).
European Communities Act 1972 (Repeal) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Philip Hollobone presented a Bill to repeal the European Communities Act 1972 and related legislation; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 1 April, and to be printed (Bill 42).
Rights Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Philip Hollobone presented a Bill to set out certain principles in a United Kingdom Bill of Rights; to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 13 May, and to be printed (Bill 43).
Sentencing (Reform) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Philip Hollobone presented a Bill to reform sentencing provision to ensure that the length of a custodial sentence reflects the sentence of a court; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 11 February, and to be printed (Bill 44)
Mr Speaker
We look forward to the product of the hon. Gentleman burning the midnight oil.
European Union Membership (Referendum) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Douglas Carswell, Mr Nigel Dodds, Mark Reckless, Philip Davies and Mr David Nuttall, presented a Bill to require the holding of a referendum on whether the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Union; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 4 March, and to be printed (Bill 45).
Broadcasting (Television Licence Fee Abolition) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Philip Hollobone, Mark Pritchard, Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Douglas Carswell, Mr Nigel Dodds, Mark Reckless, Mr Brian Binley, Philip Davies and Mr David Nuttall, presented a Bill to make provision for the abolition of the television licence fee; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 13 May, and to be printed (Bill 46).
Elector Registration Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Philip Hollobone, Mark Pritchard, Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Douglas Carswell, Mr Nigel Dodds, Mark Reckless, Mr Brian Binley, Mr William Cash, Philip Davies and Mr David Nuttall, presented a Bill to require each elector applying to register to vote to certify their entitlement to vote; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 4 March, and to be printed (Bill 47).
Electoral Law (Amendment) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Philip Hollobone, Mark Pritchard, Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Douglas Carswell, Mr Nigel Dodds, Mark Reckless, Mr Brian Binley, Mr William Cash, Philip Davies and Mr David Nuttall, presented a Bill to enable electors in the precincts of a polling station before the time designated for the closing of the poll to vote; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 22 October, and to be printed (Bill 48).
Human Trafficking (Border Control) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Philip Hollobone, Mark Pritchard, Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Douglas Carswell, Mr Nigel Dodds, Mark Reckless, Mr Brian Binley, Philip Davies, Mr David Nuttall and Dr Térèse Coffey, presented a Bill to require border control officers to stop and interview potential victims of trafficking notwithstanding entitlements under European Union law to free movement of persons; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 13 May, and to be printed (Bill 49).
Medical Insurance (Tax Relief) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mark Pritchard, Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Douglas Carswell, Mr Nigel Dodds, Mr Brian Binley, Mr William Cash, Philip Davies and Mr David Nuttall, presented a Bill to provide for tax relief on medical insurance premiums.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 4 February, and to be printed (Bill 50).
Snow Clearance Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Philip Hollobone, Mark Pritchard, Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Douglas Carswell, Mr Nigel Dodds, Mark Reckless, Mr Brian Binley, Mr William Cash, Philip Davies, Mr David Nuttall and Dr Térèse Coffey, presented Bill to provide immunity from prosecution or civil action for persons who have removed or attempted to remove snow from public places; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 12 November, and to be printed (Bill 51).
Armed Forces (Leave) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Philip Hollobone, Mark Pritchard, Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Douglas Carswell, Mr Nigel Dodds, Mark Reckless, Mr Brian Binley, Mr William Cash, Philip Davies, Mr David Nuttall and Chris Heaton-Harris, presented Bill to provide that leave for members of the armed forces serving overseas should be calculated from the time an individual arrives back in the United Kingdom; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 19 November, and to be printed (Bill 52).
Transparent Taxation (Receipts) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Philip Hollobone, Mark Pritchard, Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Douglas Carswell, Mr Nigel Dodds, Mark Reckless, Mr Brian Binley, Mr William Cash, Philip Davies, Mr David Nuttall and Chris Heaton-Harris, presented a Bill to make provision for all receipts printed in the United Kingdom to contain a figure for the total amount of tax paid on the goods and services purchased.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 21 January, and to be printed (Bill 53).
Alignment (Clear Line of Sight) Project
(14 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)
I beg to move,
That this House approves the proposals for simplifying the Government’s spending controls and financial reporting to Parliament, as set out in the paper, Alignment (Clear Line of Sight) Project, Cm 7567, of March 2009, and the response of October 2009 to the relevant report of the Liaison Committee (Second Special Report of the Liaison Committee, Session 2008-09, Financial Scrutiny: Parliamentary Control over Government Budgets: Government Response to the Committee’s Second Report of Session 2008-09, HC 1074).
The motion seeks the authority of the House to implement changes to the structure and content of the Supply estimates that set out departmental spending plans and are subject to approval by the House. These changes stem from work that began under the previous Government, and which has enjoyed cross-party support throughout. The aim of the changes is to provide a simpler and more effective system of public spending control.
As hon. Members will remember, the previous Government announced in the Green Paper, “The Governance of Britain”, in June 2007 that they would simplify the spending control framework and the Government’s financial reporting to Parliament further to enhance consistency and transparency at all stages of the process—budgetary spending plans, parliamentary Supply estimates and expenditure outcomes in resource accounts. That will lead to the following: a simpler and more transparent system, making it easier for Parliament to understand and challenge Departments; a strengthening of the existing budgeting framework by underpinning it with parliamentary control; and the streamlining of Government spending documents, making it easier to understand what is happening with public money.
Government’s and Parliament’s control and scrutiny of public spending is currently managed against four different frameworks. First, there are the national accounts, an integrated set of economic accounts covering the whole of the economy. Those accounts are produced by the Office for National Statistics in accordance with the European system of accounts 1995. National accounts are used to determine fiscal performance. Secondly, there are budgets, which are defined by the Treasury and used to control public spending. Budgets are allocated by the Treasury in spending reviews and reported on to Parliament at successive pre-Budget reports and Budgets. Certain elements of budgets are aligned to national accounts definitions. Others, such as those introduced with the move to full resource accounting and budgeting in 2003-04, relate to commercial-style accounting concepts and are designed to improve value-for-money incentives in Departments.
Thirdly, there are Supply estimates, which seek annual parliamentary authority for the expenditure of individual Departments following the plans set out in spending reviews. Estimates are largely, if not entirely, aligned to generally accepted accounting practice—GAAP—accounting definitions, rather than to national accounts, although they do not encompass all of the departmental expenditure and income that would be accounted for under GAAP. There are significant differences between estimates and budgets: about a third of departmental spending in budgets is not included in estimates, and about a sixth of what is included in estimates is not in budgets. Fourthly, there are resource accounts, which report Departments’ actual spending during a particular financial year, following GAAP, as adapted for the public sector. That means that there are some substantial differences compared with budgets and national accounts.
Those four frameworks have developed in different ways over the years for good reasons, since they serve different purposes. However, the result is significant misalignment between the different frameworks, with only two thirds of Government expenditure fully aligned across budgets, estimates and resource accounts.
Current misalignments can broadly be broken down into two categories. First, there are differences in the various boundaries—the entities and spending included in budgets, estimates and accounts. Those cover both different types of income and expenditure within the budgets and the different treatment of entities within respective boundaries. For example, the spending of non-departmental public bodies scores in budgets, but the grant-in-aid paid to those bodies scores in estimates and resource accounts, not their total spending. Secondly, there are differences in the policies. Specific transactions are often treated differently between the three frameworks. Examples include capital grants, provisions and other non-cash items within budgets.
At present, there are significant differences between the ways in which the three main elements of the public spending control framework define and treat expenditure. Those three elements are: departmental budgets as set by the Treasury; departmental Supply estimates as authorised by this House; and departmental resource accounts presented to this House after the year-end. To give just one of many potential examples, departmental estimates and accounts currently include only the spending of the relevant Government Department, whereas budgets also include the expenditure of any non-departmental public body for which the Department is responsible. This means that Departments have different controls against which to manage, and that it is very difficult to track spending from plans through to out-turn. That, in turn, limits the scope for effective parliamentary scrutiny and adds to the complexity of managing public money; it also requires time and effort to reconcile the frameworks.
The principal aims of the proposed changes are therefore to increase the transparency of public spending information; to improve accountability to this House and to the wider public; to make it easier for Government Departments and other public bodies to understand the controls to which they are working; and to provide a more efficient control framework that builds in the right incentives to deliver better value for money.
As I have said, the different frameworks have developed in different ways over the years, and for a range of reasons. For example, international standards have helped determine the definitions of expenditure currently applied within both accounts and budgets, with budgetary definitions being determined by Government but supporting internationally recognised fiscal definitions, and accounting policies reflecting international financial reporting standards adapted for the public sector context. Some misalignments between those frameworks will inevitably remain. What matters most is that they occur only where there is good reason, and that they are properly understood and kept to a minimum.
Budgets and estimates will be fully aligned under the new framework. The remaining misalignments will be with resource accounts—amounting to about £22 billion—where enforcing alignment would be contrary to the principles of the alignment project. By far the largest example, amounting to £19 billion, is the treatment of capital grants paid by Departments to the private sector, local authorities and public corporations. That is because capital grants are treated as resource spending in departmental accounts, reflecting international financial reporting standards, but as capital spending in budgets, reflecting national accounts treatment. As hon. Members will recognise, this is not a straightforward area.
Nevertheless, there is much improvement that can be made while adhering to these standards, and the alignment project represents an excellent opportunity to achieve greater consistency between the different frameworks. The main changes designed to achieve the aims of alignment are the extension of the departmental estimates and accounting boundaries to accommodate non-departmental public bodies and other bodies classified to the central Government sector, bringing their expenditure within the coverage of estimates presented to Parliament for approval. The power to do that, through a Treasury Order listing the bodies to be consolidated into estimates and accounts, was provided in part 5 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010.
It is worth spending a couple of minutes reflecting on the different nature of non-departmental public bodies, which vary enormously in size and in the functions they carry out. Consolidation will include bodies that spend very large amounts of public money, such as the Environment Agency and the Legal Services Commission, which will be consolidated within the estimate and accounts of, respectively, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Ministry of Justice. Both those bodies spend over £1 billion per annum. Some of these bodies are charities—the national museums and galleries, for example—and others have statutory independence, so it is important that we create alignment in a way that neither constrains their freedom to act nor puts their status at risk. The provisions of the 2010 Act, approved by this House earlier this year, include protection for that independence, so that we can combine operational freedom with financial accountability.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend recall that in 2007, the Treasury Committee acknowledged
“that the requirements of the alignment project mean that it is not possible for Parliament to maintain control over gross totals. We are concerned that without adequate levels of information regarding income, Parliament’s authority may be diminished.”
How can the Minister reassure Parliament that our authority over Supply will not be diminished in any way following alignment?
Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)
May I ask a number of questions on the non-departmental bodies with which the hon. Gentleman was dealing? First, when will they be incorporated into the estimates? Secondly, how will NDPBs that get some of their grant funding from a number of Departments be dealt with in the estimates? The third, and contentious, issue is NDPBs that may have reserves of moneys raised outside of Government, and which want the freedom to spend those moneys in ways appropriate to their governing bodies.
Mr Hoban
The right hon. Lady raises some interesting points. On her first point, my understanding is that this provision will come into force for the financial year 2011-12. On her third point, we of course want to make sure that NDPBs still have the freedom to act, and we have said that they will—they will have the independence they had prior to this process. That issue was, I think, taken into account in drafting the 2010 Act, which the right hon. Lady will have supported as a member of the then Government. So those controls are in place.
Margaret Hodge
On my second point, the freedom of NDPBs to spend reserves from moneys they themselves have raised was not dealt with under the 2010 Act, which I did indeed support. As a member of the then Government, I pursued that issue and did not get to a good end. I hope that the Minister will undertake to look at it, in order to give those NDPBs their freedom.
Mr Hoban
We will look at it, but incorporating NDPBs into the clear line of sight project so that their results are reported in estimates and departmental annual accounts is something that should be done, and the principle underlying these reforms is to do it in a way that does not compromise their status.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
While the hon. Gentleman is on the subject of NDPBs, can he clarify now for the House the future of the Tenant Services Authority, about which there has been some speculation in the media? Apparently, the Housing Minister described it as “toast”, and the Financial Times has speculated that the Chief Secretary overruled the Housing Minister.
Mr Hoban
No, I want to make some more progress. A number of Members on both sides of the House wish to participate in this debate, and I am conscious that there is also private business after this.
I want to talk now about the next stage of the alignment process: the coverage of estimates and budgets by including all non-voted budgetary expenditure and income in the estimates presented to Parliament. Parliament will not be asked to approve this spending as it will already have separate legislative authority, but Members will see the full picture of departmental budgetary expenditure. For example, spending financed from the national insurance fund will now be included in the accounts and the estimates, even though it does not have to be voted on annually. Going back to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), we will align the treatment of income in estimates with budgetary controls. Income will be retained by the Department, provided it is of a type allowed to be netted off budgets and included in the description of income in estimates. To this end, a new description of all relevant categories of income will be included in estimates and replicated in Supply legislation. That will ensure that such information is disclosed in the estimates, and those bodies will therefore be accountable for those sums.
We will simplify the presentation of expenditure information by fully aligning budgets and estimates, reducing remaining differences with accounts to those that are absolutely necessary, and providing clear reconciliations between any necessary misalignments that remain.
Mr Leigh
Let us get this absolutely clear. Although the Treasury originally said that there might be a problem with this information coming to Parliament, the Financial Secretary is going to make sure that it is fully available because he appreciates that this is an incredibly complicated and difficult matter for Members of Parliament to come to grips with. There is no point in having an alignment project if less information ends up coming to Parliament and the situation is less clear than it was before. I think that my hon. Friend has given us the necessary reassurance, but I wish to press him, so that there is no doubt that we will get just as much information as we have always had.
Mr Hoban
My understanding is that that is the case. What we will also be able to do—this deals with something that frustrated me when I first came into the House—is track information from budgets set by the Treasury to estimates and to the out-turns. That consistency of information will help Members of this House to hold the Government to account on how public money is being spent.
These changes have been the subject of constructive cross-party consultation over the past three years. During the previous Parliament, the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury submitted three memorandums on alignment to the Chairmen of the Treasury Committee, the Public Accounts Committee and the Liaison Committee, in November 2008, March 2009 and February 2010. The March 2009 memorandum contained detailed proposals for achieving alignment and was published as a Command Paper. All the Committees indicated their support for the proposed changes, and the Liaison Committee took the lead in providing detailed responses. I am grateful to that Committee for its engagement with, and support for, the alignment proposals throughout. The Committee noted in its report on financial scrutiny published in April 2008 that the alignment project was “potentially an historic development”. I fully endorse that view.
The Liaison Committee published a further report in July 2009, which was, again, strongly supportive of the proposed changes. It also made reference to wider issues related to the parliamentary scrutiny of public spending, including the number of days available for debates on the estimates and the outcome of spending reviews, and the scope of such debates. This Government’s establishment of the Backbench Business Committee represents a significant step forward in this area. That Committee has at its disposal 35 days in each Session, some of which are taken in Westminster Hall, to schedule debates on subjects of its choosing, including the scrutiny of public spending.
This Government are fully committed to enhancing transparency in public spending and supporting effective scrutiny by this House. We have already published data held on the Treasury’s public spending database going back to 2005-06. Further measures are being taken that will see details of all new spending of more than £25,000 published from November 2010.
Mr Thomas
The Financial Secretary rightly made reference to the support of the Liaison Committee and to the work of the Backbench Business Committee. However, the Liaison Committee also made it clear that the Government should give an undertaking to provide a day’s debate on the outcome of each spending review and on each year’s pre-Budget report. Can he confirm that it is the Government’s intention to do that from now?
Mr Hoban
Clearly, the Liaison Committee’s recommendations preceded the decision by this Government to set up the Backbench Business Committee. The Backbench Business Committee has the power to use one of the 35 days available to it to deal with the issues proposed by the Liaison Committee, and that is the right way to proceed. It is right to give the House a power to engage in that degree of scrutiny.
The House is today being asked to approve formally changes that will further support the move towards greater openness and transparency, and make effective scrutiny of spending plans by this House far easier to achieve. An explanatory note outlining the purpose of the alignment project has been made available in the Vote Office. With the authority of this House, these changes will be implemented for the financial year 2011-12, and I commend this motion to the House.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I, too, welcome this opportunity to debate the clear line of sight project. What happened this weekend will have dispelled any last remaining doubts about the need for more clarity, transparency and scrutiny of the Government’s plans for public spending. The measures that we are debating will help to make that process a little easier.
As the Financial Secretary said, this project to align better the measures of Government spending was initiated by the previous Government and was strongly supported by many of the Committees of the House. I should, at the outset, acknowledge the important contributions made by the Hansard Society—its contribution went back as far as 2006—the National Audit Office, and, of course, the Treasury Committee, the Public Accounts Committee and the Liaison Committee in championing these reforms.
The Financial Secretary alluded to the fact that in our June 2007 Green Paper, “The Governance of Britain”, we announced the establishment of the clear line of sight project. In a memo in November 2008, we published the first broad ideas, which were then developed into a clearer set of proposals published in March 2009. These ideas set out to do the following: first, to modernise the public spending process to make it more transparent and easier for parliamentary scrutiny purposes and, therefore, to make the Government more accountable; secondly, to make the public finances easier to understand by reforming the way in which the Government publish financial information; and, thirdly, to create greater incentives for value for money by improving the way public spending is managed.
In short, the project was designed to resolve the basic problem that Treasury budgets, which are announced in spending reviews and published in the departmental annual reports, estimates laid before Parliament and resource accounts each currently measure and report expenditure in different ways. That inevitably makes it difficult to compare figures, thus creating, on occasion, confusion and a lack of understanding. Given the Budget that we have just seen, with the scale of impact on the poorest, this has never been more necessary to resolve.
In March 2009, we set out a series of specific proposals in a Command Paper proposing key changes. The first was that the estimates presented to Parliament would be organised, so that when Parliament voted on them it was voting on the same totals as the Treasury would be using to control Government spending—as the Financial Secretary has said, that is particularly significant for non-departmental public bodies. The second was that parliamentary controls over expenditure would be on a net basis, rather than on a gross and net basis. The third was that Parliament would actually approve the capital spending plans of Departments, rather than just be made aware of them. Other proposals were that there would also be changes to the format of the estimates to help simplify them further, and that financial publications would be rationalised to three annual publication events.
The March 2009 proposals had identified misalignments between budgets, estimates and resource accounts of almost £500 billion from the 2008-09 departmental resource spending plans. The extent of misalignment after today’s proposed changes would have reduced to approximately £22 billion—that is a very significant and substantial improvement. Nevertheless, I hope that the Financial Secretary will undertake to keep under close scrutiny, in partnership with Parliament, the scope for any further reductions in this level of misalignment.
We demonstrated our further commitment to this project by taking forward within the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 the one aspect of these proposals that required a change to legislation. That proposal—the consolidation of non-departmental pubic bodies within department resource accounts—was included within the Act and passed in the wash-up period before the general election. I welcome the fact that the explanatory note that the Financial Secretary has put in the Table Office gives some indication of the timetable for introducing the order that will list the bodies to be consolidated into the estimates and accounts—that relates to part of the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge). However, I would welcome his including in his winding-up speech an explanation for the somewhat lengthy time lag between the primary and secondary stages of this particular process.
In the previous Government’s original proposals of March 2009, we said that we wished
“to develop, over time, a set of ‘mid-year’ departmental reports giving a provisional view of spend and performance for each department during the current financial year”.
The Liaison Committee strongly supported that proposal, so will the Financial Secretary explain how he sees the Treasury developing that particular part of the March 2009 proposals?
Perhaps, the Financial Secretary could also set out how the proposals might impact on some of the new bodies that he and his Department have announced. The Office for Budget Responsibility has not had the best of starts, with its independence being questioned and its statistical analysis set for early scrutiny. At the moment, the OBR sits within the comfortable embrace of the Treasury and I wonder whether the Financial Secretary can explain to the House whether he has plans to establish the OBR as a non-departmental public body. I ask because, if that were to be so established, under these proposals the House would be able more clearly to see what the OBR was costing and on what it was spending its money. The House would be more able to make a clearer assessment of whether the OBR’s communications and economic analysis were genuinely independent of the Treasury. If he does not plan to establish the OBR as a non-departmental public body, perhaps he can explain how he plans to offer the House the same level of scrutiny over the OBR’s spending and therefore help the House to assess how independent of the Chancellor and his spin doctors the OBR is?
Perhaps the Minister, too, can set out how these proposals will impact on the independent Equitable Life commission that he plans to establish. Again, will he establish this commission as a non-departmental public body? I ask this without prejudice.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
I am slightly puzzled by the shadow Minister’s speech, because it sounds like a debate for tomorrow.
Mr Thomas
With all due respect to the hon. Gentleman, if he had done some research into what these proposals are about, he would understand the significance of including non-departmental public bodies in the estimates and accounts and would therefore understand the advantages for the House of these proposals.
If the Equitable Life commission that the Government plan to establish were to be set up as a non-departmental public body, the House could assess how much the Government were spending on the administration of the commission as well as on the payments of the scheme. The House could therefore potentially understand more easily how the functions of the commission, which, incidentally, are yet to be made clear, were being implemented. If the Financial Secretary and his colleagues do not intend to set the commission up as a non-departmental public body, will he tell the House how it will be able to scrutinise how the commission is funded and what it spends its money on?
Similarly, the Financial Secretary’s proposals, announced in this House, for a consumer protection and markets authority and a new economic crime agency have not so far been subject to any scrutiny other than that given to the original statement to the House. Under the alignment project proposals, the House could scrutinise more effectively their spending plans and compare them to their predecessors in that regard if they were established as non-departmental public bodies. If he does not propose to establish these two bodies as non-departmental public bodies, will he explain how Parliament will be able to approve their spending plans and scrutinise their accounts? Again, I ask that without prejudice.
One of the real concerns about the Minister’s proposals was the loss of energy within regulatory agencies as individual staff focused, inevitably, on their own futures. The Minister still needs to explain how such a loss of energy in regulatory oversight is being prevented. Will he recognise today that clarity on the status, budgets and ultimately expenditure levels for the new bodies will be fundamental in giving the House confidence in the ability or not of these agencies to do the job that the coalition plans for them?
I welcome this further opportunity to confirm support for the sensible changes that the last Government created under the alignment project, which have taken place after considerable useful debate, but I look forward to the Financial Secretary giving some more clarity on the questions that I have asked.
Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)
The hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) strayed rather a long way out of the line of sight of the line of sight project, if I may say so. His points about the importance of the Office for Budget Responsibility are well made and well taken, and that is something that I hope my Committee will consider and something that I am not yet convinced we have achieved. However, I think that that is a debate for another day.
These proposals will significantly improve parliamentary scrutiny of spending. The previous Labour Government deserve a lot of credit for having put this work in train, just as the coalition Government deserve some credit for acting on what they inherited. I also want to pay tribute to the Liaison Committee and its staff and, in particular, to the work of the Treasury Sub-Committee under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon). He put in a great deal of hard work on all this, some of which is now bearing fruit. I understand that he intends to catch your eye in a moment, Mr Deputy Speaker, and he will no doubt make these points in more detail. However, in the 2007 report he expressed a number of concerns, and two main concerns in particular. One was about the timetabling of publications and the other was about the treatment of income lines in the estimates. On the first, the Government have proposed to publish their departmental reports and accounts by mid-June of each year and to publish the main estimates earlier. That is a step forward. On income streams, the Government’s original proposal—this has been mentioned—was that the House of Commons would vote only on the net estimate. That would have been a step back from the current arrangements whereby Parliament at least votes on both the gross and net figures.
The Treasury Sub-Committee, when considering this matter, acknowledged that with alignment it would not be possible for Parliament to maintain controls over gross totals, but it argued strongly that adequate information should none the less be provided. That is the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) made a moment ago.
On the question of income streams, I think that the Government’s latest plans are a great step forward. Let me explain why. If I get this wrong, the Minister can intervene and tell me. As I understand it, under his proposals any income used by Departments to support spending must be of a type specifically approved by Parliament. That is the first key point, of which there are four. The second is that tax receipts cannot be used as income by Departments to boost spending. In other words, the tax receipts must still go to the Treasury in the normal way. The third is that information on estimated income will still be presented to Parliament and the fourth is that Departments will still be required to explain variations between planned income and actual income at the year end. The Minister has not intervened on me yet, so I have high hopes that I have got that right. If I have, the Government have gone a long way towards satisfying the concerns of the Sub-Committee’s report of the previous Parliament.
This is a complex area with a lot of unknowns still as we develop these changes. We must be realistic about what is achievable and we must be clear that there was no golden age when Government estimates were routinely rejected or reduced. The House of Commons abandoned any attempt to debate estimates in that sort of detail not in the post-war era, as many people suppose, but sometime in the 19th century.
I am also clear that great care needs to be taken before pressing for dramatic increases in powers for Parliament in this area as they can have unforeseen consequences. It is certainly worth considering, for example, ensuring that supplementary estimates are approved by the relevant Sub-Committee, but I am wary of anything that could create the conditions for the growth of a pork barrel style of politics in Britain through the back door. I have been an advocate of stronger Select Committees for many years and we have a lot to learn from our counterparts in Congress, but I do not think that we have much to learn by importing pork barrel politics.
Mr Tyrie
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I am near the end of my remarks and I would rather get to the end because I have discovered—surprisingly on this subject—that quite a few people want to speak.
We will have to see whether the proposals provide better opportunities for the Select Committees that shadow spending Departments and we will soon see whether they can start to scrutinise better the spending decisions taken by them. We will have to wait to find out whether these Committees take up those opportunities—that includes the Treasury Committee, which also monitors spending Departments.
I warmly welcome these proposals from the Government. We now need to monitor them carefully.
Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)
I join others in warmly welcoming the moves that are being taken to simplify and align the reporting mechanisms to Parliament and to make better sense of the arrangements for budgets, estimates and the accounts. I also pay tribute to all those hon. Members who played a part in ensuring that we reached this point. This is the first opportunity that I have had in the House to acknowledge the contribution of the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) when he held the position that I now hold. Throughout his entire tenure of that office, he did a brilliant job of ensuring proper accountability for Government expenditure, and I know that he also played a part in developing these particular proposals. My grateful thanks go to him.
The proposals are being put forward at a particularly important time for Parliament. As we go through a period of financial constraint and cuts in public services, it is hugely important that the decisions taken by the Government are properly accounted for to Parliament. If the new arrangements make it easier for Parliament, either through its Select Committees or through debates in the House, to ensure that the Government are better held to account, we will all welcome that. This is a particularly important period, in which real value for money for every taxpayer’s pound spent is of paramount importance to members of the public.
Better, more consistent figures are one part of the story, but I would like to raise two further issues. First, we need proper time in which to debate the issues that will come out of the special financial accountability to Parliament, and I hope that Ministers will not always designate the days that are controlled by the Back-Bench Committees as those on which we can debate them. These matters are of enormous importance to Members, and should not be contained within those 35 days. I ask the Minister to ensure that the Government will make time available for the proper debate of pre-Budget reports, the spending review and Select Committee reports on expenditure.
My second point is that we all need proper time to carry out financial scrutiny of the figures for the public, whether in the form of estimates, budget estimates or accounts. I hope that Parliament will be given appropriate time to do that, to ensure that accountability.
In generally welcoming these measures, I want to ask the Minister a couple of questions. First, if we are to be able to exercise effective public scrutiny, we shall need timely presentations of the estimates—as close as possible to the Budget or to the start of the financial year. What precise undertaking can he give us on when the estimates will be presented to Parliament?
My second question is on supplementary estimates. In the report produced by the Liaison Committee, there was a suggestion that we would strive to—[Interruption.] Is that ringtone an attempt to cheer up my contribution? There was a suggestion that we would strive to reduce the number of times that it was necessary for us to consider supplementary estimates. Has any advance been made on that matter, and on the Liaison Committee’s recommendation that supplementary estimates should come before the House only once a year? I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) that it would be helpful to know what progress has been made on the development of mid-year reports on spending and performance, with an update on the provisional allocations for next year. When can we look forward to those being introduced?
I warmly welcome the Government’s decision to publish online all expenditure over £25,000, but will the Minister tell us what steps he is taking to calculate the administrative costs and bureaucratic burden of that new measure of accountability? As well as putting that information on the website, will he also ensure that it is placed in the Library, so that all Members of the House may have easy access to it? With that, I join others in noting that there is agreement across the House on these proposals, and I look forward to their early implementation.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
May I start by apologising to the House for my mobile phone ringing just now? It was definitely switched off a while ago. When I was on Birmingham city council, we used to have a policy where, if that happened, we had to give money to the lord mayor’s charity. Perhaps the Speaker’s charity should receive a small payment in this instance.
My experience on Birmingham city council gave me a good understanding of how to control public spending. In moving towards a system with a clear line of sight, all our budgets are set out so that what has been agreed matches what is being recorded. If Parliament decides that that is in fact slightly misaligned, and that we are not spending what we expected to spend, we will need to be aware of the effect that that will have at the other end of the cycle.
We had that experience with the neighbourhood renewal fund in Birmingham. The Government had strict rules on how much money should be spent in each financial year. It was a new system, and if we had not found enough useful projects to spend the money on as we got close to the end of the financial year, there would be a “dash for trash” as we tried to find something to spend it on, so that the Government would not take it away in the next year. It is right to improve the way in which we record these things, but we must ensure that we do it in a way that does not cause those people who are managing the budgets to go for a “dash for trash” at the end of the financial year, just to ensure they fulfil their budgets. Obviously, if we are recording depreciation properly, that will not vary; only the cash issues will be affected.
There are two aspects to accountability. The first involves the authority to spend public money. The second involves finding out whether the expenditure represents value for money. We need to look beyond the system of departmental accounting. Colleagues will know that I am greatly concerned about the child protection system, which is horrendously complex from a financial perspective. When a child is taken into care, the foster carer can cost about £40,000 a year. Further costs can include the parent’s lawyer, which can cost about £25,000 in legal aid. The other parent’s lawyer could cost a further £25,000 in legal aid, and expert fees might have to be paid by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, a separate non-departmental public body.
All those different charges might apply, but, when an assessment of the cost effectiveness of the process is carried out, they might not all be taken into account. When it comes to parliamentary scrutiny here, the Justice Committee will look into the legal aid costs, the Education Committee will look into the foster care costs, and so on. They might not all be put together in a way that leads us to make the right decisions, however. I have encountered many situations, for instance, in which access to a mother and baby unit has been refused on the ground of cost, although such access would have kept mother and baby together for life. The lifetime cost of that not happening is about £250,000 per child, and it could well have been a false economy to save the £6,000 cost of the mother and baby unit in the first place.
When we are considering value for money as part of the accountability programme, we need to find mechanisms to look at project costs on a value-for-money basis. Similar situations occur with capital projects. We are very pleased that the work on New Street station is going ahead, for example, but that is funded out of a number of different pots, and we are not sure what is coming from which pot. Some might be coming from the city council, some from the regional development association, and some from the Department for Transport. That uncertainty makes it difficult, from the perspective of parliamentary scrutiny, to find out what is happening. Trying to compare figures from project to project is also very difficult, because these things are so complex.
We have a similar problem with the funding costs of private finance initiatives. The great difficulty is comparing all the figures involved in what is called optimism bias. I asked the Government what the optimism bias figures were for a number of different PFI projects, and they came back with a wide range of figures. Let me explain a bit about optimism bias, for those hon. Members who are not aware of it. When a PFI project is put together, there is an assumption that, if it could be done through the public sector, it would be done through the public sector, so it must therefore be done in the most cost-effective way. A calculation is made of what the public sector project would have cost, but an optimism bias is then added to it, on the assumption that the public sector calculation is optimistic and therefore too low. That is then compared to a PFI cost without an optimism bias.
The interesting thing is that people are told to pick their own optimism bias, and if the optimism bias is such that undertaking the project through the public sector is cheaper, they must do it through the public sector, but there is no money for that so it will not go ahead. Inevitably, people pick an optimism bias figure that means that the PFI looks cheaper, when it is not. Such things have been going on substantially around the country. Although the clear line of sight project is a positive move, we need to go further.
Other hon. Members wish to speak. I could go on at great length about financial control, having dealt with it at the city council level and in various private sector businesses, as well as in this place, but to be fair to others, I shall conclude.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me in this important debate.
The effective monitoring of Government expenditure and the exercise of control over it by the House of Commons is crucial to why we are here at all, but over the centuries it has become virtually impossible for ordinary Members of Parliament to understand what is going on. It is like the classic Schleswig-Holstein question—only three people understand it, and one of them is mad and one is dead. It is so complicated and so difficult.
That is why I was happy to attempt to serve on the Liaison Committee in the last Parliament with Michael Jack, who was the Chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and John McFall, who was the Chairman of the Treasury Committee. We tried to gets our own heads around the subject, and it made our heads hurt to try and understand what was going on. I hope that some of the comments in our Liaison Committee report have found their way back into what the Government are trying to do—indeed, I know they have, because the previous Government replied to our report. There is nothing partisan about this. Both sides of the House are agreed that the present system is broken and we must do something about it.
As we made clear in our report, the present arrangements present obstacles to sensible and informed scrutiny of public expenditure. It is extraordinary that we have estimates days, but we never discuss estimates. When I tried to interest the Liaison Committee in this work in the last Parliament, there was a collective groan from the Chairmen of the other Select Committees. They said that their people were interested in policy not money, but money is all-important. Policy flows from money. How extraordinary that after centuries of accumulation, like barnacles on the ship of state, we never discuss the Budget in detail.
The Budget process is a farce—not the Budget statement, although in previous years, as we know, much of it was hidden in the Red Book. In the Finance Committee— the Committee that considers the Budget—there is only a matter of seconds available to consider each amendment. Scores of amendments are tabled, the Government swat them all away, and there is no proper debate, and the estimates days do not deal with estimates.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) spoke about the American process, which works. The Office of Budget, a presidential body, proposes a budget. The President may propose, but Congress disposes. In our system, the Chancellor and the Prime Minister propose, and the Chancellor and the Prime Minister dispose. Parliament has very little effect on the process.
In America, there are hundreds of hours of meetings on the budget process. I know that my hon. Friend mentioned pork barrel politics. That is a regrettable aspect of the process but it is often much exaggerated. Recently, Senator Byrd died at the grand old age of 90. I might still be here at the age of 90, boring the House with these matters. We know that Senator Byrd showered largesse on West Virginia, whereas it is impossible for me to give a single penny to Gainsborough, or in the case of my hon. Friend, to Chichester, but surely there is a sensible halfway house, so to speak, whereby the House can receive reasonable, sensible information, we can know what is going on, we can have estimates days that discuss the estimates, and we can make a difference.
That is why I suggested in the last Parliament that there should be a triple lock on the scrutiny process. The right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), the present Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, has already spoken in the debate. We have a superb post-audit system in the UK, perhaps one of the best in the world. Although we have one of the best audit systems in the world—actual audit systems through the National Audit Office, and parliamentary audit through the Public Accounts Committee—we have one of the weakest Budget processes. When the Hansard Society produced a report before the Liaison Committee examined the matter in the last Parliament, in terms of effective parliamentary scrutiny we were at the bottom of the heap, together with New Zealand, ranked lower than any other democratic Parliament in the world, bar none. Such was the weakness of our parliamentary control.
What I suggested was a triple lock. We already have, as I say, a good audit system. Is it not surprising that it is so difficult to interest the other Select Committees in money? On education, for example, we had an hour and a half on a statement today with people battling over policy, yet it is difficult to get the Education Committee to get to grips with the education budget, from which those policies derive.
I think we need a specialised Budget committee, which will be a Select Committee of the House and have a permanent membership, like other Select Committees. When, under the alignment project, the Government bring forward various proposals, there would have to be a trigger mechanism when any Department sought to increase its budget by a certain amount. That could trigger a potential inquiry by the Budget committee, which would have to be resourced by the scrutiny unit of the House and by the National Audit Office.
Thus we would have a particular committee, a kind of appropriations committee, which is the most powerful congressional committee. It would have to have real teeth, not just be a talking shop. I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester will not mind my relaying our private conversation earlier. He said that once we gave such a power to any Select Committee, pork barrel politics would inevitably flow from it. There would have to be safeguards, a process and gradual reform, as we always have in the House. No Government will suddenly surrender to a Select Committee or to Select Committees of the House the kind of powers that congressional committees have, but surely there is no harm in our waving the flag, as parliamentarians, for greater parliamentary control.
We would have the PAC as a kind of audit system, and a Budget committee looking at the Budget in detail in a way that the Finance Bill Committee cannot do. The third part of the triple lock on wasteful spending in Government should be some kind of Star Chamber within Government. The Treasury do a fantastic job, but when spending was increasing very rapidly during the past 10 years, it was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of decisions pouring on to officials’ desks. It was perhaps too much of a paper-based exercise. Perhaps the Chief Secretary could not get adequate control of it.
I believe that Ministers and their officials who were proposing the expenditure of large sums of money should have to come before a Star Chamber to justify their proposals and to be questioned in private and give honest answers. I have served on four Select Committees of the House in more than 20 years. Do we ever have Ministers and officials giving entirely honest answers to our Select Committees? No, because those are held in public and Ministers and officials deal with questions by playing a dead bat. I am not denigrating the role of Select Committees and I quite understand the game that Ministers and officials play in front of them, but there has to be some equivalent process privately within Government, so that as expenditure plans are being dreamed up, there is proper control and reform.
Such scrutiny will continue to be a dry subject which nobody understands or is interested in unless the Government, in the alignment process, listen to what we were trying to say. We said:
“To be properly effective improvements in presentation need to be accompanied also by improved opportunities for Members—as individuals and through select committees and front benches—to debate the figures (both in the form of the formal Estimates for the current year and the spending plans for future years).”
That is absolutely vital.
We want a clear line of sight and to know in simple terms, whether from the Department for Education or the Ministry of Defence, what they spent last year and plan to spend next year. There would be a day in Parliament when we could debate it and vote on it, and that would start to bring Parliament back into the process. In doing so, that would surely restore Parliament to what it should be about: Members acting on behalf of their constituents to control public money, so that very large sums of money are never again spent without adequate controls. That is a great prize. For all the technicalities of our discussion, for all the difficulties and for all the talk of “moving from cash to resource accounts”, “the introduction to Government budgets” and “the concept of departmental expenditure limits”—all those words that, frankly, leave most Members cold—in the end, this is not a technical process. It is a process of real parliamentary democracy, and is therefore to be warmly welcomed.
Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), and all of us look forward to hearing from him in this Chamber on his 90th birthday.
I, too, welcome warmly and, I hope, briefly the motion and the Government’s early action on the clear line of sight project. As my hon. Friend the Minister said, it has had a very long gestation. We are being asked to take note of a document that is 16 months old, and of a proposal that is at least three years old, and probably four years old. For all that, it is a welcome proposal, because it puts budgets, estimates and accounts on the same basis, and the Treasury Committee has long encouraged such a move. It is very good news to hear from the Government that the budgets will be aligned from this April, and I understand that the estimates will follow from April next year. I welcome that.
I have only three technical points and then a proposal. I hope that they are not too technical, but if they are I am happy for my hon. Friend to write to me. First, I understand that in budgets, public capital expenditure by private bodies is treated as capital expenditure, but that, when it comes to estimates and accounts, it is treated as recurrent expenditure. My hon. Friend proposes to remove the cost of capital charges from the accounts, but I am still not quite clear how the estimates and how Parliament will see the capital that private bodies expend on the public’s behalf.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) has already discussed my second point at length, and I am grateful to him for his kind words. It is about the loss of control—to which my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough referred in an intervention—between the gross and net income totals. We have to accept that there is some loss of control, but I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will reassure us that what matters is the detail of the net income to be provided. For current expenditure, that might be fees for capital expenditure, receipts or whatever, but it is important that we have sufficient sight of the income totals, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will reassure me on that.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) touched on my third point, which is about the treatment of private finance initiative contracts. I understand that, under international finance reporting standards rules, PFI contracts are now shown on the balance sheets of individual departmental accounts, but that they might not appear in the calculation of net debt in the new, whole of Government accounts. Therefore, I would be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister could explain how he proposes to reconcile public sector net debt, which is calculated on the national accounts basis, with the same figure that appears in the departmental accounts using the IFRS standard. That will be especially important as the PFI process peaks.
As the proposals are adopted, and as the assessments are prepared on that basis next year, the ball returns to our court. Therefore, I shall touch on the suggestions that my hon. Friends the Members for Chichester and for Gainsborough made and, indeed, what the Minister and his shadow, the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), said. It is true that we will have the advantage of the Backbench Business Committee being able to allocate further days for debate, but they will be for debate only. What is unsatisfactory about the current process, particularly when it comes to the supplementary estimates, is that literally billions of pounds go through on three particular evenings a year after only a single debate or, perhaps, two debates about just two items of departmental expenditure, important though they are. Those huge sums flash through on three particular evenings.
We have the new Select Committee structure and the new Select Committees, which have been elected by the whole House, and I am therefore wary of the suggestion from my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough that we set up yet another Committee. I think that he was going to call it the Budget committee, but we have an awful lot of Committees, and given that we now have elected Select Committees I ask the House to think again about how we involve them more in the process under discussion. I fully take the objection to pork barrel politics, which bedevils the United States Appropriations Committee that my hon. Friend seemed to like so much, and I should not suggest line-by-line amendment or, indeed, veto by a Select Committee. However, I should suggest that no supplementary estimate be presented to the House by any Minister unless it has first been approved by the relevant Select Committee. Nothing would transform the power of Select Committees more than my simple suggestion.
It would be up to the Department to establish a proper relationship with its Select Committee, and it would be up to the Secretary of State to plan his expenditure properly, knowing that if he went back to the Department with a huge supplementary estimate and wanted suddenly, mid-year, to transfer a vast sum from one end to another, he would have to explain himself to the Committee and win its approval. I do not suggest that the Committee should have the power to amend the proposal, simply that it should have to give its approval before that supplementary estimate is presented to the whole House. At a stroke, we would transform the relationship between the Executive and Parliament and give our Committees the power not simply to grandstand, ask questions and hurl abuse at witnesses, but to become more thoroughly involved with the work, planning and control over the money of the Departments that they scrutinise. The Committees would, therefore, become interested not simply in policy but in the huge sums that Departments spend. With that proposal, and my three technical comments, I warmly welcome the motion.
Mr George Mudie (Leeds East) (Lab)
I did not intend to speak in this debate, but I was enormously cheered by the contributions from the hon. Members for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) and for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming). I do not know whether that is down to the new faces among us, but after 18 years in this place, I had begun to despair of achieving any sensible discussion on the scrutiny of public money. We spend other people’s money, but it had seemed to be the last thing on anybody’s mind in this place.
I do not downplay the steps that the previous Labour Government took, the framework that the Minister has inherited or his steps to put that framework into operation as quickly as he has, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) put across something else very important. The proposal to put online anything over £25,000 in a budget is an enormous step forward, because we are discussing streamlining and stopping the overlap between, and the disjointed effects of, the varied financial information that covers what we spend of taxpayers’ money. I pay tribute to the Minister for that proposal.
We have to remember that we spend hundreds of billions of pounds every year. When I first came here from local government, where we knew about every line, I had the cheek to ask people in one of the Departments to break down a budget head, and I could almost hear their terror. They thought that I was very impertinent even to suggest it, and said, “It would be too expensive to give you this information.” We could take any line in the book that is in the Vote Office now—the central Government supply estimates. I picked it up this afternoon, as a geek, to go through it. There is a line referring to £1.5 billion, with a few words of explanation. If we attempt to find out what that covers and how it is broken down, we are thought to be exceeding our brief.
I listened to what was said by the hon. Members for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), for Sevenoaks and for Chichester, who has, I think, disappeared in case he gets talked into agreeing to something. I do not think that this is pork barrel politics. It is a duty of Members in this place to know the detail of the legislation we are passing and what we are spending, but the system does not allow us to do that. There is a good argument for the Committees chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking and the hon. Member for Sevenoaks getting together, in whichever way, whether it is by taking the suggestion of the hon. Member for Sevenoaks or a combined option, with a joint Sub-Committee of the Public Accounts Committee and the Treasury Committee rather than a budget Committee. Whatever we did, it would frighten the officials. It would bring us so much power and so much ability to have a say in what we are spending if we set up an apparatus that allowed us to break all these lines down. However we do it, we need to get a system whereby we set up a group of Members who are willing to spend their time on this. That is one of the difficulties of suggesting that we have another Committee that would add to all the hours put in by members of the Treasury Committee and the Public Accounts Committee.
Two weeks ago, I made a suggestion to the new Chairman of the Treasury Committee regarding the Sub-Committee so admirably chaired by the hon. Member for Sevenoaks over the past few years. I said that we already look in outline terms at the budgets and work of the Departments and bodies covered by the Treasury Committee, but we could also run a yearly exercise whereby we took one Department and, instead of just having a two-hour session, spent the whole year going through its budget line by line, and we would do that for each Department in turn. When the Treasury Committee tried to scrutinise the work and expenditure of a Department, the people from that Department had only to see the Committee for two hours a year. They could take whatever abuse was thrown at them and bat off whatever questions they were asked, but then they knew that they were free for the rest of the year. If they knew that, on a yearly cycle, they would have line-by-line scrutiny of their Department’s budget, they might be a bit more sensible in the way they spent public money.
Some wonderful suggestions have been made, and this is wonderful new ground. We should all resolve to accept the proposals that are on the table, but we should not be satisfied in thinking that they go anywhere near to allowing us to scrutinise properly. I have one last thought. I would love to have the opportunity that the Government are taking. I do not agree with their policies, their time scale, and so on; I think I made that clear the other night. However, I do agree with the music that is coming out whereby they are forcing Departments to sit down with them and go through, as much as is possible in the time scale, the make-up of the budgets to determine whether the money is being spent sensibly. That is a wonderful step forward.
Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)
I broadly welcome the motion. I particularly welcome the proposal that parliamentary time must be provided to debate spending reviews and the annual pre-Budget report, and I hope that in future that will be the case—mind you, in the light of recent Treasury reporting standards, just to have a spending review at all would be a marked improvement. However, I have some concerns about the clear line of sight project, and I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me and the House about those.
I am not an economist or an accountant, but I have seen enough episodes of “Yes Minister” to take a cautious approach to projects that seek to allow the cleansing light of scrutiny to fall on less information. I am concerned that “clear line of sight” might become “out of sight” in relation to some high-spending and income-generating Departments. For me, the Sir Humphrey element of this project concerns net accounting throughout—in other words, less information being presented, with potentially less transparency as a consequence.
Other Members have raised that issue, so I will not dwell on it. However, I wish to address the underlying assumption that Departments should be allowed to spend that additional income. It is stated as an advantage of this proposal that it will encourage Departments to be more frugal and squeeze better value for money for the taxpayer. I would argue that, paradoxically, the contrary might transpire, as Departments used the licence of net estimates to indulge in non-core activities aimed at increasing revenue for the Department. That would, in effect, be spending by stealth. Additional income raised would have to be spent in order to maintain the net figure, and presumably if the net figure were maintained Parliament would be content. Surely we would do better to have a system that set out gross expenditure and that enabled Parliament to choose how any additional income should be spent, held in reserve, or used to reduce the burden of that expenditure on the taxpayer. Unless we guarded against that, over time, we might see a distortion in the price of purchasing services such as passports, which are now practically compulsory, or in fees that might be paid, for example, to the UK Border Agency.
A second scenario might see a Department creating an income-generating activity that failed to deliver value for money or came at the expense of the statutory service that that Department was charged with carrying out. I will give the House a quick example from real life, not “Yes Minister”, although it could well have been used for that. When I was a director of Kensington and Chelsea council, I discovered that one of our local hospitals was hiring out one of its closed, but fully equipped, wards to a film company to use as a film set. To add insult to injury, the movie was a pornographic one. Although I cannot claim to have seen the final picture, as I understand that these things are no longer claimable on parliamentary expenses, it was a big-budget affair and it generated substantial income for the hospital—but apart from cheering up a few of the in-patients, it could not be said to be contributing to the objectives of the primary care trust.
The absence of scrutiny on gross income and expenditure is the equivalent of saying to the public, “Don’t bother to fill out your tax return—just tell us what your net income is and we’ll take it at face value.” Tax inspectors should see what items an individual is claiming against their income, and Parliament should be able to do the same. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will provide me with that reassurance when he sums up.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
I rise to speak on a topic that is of great importance to this House but that sadly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) said, is not engaged with in the same way as some of our policy debates are engaged with. However, I have to say that the name of the project is rather unfortunate. As well as confusing me the first time I read it, it definitely does not do what it says on the tin. I, for one, would have preferred a simpler name.
Transparency in all areas of Parliament, specifically in the use of the public purse, is of course of paramount importance. We must ensure that the public can follow and understand the decisions that are taken here. It should be a lot simpler for those who are interested to interpret the expenditure of Government, so that taxpayers can see where their money is being used. The clear line of sight project is a step forward in that regard. It is intended to simplify Government public expenditure information in both its presentation and publication, something that I as a businessman firmly believe is imperative, especially in such difficult economic times. Now more than ever, we must ensure that every penny we spend is spent wisely.
It is very important that we mention the achievements of the previous Government when considering this project, as it is one of their successes. It was established in 2007 by the previous Government and is now supported by the new coalition Government. The aim behind it is to simplify how the public can view Government expenditure, which can be done by ensuring that it is published in a simple format and that the information is presented in as easy and accessible a way as possible. I must say that even with those changes, I am not convinced that the documents in question will ever become bestsellers.
The current arrangements must be seen for what they are—confusing and unhelpful. They have even been described as obstructive of proper scrutiny. Given the recent trials of this House, I strongly believe that a change has to come. One of the most obvious ways in which that can occur is if we ensure that public expenditure is controlled and measured in one clear way. At the moment we have Treasury budgets, parliamentary estimates, resource accounts and others, each using different methods and subsequently giving us different answers.
The clear line of sight project will do a number of things to rectify that situation. It will align the different measures of public spending and ensure that the estimates are configured so that Parliament and the Treasury use the same control tools. The expenditure of non-departmental public bodies—quangos—will be incorporated into the estimates and resource accounts of the sponsoring Department, which is a good thing. The project will also ensure that financial publications are rationalised into three annual results. As a result of those changes, departmental annual reports, estimates and resource accounts will all include figures on the same basis, making it easier for the House and the public to compare figures and trends on a like-for-like basis.
Sadly, it is important to note that the current view of politics held by many of our constituents is negative. We have been through a difficult time in recent years. The expenses scandal galvanised public anger towards politics and politicians, an anger made all the greater by the perceived lack of transparency when the scandal arose. The public believe that our political system is broken, and upon taking office this Government promised changes to the political system to make it far more transparent and accountable. The clear line of sight project will hopefully be a small step forward. That is why we are here today—we need to start to fix what has been broken. The coalition has an opportunity to right the wrongs and thus lay the framework for a new politics.
Transparency is a simple thing, yet it will make a huge difference to the view of those outside the House. It will be a powerful instrument for change. If we allow the public to scrutinise and understand the things that are done here, I believe we can have a positive debate about how we want to be governed. We talk about engagement with people, yet our system of government works against that very goal. I firmly believe that, if more people understand the figures and are not put off by what they see as Government mumbo-jumbo, more people will engage in the decisions that have to be made and that affect their lives. That can only be a good thing.
A large part of what we describe as political apathy is people not feeling like they are included in the system. At the moment things are dauntingly complex, and the clear line of sight project is one way in which we can simplify them. It is for those reasons that I believe it is an important step to take, for the sake of both transparency and encouraging the public to analyse and discuss the important financial decisions that need to be made.
That is why I am a huge supporter of the opening-up of government. We have had an unprecedented amount of bureaucracy since the second world war, whether from Europe or from our own Departments in the UK—I would say that it has been an extraordinarily bureaucratic time. The coalition has an opportunity, with this drive for transparency and openness, to create a post-bureaucratic age. I commend the motion to the House.
Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)
I am sorry to delay the Minister further, but I felt it important to say how broadly I welcome this proposal. I know that it has had a long genesis; indeed, I was lucky enough to meet its team when I was part of the former Opposition’s Treasury team. I echo many of the comments that have been made commending both the clear line of sight team and the various heads of Committees who have helped to steer the process forward.
We will now have an alignment that takes care of some of the major problems, such as the £86 billion-worth of estimates that are not in budgets, the £71 billion that is in budgets but not in estimates, and the £58 billion that is in budgets but not in resource accounts. How could anyone manage a whelk stall, let alone public accounts, on that basis? Under the current system, 25% of public spending is not even seen by Parliament, so I welcome the current proposals, particularly the one to consolidate non-departmental public bodies. A complete lack of accountability has been built up in their financial reporting and processes.
I wish to echo a couple of points that other hon. Members have touched on, one of which is on the private finance initiative. We have an enormous problem of off-balance-sheet PFI commitments, which must be reconciled. I hope that the Financial Secretary will urge that that matter be brought forward and included in the project.
I should like us to go further still. While working for the Opposition team, I was lucky enough to meet one of the major heads of one of our largest outsourcing companies, who effectively has 35,000 civil servants working for him—the size of a decent Government Department. He manages it with three Excel spreadsheets, which report the same numbers at the top of the organisation and down at the bottom. We should strive further to get to that level of transparency and simplicity at all levels of Government.
It is commendable that so many Members have come to this debate and recognise how important it is, but it is not commendable that we have built up a system that most people, including most Members of Parliament, find utterly incomprehensible. As a result, we have had an enormous increase in the lack of accountability and transparency further down in the organisation of government.
I refer Members to the NAO report of February 2008 on financial performance measurement and management in government. It stated that the financial performance of a Department formed no part of the standard performance assessment criteria for a permanent secretary; that only 40% of Departments provided policy decision makers with a full financial analysis to support policy proposals; and that the last Government were teaching a course called “Managing public money” that had two stated objectives:
“To avoid a Department being disadvantaged in the public expenditure process”
and to
“protect the Accounting Officer’s position”.
There is not one word about taxpayers and, as the hon. Member for Leeds East (Mr Mudie) said so eloquently, not one acknowledgment that we are managing other people’s money in everything that we do.
The current proposal is long overdue and has been three years in the gestation. I welcome it warmly, but I should like the same commitment to transparency and accountability to be pushed down to all levels of government.
Mr Hoban
I wish to respond briefly to the debate.
As someone who in his previous career was a chartered accountant, I find something elegant about ensuring that figures are reconciled, but that is not an end in itself. In my former career it was to ensure that one could hold the management of businesses to account, and in my current career it is about being held to account myself and giving hon. Members the tools to hold Ministers and the Government to account on public spending.
A number of questions were asked about income being reported on a net basis. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), in his four comments, was correct on all points, as one would expect. The control of income, which was raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) and for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), is an issue to consider. The Supply estimates will continue to report a Department’s expected levels of income, and they will include a note breaking them down in detail. Only income of a type included in the description of income in the estimates will be able to be retained by Departments. My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North gave an example from her knowledge. Departments will continue to be subject to rules on fees and charges. That will determine the costs that can be charged for and ensure that full costs are recovered but that Departments do not generate profits. There will still be control over the types of income raised, which will be in line with legislation. There will be a note in the estimates analysis of income, which will ensure that these issues are transparent and that we can be held to account for them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks raised a number of technical issues to which I shall respond in writing. I commend the motion to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House approves the proposals for simplifying the Government’s spending controls and financial reporting to Parliament, as set out in the paper, Alignment (Clear Line of Sight) Project, Cm 7567, of March 2009, and the response of October 2009 to the relevant report of the Liaison Committee (Second Special Report of the Liaison Committee, Session 2008-09, Financial Scrutiny: Parliamentary Control over Government Budgets: Government Response to the Committee’s Second Report of Session 2008-09, HC 1074).
City of Westminster Bill [Lords]
Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
This debate arises purely on a procedural motion, instigated at the behest of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who has assiduously sought to safeguard the interests of pedlars on many occasions in respect of other private Bills in the past two years or so.
I do not intend to go into great detail on the merits of the City of Westminster Bill—nor would you allow me to do so, Mr Deputy Speaker. Suffice it to say that the main purpose of the Bill is to replace and consolidate the existing street trading regulations that apply in Westminster—namely, the City of Westminster Act 1999, which was itself a consolidating piece of legislation. We need new legislation that is fit not just for 2010 but for some years to come.
I should make it absolutely clear from the outset that the Bill does not affect pedlars wishing to trade in Westminster; the Canterbury City Council Bill and the Nottingham City Council Bill, which we shall debate tonight, would affect pedlars in the relevant areas. As far as pedlars in the City of Westminster are concerned, the position is exactly the same as it has been since 1999, so I am a little surprised that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch should have chosen to object to the revival of the Bill.
The Bill updates the 1999 Act, through which the council is able to regulate street trading using a fairly sophisticated licensing system understood by residents, traders and, no doubt, by many of those who have to go to court about these issues. Clearly, there has to be some sort of regulation in a place such as Westminster, which has world-famous shopping and tourist centres, or else there would be a free-for-all. Indeed, I often wonder whether any of those who come to London to set up their stalls and sell come what may do so because they feel that a free-for-all is already in place. Yet it would be wrong to suggest that there has not already been a fairly sophisticated regulatory system.
Among other things, the Bill gives Westminster city council additional powers to de-designate existing street trading pitches. I hope that that deregulation measure will find favour with my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for Shipley (Philip Davies). The Bill also allows street traders to trade through companies rather than just as sole practitioners or members of partnerships. It enhances the powers of council officers to deal with the real problem of unlicensed hot dog trolleys by allowing them to be seized before trading starts and introducing a sunset provision on existing provisions that allow street trading licences to be passed on to relatives.
In London, there has been a costermonger-type community that goes back many generations and several centuries. In fairness, it is felt that there should be an opportunity for a sunset clause on the passing of street trading pitches from generation to generation. The Bill would allow pitches to be passed on one more occasion for each licence currently in play. As far as pedlars are concerned, the position remains as it has been for 11 years: a street trading licence will be required unless the pedlar is selling from house to house.
Clause 52 would allow the council to regulate touting in the city. I should make it clear that that has nothing to do with ticket touting; it is about touting for business in the street, which is a considerable annoyance to residents, workers and visitors. The City of Westminster has some 140,000 residents and some 500,000 people come to work here every day. There are also, of course, countless millions of visitors from the UK and abroad. The fact that the touting provision has nothing to do with ticket touting might find favour with my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for Shipley; it is a much more general prohibition on touting for other purposes.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I am delighted that the Bill does not impinge on ticket touting, but presumably people tout for business because they can get it. If they are getting business, they must be offering something that people are looking for, and at the right price. Surely that is in the consumer’s interest. Why would my hon. Friend wish to stop people who are clearly acting in the consumer’s interest?
Mr Field
That would be a legitimate argument if there were no opportunity for street trading in the City of Westminster, but there is already a huge opportunity. The whole licensing process tries to focus on ensuring that that opportunity is in place We are seeking not to end the idea of street trading, but to regulate such trading to a certain degree, so that there is not a free-for-all. That would be undesirable and seem to make the streets of central London ever more unsafe and unpopular for visitors, workers and residents alike.
The idea is not to stop street trading, for which there are significant opportunities. As with any Yorkshireman, my hon. Friend’s heart lies in Shipley and other parts of his fair county, but he will recognise that there are still enormous opportunities for people to come to London and buy things on street corners. The Bill would not prevent that; it would prevent simply the rather unsavoury and perhaps unsafe practices involved in elements of street touting. They do real damage to Westminster as a tourist attraction. Westminster wants to remain a global attraction; we want people from all corners of the globe to come to this great city.
The motion is purely about whether the Bill should be revived in the current Session of Parliament. The Bill was initially introduced in the House of Lords on 22 January 2009. Its Second Reading took place after a debate in that Chamber on 13 March 2009. Petitions were deposited against the Bill, quite legitimately—we should be able to discuss these things. It was then referred to a Select Committee, hence the delay of almost 15 months. The Committee, which sat in July 2009, disallowed the petition of pedlars on the grounds that they had no locus, for the reasons that I have already set out. As I said, the Bill does not change the position on pedlars, unlike the consolidation Act that came about 11 years ago.
At that juncture, the Committee was adjourned and no further date could be found for the recommencement of proceedings before Parliament was dissolved for the general election. The Select Committee members, the promoters and the National Market Traders Federation, the sole remaining petitioner, are all standing by to reconvene in the House of Lords on 19 July this year, assuming that the motion is passed today. All the parties concerned have put a lot of work into the preparation for the hearing.
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has every right to object to the procedural motion before the House today. However, I hope that he and his friends and colleagues—my friends and colleagues—will not push the matter to a vote. The promoters of the Bill did all they could to move it on in the last Session. They wish to continue to do so in the new Parliament, as is evidenced by the fact that a Select Committee awaits, barely two weeks from now. Only the fact that we ran out of parliamentary time in the fifth year of the Parliament meant that we were unable to get this legislation on the statute book before then.
As the Bill originated in the Lords and the Lords has already passed a revival motion, I hope that we will be able deal with this business in the Commons with due haste tonight. The Lords ought to have the opportunity to scrutinise the Bill in detail, and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and other hon. Members will have ample opportunity to do so themselves when it returns to the House, as I hope it will early next year.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) on taking the matter before us seriously. The reason why I and other colleagues shouted “Object” to prevent the revival motion from going through on the nod was so that we could hear from the Bill’s sponsor exactly why it was held up for so long in the House of Lords between Second Reading and the completion of its Committee stage, which, as he said, has not yet happened. We now understand from the promoter’s statement that a date for the resumption of that Committee has been fixed for later this month. That will mean that the Bill and the petition against it will be considered in the Lords. As he said, if passed in the other place, the Bill will come to this place in due course, when hon. Members can give it proper scrutiny. I am all in favour of that.
I heard what my hon. Friend said, but it is worth emphasising that a revival of a private Bill is not a right but a privilege, and it is right that Members of the House ensure that a motion to revive a Bill is made on good grounds and that the case is made. We will have a chance in due course to consider aspects of the detail of the Bill, but one point my hon. Friend did not deal with is the interaction between the City of Westminster Bill and the possibility of more general legislation applying to pedlars. The Bill consolidates much of the private legislation relating to pedlars in the city of Westminster.
In the previous Parliament, the Government initially asked Durham university to carry out research, which was subsequently conducted and consulted upon. Proposals were then introduced and subjected to further consultation. I hope that during the course of the evening, in response either to the debate on this Bill or to the debate on the Canterbury City Council and the Nottingham City Council Bills, the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey) will say what the Government’s initial thinking is on their approach to pedlar legislation. What impact would national pedlar legislation have on the provisions in private Acts in relation to Westminster city council? Obviously, it might be a waste of time if the House or the other place spend a lot of time discussing the consolidation measures in the City of Westminster Bill if the Government subsequently introduced national legislation on pedlar activity.
At the moment, traditional pedlars cannot operate within the city of Westminster boundary. They can go from door to door, but they cannot act as pedlars on the street, which means that they are severely disadvantaged, notwithstanding their national licences to peddle. I hope for national legislation and a national approach to the matter, and that the Minister tells us what the Government’s thinking is on the prospect of such legislation, so that we do not have piecemeal proposals from councils up and down the country.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Is that not the crux of the matter? The previous Government talked about introducing national legislation. It costs local councils an enormous amount of money to promote private Bills, so would not such legislation solve that problem?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are told that had there not been so much resistance from him and others to private Bills in the previous Session and the one before that, there would have been many more. That it was difficult for such Bills to make progress through the House acted as an effective deterrent for the very good reason he articulates. Such legislation is expensive and will often be seen by local taxpayers as a disproportionate response to a local niggle. That is why a large number of councils did not go down the private Bill route. Obviously, the City of Westminster has a very well-resourced council—it also delivers one of the lowest council taxes in the country—and has decided that it will go down that route, but it is important to point out that many of the private Bills promoted by local councils to deal with street trading and peddling were encouraged by the City of Westminster Bill, which has acted as a sort of precedent. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and others will be interested to see what the City of Westminster council thinks of touting. I notice that its Bill includes a lot more information on seizure powers and what to do with the receptacles that are used for street trading, and that it includes some of the powers that were eventually excluded from the Bournemouth Borough Council Act 2010 and the Manchester City Council Act 2010, which were passed following a gentlemanly compromise prompted by the opponents of those provisions.
Some of the developing law is contained in the City of Westminster Bill, which is why Members who are alert to the concerns of individuals who try to eke out a living as street traders or pedlars should be vigilant on their behalf. We want to ensure that oppressive, disproportionate legislation is not introduced under the radar. That is why this evening’s debate is important, but I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster that it is not my intention to press the motion to a Division.
Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)
First, may I declare an interest as a former leader of a London borough council that had to deal with street trading on a day-to-day basis? My postbag on street trading was far bigger than my postbags on many other areas of council activity.
I should like to address a few of the issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). I understand the law of supply and demand and the effect of regulation, and that if people are selling things that people want to buy, we should not get in the way. That is fine, but if it were true, we ought to allow drug trading and prostitution to be completely unregulated. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) is quite right that a revival of the City of Westminster Bill does not stop subsequent detailed scrutiny.
I have risen to support a revival of the Bill because I feel strongly about localism, which is not an à la carte concept. We cannot say that local councils should have the rights and powers to do what they think is right for their areas only as long as we agree with them.
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, but the crux of the argument is that we want national legislation to allow local authorities to introduce the right pedlar laws for their areas, and not for councils to have to spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds on private Bills. We may be on the same side in that respect.
Mike Freer
That is quite right. It would be helpful if we could get the Department for Communities and Local Government or whichever is the correct Department to regulate on a national framework. However, in the absence of that, I shall support the city of Westminster in its promotion of the Bill. Those who have to deal with the scourge of street trading know that it is not simply a matter of the touting and the pedlars. The high streets of many major cities—especially the London boroughs—are virtually obstacle courses. One has to dodge not only the normal street furniture, but the goods and services being peddled on the pavements.
I am pleased to see that clause 18(e) deals with disabled access, because many people in wheelchairs or who use zimmer frames—or even families with pushchairs—find it difficult to manoeuvre around the variety of plastic tubs or greengrocery in the high streets. It may sound trivial, but it is not when we are trying to maintain our high streets as vibrant economies. They have to encourage trade while also retaining their attractiveness for local people. If families or disabled people feel that they cannot manoeuvre along their high street, they will go to the major shopping centres, which are regulated. On that basis alone, I support the Bill.
Importantly, the Bill also deals with the detritus of smoking. Many councils spend tens of thousands of pounds cleaning up after smokers. I expect that hon. Members were keen to ban smoking in public places, but they may not have realised the cost that was pushed on to local councils.
The fundamental issue is that if we support localism, we must allow the democratically elected councillors of Westminster to bring forward what they believe is right for their people.
Philip Davies
I appreciate my hon. Friend’s point about localism, but if we were to take it to the lengths that he seems to be suggesting, we need not bother having a national Parliament. Does he accept that the duty of Members of a national Parliament is to preserve our freedoms and not just to give carte blanche to any local authority to follow an authoritarian route and ban things that it does not like? We have a duty to defend people’s freedoms as well as to defend the principle of localism.
Mike Freer
I accept entirely that this House acts as a check and balance on the powers of local governance, but I also look forward to my hon. Friend tabling a private Member’s Bill to legalise or deregulate prostitution and drug dealing on our streets. We cannot pick and choose which freedoms should be traded on our streets.
The City of Westminster and other areas need these powers, not to regulate in a heavy-handed manner, but to revoke the licences of those who seek to cause an obstruction or damage to our local environment. On that basis, I support the revival of the Bill.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) who has experience in his borough of the problem. However, he does not have the experience of listening to the hours of debate in this Chamber. The problem really revolves around the previous Government refusing to bring in national legislation. If that had been done, each of the local authorities could have decided whether they wanted to take powers over pedlars and introduce their own legislation—exactly the localism that we are looking for. What might be right for the City of Westminster might not be right for Wellingborough. We almost teased the last Government into such legislation, so I am looking forward to hearing what my hon. Friend the Minister has to say.
The one aspect that is new to the debate—we did not know about it when we discussed it last year—is the amount of human trafficking of children into London to be pedlars, although it is false peddling as they do not have the licence from 1871. This is such a serious problem that we have seen people imprisoned. A national newspaper recently reported the case of a Romanian father who had sold his daughter to traffickers in this country to go on to the streets and, in theory, to peddle old issues of The Big Issue. In fact, that was completely false and bogus. He got four years in prison and served two, and now he is back home in Romania. Similar cases apparently involve thousands of children.
While I welcome the legislation for local councils to make their own decisions on peddling and how the law should be enforced in different areas—although I regret the thousands of pounds it has cost local councils to get to this stage—all the councils seem to have missed the question of what we do with these false pedlars, many of them young children, when it is discovered that they have been trafficked. We have to get to grips with that issue, because the children who have been trafficked over here are not criminals; they are victims of crime. It is a frightening problem and I hope that this Parliament will get to grips with it. That is why I would welcome national legislation.
I shall not oppose the revival of this Bill tonight, but the issue of the children trafficked into this country—especially into London—is one that we need to note.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
May I begin by saying how much I appreciated the speech by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field), who outlined the motion very well? I am aware that the issue before us is whether to revive the City of Westminster Bill so it can complete the parliamentary process started in the previous parliamentary session. A lot of time, effort and expense has been spent on this and the other Bills that we are considering and there is a good argument that we should not waste that by refusing to revive them. The Bills will be scrutinised in detail on their merits during later stages if the motions are passed.
We think that it is important that this Bill and the others that we are considering later are given the opportunity to complete the parliamentary process. In terms of the motion to revive the Bills in this parliamentary session, it is worth noting that the councils in question have demonstrated local support for the Bills, not only by way of council resolutions but through the support of Members of this House and of the other place. Suffice it to say that Westminster city council has made a strong case for this legislation during the passage of the Bill so far.
The main reason for the legislation, as we have heard, is to deal with the regulation of street trading in Westminster and to deal with deficiencies, identified by Westminster city council, in the City of Westminster Act 1999. It contends that, while the 1999 Act has enabled the council to have some success in controlling unlicensed street trading, the Bill would alter—and, the council suggests, would improve—the 1999 Act by giving more flexibility on the designation of licensable areas within which street trading can be licensed; by giving more flexibility in varying existing trading licences; by providing more discretion in deciding whether to allow an application for a licence; and by setting out new general grounds on which the council can refuse to grant a street trading licence, including public safety, amenity of the area, and the suitability of the application.
When this Bill was debated in the other place, Baroness Parks reflected on the importance of having these wider powers to refuse a licence because of the huge number of conservation areas in the City, including large numbers of listed buildings for which more stringent controls might be necessary. However, other measures in the Bill serve to preserve the vitality of markets in the City and, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, there is nothing in the Bill specifically related to pedlary.
I do not intend to go through the Bill’s provisions. I have merely mentioned a few, as I hope that the House can see that they relate to important issues for Westminster council and should be given parliamentary time. The Bill also contains necessary checks and balances, most notably through consultation with those affected, an opportunity for them to make representations to the council, and an appeals system. It should be further noted that opposing views have been expressed too, and obviously these need to be thoroughly debated in the House. Indeed, the point was well made in previous deliberations by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd), who pointed out that although there might be much in the Bills before the House this evening to unite us, legitimate questions should be debated thoroughly and allowed a proper examination. I totally concur with that, and I hope that we can agree this evening to proceed to the remaining stages in the parliamentary process.
Members of the other place also commented on the need to review the law on trading in the streets and selling door to door, with a view to producing national legislation that reflects current conditions. I am sure that the Minister will know that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills initiated a consultation on national legislation following detailed research on the topic by Durham university. The consultation finished in February 2010. Previous debates demonstrated clear cross-party support for a national framework, which could mean that a large number of private Bills on street trading and related issues are unnecessary. I hope that the Minister has something to say on that matter. I do not always agree with the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), but I do agree with him that it would be helpful to move to a national framework as soon as possible. I wonder whether the Minister could tell us how he proposes to move forward on that matter.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)
We have had a good debate this evening, helped by the experience from previous debates. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field), who opened the debate, and my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), who are veterans of discussion on this legislation. However, we have also benefited from new experience, on the part of my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), who spoke of his local authority days. I also welcome the hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) to her place and thank her for her contribution.
It is right that I should begin by restating an important procedural point. Traditionally, the Government do not take any view on the content or progress of private Bills, unless they are exceptionally moved to do so. From the speeches that we have heard this evening, I would note—as I am sure other hon. Members would—that there seems to be no real opposition to reviving the Bill. Although I hope to catch your eye and speak in the related debate, Mr Deputy Speaker, at this stage it is right that I should set out a little of the new Government’s thinking in this area.
Let me start by saying that, overall, having looked into the issue in some detail in recent days, I personally believe that we need to protect the rights of the genuine pedlar as we look at legislation across the piece—I say that to hon. Members from across the House and to local authorities looking at the issue. The rights of pedlars are traditional rights, going back to the Pedlars Act 1871. Although there might be people engaged in illegal street trading under the protection of a pedlar’s certificate, that should be dealt with separately. We should not use a sledgehammer to crack a nut by cracking down on genuine pedlars. They have rights that should be recognised.
The previous Government consulted on the issue, and I hope to be able to publish the Government’s response to that consultation within the next two or three months. I can tell the House that about 80 people and groups responded to the consultation, although they had differing views. The Government will reflect on those differing views and provide the House with our thoughts. Therefore, I cannot commit this evening to any particular timing for future legislation, although I can confirm something on which I believe there has been a cross-party consensus: that there is a need for a national framework, as the hon. Member for City of Durham set out and as other hon. Members stated.
Of course we need a national framework, and we need one for two reasons. We do not want local authorities across the country to have to spend tens of thousands of pounds on bringing forward private legislation. It is sensible that the Government should provide a national framework that in no way undermines localism or local responses to local situations. Therefore, although I cannot commit to any particular timing for that, that is certainly the intention, and we will be exploring those opportunities in the time ahead.
Mr Bone
The Minister is making a splendid speech and a splendid announcement. It seems strange that every time a Liberal Minister stands at the Dispatch Box, I find myself agreeing and saying what a wonderful job he is doing. [Interruption.] If I reflect on where I am sitting, I get a bit worried. Will the Minister endeavour to let councils know that that is the intention, so that those thinking of introducing legislation can hold back from so doing?
Mr Davey
I note that I am wearing a blue tie and the hon. Gentleman is wearing a yellow tie, which might suggest that this coalition is founded on many things. More seriously, I think he can be reassured that the interested local authorities will be reading Hansard; we do not need to spend money on stamps to tell them, as they are quite capable of clicking on the internet to read our deliberations.
Philip Davies
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), I am greatly encouraged by what the Minister has had to say. If the Government introduce their own legislation on this issue, will it trump the private legislation that local authorities wish to pass; or if the local authorities pass these Bills and they end up being more authoritarian than the Government’s proposals, will those measures still stand? It is important to clarify that point before we decide whether these Bills are worth reviving.
Mr Davey
I think my hon. Friend is trying to tempt me to pre-judge the response to the consultation. Tempting though that is, I am afraid that I am not going to accede to the request for an absolutely straight answer—save to say that if the rights of genuine pedlars were embedded in a future national framework, whatever form it took, local authority legislation could well be superseded. When we respond to the consultation and look at future legislation, we will consult local authorities and try to ensure that any legislation is flexible enough to take account of the special concerns of any particular local authorities.
Given the real spirit of coalition behind our exchanges, I would like to answer a particular point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone). He made an important point about examples of false pedlars being involved in the trafficking of children. I am sure that the whole House will be alarmed to read those reports and will want to know that action can be taken. I am sure that my hon. Friend is well aware that it is not for this legislation or any legislation that might come from it—whether it be a national framework or future private Bills—to tackle that issue. It is a matter for the Home Office, but I can give my hon. Friend an assurance that I will write to Home Office Ministers to bring their attention to this very important matter. At this point, it is right to pay tribute to the former Member for Totnes, Anthony Steen, who I believe retired at the last election, as he campaigned so brilliantly for the rights of women who had been trafficked to this country. It is right for this House and this Government to ensure that we take action on trafficked women. It is not an issue for my Department, but I hope and believe that this Government will want to look at the problem.
Mr Chope
May I say how much I appreciate the fact that the Minister is going to respond to this consultation within two or three months? When we last debated one of these Bills, I think he said that waiting for the framework might be like waiting for Godot. What he has said tonight suggests that he has taken it on himself to push this matter forward, on which I congratulate him.
Mr Davey
I am obviously grateful for any congratulations. I hope that I will not be too Beckett-like in my approach to this matter. I do want to make it clear, however, that we are not promising early legislation in this area, as I would need to speak to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House about that. If I gave an unduly certain commitment, I am sure I would be called to order, but that is not to say that we do not think there is room to progress action in this area—I shall return to this in my later remarks—as there are other reasons for us to look at this with the degree of gravity that it requires.
The debate has shown the cross-party consensus on the legislation and what the Government need to do in due course to relieve the burdens on local authorities in tackling the issue, to ensure that the rights of pedlars are respected, and to ensure that we crack down on those who are trading illegally on our streets and genuinely causing problems. That is promising for debates to come, and I hope that we make progress with the Bill tonight.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) on being such a dogged advocate for his local authority and his constituents. I would not want to say that I know his constituency, or what is required there, better than he does.
Mr Mark Field
I would at least do my hon. Friend the honour of suggesting that he knows my constituency better than I know his, but there is a good reason for that.
Philip Davies
That may well be true.
I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), without whose dogged pursuit of the issue we probably would not have reached this stage this evening. We all owe him a great debt of gratitude—certainly, genuine pedlars do, because without his persistence, many bad bits of legislation would have been passed to their detriment. I am sure that we are all grateful that he is here keeping people’s feet to the fire to ensure that unworthy legislation is not sneaked through the House.
The Minister’s contribution to the debate was especially helpful, although, inadvertently I suspect, it questioned whether the Bill and related Bills are worth reviving. He seems much more determined than the previous Government to see progress on national legislation in this field. If we are to move quickly towards such legislation, it is utterly pointless for local authorities to pursue their own private legislation, which, as he seemed to indicate, may shortly be trumped by a national framework.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend might be right, on this as he is on most issues. The Minister was at pains to stress that he would not prejudge what the national framework and legislation would be. The question is whether the Bills are worth reviving in light of the fact that the Government will push on with some kind of national legislation. The matter would have been more clear cut if the Government had said that they have no intention of pursuing national legislation, and that it was for local people to make up their own minds through local authorities. The Minister has slightly muddied the waters.
We all believe in the principle of localism. No one argues with that. My hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) made a forceful defence of localism, and I would tend to share his enthusiasm. However, it is difficult to expect people to know the different legislation relating to peddling as they move from one local authority to another. Certainly, when I am in London, I find it difficult to know which local authority I am in, because there is no obvious boundary between one London local authority and another. It might be clear if one is a resident and can benefit from the low council tax that Westminster city council provides, but otherwise it is difficult to know which part of London one is in.
Mr Mark Field
Let me defend the honour of Westminster city council’s cleansing department by observing that the cleanliness of Westminster’s streets marks a very obvious distinction between it and, say, Camden or Brent.
Philip Davies
I am sure that my hon. Friend is right. He clearly examines the litter in various London streets in much more detail than I do, and he clearly knows which local authority area he is in, but other people may not. Pedlars may not know whether they happen to be in Lambeth or Westminster: they may not know where one of those areas begins and ends, and which part of a bridge is in which area. When legislation is of such a local nature, it is difficult for people to know exactly what the law is in their area.
Given that the Government are talking about a national framework, and given that—particularly in a city such as London—people may not know which council area they are in, I question whether it is sensible to revive the Bill. However, on this as on so many matters, I take my lead from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. It appears from his remarks that he is satisfied that the Bill is worth reviving. Perhaps he is merely being collegiate and not wanting to cause his colleagues further discomfort or delay, but given that he seems happy for the Bill to be revived for the time being and to be scrutinised later, I will follow his lead. However, I question whether any of these Bills is worth reviving, even if the motion is passed tonight—as I am sure it will be—especially in the light of the Minister’s encouraging remarks about a national framework, which is so important in this context.
Mr Mark Field
With the leave of the House, Mr Deputy Speaker.
We have had a useful and constructive debate, but it has concerned a simple issue of procedure rather than all the aspects of the Bill. I know that my hon. Friends’ appetites are whetted by the prospect of the return of a fully fledged Bill following the deliberations in the House of Lords Select Committee on 19 July. I was encouraged by the Minister’s support for a national framework, and I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods), for her helpful and praiseworthy comments. I am hopeful that a national framework for pedlars will be introduced.
Let me try to assuage the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). I do not believe we should see what is proposed for the city of Westminster, or perhaps even what is proposed in the Bills relating to Nottingham and Canterbury, as a template or precedent. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) about the importance of localism. I think it right for a framework to exist in relation to issues such as this, but local considerations should then take much more control.
One of the most significant aspects of the debate is that local conditions will change in time. I speak for the centre of London, but I am sure that the same applies to the centre of Nottingham, which has changed beyond recognition in the last generation, and which I hope—as, no doubt, many of its residents hope—will change significantly in the decades to come. We should always be strongly aware of local conditions, and I hope that that will emerge in the detailed debates in which we will no doubt engage in the months ahead when the Bill returns to the House of Commons.
I thank my hon. Friends for their contributions, and wish the Bill a fast journey to the other place for 19 July.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved
That this House concurs with the Lords in their Resolution.
Canterbury City Council Bill
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
With this we will also consider the following motion:
That the promoters of the Nottingham City Council Bill, which was originally introduced in this House in Session 2007–08 on 22 January 2008, may have leave to proceed with the Bill in the current Session according to the provisions of Standing Order 188B (Revival of bills).
Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)
I welcome the opportunity to address the revival motion briefly. I shall talk mainly about Canterbury, and I believe that the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) will lead on the Nottingham Bill.
Both Bills were first deposited in the House in 2007, and they were first debated in the House on 21 January 2008. Since then, we have been through two cycles and one previous revival motion. We have spent many hours debating the merits of the Bills on the Floor of the House, and you, Mr Deputy Speaker, would certainly bring me to order if I were to go into that in any detail. I was, however, extremely pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Minister say not only that he sees a long-term future for a national framework in this area, but, crucially, that he sees scope for local variation, because different cities have different issues.
Canterbury’s particular problem is that we are the third or fourth most visited city in the country but we have narrow mediaeval-width streets in parts of the centre, and we have a particular problem with large numbers of illegal street traders who operate alongside street traders who have paid £800 each for their licences, with the former frequently causing an obstruction to the public. The Bill’s provisions will allow Canterbury city council to tackle the problem not of pedlars peddling but of pedlars acting illegally as street traders, and to do so in a way that is nowhere near as costly and burdensome in terms of officer time, prosecutions and so forth as the current arrangements. In fact, the current arrangements are effectively unenforceable. I was glad to hear the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods), suggest there was room for a national framework and, if I understood her correctly, for local variation. I was delighted, too, that my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) progressed with his Bill a few moments ago.
I do not want to say any more about the Canterbury Bill, except that I welcome the fact that a number of my hon. Friends made constructive speeches on the earlier Bill and I hope that the same spirit will be exhibited in respect of the Canterbury Bill and, indeed, the Nottingham Bill. I commend this second revival motion to the House.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) on introducing the revival motion, and on trying to seduce the House by not going into much detail about the background and history. If he were to do so, people would be reminded that of the four Bills dealing with pedlars introduced in this House in the last Parliament—there were also two others that started off in the other place—the Leeds and Reading Bills are now in the other place and their revival motions have not been objected to, and I think it would be sensible to put on the record why I did not object to their revival motions, whereas I did object to the revival motions in respect of the Canterbury and Nottingham Bills.
In a nutshell, the reason why I objected to one group of Bills and not the other was because in the last Parliament the promoters of the Leeds and Reading Bills and their respective council officers realised that the best way of making progress would be to have some constructive discussion about the contents of their Bills. That constructive discussion resulted in the equivalent of the clause 5 provisions on pedlars in the Canterbury and Nottingham Bills being significantly amended.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
There are a number of new Members in the House tonight who will not quite understand why councils have to come to individual Members in respect of these Bills, instead of their being like Government Bills. Will my hon. Friend expand a little on the procedure so Members can understand what is going on?
Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. The short answer is that there is no compulsion at all, but obviously, councils that are in close touch with their council tax payers will want to be able to ensure that the resources they spend are spent wisely. The view was taken in Leeds and in Reading that the provisions in the equivalent of clause 5 of the two Bills in question were not necessary for their areas, which is why they were prepared to have significant amendments. In particular, those amendments recognised that pedlars carrying their goods with them about their person should be able to continue to do so and to display and sell them in the city centres of Leeds and Reading, and to use modest additional trolleys and so on if appropriate. The issue in Leeds in particular was that the trolleys were causing the obstruction, which is why they were prepared to have their Bill amended.
Unfortunately, and despite my best efforts, the opportunity has not arisen to get any compromise out of Nottingham or Canterbury, save that my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury did agree that when his Bill progressed, he would remove completely clause 11, which deals with touting. Although there was an opportunity to do that in the last Parliament, it was not seized on for one reason or another. I am not criticising my hon. Friend, however. I know he is keen for clause 11 to be removed as soon as his Bill goes before a Committee in the other place. I hope he will also ensure that clause 5, on pedlars, is significantly amended to bring it into line with the Reading Borough Council and Leeds City Council Bills.
Mr Brazier
On the first point, my hon. Friend has of course seen a copy of the letter from the Bill’s promoters confirming that they will immediately strike out clause 11, as originally proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). On the second point, I am afraid I can give my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) no such assurance, because of the simple practical fact that, given the circumstances in which we in Canterbury find ourselves, making the same amendment would not leave us with workable legislation. At the end of the process, the situation would be as unworkable as it is at the moment.
Mr Chope
I am disappointed at my hon. Friend’s response, but not surprised; a lot of time has been spent in this House trying to tease this matter out. If his Bill is revived, goes before a Select Committee in the other place and the petitions against it are heard, I hope that Members there hearing them will take into account the compromise that has been reached by other councils—including, of course, on slightly different areas, Bournemouth borough and Manchester city councils. Obviously, my hon. Friend—and I, for that matter—will have to accept whatever verdict is reached in the other place when it considers the petitions’ merits.
One thing that emerged from what the Minister said in the previous short debate is that the Government will come forward in two or three months with their response to the consultation. I strongly urge Members of the other place to defer convening a Committee to look at the detail of these Bills and the petitions until after they have the Government’s response, because the information may be very helpful in enabling them to consider the petitions in detail. So I hope that, for the sake of a month or two, the Bills will be put on hold and that priority will be given in the other place to the Bills that were the subject of the constructive compromise to which I referred. If it is not possible to hear petitions against all the Bills at once in the other place, I hope that the Reading and Leeds cases will be dealt with before the Canterbury and Nottingham ones. That is another reason why I thought it would be helpful to put them on a different time frame by ensuring that we had this debate and that the other ones would already have gone through the other House with the revival motions unopposed.
So that is the background. We, in this House, no longer have any control over what happens to the contents of the Canterbury City Council Bill and the Nottingham City Council Bill. For that reason, the pertinent question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) in the earlier debate is more pertinent in respect of these two Bills—he asked whether the Bills are worth reviving. It remains open to this House to consider the contents of the City of Westminster Bill, but the Canterbury and Nottingham Bills are outwith our control. We have no opportunity to propose further amendments in the light of any suggestions that the Government may make, so we are at the mercy of the good sense of their lordships. To look on the bright side, I should mention that last week I met one of their lordships who is very interested in and concerned about these issues relating to pedlars. He spoke as warmly in support of the principle of pedlary as the Minister has just done, and I am sure that if that noble Lord is involved in the Committee, as I hope he will make it his business to be, the pedlars will receive a good hearing in the other place.
Mr Bone
I just wish to get this point clear in my mind. This is now in the other place, so we may now have only one option tonight if we have concerns about these Bills, on which we have had hours of debate. So if we were to divide and the Bill were not allowed to be revived, would that, in effect, kill the Bill off?
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
If this is going to be the end of the consideration of these Bills in this place, does that mean that more than 200 newly elected Members will have no say about them?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a very potent point, and the short answer to his question is yes. One of the extraordinary oddities is that our Standing Orders allow for legislation to be passed on from one Parliament to another, but only in very exceptional circumstances. That does not apply in the case of primary legislation and public Bills; it applies only in the case of private legislation in special circumstances where a strong and compelling case is being made. That is why it is important that when an attempt is made to revive one of these Bills, not just from one Session to another, but from one Parliament to the next, we should have the opportunity to consider it carefully. He makes a powerful point about whether it would not be better to introduce these Bills afresh now with a new House, as could happen, or to pull back and allow the Government to pronounce on the results of the consultation and then introduce whatever legislation might be appropriate. I look forward to hearing him develop his point later in the debate. He is speaking on behalf of many hon. Friends and Opposition Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), who is not in her place at the moment—oh, I see that she is now. I have already spoken about this subject, and one of her constituents is very exercised about what he sees as a persistent campaign over many years to try to vilify pedlars and pedlary. As my hon. Friend was keen to point out, at this time of all times, when an enormous number of people are without work but are eager to try to find work, tonight’s short debate gives us the opportunity to promote the case for pedlary. If individuals who are keen to try their hand at entrepreneurial activity get a pedlar’s certificate for £12.25, they can try selling goods to members of the general public during the course of the summer season.
Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)
I want to reiterate the point. I, like many new Members, perhaps had an impression of pedlars as people one would not want knocking on one’s granny’s front door. However, I was impressed by the work of the pedlars’ organisation and by my constituent who has shown enormous entrepreneurial zeal in setting up a business, trading legitimately within the law, obeying all the licensing regulations in the cities that he visits and running a thriving enterprise. I want to echo my hon. Friend’s point: at a time of high unemployment, I want to encourage such entrepreneurial zeal. The Bills drive out the spirit that we are looking for.
Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)
My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) was entirely right to point out that many people now in this place were not cognisant of the previous debates. Without wanting my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) to reprise the content of the debates in the previous Parliament, I would be interested to know whether there had been any discussion of the competition and free market issues that arise. If we control pedlary in one town, what happens in another? My town, Ipswich, might be concerned if pedlary were controlled in one place as that might have an impact on market traders in another place where there was no such control. Will my hon. Friend elaborate on whether that was discussed in the previous Parliament and whether he thinks it should be discussed now?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes an important point, which was discussed in the last Parliament in the context of some Bills. For example, in the context of the Bournemouth Borough Council Bill, I raised it as an issue because I represent the adjoining borough and I was concerned about the knock-on effect of banning pedlars in one town and what would happen in an adjoining town. It has been discussed, but I am bound to say that the promoters of the Bills denied that there was ever going to be a problem. In that respect, there was general denial.
On the point about entrepreneurial spirit, I can remember—with a bit of help from the Official Report for 14 January, when we last discussed the Canterbury City Council Bill—drawing the attention of my hon. Friend who was then on the Front Bench to the paper produced by Paul Braidford of St Chad’s college at Durham university, which was all about selling in the street and pedlary as a entry route to entrepreneurship. That was an important paper and my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), who was then dealing with such matters from the Front Bench, said that he had seen the paper—because I had only just given it to him—and that he was going through it.
I hope that the Minister has looked at that paper, too. He has obviously mastered it, because he seems to have got the message that although pedlary might be based on ancient statute, it is still a unique activity in our country. It is a national means by which people who want to get out and try their hand at enterprise can do so.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that, when considering whether the Bills should be revived, we should also take into account the fact that the report on street trading and pedlary that he mentioned was produced after the Bills were initially introduced? Would it not make sense for any legislation on this matter to take note of the report by Durham university, which these Bills do not, because they were introduced before its publication?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. So much has changed, in regard not just to the national economy but to the information available on the role of pedlars and pedlary, since the Bills were first introduced in late 2007. Two and a half years have passed, and we must now consider whether we want them to be discussed for a further year or 18 months in the other place, or whether it would be better to have a fresh start. Obviously, some of us are asking whether the Bills are really worth reviving. That is the consideration that we must keep at the forefront of our minds.
Mr Bone
Does my hon. Friend agree that a new aspect has come to light, and that we ought to consider it before making a decision on whether to revive the Bills? It relates to whether these local Bills would interfere with the right to the free movement of labour granted by the European Union.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend will recall that there was quite a lively debate in the previous Parliament about the interaction of the services directive and the provisions of the Bills. In the end, it was resolved by the then Minister saying that, as far as he was concerned, the legislation would not make any difference and that pedlars would still be able to carry on their pedlary irrespective of the interaction with the services directive. However, my hon. Friend is right to suggest that the matter might not be quite so clear cut.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)
There might well be an issue relating to the services directive that we need to take into account, and I will say a little more about that in my speech. European legislation is actually ahead of the game in this regard, in that it encourages this House to protect ancient rights and ensures that we legislate properly and thoughtfully.
Mr Chope
I am most grateful to the Minister for that intervention. I shall not refer back to exactly what was said in that previous debate, but what he says is a revelation. He is obviously in charge of what is happening in his Department in relation to European legislation, and I look forward to hearing more from him later about the interaction between the Bills and the services directive.
Mr Deputy Speaker, you above all others will know that the issue before us is quite a narrow one. It is a question of whether these two Bills should be revived.
Philip Davies
I hope that my hon. Friend will give some thought as to whether he will take different approaches to the Bills relating to Canterbury and to Nottingham. I know that he was disappointed by an earlier intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier), but I would suggest that Canterbury has at least made an effort to deal with some of the issues that have been raised, and he will remember that, in the previous Parliament, the former Member for Nottingham East was very unhelpful when it came to telling the House why the Bill was necessary. We now have a far more genial and constructive Member for that constituency, but my hon. Friend will remember that we were never given much of an idea of why the legislation was needed in the first place. Will he take a different approach to each of the two Bills?
Mr Chope
If there were a batting order of unpopularity, Nottingham city council would be top of the league as the most unpopular council promoting a Bill on pedlary. I am not saying that for reasons of prejudice; I am basing it on the lack of co-operation that was received in the previous Parliament. Not only was there a lack of co-operation, but a sullen silence. The former Member for Nottingham East did not wish to engage. He was so arrogant that he felt he did not need to address the arguments.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
As a proud Member for Nottingham East, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I am very much in favour of the proposals. Moreover, I can assure him that Nottingham city council and the sponsors of the Bill, whether in this place or the other place, will be more than happy to listen, out of the spirit of consensus, to the carefully crafted points that he is making. We are all keen to make progress on this important issue and to tackle the serious difficulties that exist.
Mr Chope
That is wonderful—a revelation. It has taken two and a half years and a general election, but we now have constructive engagement from the city of Nottingham. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that. I hope he will encourage his city council to engage with the other place in the same spirit, if we grant the Bills a revival tonight. His contribution to the debate—I do not know whether he intends to make a more extensive one later—may be an effective softening-up exercise among some of my colleagues, who may have been taking a rather hard line, encouraged by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley.
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend is generous. Before I make up my mind whether to support the revival of either Bill, I need to hear about the Bills. Last time we heard nothing about Nottingham. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) has been a powerful advocate and has made his point, but we will need to hear from Nottingham before deciding whether to divide the House.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury went into enormous detail about the situation in Canterbury, so much so that one almost felt that one had been living in the environs of Canterbury cathedral, among the street traders, the pedlars, the tourists and others. We have never had any similar word picture from Nottingham. We had a very effective word picture from Members from Leeds, and my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Mr Wilson) did a similar job in relation to Reading. I hope we will have the benefit of a contribution this evening from the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) so that he can put on the record—
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I will be more than happy to provide a few words of explanation about why Nottingham city believes that the legislation is needed, if the hon. Gentleman will allow us time to do so.
Mr Chope
Fortunately, we have until 11 pm, so there should be plenty of time for the hon. Lady to contribute to the debate. When there are so many Members eager to participate in the debate, there is no need for anyone to speak for longer than is appropriate. I have just set out my stall briefly, but the issues before the House are whether the case has been made for reviving the Bills, taking into account the point about the number of new Members and the fact that new Members—
Mr Nuttall
There is another point, apart from the number of new Members. I understand that in the previous Parliament, some of the Bills reached the statute book. It would be interesting to know whether my hon. Friend has had any representations about the effect, if any, that those Bills that were enacted have had on pedlary in the towns and cities that were so affected.
Mr Chope
That is another good question. I am put on the spot by my hon. Friend. I am not sure whether the Bournemouth Borough Council Bill, which got through in the end, has made any difference at all on the ground in Bournemouth. During the general election I met pedlars from my constituency and from Bournemouth who were having a go at Bournemouth borough council for having wasted so much money on trying to prevent them from carrying on their activities in Bournemouth. If Bournemouth borough council succeeds in stopping lawful pedlars trading in the town, the council and the people of Bournemouth will be the losers, because pedlars bring colour and entrepreneurial activity to the area. Now that we do not have the Member for Bournemouth West from the previous Parliament, and as his successor is not in the Chamber this evening, I can say that the problems in Bournemouth were wholly exaggerated, and it is for the people of Bournemouth to assess whether the amount of money spent on the process was proportionate. I do not know the impact on the city of Manchester and have not done any research into it, but my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) might wish to initiate some. Indeed, a Select Committee visit to a major city might be helpful.
There are some important issues, and I hope that he will have the chance to hear from the Minister.
Ben Gummer
I am sorry to ask a question that might have been dealt with in detail in the previous Parliament, but for my benefit will my hon. Friend explain whether the Bills offend against any ancient charters of the towns and cities that we are discussing? In Nottingham, there are freedoms given to citizens of the city, on which the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) will no doubt be able to enlighten us, and in Canterbury there are freedoms under the original monastic charter, which no doubt my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) will tell us about. I wonder whether the Bills might offend and go against those ancient liberties, which have been granted for so many hundreds of years, and whether the issue has been discussed.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend has a charming way of making me feel totally inadequate, because, despite detailed scrutiny of the Bills over many hours during the previous Parliament, we never got around to discussing the points that he has raised. Perhaps that was because of a lack of time, or because we did not have the presence of mind to discuss them. However, I look forward to my hon. Friend’s contribution to these ongoing debates, because prima facie his points are important and pertinent.
The jury is out on whether we should allow the Bills to be revived, and I look forward to hearing other contributors to the debate.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I support the Nottingham City Council Bill, primarily because illegal street trading is a considerable problem in our city centre. The Bill is designed not in any way to prevent legitimate pedlars, but to deal with the problem of illegal street trading.
To provide a flavour of the situation, I should say that in Nottingham city centre there are suitable places for legitimate street trading and legitimate street traders pay fees for the location of their stands. They pay between £1,775 and £7,657 per year, depending on the pitch size, the location and the range of goods. Rightly, those people want to ensure that they do not pay such fees only to find that people who are not legitimate street traders, and have not paid for licences, are taking over their pitches or significantly obstructing the streets and taking trade away from them and from the shops in our marvellous retail area.
Pedlars, by nature, are pedlars: they are meant to be on the move, not sited on stalls that are fixed or fixed for periods. Their phrase should be, “Stop me and buy one,” and they should stop only when they sell their goods. In contrast with the amount that street traders pay, which is in the thousands, the cost of obtaining a pedlar’s certificate is just £12.25. Many Government Members have talked about the importance of encouraging entrepreneurialism, and pedlary is an opportunity for people who want to make money or get back into work. We do not want to detract from that opportunity to become a pedlar and travel either door to door or around the streets; we want to give people the opportunity to stop and trade, but not in a fixed position.
Mr Nuttall
Has the hon. Lady done any sort of research among people who have street trading licences to see how many of them started off as pedlars and have now moved up the ladder? Pedlars are essentially the seed corn. People who started off as pedlars may well move on to become street traders, and perhaps their next step will be to have their own shop.
Lilian Greenwood
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I can speak only anecdotally in saying that that is not necessarily the case judging by the types of people who are involved in peddling, who often come from outside, including from abroad, in order to sell their goods. This legislation is not intended to prevent people from legitimate peddling—it merely makes a clear distinction between that and illegal street trading.
Lilian Greenwood
As I have said, I do not wish to prevent peddling. Obviously, it is great news to hear that people can go from such humble starts to building up great retail establishments.
This is a procedural motion, so I do not want to debate the merits of these Bills, which have already been examined in some detail. I have been looking at the history of the Nottingham City Council Bill since it was introduced in 2007—it obviously precedes my being in this House—and it is clear that there has already been considerable debate on these matters. I understand that it has been through First, Second and Third Readings in this place and was awaiting its Second Reading in the Lords. As there has been considerable cross-party support for these Bills at each stage in the Commons, and as there has been considerable debate on these matters over the past two and a half years, there is a strong case for their being revived and allowed to complete the parliamentary process.
Lilian Greenwood
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for asking that question. Unfortunately, I do not have the full details, but I know that it has been debated over many hours, and I am sure that that information was placed before the House at those times. I will be happy to go back and look at that, but I do not have it to hand at this moment.
There is a strong case for looking at this legislation again. It has clearly been subject to a lot of debate, and surely its revival should be allowed in order for it to complete the parliamentary process, with the opportunity for further debate and consideration in the other place.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on her speech; several Members across the House will be reassured by what she said. I was born and bred in Nottingham, so I know its streets—the narrow ones and the broader ones. I do not know whether she and the promoters of the Bill are particularly worried about the lace market or the wonderful market square in Nottingham. Perhaps the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) may wish to enlighten us later on.
I am grateful for this opportunity to respond to the debate. This is the second time that the House has debated reviving the Canterbury City Council Bill and the Nottingham City Council Bill, and I am grateful for the fact that hon. Members have made such lively contributions. During the previous debate, several Members took the opportunity to air their concerns about the national position on the regulation of street trading and pedlars, but they also set out their growing support for these Bills.
Of course, it is fair to say that there have been voices of concern, and hon. Members who have raised those concerns are focusing on at least some elements of the Bills, which they wish to ensure are not unfair to the genuine trader. I have a huge amount of sympathy with that. However, we have heard that there may nevertheless be a case for providing local authorities in general with additional powers for when they experience problems with traders in the streets and feel that they cannot properly deal with them under existing powers. I will of course reflect further on all the views expressed tonight, and all those that we have heard in the consultation, before we come to any final decisions on the need for changes to national legislation.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
I am conscious that this question really requires the presence of my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), but is the Minister aware of the pedlar of Swaffham, an ancient and renowned historical figure in the county of Norfolk? I am not aware of his being in my constituency and there are no tales of him—I assume it was a him—coming into Mid Norfolk.
My question, however, is about the regulation of pedlars and whether the Minister would like to mention any issues about the regulation of peddling in modern times. Are there particular issues that we ought to raise with local authorities?
Mr Davey
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I was not aware of the pedlar of Swaffham, but I was aware of some people who believe that Robin Hood was a pedlar in one of his many guises. No doubt stories abound around the House of pedlars from olden days. Perhaps members of the public following the debate will be more familiar with Del Boy and “Only Fools and Horses”, and perhaps they are the people whose needs we should be thinking about—the people today who are trying to earn an honest crust.
We have a balance to strike, as always in legislation. The current national legislation contains powers for local authorities to regulate street trading in their area, a point that is key to the debate. Let us be clear, though, that they are not required to do so; they have only an option to do so. That is the enabling approach that the House has taken to the matter in the past. Of course, there is also legislation dealing with the itinerant traders who can be certified as pedlars. Certification through their local police enables those traders to trade throughout the country.
In considering the legislation on street trading and pedlars that we have been bequeathed there are a number of matters to balance, and they have been aired widely in these debates. The first is the effect of unlawful trading on the livelihoods of licensed street traders and others entitled to trade in the streets, and arguably of static traders in the shops by the streets. We have to consider whether there is scope for the creation of further powers to penalise unlawful traders, which might aid local authorities and their partners in their enforcement role.
I wish to emphasise that we also have to consider the creation and dissemination of guidance on legitimate trading methods for certified pedlars, and clarification for local authorities as they go about their enforcement role under the current regime. I am concerned that some local authorities are perhaps not as clear as they might be about how they can deal with the issue. Perhaps rather than a lot of new legislation, we need to create and disseminate guidance. We will consider that in the consultation.
Claire Perry
On that point, can the hon. Gentleman assure the House that whatever the outcome of tonight’s debate and the further debate in the other place, we will strive to put no new laws on the statute book in dealing with this or any other problem, but rather to work within the existing regime and legislation so that we can start to roll back some of the legislative burden of the state?
Mr Davey
I am sympathetic to what my hon. Friend has said, although I should say that hon. Members have called in these debates for a national framework—not to increase the role of the state or impose extra burdens, but to clarify things so that local authorities do not need to come to Parliament to get yet more legislation. That can save them costs. Such a framework would also ensure that there was clarification for pedlars and legal street traders. I assure my hon. Friend that if the consultation and other processes require legislation and we believe that it is necessary, we will not put the heavy hand of the state into the statute book.
Mr Brazier
Is not the problem that all markets are ultimately based on property laws? There is a finite number of pitches. If a council is selling the number of pitches that can be reasonably accommodated in a high street at what is effectively the market clearing price, and others come in who have not paid that price, that effectively undermines what the legitimate street traders have paid.
Mr Davey
My hon. Friend has made a valid point. I have sought in my remarks to make a distinction between street trading, which has a certain definition in legislation, and peddling. There has been confusion, in some areas at least, about how those two activities, which are regulated separately, interact. Through the consultation and what follows thereafter, I hope to give greater clarity on that issue. That will help.
The Pedlars Act 1871 could also be updated. The certification of pedlars, which is currently undertaken by the police service, could become a local authority function. The consultation looked at that issue and we are considering it in detail. In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), I mentioned that we must look at how we ensure that any future authorisation of pedlars as providers of retail services complies with the rule set down in the services directive. In case my hon. Friends are concerned that that will import an extra burden from Europe, I should reassure them that doing so will help us ensure that British pedlars can provide their services anywhere in the European Union.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
My hon. Friend mentioned British pedlars, but I would like him to consider the question of European pedlars. Tamworth has a vibrant farmers market; people from Spain, Germany and France go there to sell their wares. The Bill is
“for the better control of street trading in the city of Nottingham.”
That reminds me of the quotation from T.S. Eliot:
“Between the idea
And the reality…
Falls the Shadow”.
An idea can be great, but ensuring that it works properly in reality can be very difficult. If we pass this legislation, I want to make sure that it does not impinge on those who rightly come to Britain from Paris, Madrid and Munich—
Mr Speaker
Order. On the subject of reality, I should say that the reality is that the erudition of that intervention was equalled only by its length.
Mr Davey
In a former life, you would have enjoyed such an intervention, Mr Speaker, as you were renowned for your erudition. I represent the royal and ancient borough of Kingston-upon-Thames. In a revived marketplace, we enjoy not just farmers markets but a German market; Italian and Spanish traders also come. One of the many advantages of such activity is that it can create a vibrancy in our marketplaces. It is important that local authorities consider my next point, which I wish to emphasise. The fact that additional traders come to sell their goods and services can help the traders already there. If those additional traders improve the vibrancy and vitality of a town centre, it becomes more attractive to shoppers and visitors. It is not at all a zero-sum game.
Mr Davey
We will give some detail on that when we publish our consultation. I do not wish to prejudge the final analysis, but I say simply that we know that we need carefully to consider the services directive, and I believe we can respond without undermining the centuries-long tradition of pedlary. I hope that that gives the hon. Gentleman the reassurance he needs.
Mr Davey
Many hon. Members have come to the Chamber tonight to listen to the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Christchurch, who are now renowned experts on such matters. They will have many followers and admirers in the honourable profession of pedlary for their efforts.
I was explaining how the new Government wish to pull off the different balancing acts. One issue raised by the Bills that we will consider as we respond to the consultation is the balance between ensuring healthy competition, whether among pedlars, street traders, static traders or ordinary retailers, and safety in congested, narrow streets. I have not heard anyone deny that those are genuine issues, but those who have valiantly defended the rights of pedlars are concerned that too much can be made of safety. They are worried that safety leads to protection by the back door and that it can be used to hinder genuine competition. We need to reflect carefully on that. We want to be sensitive to the different natures of our ancient towns and our more modern towns. We shall seek to strike that delicate balance as we respond to the views that we receive, for which we are grateful.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Is not there always an argument for more regulation and laws, and for taking away the liberty of the British subject? Is it about time that we had a deregulating Government, which I hope the coalition is, who stop piling law upon law upon us? A great and noble Liberal, Lord Palmerston, said that we would run out of things to legislate about, and sadly, that day has not yet come.
Mr Davey
Let me reassure my hon. Friend that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and I, and many right hon. and hon. Friends across the coalition, do not seek to burden the statute book with unnecessary legislation. As I said in response to a previous intervention, if we are careful in how we shape our response to the consultation and those genuine issues, we might see some deregulation and actually make it easier for local authorities to manage existing regulation. There are some difficult judgments to make and some of the issues are clearly not as well understood as they might be, so it is the Government’s job to give a lead and greater clarification.
The consultation deals with many practical issues. For example, is it sensible that pedlar certificates are available from individual police stations and that it falls to the police to manage the system? If not, then perhaps as discussed in the consultation document the local authorities are better placed, as many of them already license static street traders. Bringing together the systems might assist in reducing some of the burden. Not all local authorities take up the option to regulate street trading, so is it fair on local authorities that have no desire to regulate street trading that we should ask them to certify pedlars, given that we would not want to limit the availability of pedlars certificates geographically? These are the issues with which we are struggling.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
I was taken aback by the point that the Minister made about the services directive. I was a Member of the European Parliament when that went through, and we had hours of debate on it. It is one of the bizarre European examples of the law of unforeseen consequences that it should have some bearing on what local authorities do when it comes to allowing pedlars to trade on their streets. When the European Scrutiny Committee looked at the services directive—it wrote a long report on it—did it consider that point? What other unforeseen consequences might flow from that directive?
Mr Davey
My hunch is that those who considered that legislation did not have the issue of pedlars at the forefront of their minds. There has been debate about whether the services directive applies in this area, and I have given my view that it probably does. However, in a way, given the itinerant nature of pedlary, it may be one of the more happy unforeseen consequences, because the entrepreneurial spirit that exists in British pedlary may make them one of our new exports to the continent. I do not see a particular problem. I suspect—although I have done no study—that in French, German, Spanish and Italian towns street trading and pedlary are more heavily regulated, and the services directive may give some extra freedoms where there were none before.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I assure the Minister that in the European Parliament there was no debate on whether pedlars fell within the scope of the services directive, although we discussed many issues and there were battles left, right and centre. The wonderful former Labour MEP for the East Midlands, Phillip Whitehead, who was an assiduous follower of such matters, always used to say that the problem with every European law was not what was at issue, but the unforeseen consequences that flowed from it. This is another prime example of the problem with well-meaning European legislation that works in many areas, but may not do so in this one. In any case, it was not debated in the chamber of the European Parliament.
Mr Davey
My hon. Friend does not surprise me. His point however shows the need for careful scrutiny of the legislation and it is fair to say that the Bills we are considering have had a degree of scrutiny.
I hope that I have been able to illustrate that the Government are sensitive to the different perspectives of the stakeholders involved in these matters and their differing views on how to achieve a fair trading environment on our streets that will ensure that they are joyful places to shop and prosperous places for traders. I hope that I have been able to convey to the House that, while in many respects talk of pedlars and street traders might seem quaint, the issues under consideration are very serious, because they affect the livelihoods of small business people and speak to the type of society and trading environments that we want to promote and to see flourish.
Ben Gummer
In answer to an earlier intervention about the pedlar of Swaffham, my hon. Friend referred to Robin Hood, the most famous son of one of the cities that we are discussing. I wonder whether the over-zealous interpretation of the legislation by councils might take away the vibrancy that the Minister is seeking to promote. What protections in the Bill might the Government wish to bring to bear to ensure that councils do not apply it with such harshness that that vibrancy is denied, thereby preventing any future Robin Hoods from emerging?
Mr Davey
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that reference to my home town and for the point that he has made. I hope that I have done enough to reassure him and other right hon. and hon. Friends that we are mindful of the possibility of over-regulating—and thereby killing—what ought to be a legal, prosperous and vibrant livelihood. When we respond to the consultation, we will be extremely mindful of the need to ensure that we do not just maintain the status quo, but ideally encourage such entrepreneurialism. My Department is taking note of what people have said in response to the consultation.
Mr Nuttall
There has been a lot of debate about the merits of the Bills, but this evening we are considering whether they should be reintroduced in this Parliament. However, it seems to me that the most important point is the fact that more than 240 Members of the House have had no opportunity, other than in this short debate on a technicality, to consider this important legislation, which strikes at the very heart of free enterprise in this country. I wonder whether the Minister would like to comment on that.
Mr Davey
The hon. Gentleman will know that the procedures for private Bills are unique and somewhat different from those for many other types of legislation. That is why the Government do not normally comment on either the content or the process of private Bills; equally, as the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) said, it is why special provision is made for private Bills to continue from one Parliament to the next. I do not know how long that has been the position in our Standing Orders, but it is relatively traditional—it might not be as long a tradition as pedlary, but nevertheless it is not something that we should discard with undue haste.
I want to thank the House for this opportunity to outline the Government’s position on these important matters, and I look forward to future debates.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
I do not wish to delay proceedings, so I will be very brief. The Canterbury and Nottingham Bills were subject to extensive scrutiny by the House. A number of Members of this House used the parliamentary process very effectively indeed to challenge the need for the Bills and to question their content and their likely impact on pedlary and street trading. Similarly, the promoters put a great deal of time and effort into setting out to the House the need for the Bills. The Bills passed all their Commons stages, and it is surely only fair to allow them to complete their parliamentary process, bearing in mind that there are opportunities to subject them to further examination during their remaining stages—a point excellently made by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood).
The Minister is correct that this has been a lively debate, but I hope that we will be able to agree to the revival motion this evening. While I am on my feet, I would like also to thank the Minister for the comments that he made about the Government responding to the BIS consultation and publishing the outcome. I hope—I would like to press him on this point—that that will be a precursor to proposals for a national framework in due course.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
In the previous debate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) said that I knew his constituency better than he knew mine. That certainly cannot be said for the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), who knows my constituency far better than I know his. I certainly would not want to challenge his knowledge of Nottingham. As you know, Mr Speaker, he was a distinguished predecessor of mine—far more distinguished than I am—and I am sure that most of my constituents would rather he were still representing them than to have the misfortune of having me represent them. The people of Nottingham East are very fortunate to have him on their side in Parliament, and I am delighted to see him in his place this evening.
On the motion of whether we should revive these particular Bills, the main issue revolves around what has changed since they were first introduced. That is what lies behind this debate. It seems to me that three things have changed since these Bills were first proposed. The first, as we have heard in some detail, is the existence of the EU directive, which was never envisaged by the Bills’ promoters. It seems bizarre to revive a Bill when it might make absolutely no difference to the cities and towns trying to promote it. That would be the result of it being completely overridden by EU legislation. As I say, that was not envisaged when the Bills were first proposed. It seems absolutely bizarre to me that local authorities would want to continue spending taxpayers’ money in their local areas pursuing something that might be a complete and utter waste of time.
The second thing that has changed since the Bills were first proposed is the excellent report on pedlary and street trading produced by Durham university. It was a very weighty document, which I certainly commend to any hon. Member in this House. It makes the point that pedlars encompass the entrepreneurial spirit that we want to promote. Those who might have thought when the Bills were first proposed that pedlars were a nuisance will, on reading this report, find that their original prejudice was completely and utterly wrong.
The fact that Durham university makes the point so well in its report brings me on to the third thing that has changed since the Bills were first proposed, as I think was touched on by my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and for Devizes (Claire Perry). They said that since these Bills were proposed, we have suffered a very deep recession, which was not envisaged at the time. Encouraging pedlars and encouraging people to go down the route of peddling is something that this House should encourage people to do in response to the fact that some people are finding it difficult to get a job.
George Freeman
While my hon. Friend is on the subject of things that have changed, does he agree that one of them is that we on these Benches are all in this together? As we pursue a programme to develop and promote the big society, does he agree that each day of the week we find ourselves promoting a different part of society? We have national weeks and days for various things, so should we consider having a national pedlary day to promote the benefits of pedlary, particularly to some of our youngsters and school leavers, as a way of getting into entrepreneurship and small business?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes an excellent suggestion, as he often does. I certainly would not want to challenge him if he wanted to pursue introducing a national pedlars day. Along with my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, I would be one of the first to support it. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we are all in this together, which is something I tell my Whips on a regular basis.
I would like to make some distinction between the two Bills under consideration in respect of their merits for revival. I certainly share the misgivings of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch about some elements of the Canterbury City Council Bill, as I think my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) knows. We must make it clear, however, that the latter has made a valiant effort on behalf of his constituents to highlight to people in this place why this Bill is so important to his area. Although we may not agree on every particular detail of the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury has gone out of his way to do that; he has engaged in the debate, probably more than any other Member sponsoring their particular Bill. I am particularly grateful that he respected the point I made about touting with respect to the original Bill and struck that out in the proposed Bill. I am extremely grateful for the way in which he has dealt so constructively with all these points. On that basis, I am much more minded to support the merits of the Canterbury City Council Bill.
Mr Brazier
May I say that I am indebted to my hon. Friend for pointing out that particular defect? When I explained to the promoters the wide fashion in which those powers could have been used by a successor council of a very different political complexion, they were very concerned indeed. I am delighted to have been able to help on that matter.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. His contribution emphasises how constructive he has been throughout the process. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is equally thankful. Personally, I would be more minded to allow the Canterbury City Council Bill to be revived.
However, such a constructive approach has been in stark contrast to that deployed in the previous Parliament by the then hon. Member for Nottingham East, who spent barely a minute explaining why the Nottingham City Council Bill was necessary. I am delighted to see the new blood representing Nottingham on the Opposition Benches, and I commend the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on setting out in far greater detail why the Bill is important for Nottingham. The new hon. Member for Nottingham East also made an intervention that was more revealing than the entire speech made by his predecessor.
Despite that, I am still not sure why the Bill is so necessary to Nottingham that it must be revived this evening. As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made clear earlier, the revival of Bills should be seen not as a right, but as an exception and a privilege. The duty is on the sponsors of such Bills to explain why they are so important before we should consider whether they deserve to be revived. I still have not heard that from Nottingham. Serious consideration should be given to taking a different approach in relation to the Bill for Canterbury from that for Nottingham. Should the House divide on the issue of Nottingham, I would be minded to vote against that Bill.
Chris Leslie
Clearly, I look forward to the private Bills for Shipley and Bradford in due course, and I will be more than happy to contribute on any issues that the hon. Gentleman wants to raise at that point. I assure him that the Nottingham City Council Bill is virtuous. On a revival motion, it would not be appropriate to go through all the details, but it is important to revive the Bill. There are already difficulties in Clumber street in Nottingham because of the tensions between peddling and the activity of legitimate street traders who are already there. The hon. Member for Christchurch has made important points, as has the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood). I hope that the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) will be satisfied as to the merits of the Bill for Nottingham.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I do not doubt that people in Nottingham view the issue as important, and nor do I doubt his sincerity. Were any private business to be debated for Bradford and Shipley, I am sure that he would decide on the basis of its merits. I hope that he was not suggesting that if I scratch his back, he will scratch mine at a later date. I am sure that I would be wrong in inferring that—he is a fair-minded man and would treat private business for any other place on its merits, irrespective of what happens this evening.
I merely express my frustration that we have not heard a real reason why the Bill is necessary for Nottingham. The Bill will be considered no further in this place, and I am concerned that we have not got to the bottom of why it is needed in the first place.
Lilian Greenwood
I would like to say a little more about why the Bill is necessary in Nottingham city—not all Members will be as familiar with it as the Minister is. Nottingham has a strong retail sector—it is one of the best cities in the country for shopping. One part of the city, Clumber street, between the Old Market square and a large shopping centre called the Victoria centre, is, I believe, one of the busiest pedestrianised shopping streets in the whole of Europe. On a Saturday when one is trying to get from one place to another it is incredibly crowded.
One of the problems is an activity which, although Members might want to call it peddling, is actually illegal street trading. People set up small stalls—they are not pedlars walking from place to place waiting for people to stop them and buy—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am learning quite a lot about the geography and high streets of south Nottingham, and that is a matter of considerable interest, but it had been my impression that the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) was still making his speech and was giving way to an intervention. I think we will now let him respond to it.
Philip Davies
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Obviously I accept your ruling, but the hon. Member for Nottingham South was being extremely helpful in at least setting out the case for why we need the legislation, and I think we are all grateful for that. It is just a shame that this is the first occasion on which we have heard any of these matters discussed.
I do not wish to cover ground that was covered during the debate on the City of Westminster Bill, but I must return to one point. The Minister made a second very helpful speech earlier, and I commend his comments and the approach that he has taken. He is still indicating that the Government wish to introduce a national framework by some means, and I still do not see any point in reviving private business for particular towns and cities when it seems that the Government, in good faith, are going to make some provision in that regard anyway.
I ask the sponsors of the Bills whether what the Minister has said today—which was much more proactive than anything that we heard from the last Government—has made them change their minds. I entirely understand why, during the last Parliament, people were keen for these private Bills to proceed, because the Government kept saying that they were going to do something and then never did. I have much more confidence in this Minister. I think it far more likely that he will proceed with something much more sensible in a much more timely way, and I think that in the light of what he has said, we should question whether we need to revive the Bills.
I do not wish to detain the House, which has debated these matters for some time, but the issues are important. Again, I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, who has made a fantastic contribution. Without him, we should not have seen any concessions. I shall leave this with him. I shall be happy to follow his lead, and I shall give some thought to whether these Bills should be treated differently. However, I hope that when they go to the other place—if that happens—they will receive the scrutiny that they deserve, and that we will celebrate pedlars who are trying to make something of their lives rather than attempting to do them down.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wonder whether any Education Minister has approached you following our discussion on the statement made earlier today about the future of the Building Schools for the Future programme. You were in the Chair, Mr. Speaker, and you may recall that there was considerable discussion about the propriety of what the former Secretary of State for Education had done with respect to capital expenditure, about whether the previous Government’s proposals had been affordable and, indeed, about whether the former Secretary of State had acted in a way that was consistent with Treasury rules.
If you remember, Mr. Speaker, the former Secretary of State asked the Secretary of State if we could have a letter from the accounting officer—in other words, the permanent secretary to the Department for Education—stating whether the former Secretary of State had acted appropriately with respect to capital expenditure, and whether he had received a ministerial direction. As you know, Mr. Speaker, he would have had to receive such a direction had the former Secretary of State acted in a way that was inappropriate with respect to that money.
We now have that letter, which I shared with you, Mr. Speaker. I will not read all of it, but it describes the ways in which end-of-year flexibility and decisions on capital expenditure were handled, all of them appropriately. The last paragraph states,
“If any actions on this, or any matter, were in breach of the requirements of propriety or regularity, I would have sought a ministerial direction. I can confirm that I made no such requests during your time as Secretary of State.”
The issue is extremely serious, Mr. Speaker, and I wonder whether you have had any request from an Education Minister to explain it to the House.
Mr Speaker
The short answer to the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) is that I have had no request from a Minister to make a statement on the matter. The second point I would make is that he has clarified the position in terms of his understanding and in defence of the former Secretary of State, and as he will know as he is an experienced Member who has been in the House for 13 years, his views are now clearly on the record.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I am glad to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), but after that rather long point of order I wonder whether we should reprise what we have covered so far, perhaps for half an hour or so, to get us back into the swing of our debate about pedlars. Time is short, however, and we want to reach a conclusion tonight.
I want to put on the record that if it were not for my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), we would not be here tonight. His forceful and persistent standing up for the right of a minority of people in this country is to be welcomed.
The decision the House has to make tonight is whether to support the revival of these Bills. In principle, I am against reviving Bills. I start from that basis, because if a Bill’s promoters have not been able to get it through since 2007, perhaps there is something wrong with it.
That is where I start from, therefore, but there are other issues. First, I believe we should listen to the Members who represent the constituencies where the Bills are being promoted. I commend in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) because he has attended every debate I have been at on the pedlar issue, and he has always represented his constituents with great zeal. I appreciate that, and I note that he has made it clear to the House that the promoters have listened and will remove clause 11 from the Canterbury Bill. Although I have some concerns about clause 5, at least there has been some movement, and I understand that the Bill still has to be discussed in the other place. I am therefore inclined to say we should support the Canterbury Bill because of the local input and that movement. That is the way things should happen, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he has done.
I cannot, however, say the same about the Nottingham Bill. The two new Members, the hon. Members for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) and for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), have done their best tonight, but in the previous Parliament I sat through many hours of silence from Nottingham Members, and I am not entirely convinced that I know enough to say that the people of Nottingham want this Bill. I intervened on the hon. Member for Nottingham South when she was making her speech to ask what the feeling is in the city. Is there great demand for this in Nottingham? Which organisations want it? Does the council want it? Are people marching in the street demanding that pedlars be removed? I was also a little concerned that it sounded slightly as if this was a money-making exercise for the council, with huge fees for sites.
There is another issue that worries me about the revival of these Bills. My hon. Friend the Minister has made it clear that there may well be a national framework in a number of months, and it seems that if we stop the Nottingham Bill no more money will be spent by that council—no more taxpayers’ money will be wasted. Also, if the European Union, that wonderful organisation for which I only have praise on so many occasions, is actually ahead of the game, then that is good. We have to weigh these issues up in our minds in deciding on these matters.
Chris Leslie
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman cannot be distinguishing between the Nottingham and Canterbury Bills on the basis of the different political complexion of the Members concerned. I am sure that that would be entirely wrong and inappropriate. However, I assure him that, as elucidated in previous debates, there are strong reasons in favour of the Nottingham Bill, so I refer the hon. Gentleman to the previous debates.
Mr Bone
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. Had he been a Member of this House for a little longer, he would know that I am just as critical of my own side on many occasions.
The other issue we must take into account is whether the new Parliament has a right to discuss this Bill.
Mr Chope
Does my hon. Friend think that Nottingham city council has indicated tonight through its Members of Parliament a willingness in any way to compromise on the Bill’s content? If there is such a willingness, it might cause people not to want to vote against its revival.
Lilian Greenwood
I am sure that those in Nottingham would be very happy to have further discussion and to approach the issue in a spirit of compromise. This is an important Bill for our city, and I would be happy to talk at length another time about the many reasons why we need it.
Philip Davies
I hope my hon. Friend agrees that we might allow Nottingham the same benefit as that given to Canterbury, in the light of the hon. Lady’s extremely helpful intervention, of the constructive nature of the comments of both Nottingham Members, and of the willingness to negotiate and discuss this issue in more detail.
Mr Bone
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention; I was actually coming round to that view myself. The interventions have been most helpful, and it does show that argument in this House can win the day.
I have to commend the Liberal Democrat Minister; I think he is almost now a Tory Minister, given the way he is performing. He is doing exceptionally well. I point out, just so the House knows, that it is a credit to this coalition Government that there is no whipping on this side of the House. We are entirely free to do what we wish—on almost everything, but certainly on tonight’s business. That is in contrast with what happened in the last Parliament, on occasion, when private business was discussed here, when I felt that the heavy hand of the Government Whips was behind some of the things that happened.
Mr Brazier
We have had a most interesting and entertaining debate; it has been a remarkable evening. To hear my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) praising the EU is something I never thought I would hear in my whole political career. We have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) being brief, which is tremendous, and we have heard the Minister set out clearly that this is an area in which there is a case for a national framework and for local variation. I do not think it an exaggeration to say that Opposition Front Benchers broadly took the same position.
The practical fact is that there is a split on two very simple issues: first, on whether this is a question of unfairly regulating a struggling group of business men, or of protecting property—the finite number of slots on overcrowded high streets—for which another group has actually paid; and secondly, on enforcement.
We have taken some 14 hours in total on these two Bills. I am most grateful to all my hon. Friends who have spoken tonight for indicating that they intend to let the Canterbury Bill go forward—and, I hope, the Nottingham Bill, which has the same merits. I am grateful to the House for an interesting exchange, and I am profoundly relieved that these Bills will now go to another place and hopefully not re-emerge here—with the solitary exception of the one Lords amendment on which I made a commitment to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That the promoters of the Canterbury City Council Bill, which was originally introduced in this House in Session 2007–08 on 22 January 2008, may have leave to proceed with the Bill in the current Session according to the provisions of Standing Order 188B (Revival of bills).
Nottingham City Council Bill
Lords message (10 June) considered.
Ordered,
That the promoters of the Nottingham City Council Bill, which was originally introduced in this House in Session 2007–08 on 22 January 2008, may have leave to proceed with the Bill in the current Session according to the provisions of Standing Order 188B (Revival of bills).—(The Chairman of Ways and Means.)
North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust
(14 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing me to speak on this subject this evening in my first Adjournment debate. I am only sorry that it must focus on such a seriously worrying subject. I had hoped to have more time for this debate, but my learning about this place has taken a huge leap forward. I have learned tonight that Conservative Members appear to have more interest and certainly more expertise in the activities of pedlars and Robin Hood than they do in the health of the nation.
I called for this debate in the light of the statement made to the House by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury on 17 June that the new hospital to replace the North Tees and Hartlepool university hospitals will no longer receive Treasury funding. As a former non-executive director of the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, I was closely involved in the planning of future health care for the area over some considerable time. This was not a project rushed through to beat a deadline, but one that was carefully planned over years. I will address that in more detail this evening.
This hospital would have served local people from a number of constituencies, not just my own but others including Stockton South, Hartlepool, Easington and Sedgefield, and I am pleased to see colleagues from those areas in the Chamber tonight. I know from speaking to other Members, at least those on this side of the House, that there is huge disappointment, but little surprise, that the coalition has already begun slashing spending on front-line services. It is already abundantly clear that this programme of deep cuts will have a serious impact on people in Teesside and the north-east.
I wish, first, to set out the background to the decision to build a new state-of-the-art hospital to serve our communities, which was planned to open in 2015. Although the Chief Secretary was correct in saying that final approval for this £464 million project was granted in March, the project has been on the drawing board for more than five years. It dates back to a 2005 report by eminent clinician Professor Sir Ara Darzi on acute services in Hartlepool and Teesside. In 2006, an independent reconfiguration panel report stated that
“a modern hospital to replace the existing out of date hospital buildings should be provided on a new site in a well situated location accessible to the people of Hartlepool, Stockton-on-Tees, Easington and Sedgefield.”
I had cause to visit one such modern hospital this weekend, and I wish to place on record my personal thanks—I hope that the Minister will join me in this—to the plastic surgeons and the staff of ward 35 at James Cook university hospital for their care and expertise, and for saving my finger.
Let us be clear that the two hospitals that currently serve our communities operate to the best of their abilities and have excellent staff. However, the hospitals are showing their age and must be replaced if we are to maintain and improve health services in our area. I want my area to have the same modern facilities that I benefited from over the past couple of days.
Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, which is very important to a large number of hon. Members. Will he confirm that the whole driver for this reconfiguration has been a clinically led approach—led by eminent doctors and surgeons—and that the decision made by the Chief Secretary takes us back to square one, with no plan B?
Alex Cunningham
I certainly agree with that. I know that it is the view of clinicians and other health professionals that it will be impossible to sustain two hospitals with the full range of services and facilities needed to serve our communities. Indeed, patients in our areas have to access different services at the two different sites, which are 14 miles apart.
The new hospital was to be a vital element of wider health care reform in our region and would have delivered clinically sustainable hospital services in the single hospital while delivering a much wider range of services in the community much closer to people’s homes, including three new integrated care centres in Billingham, Hartlepool and Stockton. There is no doubt that there has been some controversy about the plan to build one “super hospital” to replace the two outdated ones, as well as unease among some in the community about the location chosen. I firmly believe, however, that the plan would have provided improved services for local people and that it is ultimately the right plan for the NHS trust to pursue.
James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I also note with interest that he is perhaps the first hon. Member in the history of this House to brandish his middle finger at Mr Speaker and to receive no reprimand for it.
The hon. Gentleman has acknowledged that the hospital’s location between two communities is somewhat controversial locally. The representations that I have received from my constituents have, almost without exception, praised the Government’s decision and criticised the proposals for the hospital at Wynyard. Let me read him one short example of an e-mail that I received only the other day:
“The decision is a sensible one. Leaving aside the reckless economic folly of committing funding the country does not possess and blatant politicking by Labour in promising such funding in marginal constituencies the truth is that this hospital was vehemently opposed by a significant number of local people on grounds that it was geographically in the ‘wrong’ place for both communities, had no public transport links and would seriously affect A19 and A689 traffic flows”.
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the views of his constituents and mine are mixed, at best?
Alex Cunningham
These issues were extensively explored with the public. There was detailed and extensive formal and informal consultation involving public meetings, leaflet drops to households and a radio campaign. The Government had promised additional funding to tackle some of the transport issues and communities across the place were in favour of the hospital.
I must outline why the new hospital should remain a priority for the new Government.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South— [Interruption.] I am sorry—we will get that one next time. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) on securing this debate. People in my constituency and the five others that were to have been served by this new hospital need to know why this project was cancelled when three other schemes elsewhere in the country were approved. The Minister is being coy in his written answers to questions, but we really need answers. The need remains. Issues of health inequality need to be addressed. I want to place it on record that south Easington, which would be served by this new hospital, is one of the most deprived communities in the United Kingdom, as identified by the indices of multiple deprivation. Health inequalities still play a significant role in determining life expectancy and quality of life. Health inequalities remain a big issue: they are inequalities not just in terms of outcomes but in access to health care resources—
Mr Speaker
Order. May I say very gently to new Members, whose passion for this subject I respect, that although the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) is showing great forbearance there is a difference between a speech and a short intervention?
Alex Cunningham
Mr Speaker, I agree with the long intervention and the facts laid out by my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris).
In Stockton-on-Tees, just over a quarter of residents live in some of the most deprived areas of England. Early deaths from heart disease and stroke and from cancer are higher than the England average. Inequalities are starkly demonstrated by the fact that a man living in one of the least deprived areas of Stockton can expect to live just over 10 years longer than a man living in one of the most deprived areas.
Since 1997, however, early death rates from heart disease and stroke have fallen markedly and early death rates from cancer have also fallen, albeit more slowly. We have also seen a narrowing in the gap between our area and the rest of the country. Things are improving for my constituents, and my concern is that the coalition’s decision will see a halt to and possibly even a reversal in these positive outcomes. The NHS is too important to be turned into a party political football, however. Those listening to this debate back in the north-east this evening do not want to hear us point scoring. I have heard you say yourself, Mr Speaker, that that is the sort of behaviour that turns people off politics and politicians.
I wholeheartedly welcome the commitment shown by the Prime Minister and his party to the NHS, and I would like to draw the attention of hon. Members to a statement that he made during the election campaign. He said:
“The test of a good society is you look after the elderly, the frail, the vulnerable, the poorest in our society. And that test is even more important in difficult times, when difficult decisions have to be taken, than it is in better times.”
I could not agree more with the Prime Minister’s statement, but I fear that his words are not being followed by his actions. As we all know, it is all too easy to make promises in politics. The real test is whether we stand by our word once the votes have been counted.
During the election campaign, the Conservative party claimed that it was now the party of the NHS. I doubt very much that people who went to the ballot box on 6 May and put a cross next to the name of their Conservative candidate thought that the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) would be authorising the cancellation of a long-awaited new hospital just weeks later. We all acknowledge that cuts have to be made to reduce the deficit, but this is a much needed front-line service, and I will not stand by and let this project disappear without a fight.
Of course, 6 May gave us not a Conservative Government but a Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition, so I urge Members to refer to the document “The Coalition: our programme for government”, which states:
“We are committed to the continuous improvement of the quality of services to patients.”
Again, I warmly welcome that statement, but I fear that when push comes to shove, it will mean very little to my constituents and those in neighbouring areas. This coalition seems intent on cutting spending without fully realising the human cost of the cuts. This decision is a backward step for the communities that would have been served by the new hospital, and it does not tally with the Prime Minister’s claim that the Conservatives are now the party of the NHS or with the coalition’s document.
Since the announcement on 17 June, I and other Labour Members have met the chair and chief executive of North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust. They are understandably extremely disappointed that, after the many years of hard work creating and fine-tuning the plans for the future of health services in our region, those plans have been sent back to the drawing board. It is not only the foundation trust that is unhappy with the decision: on Saturday 26 June, other Members and I attended a rally in Hartlepool to highlight local opposition to the decision, which grows by the day.
I have also received encouraging support for early-day motion 273, which asks for a review of the coalition’s decision. To date, it has received 42 signatures—regrettably, only from Members on this side of the House. I hope that it will not only be Labour Members arguing this evening that their constituents should not lose out after waiting so long for an agreement on the future of health care in our area.
One of the key questions that I hope the Minister will answer this evening is why this particular project has been scrapped. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury said in his statement to the House that his decision to cut £2 billion of public spending, including on our new hospital, was guided by a principle of fairness. At the moment, we feel as though we have been subject to an arbitrary decision. I have yet to hear any persuasive argument as to why people in the north-east have had their new hospital withdrawn while schemes such as the Royal Liverpool hospital, the Pennine acute hospital and the Epsom and St Helier hospital are going ahead. What advice did the Minister receive from his Department that led to the conclusion that the North Tees and Hartlepool project did not represent value for money, compared with the other projects?
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury told the House on 17 June that our new hospital was
“assessed against a number of other major build projects that were at the same stage of development; those schemes are more urgent.”—[Official Report, 17 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 1051.]
I would appreciate a little more clarity from the Minister about what was meant by that statement, and I request that he publish the criteria used and the detailed comparisons carried out against the project. The North Tees and Hartlepool project was, according to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), the top priority for the NHS. We would like to know why it has slipped down and out of the queue.
In answer to my question on 29 June about the strategy developed by the foundation trust, the Secretary of State for Health did not rule out other ways of making our new hospital happen. I noted that he said it needed to fit his new criteria and that the trust should not ask the Department of Health to meet the whole capital cost of whatever it proposes. Does that mean that some funding could be made available and the balance raised by the trust using its existing powers?
I urge the coalition to work with Members on the Opposition Benches as well as with the foundation trust to look at new and innovative ways of funding the project and ensuring that local people are not left behind. Will the Minister confirm that more time invested in developing a new solution to fund the new hospital will not be a waste of time, and that he and his coalition partners have not set themselves against any new hospital in our part of the country?
If we do not find a solution and build a new hospital, what will happen? The chief executive of the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust has publicly acknowledged that there is a chance that Hartlepool hospital could close, whether or not a new hospital goes ahead. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright)is extremely anxious about that. We could end up with one hospital. I want it to be a new one.
There is much more at stake than just health care and a new hospital. The location for the hospital was Wynyard park, a 700 acre high-end mixed-use development accommodating residential and business properties.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on achieving the Adjournment debate. I shall be brief. I expect the point that he intends to make is about added value arising from the project. The business park would have attracted high-value private sector jobs in medical research in an area that needs them. They would have reached the site as a result of the £10 million that would have been introduced into the transport system.
Alex Cunningham
Exactly. The new hospital would have kick-started development in the area, creating many thousands of jobs. The owners of Wynyard park believe that the new hospital would have been a considerable incentive for investment by others to develop the type of industries mentioned by my hon. Friend. Most important of all, the coalition’s decision to scrap the new hospital will have a major detrimental effect on continuing the work to close the gap between the unhealthiest and healthiest in our communities.
I am therefore grateful to the Minister, who has agreed to a request from my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) for a meeting to discuss how we can keep our hospital project alive. I look forward to the meeting to discuss the way forward and will listen intently to his response this evening, in the hope that the door to funding is not already firmly closed. At present there are many more questions than answers about the future of acute services in our region. What is the future of health care, of our strategy for a new hospital, and of the organisations, such as the foundation trust, that plan care? There is so much doubt.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that that meeting is an important opportunity for the coalition Government to demonstrate some commitment to reducing health inequalities in the north-east, tackling deprivation and supporting a new hospital?
Alex Cunningham
Most certainly. The project is also about jobs and tackling deprivation. Tremendous progress has been made on health inequalities in our area, and I want to see that work continue. The good people of Stockton, Hartlepool and the surrounding areas deserve better than this, and I can assure the Minister that my hon. Friends and I will fight passionately to ensure that they are not left behind.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)
I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) on securing the debate on the future of the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust and its hospitals. I join him, with the greatest pleasure, in congratulating clinicians, GPs, ancillary workers and all those who work so hard on Teesside, in the north-east and in the rest of the country to provide a first-class quality health care service for the people of this nation.
The decision to cancel the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust proposal has to be seen within the context of the wider economic climate. This year’s budget deficit of £155 billion—inherited, I gently remind Opposition Members, from the previous Government—illustrates the scale of the economic challenge facing this Government. As part of this Government’s determination to face that challenge head on, the Treasury and other Departments have reviewed every significant spending decision made between 1 January and the general election on 6 May. As the proposed new hospital scheme at the foundation trust received the previous Government’s approval only in March, the North Tees decision formed part of that review.
In these tough economic times, it is essential that all major hospital building schemes be affordable. On 17 June, as the hon. Member for Stockton North rightly said, my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury announced to this House the decisions of the Government’s review of spending commitments. The review cancelled 12 projects throughout Government and considered four major NHS capital investment schemes with a total capital value of more than £1.2 billion.
The size and funding of the schemes were considered in relation to the nature of the organisations concerned. The aim of granting foundation trust status is to give such bodies greater financial independence. As well as being able to keep any internally generated resources, foundation trusts have greater freedom to borrow from either the public or the private sectors, and, by requiring an allocation of public dividend capital from the Department of Health of more than £400 million, the proposals were not consistent with that financial independence.
Mr Iain Wright
What local clinical advice did the Minister and his ministerial team take prior to the decision to scrap the new hospital?
Mr Burns
If the hon. Gentleman waits, as I develop my argument I shall continue to explain the reasons for cancelling the scheme within the public spending review.
Treasury and Department of Health Ministers, myself included, decided that, overall, these factors—affordability within the changed economic climate and the foundation trust status—weighed more against the scheme for North Tees and Hartlepool than against the other three schemes for the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust, Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust and the Royal National Orthopaedic hospital. For those reasons, the Government withdrew their support for the scheme.
If I may, I shall just answer one question that was mentioned in an intervention on the hon. Member for Stockton North. The question was, “Why North Tees and Hartlepool and not the three other schemes?” After looking into the situation, we found that, for example, the Royal Liverpool university hospital building is not compliant with fire safety regulations, and that its mechanical and engineering services are more than 30 years old and at increasing risk of failure. Some 94% of St Helier hospital’s buildings are more than 50 years old, and the 2007-08 data show that the total maintenance backlog for the Royal National Orthopaedic hospital is £53.8 million; for Epsom and St Helier it is £23.8 million; for the Royal Liverpool it is £16.3 million; and for North Tees and Hartlepool it is £3.5 million.
Grahame M. Morris
On the point about affordability and the Minister’s suggestion that the foundation trust look towards PFI, how would such a proposal be more affordable when the evidence suggests that PFIs are 14 to 20% more expensive to deliver? The need certainly exists, and we need to deliver quality health care, but affordability suggests that the public purse is the best way to do it.
Mr Burns
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Earlier today, his right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) made the point that it would be cheaper to have a new hospital than to maintain the existing two ageing hospitals. I do not believe that that is accurate. The business case actually showed that the whole-life costs of continuing to operate and provide services from the two hospitals were very similar, but slightly lower than the whole-life of costs of operating and providing services from the proposed new facility. Over the appraisal period of 35 years, the total net present cost—that is, the whole-life cost—of building, maintaining and operating the new facility was £5.033 billion, but the cost of repairing defects, maintaining, operating and providing services from the two existing buildings was £5.024 billion.
However, the North East strategic health authority, Hartlepool primary care trust and Stockton-on-Tees primary care trust have pledged to continue working closely with North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust to plan and develop the best possible health services for the local population of Hartlepool and North Tees. I understand that the chief executive of North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust is currently reappraising the available options. As I have said, NHS foundation trusts have greater financial independence, which includes consideration of the private finance initiative. I am advised that the chief executive of the trust has already said that the PFI is one of the options that he is looking at, but any new proposals must be realistic, affordable and provide value for money. I cannot in any way give any guarantees that such a scheme would or would not be approved. Like all schemes, any proposals that might come forward would have to be considered on its merits and in the light of the economic climate at that time.
The local health economy is also ensuring that the wider momentum project, which involves bringing health care services closer to communities, will continue. I am delighted that on 10 May this year, the new integrated care centre known as One Life Hartlepool, located in Hartlepool town centre, opened its doors to patients. Hartlepool primary care trust has transferred a range of community services into this new £20 million facility. The PCT is working with North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust to agree a programme for moving a range of out-patient services into the building. In addition, work is continuing on the outline business cases for integrated care centres in Billingham and Stockton.
In conclusion, any new proposals to develop—
Alex Cunningham
I have just one question. Will the funding for those two centres in Stockton and Billingham be guaranteed?
Mr Burns
As I understand it, the finance is in place, and I assume that the measures will proceed on that basis.
Any new proposals to develop local NHS services must be affordable, but they must also now take into account the further criteria on service reconfiguration recently set out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I believe that it is vital that any proposals focus on improving patient outcomes, are based on sound clinical evidence, increase choice for patients, and have the backing of GP commissioners. I, like the hon. Gentleman, his hon. Friends and everyone else in this country, want a high-quality NHS that is accountable to patients and led and controlled locally. This Government have been elected on a platform of real-terms increases in the NHS budget for every year of this five-year Parliament. But hand in hand with that, we must have an NHS that puts patients at the centre of high-quality care and delivers care that is efficient, productive and, importantly, affordable. This must be the case nationally; it must also be the case locally, including for the people of Stockton North and Teesside.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Ministerial Statement
Public Spending Control
(14 years, 5 months ago)
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The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Danny Alexander)
The Government’s top priority is to take early action to tackle the unprecedented deficit and restore confidence in the economy.
Within 10 days of taking office, the Government took decisive action to find £6.2 billion of efficiency savings in 2010-11.
We have since conducted a review of all spending decisions approved by the previous Government in their final months of office, and I presented the conclusions of this review to the House on 17 June 2010.
I also informed the House on 17 June that, while conducting this review, we had discovered yet another legacy issue that needed to be addressed. The previous Government made billions of pounds of spending commitments for this financial year that relied upon underspending across Government via the end-year flexibility (EYF) system or on additional funding from the reserve.
However, it was highly unrealistic to expect that underspending would have been sufficient to cover these commitments. There is insufficient contingency in the reserve to cover the remainder. Without remedial action, the difference would result in higher borrowing this year. It is clear that commitments of this scale should never have been entered into.
In order to address this serious situation, the Treasury has worked with Departments to cancel £1.5 billion of commitments that relied upon access to the reserve and EYF to deal with the most serious pressures. These decisions are an unavoidable consequence of the unaffordable level of previous commitments. The details are given in the table below.
Department | Savings Announced (£m) |
|---|---|
Department for Education | 1000 |
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills | 265 |
Department for Communities and Local Government | 220 |
Home Office | 55 |
Total | 1540 |
As these commitments relied upon the drawdown of additional funding later this year rather than money already in budgets, the existing departmental expenditure limits (DELs) of these Departments will remain unchanged.
The EYF and reserve deals for other Departments remain under review, in the usual way, until later in the financial year when likely departmental underspending figures for 2010-11 will become clearer. Final allocations of EYF and reserve funding will be determined on a basis of need, realism and the wider fiscal position, and announced at the time of spring supplementary estimates later in the financial year.
Cancelling the commitments for additional funding set out above and working to manage down remaining claims over the course of the year, will help create contingency in the reserve to meet further pressures that might arise over the course of the year, without increasing borrowing.
The Government will meet the previous Government’s EYF and reserve commitments to the devolved Administrations, including those in the financial package agreed with the Northern Ireland Executive to support the devolution of policing and justice powers.
House of Lords
Introduction: Baroness Sherlock
Introduction: Lord Bannside
Introduction: Baroness Drake
Energy: Renewables
(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord James of Blackheath
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to assess the assurances given by the previous Administration on the completion date and costs of the renewable energy programme required to meet the European Union target of a 20 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020.
Lord James of Blackheath
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In so doing, I note my former interest as chairman of North Sea Assets plc and British Underwater Engineering plc.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Marland)
My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord is referring to the European Union’s obligation under the renewable energy directive to source 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, of which the UK share is to achieve 15 per cent renewable energy consumption by 2020. We are committed to meeting the UK’s target for renewable energy by 2020, but we want to go further and have asked the Committee on Climate Change to provide independent advice on the level of ambition for renewables across the UK.
As part of the package of challenging energy and climate change measures, the UK has also signed up to the target of a reduction in new EU greenhouse emissions of at least 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. Actual costs will depend on how the market responds to incentives, on barriers to deployment and on how technology costs evolve between now and 2020. We will continue to monitor and review the uptake of financial incentives and costs.
Lord James of Blackheath
I thank the Minister for that reply. Can he confirm whether his department is able to agree with the former estimates last provided to your Lordships by the previous Government to the effect that they would achieve the target for 2020 with a programme of extensive wind farm developments on Crown properties within a budget to be provided by the Prime Minister of the time—not from his own pocket, I think—of £75 billion? Does that hold good as an achievable forecast today, given that not a scrap of equipment can be contracted for wind farm development until 2020?
Lord Marland
Noble Lords may want brevity of answer over here, but it will not suit Members on those Benches too well if I give that, quite frankly.
Lord Marland
Because of lack of performance, I am afraid. However, I am avoiding any confrontation on this issue, so if I were the noble Lord, I would as well.
The most recent statistics for 2009 show that the level of renewable energy consumed in the UK has reached 3 per cent. This puts us on a trajectory to meet our first interim target under the renewable energy directive, which is 4 per cent by 2012.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, are the Government wise to have committed £18 billion per annum for the next 40 years to combat climate change when the science underpinning it has collapsed? How many British people will suffer fuel poverty as a result of this discredited initiative?
Lord Marland
I am not sure I thank the noble Lord for his question, but his party’s views are well known and, I am afraid, do not coincide with ours. We think that climate change is one of the biggest issues to confront the nation. We are putting green awareness on the front of our agenda. We are going to be the greenest Government who have existed and we intend to deliver policies to show so.
Lord Tomlinson
Does the noble Lord regard nuclear-generated electricity as being renewable?
Lord Marland
Nuclear-generated electricity is a fundamental part of our party’s coalition policy but I am not sure that it is relevant to the Question in hand.
Lord Teverson
My Lords, is not one of the ways in which we will meet this target much greater use of biogas? How will the UK catch up with other European countries, such as Germany, in terms of anaerobic digestion?
Lord Marland
I thank my noble coalition colleague for that question. For some people who may not have the noble Lord’s knowledge, anaerobic digestion needs to be encouraged. It is a recycling of waste—sewerage, animal waste and food waste—that creates biogas. It is a very important development. My honourable friend in the other place, Mr Greg Barker, has organised a stakeholder event in the Recess to discuss the development of this kind of renewable energy.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
There must be room for both noble Lords to speak. Why do we not have first my noble friend Lord Lawson and then the noble Lord, Lord Howarth?
Lord Lawson of Blaby
I am grateful to the Leader of the House. Is my noble friend aware that only a couple of days ago, Mr Bob Wigley, the chairman of the previous Government’s Green Investment Bank Commission, stated that meeting the requirements of the absurd Climate Change Act will cost the United Kingdom £50 billion a year, every year, for the next 40 years. How—above all in this age of austerity—can this possibly be justified?
Lord Marland
I am very grateful to noble Lords for fighting over a question for me; it is quite rare in this job. However, I must correct my noble friend; the Green Investment Bank was an initiative set up by our own party and one must not rule out the phenomenal business opportunities that it offers for this country. We must have 2 million heat pumps by 2020. We must have bioenergy, which will create 100,000 jobs at a value of £116 million. Wind alone should create 130,000 jobs at a value of £36 billion. At a time when the country needs investment, these are heartening numbers.
Baroness Ford
At a time when the country needs this investment so badly, how does the Minister propose to meet those renewables targets without the benefit of an independent Infrastructure Planning Commission, which this Government are committed to abolishing?
Lord Marland
I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for her question. She is quite right; the planning process is fundamental to renewable energies and we have to put great emphasis on it, and I am afraid that we have to accelerate it because it had become stuck in a mire. I am not sure that the IPC is the right method for doing that. We shall put energy into reforming that area. I am grateful to the climate change committee for recommending it.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, in seeking to pursue their laudable aim of increasing the proportion of energy consumption supplied by renewables, how will the Government ensure that the landscape of this country is not disfigured by a rash of ill-planned wind turbines?
Lord Marland
I am grateful for that question. Under the previous Government, 14 gigawatts of onshore turbines were approved, 70 per cent of which is under way. It is our determination that there should be no dramatic increase in this and that the emphasis should be offshore, where the supply of wind is much more reliable. There are of course constraints in the environment, to which the noble Lord referred, and fishing and shipping communities need to be listened to, but offshore is the future for this country.
Wealth
Lord Sheldon
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proportion of wealth is held by the richest 10 per cent of the population.
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)
My Lords, there are different methods of calculating wealth. HMRC personal wealth statistics estimate that, in 2005, the latest year for which data are available, the top 10 per cent of individuals owned 54 per cent of total wealth. The wealth and asset survey, a new survey measuring wealth across Great Britain, estimates that, between 2006 and 2008, the top 10 per cent of households owned 44 per cent of wealth. However, the wealth and assets survey uses a different methodology from the HMRC statistics.
Lord Sheldon
That does not take into account the period from 2000, which was my original question, and how the population varied during the period of the Labour Government. The richest 10 per cent must have been rather wealthier than the Minister said. What action has been taken to reduce the level of wealth?
Lord Sassoon
I am grateful to the noble Lord for asking what action was taken during the period of the Labour Government to reduce wealth inequality, because I can give him the statistics. The HMRC survey showed that the top 10 per cent of households in 1997 owned 54 per cent of the wealth; in 2005, they still owned 54 per cent of the wealth. The Gini coefficient, which your Lordships will be aware measures the dispersal of wealth, had risen marginally from 69 per cent in 1997 to 70 per cent in 2005. That probably shows that whatever action was taken had no appreciable effect.
Lord Bilimoria
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the question should be not how much wealth does the richest 10 per cent hold, but how much wealth does the richest 10 per cent generate for this economy? What are the Government doing about the worry of driving away some of the most talented people through the 50 per cent rate of tax, the non-dom levy and increased CGT? Surely we should be attracting more wealth creation. On the other hand, with regard to the question before about the previous Government and reducing child poverty, is it not shocking that we should have child poverty in one of the wealthiest nations in the world?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, because he enables me to say yet again how important it is that wealth generation is created and that the balance of the economy is switched from overdependence on the public sector and debt to dependence on the private sector and equity. That is why he did not mention—but I will—the reduction in corporation tax, the fact that CGT did not go up anything like as much as people had feared and a number of other measures in the Budget. He is right to draw attention to child poverty because the previous Government failed to meet their target of halving it by 2010.
Lord Roberts of Conwy
My Lords, is it not true that the gap between the richest 10 per cent and the poorest 10 per cent is actually at its greatest for 40 years? The party opposite were in Government for the best part—no, not quite the best part, but for 18 years, or almost half—of that 40 years. If we were in the blame game should they not take responsibility?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I completely agree with my noble friend. The policy of this Government is to increase wealth across the wealth distribution for everybody.
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, does the Minister agree that one of the most important political ideas of the past 50 years is that of a property-owning democracy? Conservative thinkers must get due credit for the development of that idea. Why, then, have the Government abolished child trust funds, the first measure in the history of this country to give every child a stake in the wealth of the nation?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, there are simply some measures that, in the present fiscal position, are unaffordable. The child trust fund, regrettably, falls into that category. However, to ensure that children at greatest risk are protected, we have introduced above-indexation rises in child tax credit. If noble Lords look at the new tables set out in the Budget document on pages 64 to 70, they will see that the effect is progressive across all income bands.
Lord Newby
My Lords, does the Minister accept that one way to stop disparities in wealth growing disproportionately is for the wealthy to pay their taxes? The Government have at long last announced a review looking at the possibility of introducing a general anti-avoidance rule. Will the Minister assure the House that this review will be finished in time for legislation on this matter to be introduced in the next finance Bill?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, the coalition agreement indeed commits the Government to make every effort to tackle tax avoidance. There was a Budget press notice on eight initiatives that we are taking. One is to examine whether the option of a general anti-avoidance rule should form one element of strengthened defences against avoidance. I assure my noble friend that there will be informal consultations on this possible anti-avoidance rule over the summer.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, may I ask the Minister a very simple question? What proportion of wealth is held by members of the Cabinet?
Lord Sassoon
I suspect that it would not register significantly on the data.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, whatever the views of the Benches beside me and opposite me, does the Minister not agree that in socialist societies the differential is very much sharper than in democratic and capitalist societies? Does he, for instance, recall that in the Soviet Union some 95 per cent of the wealth and influence was controlled by less than 2 per cent of the population?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I have been looking for international comparison data, which are very hard to come by. I certainly do not know of any reliable statistics for the former Soviet Union. In the latest data of which I am aware, which is an Economic Policy Research Institute survey in 2000, the USA has the top 10 per cent of households earning 69.8 per cent of wealth, France is on 61 per cent, the UK on 56 per cent, Germany on 44 per cent and Japan on 39.3 per cent.
Disabled People: UN Convention
(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Greengross
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to implement the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Baroness Greengross
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. I declare an interest as a member of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, this Government are committed to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and to using it as a driver to achieve equality for disabled people. The Office for Disability Issues is co-ordinating implementation, monitoring and reporting across government and the devolved Administrations to ensure that they are aware of the need to take the convention into account in developing policies, and that they involve disabled people and their organisations in doing so.
Baroness Greengross
In thanking the Minister for his reply, I recognise the huge resource challenge we all face and I welcome the Government’s commitment to ensure that fairness is at the heart of any financial decisions that will be made. In light of the recent announcements around welfare reform, including incapacity benefit and disability living allowance, and the possibility of a delay in implementing the Equality Act, can the Minister assure the House that every step is being taken to make sure that spending cuts do not impede the implementation of the UN convention and that full equality impact assessments are carried out so that the impact on disabled people is actively and appropriately considered?
Lord Freud
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her informed questions, which I know come from her interest in and passion for equality issues. I can assure her that we will treat this convention with great seriousness and will push ahead to make sure that it does not slow down. Next July, we are due to report on progress in this area. We will be pushing to make sure that we do so to time. I can also assure her that in our welfare reforms we will look precisely at making sure that those who need support the most continue to receive it.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
My Lords, one-third of disabled people live below the official poverty line, which does not measure the additional costs of disability. Under the UN disability convention, the Government must promote the right of disabled people to an adequate standard of living and social protection. Will the Government’s review of the disability living allowance and, more importantly the recent closure of the independent living fund to new recipients, breach that obligation?
Lord Freud
My Lords, when we look at our obligations under the convention, we are clearly looking at a journey towards complete equality for disabled people. It would be naive to claim that within one bound we shall produce total equality. This has been a long journey, which started many years ago. We are committed to press on and make sure that as we move ahead we produce greater equality and improve the lot of disabled people steadily as the years progress.
Lord Ashley of Stoke
The Minister’s assurances are welcome, but how do the Government explain the reservations that they have made? It is not so much the question of individual reservations, but the cumulative effect of all four of them. It gives the impression that the British Government are not interested and certainly are only lukewarm towards the issues covered by the four reservations to the convention. How does the Minister square that?
Lord Freud
My Lords, we have four reservations on this convention, and there are two ways of looking at that. A large number of countries have signed—145 of them, and 87 have ratified. We have taken this convention with great seriousness and looked through the implications of applying it, rather than looking at it as a purely aspirational matter. Of those four reservations, we are working extremely hard to ensure that we can remove two.
Lord Addington
My Lords, when we are dealing with disability matters we tend to pass a lot of legislation, then have to go back and pass legislation again on the same subject. Have the Government decided whether we have the legislative framework to enact the United Nations convention? If we do not, when will it be in place? May we know as soon as possible?
Lord Freud
The United Nations convention is not a matter of law in this country or in Europe. It is a convention that holds us to account on our performance, and on which we report back to the UN. We will do that in July.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, Article 28 of the convention promotes the right to an adequate standard of living. Elsewhere, the convention requires that all activities must include the participation of persons with disabilities. How have persons with disabilities been involved in the decisions in the Budget that show, in table 2.1 of the Red Book, that £360 million in 2013 and then over £1 billion in 2014 will be cut from the disability living allowance?
Lord Freud
My Lords, this is the first time that I have had a chance to welcome the noble Lord to these Benches. As he points out, part of the convention says “nothing about us without us”, and we take that seriously. We will go through the normal Budget processes in terms of ensuring that equality and human rights issues are dealt with.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that the European Parliament is currently considering a draft regulation on the rights of passengers on bus and coach transport. Will he assure me that the British Government will support the inclusion in this regulation of stronger rights for disabled people in line with Article 9 of the UN convention, particularly with regard to the provision of assistance and accessible information?
Lord Freud
As I said, my Lords, we are determined to implement this convention. We have four reservations, but transport is not one of them. We will be implementing it in as proportionate a way as we can.
House of Lords: Reform
(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Campbell of Alloway
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what process will be used by the House of Lords reform committee to give instructions to parliamentary counsel for a draft bill.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, instructions to parliamentary counsel will be drafted by officials in the usual manner, based on decisions made by the committee.
Lord Campbell of Alloway
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that response. The take note debate raised a question of due process relating to this Question, which, in effect, has not been answered. I am afraid that I cannot answer it; I did not set up the committee. I suspect that the only person in your Lordships’ House who can really answer it is my noble friend the Justice Minister. In the mean time, though, there is a problem about this process. There are two aspects.
Lord McNally
My Lords, because, as the noble Lord said, the debate raised the issue of due process, I was very careful to make inquiries about whether it could be suggested that anything that was taking place was not being done with due process. I am advised that parliamentary counsel will draft the Bill, which the Government plan to publish before the end of the year, based on clear instructions provided by the departmental lawyers, and that this is normal practice.
Lord Dubs
Does the Minister agree that every Minister should be accountable to one House or the other in Parliament and that it is therefore an anomaly that the Minister without Portfolio in the Cabinet Office is apparently not answerable to anybody in either House? Will the Minister ensure, in feeding in to this process, that all Ministers are accountable?
Lord McNally
I cannot believe that that is not the case. Perhaps the noble Lord will write to me on it; otherwise, I will report what he suggests to the Cabinet Office. I think that I have seen most Ministers up for Questions. If the Minister is in another place, it is open to Members of another place—
Lord McNally
Ah, I know where we are now. Why does the noble Lord not try putting down a Question to her?
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
Can my noble friend give a little further advice on the status of the committee, which, although appointed by the Government, includes a representative of the Opposition? None the less, the Leader of the Opposition in this House, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, described it as a Cabinet committee. Does it have that authority and collective responsibility? Secondly, what steps will be taken to enable representations to be made to the committee that are germane to the work of the committee in the form of advice, given that the noble Baroness said to the House that the committee’s proceedings could not be made clear or transparent? Are we not all interested in helping constructively? If we are to help constructively, can we be given some greater indication of how we can do so?
Lord McNally
I am very much aware of just how constructive most of this House wants to be to the committee and I am grateful for that. It is not a Cabinet committee; it is a working group that is drawing up a draft Bill. The reason why the Opposition accepted the invitation to join the group is that, prior to the election, a great deal of the work had been done by a similar committee under the chairmanship of Mr Jack Straw. That committee left a good body of work for this group to get ahead in its work in drawing up a draft Bill.
Lord Christopher
My Lords, I understand that the Cabinet rules on legislation require an impact assessment and a cost-benefit analysis. Indeed, the Government were criticised only recently for not producing them. In the case of this government draft legislation, it seems ludicrous that the House should discuss something without knowing what the consequences will be.
Lord McNally
Those matters can be fully scrutinised by the pre-legislative scrutiny committee when it sees the draft Bill. I emphasise that this committee is working on a draft Bill, which will be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny, when there will be a lot of opportunities to look at both the impact and the cost.
Lord Grocott
My Lords, as I previously understood it—the Minister has made it much clearer to me now—the agenda and the minutes of the committee could not be made public because the committee was a Cabinet committee. The noble Lord has now told us that it is definitely not a Cabinet committee. Given that this Government have trumpeted their commitment to transparency and openness, on which the Deputy Prime Minister has been in the lead, why on earth cannot the agenda and the minutes be published? If the noble Lord tells me that they cannot be, what offence would be committed if, for example, I were to ask my noble friend the shadow Leader of the House to let me have a copy of them?
Lord McNally
I am sure that the Leader of the Opposition would honour what has been set out by the committee. This is a drafting committee and we are working with due speed to produce a draft, which will then give the opportunity for the real work that Lords reform requires. I think that the House is getting overexcited about this. We are receiving advice and written submissions and we are working hard to be able to give the House what I have described before as a bone for it to chew on. I think that that is the best way forward for Lords reform.
Arrangement of Business
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, at a convenient point after 4 pm, my noble friend Lord McNally will repeat a Statement on political and constitutional reform, followed immediately by my noble friend Lord Hill of Oareford repeating a Statement on education funding.
Transport
Earl Attlee
That this House takes note of the case for safe and sustainable transport and its role in generating future economic growth and prosperity.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I am very grateful to the usual channels for giving us the opportunity to have a full debate on transport matters, and in prime time. The provisions of the Companion apply but we have no overall limit on time, and that is a pleasant change from our normal ration. We have an excellent list of speakers who have much experience and knowledge in the field. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, has spoken on transport from the Front Bench for many years, and I am delighted that he will continue to do so. I am sure that he will give me not only a run for my money but the benefit of his wise counsel.
Transport is, and always has been, an integral part of a strong economy and a free society in the UK. It was 250 years ago this month, 180 miles to our north on the Duke of Bridgewater’s estate, that excavation work began on the central section of a groundbreaking canal linking the coal mines at Worsley Mill to factories in the heart of Manchester. The Bridgewater Canal revolutionised transport in this country, and the boom in canal building that followed its construction unleashed a wave of industrialisation that transformed Britain into the richest nation on earth.
This country’s history has long borne witness to the importance of transport in supporting its economic and social development. As a proud maritime power, for centuries our ships have carried goods to and from the furthest-flung corners of the globe. In the decades following George Stephenson’s pioneering trial of his Rocket locomotive in 1829, we became the first country to develop a comprehensive railway network, carrying our citizens and commerce between towns and cities the length and breadth of our island. In the 20th century, the motor car brought unprecedented personal freedom to millions, while air travel shrunk space and time and, in doing so, opened markets, spread trade, connected countries and brought people and communities closer together than ever before. We now live in a globalised world. We are interconnected and interdependent—socially and culturally, economically and environmentally. What binds, links and supports us is transport. So, as we stand here in 2010, our duty is to build on the successes of the past and continue with the task of delivering a transport system that is safe and accessible; that supports communities and spreads opportunity; and that sustains the economy and safeguards the environment.
Noble Lords will note that safety was deliberately the first issue I listed. I did so because safety will always be paramount in this country’s transport systems. We have a duty to ensure that our citizens are conveyed on the safest aircraft, the safest ships, the safest trains and the safest road vehicles. We are fortunate that the UK is already a world leader on safety. The latest figures show that the number of people killed in road accidents fell by 12 per cent, from 2,538 in 2008 to 2,222 in 2009, but this still leaves us facing a toll of more than six deaths per day—a cost in life and suffering that, of course, remains far too high. We need to switch to more effective ways of making our roads safer while ensuring that we do not curtail Britain’s tradition of freedom and fairness through an obsession with new fixed cameras and “spy in the sky” technology. Fatal drink-drive accidents and fatalities are now at their lowest-ever level after falling by three-quarters since breath testing was launched 40 years ago. We need to continue to tackle drink and drug driving in the most effective way possible to protect law-abiding motorists, and we are committed to introducing a drug-testing kit for drivers as soon as possible. We hope to have it in police stations as soon as next year.
Driving is an important life skill and calls for continued and lifelong learning, and I say this as an out-of-date qualified Army driving instructor. The Government are therefore considering what improvements could be delivered to the traditional driving test as well as steps beyond to ensure that we are helping people to become, and stay, safe and responsible drivers. We will be looking closely at the availability and delivery of products that help qualified drivers to maintain and develop their driving skills, including Pass Plus, additional training with the possibility of an assessment aimed at newly qualified drivers, advanced training and remedial training offered to drivers responsible for collisions or infringements of motoring law.
It is not just essential that we take the right steps to protect those who use transport; it is vital that we take the right steps to protect the planet from our transport system’s damaging side-effects as well. Climate change imperils our planet—that is scientific fact. We cannot side-step this challenge and we cannot ignore it in the hope that it will go away. We have to face it head on and transport has to be front and centre of our efforts. Transport accounted for more than a fifth of UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2009, so we must be prepared to deploy a wide range of levers to cut carbon emissions and decarbonise the economy. While this is a challenge, it is also an opportunity, and transport has a central role to play in the creation of new green jobs and technologies. A cleaner tomorrow demands a cleaner transport sector—a transport sector that is more sustainable, with tougher emissions standards and support for new transport technologies. We are determined to protect our environment as well as strengthen our economy. That is why we regard a low-carbon future as the only viable future for Britain.
The vast majority of transport’s contributions to greenhouse gas emissions come from road transport. That is precisely why it is so crucial that sustainable alternatives to the internal combustion engine are developed and given the appropriate support. Currently, half of all car journeys are between one and five miles in length while close to half of all car journeys for education purposes are less than two miles. If we could replace as many of these car trips as possible with the cleaner and greener travel alternatives of walking, cycling and public transport, we could see significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions—and that is in addition to the improvements in health, air quality and traffic congestion that would result. These benefits to our shared environment, our individual well-being and our collective quality of life mean that this Government are committed to sustainable travel initiatives as well as to the encouragement of joint working between bus operators and local authorities.
It is also vital that a new generation of low-emission vehicles emerges to take the place of the UK’s current fleet. I can tell your Lordships that the Government are committed to fostering the development of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles with plans to mandate a national vehicle charging infrastructure on top of a smart grid and smart metering for electricity. As well as the obvious environmental benefits, the shift to ultra-low-carbon technologies is an opportunity to reinvigorate the UK automotive industry. The sector already employs 180,000 people in manufacturing and adds £11 billion to the economy each year, and this Government are continuing to work with industry to realise the business opportunities from the global transition to low-carbon technologies.
Beyond any question, rail will have a central role to play in building a greener future for our country. The Government support a truly national high-speed network connecting key cities across the country. We also support Crossrail and the further electrification of the rail network. Taken together, these railway projects have the very real potential not only to generate economic growth but to encourage a modal shift of people and freight from long road journeys and short-haul flights.
The fact that we are pro-environment does not mean that we are anti-aviation. Yes, we recognise the environmental impact of aviation and believe that we must seek to reduce that impact, but we are also a Government who understand fully and appreciate absolutely the positive social and economic contribution that aviation makes. To strike that balance between aviation’s environmental impact and its socio-economic benefits, the Government are working for a better, rather than a bigger, Heathrow by shelving plans for a third runway there. We will also explore changes to the aviation tax system, including switching from a per-passenger to a per-plane duty, which would encourage a switch to fuller and cleaner planes.
Lord Clinton-Davis
If there is to be no expansion of Heathrow, will other airports be available? If so, where? It is incumbent on the present Government to identify this important issue of regulation.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, one of the reasons why I have looked forward to this debate is the opportunity it will provide to listen to the noble Lord’s full contribution—which I know he is looking forward to making. When I wind up the debate, I will be in a position to give him a full answer.
More broadly, we are also committed to reforming the way that decisions are made on which transport projects to prioritise, so that the benefits of low-carbon proposals, including light rail schemes, are fully recognised.
Transport matters. It matters because it fosters economic growth, and it matters because it connects companies to markets and customers. Transport matters because it increases competition, spreads innovation and produces economies of scale. It matters because it improves labour market flexibility at home and opens up business opportunities abroad. Above all, transport matters because, when it is safe and sustainable and when it works at its best as the great connector, it can improve beyond measure our economy, our society, our communities and our environment. An investment now in transport is an investment in recovery, renewed growth and our children’s prosperity.
I am convinced that, just as canals shaped our national life in the late 18th century, our transport networks can transform Britain for the better in the 21st century. Modern transport in a modern Britain means a country equipped to compete in a globalised world—a country with an economy that is strong and stable, an environment that is clean and green, and a society that is free and fair. That is what safe and sustainable transport can achieve. That is its potential for progress—a potential that this country's ports, airports, railways, motorways, bus lanes, cycle lanes and paths all have a part in delivering. Few in this House would underestimate the role that safe and sustainable transport has in building a better Britain, and I look forward to all your Lordships' contributions in the debate to come. I beg to move.
Lord Snape
My Lords, first I apologise to the noble Earl for missing the first three minutes of his speech. I am afraid that I was running late, as was the Virgin train that I came down to London on this morning. However, it is about time that those of us who participate regularly in these debates in your Lordships' House paid tribute to those in the transport industries generally, and certainly in the railway industry, for the high level of passenger satisfaction that has been demonstrated in recent months. The PPM for our railways is running at about 94 per cent, which reflects enormous credit on those who work in the railway industry. We ought to give credit where credit is due and pay tribute to railway men and women at all grades for the efforts that they are making and for the high levels of passenger satisfaction that have been demonstrated throughout the country.
Having apologised to the Minister, I now thank him. He sent me a handwritten note last week thanking me for participating in this debate. Whether he will send me another one when I sit down remains to be seen. However, it is the first time that I have received such a note from a Minister, and I am grateful for it.
A very short time is available to all of us who are participating in this debate. The Minister is right that good and efficient transport is essential for a civilised society. I start with a warning to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and to the Government, about the so-called draconian cuts that are planned—if the media are to be believed—across our transport industries. The new Secretary of State did not make a particularly good start when he talked about the new Government’s policies ending the war on motorists. It is a pretty phoney war, because the cost of motoring has fallen in real terms since 1997 compared with the cost of travelling by both rail and bus, which has increased in real terms. I hope that his future pronouncements on government policy, and his actions, will be based on reality rather than prejudice.
The Government are seeking to make many savings in the transport budget. I will presume to make some suggestions to the Minister, which I hope he will accept in the spirit in which they are offered. Certainly, there is a problem with Network Rail. I probably carry both sides of the House with me when I say that various obvious savings can be made in the Network Rail budget. There are three things wrong with Network Rail: its governance, its performance and its prices. There is a lot wrong with its governance. I have had the privilege of serving on a couple of boards in my career. Any board that has more than 100 members is a recipe for chaos. I am not sure why Network Rail’s governance is as chaotic as it is, or why it has so many people on what is not a board of directors but merely an advisory group. Perhaps the best size of a board is five or six; it is certainly a lot less than 100.
We all know why Network Rail was created in the way that it was; it was an attempt by the previous Government to keep their expenditure off the PSBR. Laudable though that may be, it is no way to run a business to have an advisory board of the size that Network Rail has. I hope that the Government will look again at this. At the moment, Network Rail appears to be neither fowl nor good red herring. If it is to be run properly, the Government have to look again at its overall governance.
The Government should also look at Network Rail’s performance. All too often, these debates become a series of “All Our Yesterdays” stories, but from my time in the railway industry I seem to remember the much maligned British Rail being far more efficient than Network Rail is at present. As an 18 year-old newly qualified signalman in 1960—that rather gives my age away—the old BR managed to resignal Manchester London Road, as it then was, in a weekend. The semaphore signals dating from 1908 were swept away and scores of colour light signals were put into what became Manchester Piccadilly. Actually, it did not work out quite as well as BR had hoped, as I think it was about Wednesday before we were able to run a comprehensive service. However, for all that to be done in four days, although the target was two, far surpasses anything that Network Rail can do at the moment. I live very close to Yardley Wood station in Birmingham. Only last year, Network Rail decided to resignal the Stratford line, which passes my home. It was necessary to close the line on successive weekends and then for the line to be completely closed for 10 or 12 days in order to install a dozen signals and a new junction at Tyseley. BR could do things far better than that. Network Rail has to toughen up its performance if it is going to match what BR managed to do quite easily in the past.
The other aspect of Network Rail’s performance is price. I was at a recent meeting of the All-Party Group on Rail at which officers of the Office of Rail Regulation were present. They talked about benchmarking Network Rail. How do you benchmark a monopoly? Perhaps the Minister can tell us how that can be done. Is it necessary to have a monopoly such as Network Rail? After all, rail companies such as ScotRail run an organisation that is largely separate from the rest of Network Rail. Why not allow ScotRail to maintain its own track and infrastructure? There could then be a proper comparison between the costs there and those of the rest of the railway network. Why not let Merseyrail, for example—again, an organisation that is virtually completely separate from the rest of the network—operate and maintain its own track on Merseyside? Surely that would be the best way to benchmark Network Rail, where the simplest job appears to cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. If the Government genuinely want to save money—I understand their reasons for wanting to do so—why not have proper cost comparators such as that? As long as Network Rail is allowed to maintain its own monopoly, we will never really know the true cost of major railway works, and we have to accept the costings before, during and after as laid down by Network Rail.
There are other areas that I hope Her Majesty’s Government will look at. In the West Midlands, for example, close to my former constituency of West Bromwich is a company called Parry People Movers, which operates about 700 or 800 yards of line between Stourbridge Junction and Stourbridge. It has achieved a 99 per cent reliability rate on that stretch of line. Why—this is not a political point; it happens under all Governments—do we find it so difficult to innovate within the railway industry? Why are we so hidebound and traditional as to insist on rolling stock being made to the highest possible standard and with the tracks being maintained as though Pendolino trains will run at 125 miles per hour throughout the network? Why cannot we have a cheap and cheerful branch line perhaps run by Parry People Movers? I hasten to add that I have no direct connection with the business. Some years ago, John Parry, the chairman, asked whether I would be interested in joining his board. At that time, I was working for a rather bigger organisation called National Express, so, probably to his relief, I had to turn him down.
This is an area in which genuine savings could be made. We could operate a cheap, or cheaper, railway system on some of our threatened branch lines. Indeed, we should consider reopening some of them, but that cannot happen at present because of the costs of operating the current railway system.
I hope that the Government will look not at slashing front-line services or cutting railway infrastructure but on making the present system work more cheaply and efficiently. I hope in the 10 minutes or so available to me that I have been able to give the Minister some food for thought and that the Government will see that we depend on the railway industry economically as we do on other forms of transport.
I wish that I had time to talk about buses and aviation, but I know that other noble Lords want to participate in the debate and I do not want to take up too much time. The transport industry can do a lot to boost the economy of the United Kingdom, so please let us not slash infrastructure or front-line services.
Going back to my BR days, all too often when cuts had to be made it was the night-turn shunter who lost his premium payments on Saturday and Sunday nights. The problem with the present railway industry is that it is overmanaged and undersupervised. All too often when things go wrong, managers are far away and not in a position to put things right and no one on the spot has the ability, knowledge or authority to do what is necessary to combat either delays or dislocations. The Government could genuinely save money in those areas while preserving the best of our railway industry.
I wish the Minister all the best in his new post and hope that he can convince the Secretary of State that clichés such as “Ending the war on motorists” are not the right way forward. I also hope that he can find some time to write me another letter saying that not only are the Government taking some of my strictures on board but that they are prepared to act on them.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market
I take this opportunity to congratulate the noble Earl on his appointment. In the short time with his brief he has already shown himself to be an assiduous Minister and I look forward to working with him on transport issues in the coming months and years.
In his opening remarks he talked about the fundamental role that transport plays in the economic, social and environmental well-being of the community. My interest in transport developed in a much less dramatic way as a councillor in Suffolk when I realised fairly quickly that probably nine out of 10 pieces of casework related to transport in some way or another, whether it was home-to-school transport, a dangerous crossing, an inability to access some sort of public service, or the state of the roads. I have always been interested in the enabling role that transport plays, and the fact that many good policy interventions made by government and local authorities failed to work because nobody properly thought through the transport dimension.
I have never made a pretence of having any great technical expertise on transport but I have a great admiration for those who do. The UK transport industry is a major employer throughout the country. In the past 20 years huge structural changes in the industry mean that transport is much less the preserve of the public service than it used to be and there is huge variation in the size of the organisations concerned, from large multinationals to small specialist companies—indeed, Parry People Movers.
The Brunel report published in November 2008 reported a supply of 87,400 people working in engineering, the technical field and planning across the transport industry. That compared to a demand of 96,900. While I acknowledge that the cancellation or postponement of some projects may have reduced the skills gap, it still exists. The challenge on how to mix economic growth with a low-carbon economy is set to increase the skills shortage in coming years. If we do not meet that challenge our future prosperity will be jeopardised.
Currently, the average age of a chartered engineer is 57. That may be young compared to the membership of this House, but the reality is that over the next decade a huge part of the current knowledge and experience in the transport engineering industry will be retiring. While there are many young people graduating into engineering, many of them then do not go on to work in engineering—they go off and do other things, which are usually better paid.
Young people are required to make a choice about their subject options about 12 years before they would expect to become a chartered engineer or transport planner, so a choice made about topics and subjects this year will affect a young person qualifying in 2022, or thereabouts. Operating on these timescales does not sit comfortably with short-term planning and stop/go investment. Advanced apprenticeships, support for 14 to 19 diplomas and supporting STEM subjects all need funding, and what is more they need employers who have the security of knowing that they will have predictable income streams to pay for the training. Statutory regulations on apprenticeships should be looked at to ensure that they are cost-effective, accessible and manageable, especially for small businesses.
Furthermore, it does not stop with young people. At all levels, changing skill requirements, new and safer working practices, green technologies and other developments mean that the need for training and development is continuous. The costs of that always fall to the industry, which is another reason why industry needs stable investment flows.
The need for skilled, specialised personnel in the transport sector is crucial and will remain so. The supply cannot be turned on and off at will. It takes a considerable time to develop such people, and the timescale goes way beyond our current financial challenges.
At this time, we have to consider a simple economic case: stop/go work flows will make it difficult for even the most enlightened employers to go on investing in good training and development. A lack of short-term prospects could drive skilled people to other sectors or abroad. The result of those two things could exacerbate the skills shortage, driving up costs, when the upturn comes. If the skills base is too far eroded, there will be a real lack of capacity to provide the transport infrastructure needed to sustain growth. The transport industry needs a long-term vision and strategy so that it can resource the skills needed for a low-carbon economy in the future.
I want to say a few words about transport spending in the current environment. In roads, focusing on maintaining the existing asset and using it more effectively should be a priority. It is usually easier to commission and has more immediately visible results. Reactive maintenance—in other words, response to damage—is an inefficient way of dealing with the highway. Planned preventive maintenance offers better value for money and is more efficient.
Road safety is not just a matter of quality of life —often literally—although that is clearly uppermost in our minds. It is also a question of value for money —savings for the NHS in dealing with the injuries caused by road traffic accidents, but also the long-term care required by people with the most severe injuries. Yet there are very few training requirements for people in road safety specialisms, and what little there is is provided by local authorities on a discretionary basis. Of course, when money is tight, discretionary services, especially training, tend to be high on the cuts list.
It is possible to build incentives for training into our procurement processes. For example, the East Midlands Highways Alliance is a collaboration of a number of companies and local authorities whose aim is to improve highways services in the region, and includes the development of a skills academy. The savings to its partners have been huge over recent years.
I have always used trains and, since becoming president of my party, have spent an inordinate amount of time on the railways. I have seen them at their best, and I have seen them at their worst. My overwhelming feeling is that the current franchising scheme, and the highly complex regulatory regime within which the rail industry has to operate, has completely lost sight of the needs of the passengers. I hope that the very welcome review of the franchising system will at last begin to put the passenger first. The fares system is in chaos and there is a widespread lack of understanding of how it works, even among the staff who operate the system. Queues for tickets are at unacceptable levels and should be dealt with as a priority. There are far too many bus substitutions and too few visible staff to help when things go wrong. When passengers complain to train operators, they are often told that their freedom to respond to passengers is hampered by franchises which are overregulated and micromanaged by the Department for Transport. Surely departmental oversight should be focused on the things that really matter: punctuality, reliability, cost and, above all, passenger satisfaction.
It is surely no coincidence that the three train operating companies with the highest performance and passenger satisfaction are those with the longest franchises. Can the Minister tell us the Government's thinking on longer franchises? Does he agree that the decision to award a franchise should not be on cost alone; it should be on improving service quality and how much the operator is prepared to put in? With refranchising of the west coast main line due in 2012 and of the east coast main line next year, and with the whole question of my local, rather benighted, rail franchise, National Express East Anglia, can he tell us whether they will come under the new regime which is currently under consultation, and what will be the timetable? Furthermore, will he say something about rolling stock? There is clearly a need for new rolling stock, but at the moment there seems to be a huge amount of unnecessary government intervention between train operators and the roscos.
I am very pleased that this House has had the opportunity to debate transport matters at this early stage in the life of the new Government. I look forward to contributions from other noble Lords. The importance of transport in all areas of our lives is not always recognised, and it is good that it has been today.
Lord Liddle
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for moving the Motion and enabling this debate. I have a long-standing interest in transport questions. My dad was a railway clerk for most of his life and a member of my noble friend Lord Rosser’s trade union. My first job in national politics was working for the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, as a special adviser in the Callaghan Government when he was Secretary of State for Transport.
Today, I shall talk about transport issues from a regional perspective, and specifically from a Cumbrian perspective. I declare an interest here as chairman of Cumbria Vision, which is the sub-regional economic development body for the county of Cumbria.
The question of transport connectivity is crucial to the future of the north of England at this time. Like many parts of the north, Cumbria is heavily dependent on the public sector. The county council undertook an analysis which shows that of all types of different public expenditure, we in Cumbria get £2 for every £1 we contribute in tax, so we are very vulnerable to the cuts in public expenditure now in prospect.
That also means that the economic priority for the north of England has to be to grow the private sector. The private sector can grow—we can attract new businesses to the north—only if some key facilitators of growth are in place. Some of those are skills and some of them are adequate industrial sites. Digital connectivity is important, but crucial is transport. Investment in safe and sustainable transport is vital. I hope that the Government recognise at this time of public spending restraint and cuts that if they want private sector growth and inward investment in places such as the north of England, they must continue to provide favourable public investment, especially in transport, to support it.
We have seen in recent years a great improvement in rail services. When I was a boy, if you wanted to go from Carlisle to London, there was a train that left Carlisle at 8.40 and it got in at four o’clock in the afternoon. Most people who wanted to go to London from Carlisle went overnight, and the station was busiest as people were getting on overnight trains. Nowadays, with the west coast main line modernisation, the journey takes about three hours and 20 minutes, so there has been a great improvement. I agree with what my noble friend Lord Snape said about the need to make sure that Network Rail stays up to the mark in delivering this high-quality service. I was involved in the Grayrigg train crash, in which a Pendolino came off the track on the way to Carlisle, and I think that any detriment to the safety of the system is a great concern.
Despite the investment, the situation is still not satisfactory. If noble Lords will bear with me, I shall make some particular points of general relevance. First, you can get to Carlisle very fast, but if you want to go to the heart of Britain’s nuclear industry at Sellafield, you face another 40 or 50 miles on a very slow train that rarely connects efficiently with the mainline service at Carlisle. Connections are vital for our area if we are to attract the potentially huge investment from American and French firms that could come to Cumbria if we get the conditions right for a revival of our nuclear power industry. There is a huge opportunity here, but we need to have investment in transport to make it possible. Some of the questions I have for the Minister are, “Do we have the regulatory system right?”, and, “Is the franchise system right to encourage the different train operators to work together effectively so that we have a seamless network rather than lots of different services?”.
Secondly, I do not believe that at present transport is serving the needs of sustainable tourism in the future. The Lake District is one of our greatest tourist assets and one of our greatest areas of natural beauty. However, more than 95 per cent of people who come to the Lake District come by car. If we are going to get more sustainability in our tourism, we have to see a modal shift away from the car to public transport. I believe that there is enormous potential for expanding the role of the private sector in providing sustainable transport, but we have to put in place the right regulatory and economic framework. I know that in my county this is not a popular view, but I think we have to question whether free and unrestricted access for private cars to national parks is consistent with a sustainable long-term future. We have to look at different methods of road pricing and congestion charging and at banning cars from particularly sensitive parts of our national parks. There is potential for the kind of electric carbon-neutral buses that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, spoke about, but we need to have the right economic framework in place for that to happen. Further, if the framework is in place, we can explore the potential for opening up some of our closed railway links like the line into the heart of the Lake District that ran from Penrith to Keswick.
One of the things I applaud about the present Government’s transport policy is their commitment to high-speed rail and investment in a modern, European-style fast rail system. I hope that this is not going to be a victim of the Government’s cuts, but I know that the Treasury, which is always suspicious of any sort of rail investment, will try to sharpen its knives. I hope that Ministers in the Government are strong enough to make sure that the high-speed rail links go ahead—and if they do, let me make one special plea. Great Britain does not stop at Birmingham and it certainly does not stop at Manchester; it goes much further north. If we are to have fast trains on the European model in Britain, they have to go to Scotland, and I say that they also have to stop at Carlisle. There is a bit of special pleading for you, but I hope in a good cause. I believe that if we get the economic framework right, we can see a growth in sustainable transport in this country and we can secure a sustainable future for one of the most special parts of England.
Lord Teverson
My Lords, the reason I am taking part in this debate is not because I have been in the transport industry, although I was involved in road freight, but because one of the great things about life in the 20th and 21st century is real freedom of movement. As individuals it allows us to travel more or less where we want, and the freedom of movement of goods means that we can purchase or acquire more or less whatever we want from any part of the world. That is a fantastic privilege. After I left university in 1973, I travelled to eastern Europe, which was not often done in those days. I had an old Morris 1100 and with colleagues we drove around East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. We came across other students and young people who at the time were not allowed to move out of the communist bloc. They did not have freedom of movement, so it is a great privilege that we can enjoy today.
The big difference between the 20th and the 21st centuries is, of course, that we have to feel guilty about that freedom of movement because of our carbon footprint and all that is caused by carbon emissions produced through the movement of ourselves or our goods. Something like a quarter of all carbon emissions within the United Kingdom are the result of transport, while beyond that to the global environment, aircraft emissions account for 2 per cent rising to 3 per cent of total emissions. Again, that is something we are concerned about and will have to solve if we are going to have sustainable economies.
What I really want to do in this debate is agree with the premise of the Motion, which is that through transport we can be sustainable while enjoying those freedoms and creating jobs that will renew our economy, and I want to encourage the Government in that process. I have one or two questions which have not been raised. The Committee on Climate Change looked at a number of things to do with sustainability in transport and came up with a series of questions. It pointed out that over the past few years we have had quite high profile negotiations at the EU level with car manufacturers about bringing down the emissions of the cars we drive. That has been relatively successful. But we have not had a similar hard negotiation with the manufacturers of trucks and vans, so those emissions have not come down on average. Are we going to press the Commission to take on the industry at truck and van level, as we have done with cars, to ensure that emissions come down?
When I first came into the House four years ago, one of the areas of salvation for sustainability of transport and travel was biofuels, which were going to be the future. We all then had visions of the rainforests in Indonesia and South America being cut down—that we were feeding cars rather than people and that food prices were going to go up—and, all of sudden, it became a dodgy subject to talk about rather than a good one. I think it is time the pendulum started to swing back the other way, partly because it is possible to develop sustainable biofuels, such as biodiesel and ethanol, and I would like to know what progress there has been on the guarantee and certification of sustainability. With biogas we have a fantastic opportunity to ensure that biofuels work properly, and in a big way, for sustainable transport through anaerobic digestion and other techniques that do not necessarily substitute road energy for food. What are the Government’s plans in that area?
The Committee on Climate Change drew attention to the staggering statistic that, by 2020—which is only a decade away, obviously—we can expect to have 2 million electric cars on the roads of Britain. When are we going to start the process of setting up the infrastructure to ensure that charging points are delivered across the nation and we can really start to move into that technology? I do not understand how that is going to happen practically.
For me, one of the great moments in the coalition Government so far was the announcement in the other place from the Ministry of Justice that we are going to reform prison policy; it is fantastic that we are going to look at prisons in a different way. However, in road transport we have an equal kind of hostage to fortune—road pricing. We all know that the only way we will effectively and economically control cars and their usage is through road pricing. Is it likely that there might be a revolution in this area as well over the next five years?
I congratulate the Government on moving forward with the good work that the previous Government have done in this area, particularly in relation to the high-speed rail network. I encourage them to reach the goal of substituting rail transport for all internal air transport as quickly as possible. However, I have a difficult tale to tell about my experience over the last weekend when I went to Amsterdam to see my daughter, who is working there. I decided to go by high-speed train to Brussels and then, beyond that, to Amsterdam. It was a great travel experience but it was not a great experience for my wallet; it cost me something like double the amount it would have cost me to fly. Affordability, therefore, provides a real challenge and, while I commend the Government on their job creation through sustainable transport and for maintaining our individual freedoms through sustainable travel—Amsterdam was a fantastic example because people there move about the city by bicycle, trams and walking—I urge them to keep to their targets for sustainable transport through high-speed rail, electrification and a sustainable road network.
I congratulate the coalition Government. I look forward to the Minister’s answers and to progress in the industry and in this area of operations.
Political and Constitutional Reform
(14 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister. The Statement is as follows.
“Mr Speaker, every Member of this House was elected knowing that this Parliament must be unlike any other, that we have a unique duty to restore the trust in our political system that has been tested to its limits in recent times. If anything was clear at the general election, it was that more and more people have realised that our political system is broken and needs to be fixed. They want us to clean up politics; they want to be able to hold us properly to account. So the Government have set out an ambitious programme for political renewal, transferring power away from the Executive to empower Parliament and away from Parliament to empower people.
That programme includes: introducing a power of recall for MPs who are guilty of serious wrongdoing; tackling the influence of big money as we look again at party funding; taking forward long overdue reform of the other place; implementing the Wright Committee recommendations; taking steps to give people more power to shape parliamentary business; speeding up the implementation of individual voter registration; and increasing transparency in lobbying, including through a statutory register.
Today I am announcing the details of a number of major elements of the Government’s proposals for political reform. First, we are introducing legislation to fix parliamentary terms. The date of the next general election will be 7 May 2015. This is a hugely significant constitutional innovation. It is simply not right that a general election can be called according to a Prime Minister’s whims. This Prime Minister will be the first Prime Minister to give up that right.
I know that when the coalition agreement was published, there was some concern at these proposals. We have listened carefully to those concerns, and I can announce today that we will proceed in a Bill that will be introduced before the Summer Recess. First, traditional powers of no confidence will be put into law, and a vote of no confidence will still require only a simple majority. Secondly, if after that vote of no confidence a Government cannot be formed within 14 days, Parliament will be dissolved and a general election will be held. Let me be clear: these steps will strengthen Parliament’s power over the Executive. Thirdly, there will be an additional power for Parliament to vote for an early and immediate dissolution. We have decided that a majority of two-thirds will be needed to carry the vote, as opposed to the 55 per cent first suggested, as is the case in the Scottish Parliament. These changes will make it impossible for any Government to force a dissolution for their own purposes. These proposals should make it absolutely clear to the House that votes of no confidence and votes for early dissolution are entirely separate, and that we are putting in place safeguards against a lame-duck Government being left in limbo if the House passes a vote of no confidence but does not vote for early dissolution.
I am also announcing today the details of the Government's proposals for a referendum on the alternative vote system and for a review of constituency boundaries to create fewer and more equally sized constituencies, cutting the cost of politics and reducing the number of MPs from the 650 that we have today to a House of 600 MPs.
Together, these proposals help correct the deep unfairness in the way that we hold elections in this country. Under the current set-up, votes count more in some parts of the country than in others, and millions of people feel that their votes do not count at all. Elections are won and lost in a small minority of seats. We have a fractured democracy where some people’s votes count and others’ do not, where some people are listened to and others are ignored.
By equalising the size of constituencies, we ensure that people’s votes carry the same weight no matter where they live. Only months ago, the electorate of Islington North stood at 66,472, while 10 miles away, in East Ham, the figure was 87,809. In effect, that means that a person voting in East Ham has a vote that is worth much less than a vote in Islington North. That cannot be right. These imbalances are found right across the United Kingdom.
Reducing the number of MPs allows us to bring our oversized House of Commons into line with legislatures across the world. The House of Commons is the largest directly elected Chamber in the European Union, and is half as big again as the US House of Representatives. It was never intended that the overall size of the House should keep rising, yet that is precisely the effect of the current legislation—the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986. Capping the number of MPs corrects that, and saves money too. Fifty fewer MPs would save £12 million a year on pay, pensions and allowances.
On the referendum, by giving people a choice over their electoral system, we give that system a new legitimacy. Surely when dissatisfaction with politics is so great, one of our first acts must be to give people their own say over something as fundamental as how they elect their MPs. The question will be simple—asking people whether they want to adopt the alternative vote, yes or no. The precise wording will be tested by the Electoral Commission.
As for the date of the referendum, in making that decision we have been driven by three key considerations: that all parties fought the general election on an absolute pledge to move fast to fix our political system so we must get on and do that without delay; that it is important to avoid asking people to keep traipsing to the ballot box; and, finally, that in these straitened times we must keep costs as low as possible.
That is why the Prime Minister and I have decided that the referendum will be held on 5 May 2011, the same day as the elections to the devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and local elections in England. That will save an estimated £17 million. I know that some honourable Members have concerns over that date, but I believe that people will be able to distinguish between the different issues on which they will be asked to vote on the same day.
Our Bill will make explicit provision for the boundary commissions to report on more equally sized constituencies for the process to be completed by the end of 2013, allowing enough time for candidates to be selected ahead of the 2015 election, and we will ensure that the boundary commissions have what they need to do that. That means that, in the event of a vote in favour of AV, the 2015 election will be held on the new system, and according to new boundaries. Let me be clear: these are complementary changes—the outcome of the referendum is put in place as the new boundaries are put in place.
The Bill will require the boundary commissions to set new constituencies within 5 per cent of a target quota of registered electors, with just two exceptions: Orkney and Shetland, and the Western Isles, uniquely placed given their locations. We have listened, also, to those who have very large constituencies—so the Bill will provide that no constituency will be larger than the size of the largest one now. We intend that, in the future, boundary reviews will be more frequent to ensure that constituencies continue to meet the requirements we will set out in our Bill.
I understand that this announcement will raise questions on all sides of this House, for these are profound changes. But let me just say this: yes, there are technical issues that will need to be scrutinised and approached with care as these Bills pass through Parliament. But ensuring that elections are as fair and democratic as possible is a matter of principle above all else. These are big, fundamental reforms we are proposing, but we are all duty bound to respond to public demand for political reform. That is how we restore people’s faith in their politics once again. I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord the Deputy Leader for repeating the Statement of the Deputy Prime Minister, and I am grateful to the Government for early sight of the Statement.
There are some who take the view that this House has no role in these matters, that these are matters for the House of Commons and the House of Commons alone; but I believe that this House is a key part of the politics and the constitution of our country and a vital element of the constitutional checks and balances which are a central feature of the governance of our nation. There are clearly issues in the Statement repeated by the Deputy Leader for this House to consider.
First, will the Deputy Leader acknowledge that the Government’s proposals announced today for an early Dissolution of Parliament following a vote of no confidence represent the first major U-turn of this Government—and in less than two months? Can he explain to the House why the Government did not think before about the impossibility of a Government hanging on after they had lost a vote of no confidence by a simple majority? To have done so would have saved the Government a lot of embarrassment. But why, having recognised that a vote of no confidence leads inexorably to a Dissolution, do the Government continue to assert the nonsense that no confidence and Dissolution are separate? They are not—the one is a consequence of the other. As to the Government’s now subsidiary proposal for a two-thirds majority of any other Dissolution, what is its purpose? Is it not completely superfluous? Either the Government are in favour of a fixed-term Parliament, as long as the Government of the day enjoy the confidence of the House, or they are not.
On boundary changes, is the Deputy Leader aware that what we in the Opposition will not allow is for support for AV to be used as some sort of cover for outrageously partisan proposals in the same Bill to gerrymander the boundaries of the House of Commons by arbitrary changes in the rules for setting boundaries and by an equally arbitrary cut in the number of MPs? There is the huge problem, which the Electoral Commission highlighted in March, of 3.5 million citizens who are eligible to vote but who are not on the register. If the Government’s aim is to make the system fairer, why has the Deputy Leader said absolutely nothing about how the Government will ensure that those 3.5 million citizens are included in the Boundary Commission’s calculations about the size of the constituencies and how to get them on to the register in time for the review of the boundaries?
Since the Government claim that they want to empower people, is it the Deputy Leader’s intention that local communities should continue to have a right to an independent local Boundary Commission inquiry? If it is, then when he says,
“we will ensure the Boundary Commissions have what they need”,
to complete this huge task by the end of 2013, what additional resources and staff will it be given?
As for the referendum on the alternative vote, this House will be well aware that just such a proposal was put forward by this party on these Benches. But does the Deputy Leader recall that during the general election the Deputy Prime Minister told the Independent newspaper that the alternative vote system was a “miserable little compromise” and that he was “not going to settle” for that?
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
Can the Deputy Leader tell the House what changed the Deputy Prime Minister's mind?
The material points on this for your Lordships’ House are principally twofold. First, a matter such as a referendum on voting reform is bound to be a central component of the national debate. Whether the public are as interested in it as the politicians remains to be seen. However, it will be part of the national debate, and this House unquestionably has a part to play in that debate.
Secondly, a move to a referendum will require primary legislation. Even if you do subscribe to the view that it must be for the elected House to have its way on electoral matters at national level, the fact that legislation will come before your Lordships’ House again unquestionably requires this House to play its part in the carriage of that legislation. So, Members of this House will be able to hold the Government to account as they bring forward the legislation which this referendum will require.
I can tell the Deputy Leader that one of the points on which we will be pressing the Government strenuously will be the clear need to improve the register of voters before any election under a changed system of voting. We know the gaps in the register. We know that people across this country are disenfranchised. We know that those who are particularly disenfranchised are those who are already among the most disadvantaged. So, as part of the preparation for the next general election—and particularly so if it is to be carried out on the basis of a changed method of voting—can the Deputy Leader confirm that the Government will mount with local authorities a major exercise to improve registration?
Can the Minister also confirm that just as the coalition Government are preparing to press ahead with a referendum on a major constitutional issue such as a change to the electoral system to be used for national general elections, the coalition Government will also commit themselves to a referendum on further major reform of your Lordships’ House?
Much has been made of how far the decision of the coalition Government to proceed to a referendum on AV is a risk to the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the two parties which form the coalition and the coalition Government as a whole. All that, of course, must be a matter for them. However, we on this side of the House are concerned about making sure that the Government’s decision to move to a referendum is not a risk to the constitution, to the legislative process and to the country. That is the proper job of opposition. That is a job which, in relation to what the Deputy Prime Minister has announced today, we on this side of this House will do.
Lord McNally
My Lords, on that last point, I would expect no other. Yes, it is the job of the Official Opposition, and indeed of both Houses of Parliament, to scrutinise carefully any constitutional change, and there is nothing in what the noble Baroness said that I could disagree with. Nor would I disagree with the fact that, given the experience and collective wisdom of this House, when the legislation comes forward it should again have proper scrutiny in this House, as it will, as a constitutional Bill, on the Floor of the other place.
It is always good fun to find U-turns. If you do not U-turn then you are arrogant, you do not listen and you are pushing ahead, but if you consult, listen to advice and make changes then you have done a U-turn. What I look at is the end result, and here the end result is far more sensible and should be far more acceptable to the House than the original proposition. Two-thirds is belt and braces against the Government breaking the fixed Parliament, and as such it should be welcomed. The endorsement of the straight majority being the requisite for a vote of no confidence should, again, be welcome.
On the question of “outrageously arbitrary”, “gerrymandering” and so on, one expects the Opposition to get a little excited and start using colourful and florid language. As most colleagues know, what was wrong with our system was that it was becoming increasingly distorted: in 1951, 98 per cent voted either Labour or Conservative, so the system reflected the view of the country to a general degree, but in 2005, 36 per cent of the vote delivered a majority of 66 per cent in the House of Commons. Giving absolute power on a grotesque minority of the vote is arbitrary and unacceptable, so it is right that we should look at equal constituency sizes. As my right honourable friend pointed out to Mr Straw in the other place, equal constituency size was in fact one of the initial demands of the Chartists in the 1840s, and if it was good enough for the Chartists, it is good enough for me.
Lord McNally
The noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, is showing off his history again.
These missing 3.5 million citizens are a concern, and it is a concern that many of them can be identified as young people, people from ethnic minorities and the very poor. The reason why they are not registered is a matter that we all have to address, and I fully agree that there has to be more of an effort to get them on to the register. On the other hand, if you have between 92 percent and 93 per cent of your electorate registered, with all the churn that goes on, that is not a bad record for a functioning democracy.
What is more unacceptable is the idea of holding elections on Boundary Commission boundaries that, by the time the election is held, are over 10 years old. That is how you get your elections out of kilter. However, I take the noble Baroness’s point. We will certainly make every effort to get people registered and involved in our political system. One of the good things about this exercise is that nobody has suggested that our Boundary Commission has been anything other than absolutely above reproach in the way in which it has carried out its work, except that it has been extraordinarily slow in doing that work. We will talk with the Electoral Commission and the Boundary Commission to see what resources they need to do a better job quickly.
Whether or not AV is a “miserable little compromise” is a matter of judgment, but it is interesting that the party opposite opted for AV for the very good reason that it retains the link with the single constituency. I see the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, nodding in agreement. I find one of the refreshing and enlivening things about coalition is that, after you have fought an election with firm vigour, you sit down with your coalition partners and you manage to convince them about a referendum on voting reform, while they manage to convince you that AV would be the best solution to put to the country. That is the kind of healthy give and take—
Lord McNally
No, sit down. We have 20 minutes. So eager are the Opposition to start asking me further questions that I will just say that I think that I have covered most of the points that the noble Baroness raised and I look forward to questions from the Back Benches.
Lord Waddington
I wonder whether the noble Lord will allow me to pursue a matter that was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. I am very much in favour of a reduction in the number of parliamentary seats, but how will the Government ensure that the Boundary Commission can report and bring those changes into effect in time for the next general election? It is not enough just to require the Boundary Commission to report by a certain date; somehow or other, it will have to avoid getting bogged down in interminable local inquiries, which are what have taken up time in the past. What will the Government do to try to curtail those inquiries and to make it possible for the Boundary Commission to report? I am not much in favour of curtailing the rights of citizens to give evidence at inquiries, but what is the alternative? How can the Minister assure me that these changes will come into effect in time for the next general election?
Lord McNally
My noble friend makes a very interesting point, which I suspect that the draft Bill will cover. We have to find the right balance between the Boundary Commission doing a proper and thorough job and not getting bogged down in the way that my noble friend describes.
Baroness Taylor of Bolton
Given the Government’s new-found enthusiasm for a two-thirds threshold for a Dissolution of Parliament, will there be a threshold in the referendum? Will two-thirds of the country have to vote yes in the referendum? Will there be a threshold in the turnout of the electorate before the referendum has any validity?
Lord McNally
No. If the noble Baroness wants me to show her the scars, I will tell her about the first Scottish referendum.
Lord Howe of Aberavon
My Lords, what is most notable about my noble friend’s presentation is that in the last paragraph he emphasises that these are profound changes—“big, fundamental reforms” which will require immense and careful scrutiny. Does it begin to make sense for the whole range of solutions to these wide-ranging problems to be presented in this way at this time? Is he aware that the first book I reviewed, for the South Wales Evening Post, was written by Christopher Hollis and had as its title the question Can Parliament Survive? That was 60 years ago. The book was full of anxieties and propositions. Parliament has, on the whole, until the last decade survived pretty well. In the earlier 50 years it would not have dreamt of approaching problems as large as this with solutions as great as this. It would surely have committed them to a Speaker’s Conference, a royal commission or both, and done it step by step. To address this situation of total disillusion, as my noble friend describes it, with a torrent of ill considered change of almost everything is surely the last thing people want at this time.
Lord McNally
That speech has been made in this House and the other place many times over the last 200 years, though not by me. I have always taken the view that constitutional reforms are carried through by Governments that believe in them and put them with vigour to both Houses. My noble and learned friend gives the recipe for inaction that we have always had—Speaker’s Conferences, royal commissions and inaction. This is a radical programme to deal with a problem that we are all aware of. I was a member of the Maclennan committee before the 1997 election. I remember our high hopes that the incoming Labour Government would move forward. Unfortunately, after three or four years they completely ran out of stem on steam on constitutional reform.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
My Lords, we have another 15 minutes. I am sure everybody will get in. Shall we hear from the Cross Benches first and then somebody from the Labour Party?
Lord Elystan-Morgan
My Lords, does the Minister recollect that, about a fortnight ago, in reply to my intervention in a Question on the reduction of the number of seats in the House of Commons, he said that the justification for that was devolution in relation to Scotland and Wales? Today’s Statement makes no reference to devolution—only to the saving of £12 million per annum. Which is it? Will it be the case, as far as the reduction is concerned, that it will be pro rata over the whole of the United Kingdom, with no specific culling on the basis of devolution for Wales or Scotland?
Lord McNally
There is no specific culling on the basis of Welsh or Scottish devolution. There is an aim, as far as possible, to get the same size of constituency. Saving money and moving forward with devolution are not mutually exclusive. We have already pledged that we will move forward with the referendum on more powers for the Welsh Assembly—something that the Government are committed to and which is part of this broader pattern of political reform.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I said that a Labour Back-Bencher should speak next. Then we will hear from my noble friend Lord Dholakia.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I ask a question that will be on the minds of elected Members of the House of Commons. The noble Lord referred to 5 per cent of the target quota of registered electors. What is that number per constituency on the basis of calculations which have already been done in the Minister’s department?
Lord McNally
I think the figure is about 80,000. I am not sure whether I am going beyond my brief in telling the noble Lord that, but it does not take a great deal of high mathematics to work out that 600 into the electorate is about 80,000.
Lord Dholakia
My Lords, from this side of the coalition I thank the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for repeating the Statement on political and constitutional reform. Coming so soon after the reform of the criminal justice system announced last week, this is most welcome and the Government ought to be congratulated on it. Does the Minister accept that the previous election, fought on the first past the post system, did not deliver a strong, stable or decisive Government—so much for that system? Some in government have indicated that they do not wish to play an active role in the referendum campaign. What is being done to encourage them to participate? The referendum and the involvement of political parties will have resource implications. What discussions are being held with the Electoral Commission and others to ensure that funds are available for that campaign? Will the Minister encourage the media to take an active role similar to that adopted in the leadership debates so that the electorate are better informed about the new system being proposed?
Lord McNally
I thank my noble friend for those comments. It is clear that a referendum will involve a yes and a no campaign with a cap on the expenditure on either side but with some public funding available to help both sides. That will become clear following the discussions we are having with the Electoral Commission to ensure that the referendum can be conducted properly and with the involvement that my noble friend talked about.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
When precisely will the Government speed up registration? What action will they take between now and the referendum, or can we expect 3.5 million people not to vote in the referendum because they are not registered? Will the Minister consider the suggestion made recently to him by his Back-Bench noble friend Lord Goodlad as regards adopting the good and well tried practice in many countries, particularly Australia, where there is compulsory registration of individuals? Are the Government considering that; if not, why not?
Lord McNally
We are not considering compulsory voting. The note of indignation about the missing 3.5 million comes a bit rum from a Government who tolerated it all through their period in office. However, I do not blame them. Suddenly the Labour Party has become indignant about the missing 3.5 million. I believe that in a voluntary system it is almost impossible to get 100 per cent registration. Then there is the problem to which I referred of a low turnout among the very poor, ethnic minorities and the very young. Those problems face all political parties when seeking to engage those groups in our political process.
Lord Higgins
We have heard various cost estimates, but not one for the redistribution of the boundaries under the Boundary Commission. What is that cost estimate? I do not share the noble Lord’s view on the Boundary Commission. In a public inquiry in my former constituency of Worthing all the political parties and everyone were agreed on what the right answer was. After the matter had been concluded, the Boundary Commission, without warning, came up with a totally different solution. Should there not be an appeals procedure, at least in extreme cases where the answer seems to be wrong?
Lord McNally
We will have to see what the proposals are in the Bill to meet the objective of streamlining the work of the Boundary Commission. I think that any reasonable person would say that is needed if its work is to be relevant to elections. I repeat that a gap of 10 years between the commission doing its work and the holding of an election renders that work absurd. It is very difficult to respond on individual constituency issues and to give at the moment a precise response on costing. All those will come forward in due course and in proper time.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, has been trying to get in from the very start. He is the leader of a party in this House. Perhaps we can then hear from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, I am most grateful. I should like to put a question on behalf of the 2.5 million people who voted for minority parties, the largest of which I have the honour to lead. The Government state:
“Surely when dissatisfaction with politics is so great, one of our first acts must be to give people their own say over something as fundamental as how they elect their MPs”.
However, the Statement goes on to “take it or leave it”. It is the AV system or nothing. What is wrong with AV plus, which is, after all, a system that is good enough for Scotland, Wales and the London Assembly? Why is that system not good enough for the country?
Lord McNally
I have just heard a major flaw in AV plus; the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, was elected to the Scottish Parliament on it. The Government of the day have a duty to put forward a proposal for Parliament to consider a referendum on AV plus—
Lord McNally
I am sorry, I meant AV. It is for Parliament to scrutinise and Parliament will decide.
Lord Pannick
Can the Deputy Leader clarify what is the purpose of legislating to allow for a dissolution of Parliament on a two-thirds vote of the Members of the other place? Her Majesty’s Opposition will of course seek to persuade that House, on a 50 per cent vote, to pass a vote of no confidence. This matter was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, but the noble Lord gave no answer.
Lord McNally
The point is that once we have got to a system of fixed-term Parliaments, to prevent the Government of the day engineering an early dissolution for their own short-term political advantage, they would therefore need a two-thirds majority—something that no Government in the UK have had since the war. As I said in my opening response to the noble Baroness, it is belt and braces against what we are trying to get away from. We are trying to move to the stability of a fixed-term Parliament and away from Governments of the day using early elections for short-term advantage.
Lord Lawson of Blaby
My Lords, given the profundity of the constitutional changes that will be incorporated in this Bill, can my noble friend give an undertaking that in no circumstances would the Parliament Act be invoked in order to secure its passage?
Lord McNally
I do not think that we go into things like that at this stage.
Lord McNally
We put forward proposals for the very good reason that we think they are very sensible, and we assume that both Houses of Parliament will endorse them.
Lord Davies of Coity
My Lords, with regard to the referendum on the alternative vote, can the Minister answer this simple question? We understand that both parties that make up the coalition Government will campaign in opposite directions. If that is the case, what impact will that have on the electorate?
Lord McNally
I have no idea. However, I am sure that, as with previous referenda, we will have people of good will taking honest opinions about voting yes or no and campaigning on them—and may the best side win.
Lord Rennard
My Lords, is the Minister aware that the estimates that have been made of the party-political consequences of this reducing and equalising measure suggest that it may make a difference of only seven or eight, or 12 or 13, seats; and therefore that much heat has been generated needlessly about this proposal?
Lord McNally
I am quite sure that the psephologists and slide-rule merchants in all parties and on television will be making calculations. We are putting this forward because it makes our system of elections fairer, and that is what people want.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, I do not want to be unkind to the Deputy Leader of the House, but his answers seem to have been a combination of, “You would say that, wouldn’t you?” to the Opposition, and, “I have heard that argument before” to members of his coalition; and it seems that he cannot say whether the Parliament Act would be used. I will ask a straightforward question: what will happen to the coalition if the referendum on an AV system is lost?
Lord McNally
Usually, people who say that they do not want to be unkind mean that they want to be unkind. I assure the noble Baroness that if the referendum is lost, the coalition will move on with its programme of government towards the election in May 2015. What has not got across to the other side is that we are into a new system of politics that provides better governance.
Lord Goodlad
My Lords, will my noble friend arrange for an early debate on the Select Committee on the Constitution’s recent report on referendums, in the light of the difference of views that have been expressed around the House and of the topicality of the subject?
Lord Myners
The Minister explained the reduction in the size of the other place by reference to the size of Chambers elsewhere in the world, and to cost. Will he explain why the Government are increasing the membership of this House?
Lord McNally
It is a period of transition—I nearly said “ambition”. Once the radical reforms for this place are through, this House, too, will come down in size.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I know that this subject interests all parts of the House, but we have now spent 20 minutes on it. Normally, we would go on to the next Statement, which is on education. However, since it has not yet started in another place, we will continue with the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Greenway, is the next person on the list of speakers. It has been drawn to my attention that he has now arrived, which is very good news for the whole House and no doubt for the nation, which will be waiting to hear what he has to say.
Transport
Lord Greenway
My Lords, I am grateful to the Leader of the House and apologise for being caught completely unawares. I am rather breathless but I am here.
We now return to the general transport debate, so ably introduced by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, whose competence in many transport matters we have got used to over the years. I join other noble Lords in welcoming him to his new post.
So far we have talked about rail and roads, and no doubt we will talk more about those subjects, but I am now going to take your Lordships away for a breath of sea air and talk for a bit about the maritime side of the transport business.
We are an island nation and have always relied on trade for our well-being. Indeed, it was on the back of trade that our present greatness was built, and for many many years we were without equal in both shipping and shipbuilding. We are still an island and trade is still vital to our economy, with over 90 per cent of it involving a sea journey.
The introduction of the tonnage tax by the then Deputy Prime Minister in 1998 reversed a serious decline of the UK fleet, since when it has made a considerable recovery, increasing some sixfold. A number of big foreign companies have set up large UK operations and have placed quite a large number of ships on the UK register.
The recent recession hit shipping hard. The volumes coming out of Asia are starting to improve and rates are holding up, giving some cause for optimism, although I am sure that there could, and probably will, be further fluctuations before we return to the boom conditions that existed before the credit crunch.
However, this sense of optimism is under severe threat so far as the UK flag is concerned, as a very nasty squall is approaching over the horizon. Some of your Lordships may have seen a letter in the Daily Telegraph last Friday and an article by Libby Purves in the Times today. The letter in the Daily Telegraph was signed by 11 senior shipping executives in this country. The reason for their concern is an obscure regulation tucked away in the Equality Act, which was rushed through just before the election. I believe that it is coming up for implementation in October and, if brought in, it could compel quite a large number of UK flagship operators to leave the UK register, as it would compel them to pay UK wage levels to seafarers who are normally resident abroad.
For many years, those people have been paid lower wages than their UK counterparts but ones that nevertheless place them on a par with highly skilled professionals in their own countries. The arrangement goes back to the Race Relations Act 1976, from which shipping was granted an exemption. It was reviewed in 2003 when the amount of damage that it would do to the industry was realised. This new threat is indeed very severe, and quite a large number of owners—possibly up to 20—have indicated that, if the regulation is brought in, they will almost definitely remove their ships to another flag. As many as 172 ships—almost 50 per cent of the current UK fleet—could be affected. If the new rates apply only to ships within the European economic area, a smaller number of ships will be affected but it will still have a massive impact on UK Ltd’s shipping. Extra costs would arise out of it and could well impact on the jobs of 4,000 seafarers.
I hope that the Government will look at this matter extremely seriously. It would affect not only shipping but all the ancillary businesses in the City that rely on shipping and are still recognised as world leaders. I am talking of insurance, arbitration and shipping law. Many foreigners still prefer to use shipping law, so London must not lose its attraction. Many other places in the world, including Singapore and Dubai, are trying to increase their shipping centres, and anything that happens to damage our shipping will only benefit these new centres.
Yet another squall is coming over the horizon involving taxing non-domiciles, which I believe the Government are taking a further look at. Let me give an example of what can happen. Some years ago New York was a maritime centre to rival London, with many non-domiciled Greeks living and working there. The Americans decided to tax the worldwide interests of the non-doms, which resulted in all the Greeks upping sticks and leaving New York. They have never returned. We cannot allow that to happen here. A lot of Greek non-domiciled shipping people have been resident here for many years but a number have already gone back to Athens. If any further detrimental change is made to the tax regime for non-doms, UK shipping would suffer a very great loss. It does not just affect immediate owners. Greek shipping businesses are very complex; there are a lot of family trusts, so not only the up-front people are affected but many of the families as well.
The Government must take strong note of two factors. We must preserve a decent UK-flagged fleet because on that hangs all our expertise in the City of London. That was why the International Maritime Organisation was based in London in the first place.
I shall say a few words about safety, which is part of today’s debate. One of the worrying things about shipping is manning levels. Shipping companies have been far too ready to cut their staff, which must have a detrimental effect. There are numerous instances of fatigue causing accidents. I believe that some measures are being taken to try to rectify that, but when so much capital is tied up in a ship and its cargo one must ensure that that ship is properly navigated and looked after. That issue needs to be looked at again. It is all very well relying on modern electronics but one cannot beat an extra pair of eyes on the bridge of a ship.
There is also concern about the dissemination of information within the industry. There was an incident this year when a container stack on a feeder ship collapsed. The investigation discovered that an almost identical accident had happened on a similar ship four years ago. The Marine Accident Investigation Branch had reported thoroughly on that accident but it appears that that knowledge had simply not reached the operators of the ship that was affected this year. That cannot be right and we must try to improve the dissemination of important safety information.
Another worrying issue regarding the international transportation of containers is the fact that there is no proper way of checking the weight of a container before it is loaded on board a ship. The shipowner has to take what the transporter of the goods says, and again in recent incidents when container stacks have collapsed, their weight bore no relation to the figures provided to the shipping company.
The enormous expansion in the number of wind farms, as mentioned in the first Question today, is also a safety concern for the shipping industry. In the earlier rounds of granting licences to developers of offshore wind farms, no one seemed to take shipping into consideration. It was intended to place some of them right across well used shipping lanes, which was obviously crazy. Things have since improved and developers now consult widely with the general lighthouse authorities. Inevitably, however, with the enormous increase in wind turbines offshore, we will increase the risk of an accident. If a gas carrier or large tanker is involved, one can only guess at the horrors that might arise.
I want to comment briefly on ports, which are the important interfaces between the shipping industry, shipping transport and inland transport. I am delighted that the Government have acted quickly to reverse the back-dated rates, which were affecting a large number of ports and people who operate within them. The system was quite iniquitous and I am delighted that they have taken that action. However, a few companies have gone bust as a result. What will happen about them? I fear that nothing will.
A number of new port developments have been given the go-ahead. Work is actually starting on the London Gateway, on the site of the old oil refinery just this side of Southend. It is an extremely large and important development, and with improvements in shipping and overall trade we will need such facilities when shipping gets back into its stride.
I could go on to talk about all sorts of different subjects, but I will not. I shall merely return to the fact that shipping is so important to this country that the Government must take note of the two issues I mentioned earlier. If we lose our UK flag, the whole of the back-up of maritime businesses could topple like a pack of cards. That is something that we cannot allow.
Education: Funding
(14 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, first, I apologise for interrupting the debate again. With permission, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education. The Statement is as follows:
“Mr Speaker, with your permission, I would like to make a Statement on education funding. This coalition Government are determined to make opportunity more equal and to reverse the decline in the performance of our education system relative to our international competitors.
Over the last 10 years, we have declined from fourth in the world for the quality of science education to 14th; from seventh in the world for literacy to 17th; and from eighth in the world for mathematics to 24th. At the same time, the gulf between rich and poor has got wider, with the attainment gap between students in fee-paying schools and those in state schools doubling. But the action necessary to improve our schools is made more difficult by the truly appalling state of the public finances left by the last Government.
This coalition has inherited a national debt approaching £1 trillion; a budget deficit of £150 billion; and debt interest costs every year which are more than the entire schools budget. It is no surprise then that the last Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer felt he had to pledge a 50 per cent cut in all capital spending, the last Labour Education Secretary could not make any firm promises to protect schools’ capital spending and the last Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury left a letter saying simply that there is no money left.
Faced with the desperate mess left by the last Administration, this Government have had to prioritise, and our first priority is raising the attainment of the poorest by investing in great teaching. We know that the world’s best education systems have the most highly qualified teachers. We are fortunate that the current generation of teachers is the best ever, but we must do better if we are to keep pace with the best.
No organisation has done more to attract brilliant new recruits into the classroom than the charity Teach First. Since its launch, Teach First has placed hundreds of highly accomplished graduates in our most challenging schools and has helped drive up attainment in those schools for the very poorest.
We believe that every child should have access to excellence, especially the poorest, which is why we will more than double the size of the programme from 560 new teachers a year to 1,140. We will help to recruit hundreds more teachers into areas of poverty, so there will be Teach First teachers in one-third of all challenging schools. Breaking new ground, we will fund the permanent expansion of Teach First into primary schools, so that more than 300 superb new teachers will be working in some of the country’s most challenging primaries.
Therefore, to clear up the economic mess that we have been left, we have to bear down on the waste and bureaucracy which have characterised Labour’s years in office and reined back projects which have not been properly funded. Even before we formed this coalition Government and had the opportunity to look properly at the scandalous mess that we inherited, we knew that Labour Ministers had no proper respect for the public’s money.
The whole process by which the Government procured new school buildings was a case in point. The Building Schools for the Future scheme has been responsible for about one-third of all the department’s capital spending, but throughout its life, it has been characterised by massive overspends, tragic delays, botched construction projects and needless bureaucracy.
The BSF process has had nine meta-stages: preparation for BSF, project initiation, strategic planning, business case development, procurement planning, procurement, contractual close, construction and then operation. Each of those meta-stages has a series of sub-stages. Meta-stage 3, strategic planning, for example, has had another nine sub-stages: step 1, local authorities produce a strategic overview of the education strategy; step 2, local authorities produce a school and FE estate summary; step 3, local authorities submit their plans to both the non-departmental public body, Partnership for Schools, and the Department for Education for approval; step 4, once Ministers have approved steps 2 and 3, part 1 of the Strategy for Change is considered complete; step 5, local authorities produce another strategic overview, this time with “detail and delivery”; step 6, local authorities use the school and FE estate summary to develop an estates strategy; step 7, local authorities then seek executive approval on steps 5 and 6; step 8, once they get executive approval, local authorities submit the same documents to the Department for Education; step 9, once the Department for Education approves, part 2 of the Strategy for Change is complete.
I have here just the first three of the more than 60 official documents which anyone negotiating the BSF process needed to navigate. The whole process has been presided over by the Department for Education, the quango, Partnership for Schools, and at various times has involved another body, 4ps, and Partnership UK.
Local authorities involved in this process have employed a Partnership for Schools director, a Department for Education project adviser, a 4ps adviser and an enabler from CABE, the Council for Architecture and the Built Environment—another non-departmental public body. Local authorities have also had to set up a project governance and delivery structure, normally including a project board of 10 people, a separate project team of another 10 people and a further, separate, stakeholder board of 20 people. They formed the core group supervising the project. Beyond them, local authorities were expected to engage a design champion, a client design adviser and the 4ps gateway review team—a group of people who produce six separate gateway reviews over the course of the whole project.
It is perhaps no surprise that it can take almost three years to negotiate the bureaucratic process of BSF before a single builder is engaged or brick is laid. Some councils which entered the process six years ago have only just started building new schools. Another project starting this year is three years behind schedule.
By contrast, Hong Kong International Airport, which was built on a barren rock in the South China Sea and can process 50 million passenger movements every year took just six years to build—from start to finish.
Given the massively flawed way in which it was designed and led, BSF failed to meet any of its targets. BSF schools cost three times what it costs to procure buildings in the commercial world, and twice what it costs to build a school in Ireland. The previous Government were supposed to have built 200 wholly new schools by the end of 2008. They had rebuilt only 35 and refurbished 13. The cost to each school for just participating in the early stages of the programme was equivalent to the cost of a whole newly qualified teacher. The cost of setting up the procurement bureaucracy before building could commence—the so-called local education partnership or LEP—has been up to £10 million for each local area.
This expenditure did not guarantee quality. One BSF school was built with corridors so narrow that the whole building had to be reconstructed; another had to be closed because the doors could not cope with high winds; and one was so badly ventilated that additional mobile air conditioners had to be brought in during the summer and pupils were sent home.
After 13 years in power, only 96 new schools out of a total secondary school estate of 3,500 schools have ever been built under BSF. The dilapidated school estate we have today is, alongside our broken public finances, Labour’s real legacy. Far from using the boom years to build a new Jerusalem, the previous Government managed to fix only just under 3 per cent of roofs while the sun was shining.
The whole way we build schools needs radical reform to ensure more money is not wasted on pointless bureaucracy, to ensure buildings are built on budget and on time, and to ensure that a higher proportion of the capital investment we have gets rapidly to the front line: to individual local authorities and schools which need it most. That is why I can announce today that a capital review team, led by John Hood, the former vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, Sir John Egan, the former chief executive of BAA and Jaguar, Sebastian James, the group operations director of Dixons Store Group, Kevin Grace, Tesco’s director of property services, and Barry Quirk, chief executive of Lewisham Council, will look at every area of departmental capital spending to ensure we can drive down costs, get buildings more quickly and have a higher proportion of money going direct to the front line.
In order to ensure we do not waste any more money on a dysfunctional process, I am today taking action to get the best possible value for the taxpayer. I will take account of the contractual commitments already entered into, but I cannot allow more money to be spent until we have ensured a more efficient use of resources. Where financial close has been reached in a local education partnership, the projects agreed under that LEP will go ahead. I will continue to look at the scope for savings in all these projects. Where financial close has not been reached, future projects procured under BSF will not go ahead. This decision will not affect the other capital funding in those areas. Schools will still receive their devolved capital allowance for necessary repairs, and the efficiencies we make now will ensure better targeting of future commitments on areas of greatest need.
However, there are some areas where, although financial close has not been reached, very significant work has been undertaken to the point of appointing a preferred bidder at close of dialogue. There are 14 such cases. In these cases, two, or occasionally, three projects have been prioritised locally as sample projects to be the first taken forward in the area. I will be looking in more detail over coming weeks at these sample projects to see whether any should be allowed to proceed.
Because we believe in supporting those in greatest need, my department will be talking to the sponsors of the 100 or so academy projects in the pipeline with funding agreements or which are due to open in the coming academic year which are designed to serve students in challenging schools in our most deprived areas. Where academies are meeting a demand for significant new places and building work is essential to meet that demand, where there is a merger and use of existing buildings would cause educational problems and where there is other pressing need, I will look sympathetically on the need for building work to go ahead, but where projects are some way from opening or academy sponsors can use existing buildings to continue their work of educational transformation any future capital commitments will have to wait until the conclusion of our review. That review is made all the more necessary because as pupil numbers rise in years to come we have to ensure our first duty is guaranteeing an expansion in capacity to meet that demographic growth.
Fortunately, in this coalition Government, we have a proper relationship between the Department for Education and the Treasury, which is why we have deliberately reduced our forecast reliance on underspends elsewhere and brought our spending into line. In the process, we have kept capital spending within the envelope outlined by the last Government so there are no reductions beyond those which the Treasury had budgeted for. By bearing down on costs now, we can ensure that money will be available in the future to help secure additional places, to help the most disadvantaged pupils, and to refurbish those schools in greatest need.
We have safeguarded front-line schools spending, front-line spending on Sure Start, and front-line spending on school and college places for 16 to 19 year-olds this year. We have cut spending on wasteful quangos, we have cut the unnecessary bureaucracy that has swallowed up so much money, and we have reduced the amount spent on regional government, on field forces, and on unnecessary government inspection regimes. But we have prioritised funding for better teachers, we have invested more in the education of the poorest, and we are giving schools greater control of the money which had previously been spent on their behalf. For everyone who believes in reforming education, that has to be the right choice, and I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement in this House. I do not want to trade on legacies, but I have to make it clear for the record that even the right honourable Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, has recognised and admitted, albeit rather grudgingly, that in 1997 we inherited a legacy of tremendous underinvestment in the school estate and that it was absolutely right to prioritise investment in school facilities. Labour’s investment in school building initially targeted the backlog of repairs that had built up under the last Conservative Government as well as helping to provide for smaller classes in the primary sector. Since 1997, around 4,000 schools have been built new, rebuilt or significantly refurbished, with 1,000 completed in the last two years. Labour was on track to see a further 1,000 new school buildings in the next two years. Overall, every school has benefited from investment projects, big or small, and devolved programmes did put investment directly into the hands of every single school in every single part of the country.
Building Schools for the Future refocused schools investment on the strategic renewal of the school estate. It was intended to be a programme to renew the entire secondary estate and to plan and provide for changes in demand. The National Audit Office looked at Building Schools for the Future and found that, yes, it was delivering rebuild and redevelopment in a very successful way. So I have to say that this Statement is disastrous news for hundreds of thousands of teachers, parents and pupils who had been expecting this much-needed investment in decent, 21st century facilities for children to learn in. Even though we warned during the election campaign that hundreds of school rebuilding projects would face the Tory axe, I believe that this news will still be a bitter blow for communities right across the country, from Devon all the way to Denbighshire.
This is an extremely short-sighted decision by the coalition Government. Billions of pounds’ worth of contracts that support thousands of jobs and local businesses will now be lost. Further, many schools and councils have spent a great deal of time as well as investing money and resources into working up their rebuilding plans, only to find the rug pulled from under their feet. As I said, Building Schools for the Future was also designed to plan for future changes in school numbers. The right honourable Michael Gove has said that his priority for the spending review is a hugely expensive free market schools policy that will see new schools built with no regard for the need for places in an area. Instead, it will create a free-for-all which has been shown elsewhere to be much more expensive.
I have a number of questions for the Minister. The Statement began by talking about standards. Can he confirm that, in 1997, half of all schools missed the basic performance level of 30 per cent good GCSEs that we set and which has been cut to just one in 12 schools? Can he confirm that improvement in standards since 1997? Further, can he confirm that in the international TIMSS study, England has risen from 25th in the world in 1995 to seventh place, and that England’s 10 and 14 year-olds are the highest achieving pupils overall in maths and science among European countries? Can he dispel the notion that it is the Government’s policy to run down the achievements of teachers and children around this country at every opportunity? I would like to hear him say how proud he is of the achievements and our children around the country.
On the question of Teach First, does the Minister agree that we have the best generation of teachers we have ever had in this country? Is he proud of the contribution that teachers make? Can he confirm that the previous Government had already invested in expanding Teach First, including pilots for primary schools? Can he make the House aware that it was the leadership of the Teach First programme who warned the previous Government that to accelerate its expansion any faster would put at risk the future quality of the programme? So it was the previous Government who were thinking carefully about the quality of the programme.
Can the Minister be clear about what independent assessment has been made about the Building Schools for the Future programme that has led to this huge cut to valuable developments around the country? Have the Government made any assessment of the numbers of construction and private sector jobs that will be lost as a result of the decision? What will be the impact of the decision on jobs? Do the Government believe that excellent facilities are key to an excellent learning environment? What is the Government’s policy on that? Will the schools that have been planning for building still have a building programme under this new value for money scheme, or does it simply represent an overall cut in the development of our school infrastructure?
Where will the capital come from for the free school programme? I really want an answer to that because I have asked the question a few times already. Will the projects be capitally funded from money saved from the cut in the Building Schools for the Future programme? Exactly how much will be saved by this announcement today? What will be lost through the cost of break clauses and reorganising expenditure? What methods will the Government use to fund and support councils to plan for future changes in demand for schools, or will they simply expect them to provide more portacabins as the rolls increase? Will schools and councils be left to pick up the tab for the work they have done already to prepare for the new investment?
Finally, have the Government made an independent assessment of the value for money of the free schools policy? As the Minister is aware, I am interested to know about that impact assessment because evidence from Sweden has shown some disappointing results.
I am aware that I have asked a number of questions and I am grateful for the Minister’s attention. If there are any points of detail on which he would wish to write to me, I should be happy to receive such a letter. I am grateful to the noble Lord for repeating the Statement.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, if there are points of detail I shall write. However, let me respond in broad terms, first, to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan.
Going back to 1997 generally, I hope I have always made it clear to the noble Baroness and other noble Lords on the Benches opposite that there are many things that the previous Labour Government did well in the field of education that we want to build on. As she rightly pointed out, one of those was Teach First, and I am happy to put on the record again my praise for the previous Government in setting up that scheme. I agree with her that this is the best generation of teachers that we have had. I recognise that that does not happen by accident and the efforts of the previous Government contributed to it I certainly want to dispel the notion that, in talking about Building Schools for the Future, one in any way wants to run down or disparage the achievement of teachers or pupils. That is not our purpose. If the noble Baroness were to be fair to me, she would recognise that, since I have started doing this job, I have sought frequently to praise teachers where praise is due.
Neither this Government nor any Government would want willingly to cause the difficulty and disappointment for schools that the noble Baroness rightly said would be caused by this step. It is being done because it has to be done. The NAO report pointed out that the costs of delivering the project appear to have increased by between 16 per cent and 23 per cent from when it was set up. Quite a lot of the evidence has been heard about the bureaucratic nature of the process from people who have involved in it. If one thinks that this is a very expensive way of spending capital and improving schools, one is under an obligation to try to find a cheaper way of doing it. To spend capital willy-nilly when one knows that there is a cheaper way of doing it, when we have all the other financial pressures that we face and when we are asking people to bear a heavier tax burden seems not a sensible or fair way to proceed. Therefore, I do not make this announcement with a light heart, and I recognise the noble Baroness’s point about the difficulty that it will cause, but we have taken the decision in order to try to get better value for every pound that we spend on capital and to make sure that, if capital is spent more effectively, we are able to help schools better.
The noble Baroness has asked me on a previous occasion about funding for the new free schools. The money for that is not coming from any savings from Building Schools for the Future because the previous announcement predated this one. The money for that, which I believe is in the order of £50 million for the first year, is coming from savings from an existing technology fund.
The noble Baroness asked how much will be saved. By stopping the expenditure now, we think that we can save £5 billion over the lifetime of the spending review period. That £5 billion would have been spent if we had just carried on.
I hope that I have responded to the noble Baroness’s general points; I shall follow up on any specific points. The purpose of setting up the independent review is to learn lessons from Building Schools for the Future and come up with a better, quicker and cheaper system of capital allocation which I am sure everyone would welcome. That money would then go to the schools that needed it most.
Baroness Walmsley
I thank my noble friend for repeating the Statement. I should like to ask him first about Teach First. He will be aware that, under Labour, many schools in deprived areas did not have properly qualified teachers in the STEM subjects, which include science, technology and engineering. Can he say anything about the distribution of the new teachers in Teach First, some of whom will by their nature have qualifications in those subjects? Will he prioritise those schools in deprived areas that have suffered from the lack of properly qualified teachers in those subjects? Can he say something about the resources available for training these new recruits to the teaching profession, who will know all about their own subject but will not know too much about teaching in the first instance? I am aware that they have a foreshortened programme of teacher training, but there will be a lot more of them and we need to be reassured that appropriate funding is available to do that training.
On Building Schools for the Future, the Minister has made it clear how much it has cost schools and local authorities already to become involved in this overbureaucratic process. When the coalition Government have brought this country’s economic situation under control, will those schools that have already spent a lot of money and time, but have suffered from the freeze that he has just announced, be at the front of the queue when we are able to get back to normal business?
Finally, when talking about quangos, will Partnerships for Schools be closed down?
Lord Hill of Oareford
The role of Partnership for Schools will be considered as part of the review that we have announced. We plan to roll out Teach First to areas of the country that it has previously not reached and go to primary schools, which I am sure my noble friend will particularly welcome given her interest in the teaching of young children. I take her point about the importance of training for STEM subjects, for which there is a particular problem in finding teachers. I know that the previous Government worked hard on that. It is a problem faced by all Governments and I hope that Teach First will help.
As for whether the disappointed schools that were a long way down in the process would be first in the queue, the answer to all those questions is inevitably dependent on the comprehensive spending review in the autumn and how much capital the department ends up with. It would be wrong of me to presume on the outcome of that, but those are factors that the department will take into account when making future capital allocations.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, in repeating the Statement, the Minister said:
“Where academies are meeting a demand for significant new places and building work is essential to meet that demand, where there is a merger and use of existing buildings would cause educational problems and where there is other pressing need”,
the department will look sympathetically on the need for that work to go ahead. Will he give a categorical assurance that all other schools in the voluntary and maintained sectors will be treated in exactly the same way? Can we have an assurance that after the review, the £5 billion to which the Minister referred, that everyone agrees needs to be spent on our schools, will be returned? There will not be £5 billion of savings after the review unless the money is gone.
Lord Hill of Oareford
On the noble Baroness’s first point, the Secretary of State said what he did about academies because the kind of schools that are in the academies programme from the previous Government, which we want to try to continue to support, are by definition focused in the areas of greatest need and deprivation. In looking at those, he will not give any blanket position but will review them on a case-by-case basis to consider as fairly as he can those individual circumstances.
On funding more generally, I suspect that those are decisions that will be taken by the Treasury, so I doubt that I can give any sensible undertaking at all.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, after the Minister’s excoriation of the bureaucracy surrounding the Building Schools for the Future programme, I cannot help observing that the Government appear to have commissioned five people to undertake an independent review of school building. Be that as it may, I welcome the initiative to extend the Teach First programme. Another area where the previous Government took a valuable initiative was in the development of educational leadership. What are the coalition Government’s plans for the future of the National College for the Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services?
Lord Hill of Oareford
On the first point, five does not seem to be a completely outrageous number. In the composition of the review membership, we have a fairly broad spectrum of people with a range of perspectives which we hope will help us to find cheaper ways of delivering capital. On the second point, I know that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has spoken recently at the national college and I think that he is positive about the work that it does. As I have already said again today, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Low, about the work of the previous Government in encouraging national leaders. That was a successful programme on which there is much one would want to build.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for reading the Statement and for the sensitive and considerate way in which he expressed his feelings of a heavy heart with having to bring some curtailment to the BSF programme. While sharing his disappointment at the inability to continue the full programme, I should remind noble Lords that many of us felt extreme disappointment at the way in which the BSF programme was dragged out for many urgent cases. Exciting plans were bogged down in bureaucracy and the length of time that it took the department to respond. As my noble friend described, there were many stages, any one of which could make the whole thing fall and thus mean having to start again from the beginning. It was very distressing for many local authorities and schools to have to drag through that process, and to miss out on the plans which they had made.
Undoubtedly, many good projects are left. They may not necessarily be for new schools, which may have to be put on hold, but for refurbishment of some remaining very dilapidated buildings. Are there any ways in which the coalition Government can put pressure on local authorities to honour some of the more extreme cases of dilapidation and to spend such money as they have in their budgets to help those schools which really need help now?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to my noble friend and I will reflect on her last point. In order to make it clear, as regards BSF and the first point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, on investment and what the previous Government did from 1997, I do not doubt for one moment the good intentions of that programme and what they set out to do. The trouble is that along the way, the programme became encrusted with processes that slowed things down, pushed up the costs and forced out some good things. Coming out of this review, I hope that we will get a better process that will help us to do better by our schools.
Lord Radice
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made in the other House. We will, of course, want to look carefully at what has been said.
I just comment that there has been a certain difference between the actual Statement that the Minister read out and the way that he dealt in a rather emollient and sensible way with the interjections from all over the House. I much preferred his way of doing it to the extremely partisan Statement made in the lower House that completely ignored the fact that the previous Government built or refurbished 4,000 schools—the biggest infrastructure programme in education that has been seen in our lifetime.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to the noble Lord. I am fast learning the difference between another place and this House, and I consider myself fortunate to be in this place.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, the Minister was right to praise the previous Government for a lot of the things that went on regarding education. Equally, though, I fear that the Statement in both Houses underlines some considerable mistakes that have been made and the wasteful way in which resources have been used.
Given all our concerns about special needs and schools in deprived areas, not least with the Academies Bill going through, I am thinking about the school buildings that are going to be left half-done, as it were. There is this attractive and clearly well qualified group of five people set up to look at some of these areas. Will the Minister assure us that they will be looking at both deprived areas and deprived needs as one of the major priorities for spending any money that they can find, and that they will move faster?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I will ensure that the terms of reference for the independent review are available. If they have not already been placed in the Library, they should be. I take the noble Baroness’s point that it is precisely on those who need help most that one ought to be concentrating such capital as we have.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall
My Lords, in his brief time in this House, the Minister has earned the respect of the whole House for the way in which he has discharged his duties so far. I sympathise with him for having had to repeat what was really a pretty shameless bit of grandstanding on the part of his right honourable friend in another place.
However, my question now is concerned with the leadership issue that was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston. Without any question, we are facing difficult times—they are going to be hard, whichever way the cake is carved up—and the people who are going to have to be fully committed and thoroughly supported as we go into this next period are teachers. Rather than just suggesting that his right honourable friend should perhaps not think too badly of the National College for Leadership, will the Minister tell the House that there will be significant resources available not only to train teachers to come into the profession but to reinforce and reskill the teachers already in it, who will need to be at the top of their bent as we go into the next decade?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to the noble Baroness. Forgive me for my previous answer to the noble Lord, Lord Low. I was not being evasive; I did not know the precise nature of the commitment that we had given. If the noble Baroness will permit me, perhaps I can contact her and the noble Lord after today and, I hope, give a more precise answer to her question.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, there is support around the House for the emphasis laid, both in this House and in the other place, on the importance of the quality of teachers and teaching. We all support that warmly. I also associate myself with the positive comments about the initiative made on Teach First and the way in which new recruits to the profession have been brought in. Teach First is one of those initiatives that have been successful. The question that is not often asked is what it has to teach us for the continuing professional development of teachers already in post and for the future development of patterns of recruitment and training of teachers more widely in the system. Will someone be charged with asking those questions and bringing back an answer to the wider community?
Lord Hill of Oareford
In the light of those comments, I will charge myself with asking those questions, as I think that the noble Lord makes a fair point. Given that what he mentions seems to be so successful, there must be points from it that have a wider application. We should make sure that we learn from them.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
If the House will forgive me, I will ask another question, as no one else wants to come in. In response to my earlier question, the Minister referred to the fact—and it is a fact—that the academies are concentrated in areas of deprivation. I asked him about equal treatment for schools in general. Will he give a categorical assurance that other schools in similarly deprived areas will have exactly the same criteria for new projects as the academies will have?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I understand the question and, although I do not want to go too much into the gory detail, I will say that there are two criteria. There is a point in the process of BSF called “financial close”, which the Government are taking for the cut-off. It applies to maintained schools and academies. In addition, because academies are in areas of greatest need and deprivation, the Secretary of State will look on a case-by-case basis at whether any of them merit funding, either because a merger is in process or because new buildings are being built, without which children would have nowhere to go to school.
Transport
Lord Dykes
My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, but I hope that he will forgive me if, through inexperience and lack of knowledge, I do not adhere to his maritime theme, which was extremely interesting, but return to some of the more general themes enunciated in the debate. I make the brief reflection that this appears to have been a rather unusual and bizarre procedure: the distinguished Peer, the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, made a speech after the first Statement, after which we immediately had a second ministerial Statement. I do not think that I have experienced that before. For the convenience of the House—I hasten to add that I am not stressing my personal convenience—it might have been better if the second Statement had started at about 6 o’clock, rather than 5 o’clock, so that we could have had a substantial additional portion of the transport debate before the Statement. The decision was reached through the usual channels, I suppose, but perhaps Ministers could reflect that their personal convenience should take second place to the general convenience of Members of the House.
A number of anxieties have been expressed in speeches in the transport debate about what will happen with the capital cuts programme in the department. One of the inevitably sad reflections is that, as the Independent said today, the overwhelming bulk of the department’s expenditure is for the Highways Agency, which maintains major roads with a budget of £6.5 billion. There will be no cuts in road repairs, which is probably a good thing, but work on congestion and on providing information will suffer.
There will presumably be quite serious cuts in railway infrastructure expenditure just at this crucial time when one needs additional spending, particularly in the freight sector—I see the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, who is a great expert on this subject, in his place—so there will be quite a few anxieties. This is definitely not a personal observation on a distinguished politician in the other House, but the former shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury is now the Secretary of State and so will quickly have to shed his culture of preparing the axe. He had assumed that he would be a Minister if the Tories won either on their own or in coalition but now has to change his tune and say that capital investment in transport projects is a good way of helping the private sector, as he did in his recent interview in the Financial Times.
Incidentally, I hope that means that it is a very good thing for the private sector and the public sector. I remain sceptical about the notion of bashing down the public sector—which has a stronger multiplier effect in respect of capital outlays on jobs, employment creation and general economic growth than any other sector, as figures certainly show—and relying entirely on the private sector to make the difference. That is a distinctly old-fashioned theory from pre-war days, which remains to be tested. Be that as it may, these are early days and even coalitions are known to learn from experience. This is an unusual coalition for us, and it is the first post-war one. We all hope that it will be very successful. I also wish the Minister on the Bench well in his task of handling this portfolio and speaking in this debate.
We know that there is a serious crisis facing rail freight. I have here the latest RFG magazine. I will, mercifully, not quote from it because of time, but it is an excellent magazine. I pay tribute to what the RFG says; it expresses very serious anxieties. I hope the Minister will spend at least some time in his remarks today dealing with the RFG’s arguments, which merit close attention. I am anxious that we are to be more concerned with cutting transport outlays than outlays on defence or security. Defence expenditure is often very wasteful. In the whole world there is not a single conventional enemy facing this country. We are dealing only with terrorist dangers. We have to be very careful about priorities and the proper use of even scarcer capital resources.
The McNulty report, which came out in March, is an incredibly difficult document to fathom if you are not an expert on the detail. I refer briefly to the section entitled “Rail industry costs and finances”, on page 15. It certainly needs a considerable brain to understand all the things in there, except to reach the general and harrowing conclusion that, for a mysterious reason which people cannot quite fathom, our infrastructure costs in terms of railway engineering remain higher than those not only in all other European countries but in other countries in other parts of the world as well. Noble Lords have already referred to the heavy infrastructure costs and bureaucracy of the Network Rail system. Equally, the infrastructure installation costs for the Transit Light tram system, which is developing in more and more British cities, are mysteriously higher in this country—by a significant and worrying amount—than in other countries. I hope the Minister will tackle that matter, too, in this debate today.
I switch from that for one comment before I finish on High Speed 2. The Minister referred to the menace of drink-driving and what the Government are quite rightly doing. We wish the Government well in dealing with those matters. There are some horrendous recent examples of people who have been well over the limit and had some very nasty accidents. However, I hope the Minister will, if he has time, comment on drug-driving. This, too, is a growing menace. Sometimes there is a combination of both, but examples of drug-driving are growing. The police are very worried about it and more needs to be done.
I turn quickly to mobile phones. Even if they are fixed—rather than hand-held, which is illegal, as we know—they are, none the less, a major factor in reducing concentration when driving in increasingly congested conditions, not just in cities but on our country lanes. These are more and more congested, used not only by private drivers but by trucks and lorries as well. That, too, has to be tackled. It is utterly irresponsible, particularly for parents driving with children in the back, to talk into mobile phones and not concentrate on driving complications. Incidents can spring up in seconds and it can be too late to control the vehicle properly.
I have anxieties about High Speed 2. I remember the dramatic Statement made in March by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—then the Secretary of State—in which he announced the plan for HS2. I am worried about the reference in the coalition agreement to this. It states on page 31:
“We will establish a high speed rail network as part of our programme of measures to fulfil our joint ambitions for creating a low carbon economy”.
I hope that it is being done for other reasons as well, of course, but that is a very important reason. The document continues:
“Our vision is of a truly national high speed rail network for the whole of Britain. Given financial constraints, we will have to achieve this in phases”.
The ominous warning we face is that the high-speed network might eventually be scrapped due to pressures on spending and the Government’s budget cuts, subject to the comprehensive review in the autumn. Or it might be postponed, thus making it more expensive than it would have been. If that occurs, money will be wasted and we will not have the high-speed network that this country demands. Incidentally, it should go all the way to Scotland, not just to northern England. To achieve a harmonised economic system, we need a high-speed network over the whole country.
I have touched on a number of themes which the Minister, if he has time, should deal with, as there are great anxieties about the future. People are worried that this process will take much longer than we thought.
Lord Rosser
I too thank the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for securing this debate and enabling us to hear something of the Government's plans and intentions in the field of transport. I also congratulate him on his appointment. Earlier, the noble Earl told the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, that he would give full answers to his questions when he wound up. I too have a number of questions for the noble Earl. I hope that I too will receive full answers.
One of the first decisions of the coalition Government was to announce that they would not proceed with a third runway at Heathrow. Perhaps the Minister could tell what us what the Government's view is on capacity at Heathrow. Do they accept that it is operating at virtually full capacity? Do they accept that the demand for flights at Heathrow will increase? If so, how much additional capacity at Heathrow—within the constraints of existing runway capacity—do the Government believe can be identified, or has the working group the Government set up recently on aviation in the south-east been drawn up in the hope that it might pull a rabbit out of the hat rather than on the basis that there is credible evidence that existing runway capacity can be increased?
The Government appear to be working on the basis that internal flights within Great Britain will largely cease with the development of high-speed rail. When do the Government anticipate completing a high-speed rail link going north from London? What has been the reduction in flights per day between London Heathrow and Paris and Brussels following the completion of the high-speed rail link through the Channel Tunnel? What percentage of overall flights into and out of Heathrow each day did that reduction in Paris and Brussels flights represent? Have the additional flight paths that were presumably created been already taken up so that capacity is just the same as it was prior to the completion of the high-speed rail link through the tunnel? These questions are relevant to the reduction in airline traffic that would take place with a high-speed rail link going north from London.
There are, of course, strongly held different views about the expansion of Heathrow, but the case for expanding capacity was based not on domestic internal flight capacity but on international and in particular long-haul traffic capacity. High-speed rail is certainly thoroughly desirable and needed in its own right, but it is not an alternative to increased capacity at Heathrow. France has a network of high-speed lines, but it also has five runways at its main airport in Paris.
I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us more than he has done so far about the Government's approach to airport capacity, bearing in mind that they have already decided that one solution—namely, an additional runway at Heathrow—is not acceptable. If we cannot address the capacity issue, more and more passengers will go from this country to Paris, Frankfurt or Amsterdam, which do have the capacity, to connect with international flights, and more and more long-haul international flights coming to Europe will not fly into London. That will hardly be helpful to London as an international business centre, hardly helpful to generating economic growth, and hardly helpful to this country as a first-choice international tourist destination in Europe.
In the other place last month, the Secretary of State referred to Heathrow as Britain’s premier hub airport and said that the Government would ensure that they protected its status. Can the Minister confirm that this statement means that the Government will not be pursuing the plans of the Mayor of London to build a new major airport well to the east of London?
Of course, one possible solution to ensuring that Britain does not lose out economically as a result of capacity issues at Heathrow is to work for international action to check the increase in air travel. Is that a course of action that the Government are pursuing or contemplating pursuing? Alternatively, are the Government looking to resolve issues of airport capacity at Heathrow and in the south-east by putting on further additional taxes or charges in the future which would increase the cost of air travel and thus dampen down demand in that way? It would be helpful if the Minister gave some indication of the Government’s thinking on these issues in the light of the decisions in respect of runway capacity in London and the south-east, including the third runway at Heathrow.
I ask these and other questions on the basis that the Minister has initiated this debate, which is to be welcomed, and because he has some answers to the obvious questions that will be put to him, not because he does not have the answers. I also raise my points on the basis that the Secretary of State has already agreed to contribute £683 million to the £6 billion of 2010-11 budget reductions and that, on the face of it, safe and sustainable transport that generates future economic growth and prosperity is not normally promoted by cutting back on funding and increasing the likelihood of reductions in investment and levels of service—and further hikes in fares.
Can the Minister clarify some issues in respect of rail transport? Is it the Government’s policy to encourage further increases in rail traffic by passengers and freight, and is it their objective to promote transfers of traffic from road to rail? If it is the Government’s policy, by what means are they seeking to do it? Is it by further investment in the railway infrastructure through the construction of a high-speed line from London to Birmingham and then further north, and by electrification of existing routes such as the line from Paddington to Bristol and south Wales and one of the routes from Liverpool to Manchester? Are projects such as these going to proceed and, if so, to what timetable for commencement and completion? What is the timetable for the completion of Crossrail?
Are the Government going to ensure that older rolling stock is renewed and stations renovated and renewed, or will work of this kind be put on the back burner, bearing in mind that the Department for Transport appears to be one of those departments that will face the full force of the coalition Government’s cuts? If there is a further 25 per cent cut in the departmental budget, where does the Minister envisage that the cuts might fall? To what extent will they be on capital expenditure and to what extent on revenue expenditure? Can the Minister give an assurance that the Government are not looking at the arrangements with existing railway franchise holders with a view to agreeing to reductions in service or increases in fares above those allowed under the current arrangements as a way of reducing expenditure on rail by his department? Does he agree that reductions in levels of service and further increases in rail fares over and above the current arrangements would hardly be a step towards promoting sustainable transport if it led to more traffic going by road?
On the subject of fares, can the Minister confirm what I believe has already been said—namely, that no adverse changes from the point of view of users will be made to the national concessionary bus fare scheme? I declare an interest as a beneficiary. The same issues of possible reductions in levels of service and higher fare increases apply in respect of bus travel. Local transport authorities already contribute heavily to the income of the bus industry, and any significant reductions in the money provided to local authorities by central government could have a major impact on the level and cost of bus services. What is the Government’s policy in this regard? Do they intend to ensure that no decisions on levels of funding by central government should lead to a reduction in bus services or higher fares? Or is this an area that is going to take the brunt of the cuts and, if so, where does that leave the objective of pursuing a sustainable transport policy if it leads to a transfer from public transport to private transport, and in particular the car? What is the policy on bus quality contracts, which Theresa Villiers told the other place prior to the election that the Conservatives would remove altogether as an option outside London? Is that the policy of the coalition Government?
Do the Government have a policy for containing the level of travel by car? Do they have a view on whether car users should pay according to the mileage that they travel? If it is the Government's objective to further promote cycling and walking, to reduce the use of the car in particular, what additional resources are they intending to invest in this field, either directly or, for example, through local transport authorities, and what do they consider the impact of promoting cycling and walking further could be on existing or projected levels of car usage? In pursuit of further progress towards safe and sustainable transport, what plans do the Government have for funding or encouraging research and development into, for example, greater fuel efficiency and clean fuels in road, rail and aviation; and what level of investment do the Government intend to put into developing and encouraging the use of electric cars and vehicles?
In his opening comments, the Minister referred to the development of the canal network. The canals are part of our network for carrying freight. What is the Government's policy on further investment in appropriate parts of the canal system to increase freight carrying as part of their policy on developing safe and sustainable transport?
As the Minister will know, transport accounts for 21 per cent of UK emissions—and 92 per cent of that comes from domestic road transport. It is easy to talk about moving to a safe and sustainable transport system, but it is another thing to continue the progress already made—even more so when the Government and Ministers, despite the potentially devastating long-term consequences of climate change, appear interested in ever heavier funding cuts, to the almost certain detriment of a sustainable transport system.
The Earl of Glasgow
My Lords, the reason why I am not as worried as others about the spending cuts likely to be imposed on the Department for Transport in the short term is that I believe that the next few years should be spent largely on planning for the future, rather than on short-term improvement measures. Immediate transport problems such as better road safety, overcrowded trains and airport security, important as they are, are relatively quick-fix issues. The really important decision is to establish what sort of transport network we will need in Britain beyond 2025, and how we can best start preparing for it. These major policy decisions will depend on questions such as how much we want or need to reduce carbon emissions—something that was alluded to by my noble friend Lady Scott—and also on assessing how much greater will be the demand for travel in 15 years’ time; and how much we want to spread Britain's wealth, presently concentrated so much in the south-east, more evenly over the rest of the UK. These are the big decisions, and to a large extent they will determine the sort of Britain that we leave to the next generation.
Several reports, including the Government’s Eddington study, show a strong correlation between transport and economic growth. An efficient, reliable transport infrastructure is essential if British businesses over the whole country are to thrive. In the debate on the gracious Speech, I stated what seemed obvious to me, namely that future transport policy must be based on a renaissance of the train. It is potentially the most civilised way to travel, environmentally relatively clean, relatively safe and relatively stress-free for the traveller. Of course, this will mean an inevitable upgrading and extension of our existing railway network, which we are assured is already in progress. We will have to be less dependent on the motor car in future, and if we have to dig up the British countryside, let it be for a railway line and not for a new road. With a better and cheaper train service, we may not need that proposed bypass after all.
It is hardly surprising that we in our party so enthusiastically welcomed the new high-speed train proposals, apparently supported by all parties—but we still need to be convinced that our allies in the Government are as enthusiastic about it as we are. This new high-speed railway cannot be a half-hearted, stage-by-stage, “let's see how much we can afford for the time being” project: it must be a totally committed, all-the-way project. The line must start from Scotland—Glasgow preferably, but I am biased so far as that is concerned—through Manchester, Birmingham and London and then on to the continent. Also, for the benefit of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, it must include Carlisle. In the Queen’s Speech debate, the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Henley—assured me that the Government’s intention was indeed to take the line all the way to Scotland, but I still need assurance that that means from the outset—not a presumption that a second stage of planning would start once the line had been completed to Manchester or Leeds. It appears that High Speed 2 has so far been instructed to present proposals for the line only as far as Manchester and Leeds, and that is what makes me suspicious. In spite of the Minister’s assurances, might the Government still be committed to go only as far as that to begin with? I should very much like the Minister’s reassurance on this.
Scotland and the far north of England—here, again, I know that I shall get the support of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle—would find themselves at a considerable economic and commercial disadvantage if it were to take another 10 years or so for high-speed rail to reach them. To get the full benefit of high-speed rail, the line must go all the way. Immediately you find yourself having to change from a conventional to a high-speed train at somewhere such as Manchester, you might just as well have taken the plane in the first place. One of the other great benefits of high-speed rail is that it will make many of those atmosphere-polluting internal flights redundant. Here, I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, who does not think that it will make any difference. It would certainly make a difference.
Of course, it is unlikely that construction of the new high-speed railway line will start for at least five years, but that gives the Government time to assure themselves that they are taking the best possible route, time to negotiate terms with the objectors and time to get the best possible advice. I hope that they will not waste too much money on consultants. The advice of experienced engineers and chartered surveyors is what is needed, and that is whom the consultants will be consulting anyway. Furthermore, we should not assume that High Speed 2’s recommendations are necessarily the best. The time delay will also give the Government the chance to satisfy themselves that when construction does start—in, one hopes, a much better economic climate than exists at present—they will have the necessary means to complete the job, all the way to Glasgow.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood
My Lords, as some of your Lordships will know, I spent 12 years on Surrey County Council, including a number of years as a member, and consequently chairman, of the highways and transport committee. I was among those councillors who particularly enjoyed the work of the committee. I think that its appeal was the practical and concrete evidence of its effectiveness—or not—on the roads, highways, byways and pavements of the county.
In preparation for this debate, I had a brief but useful talk with one of the current officers of the county council’s highways and transport department, and it is clear that times are hard. Leaving aside the main roads maintained by Surrey County Council, there is, once again, great difficulty in maintaining minor roads across the county. This is not a new problem; it is one that recurs whenever the public finances are in a poor state. It appears that Surrey’s new chief executive is going through the entire county budget with a fine-toothed comb. As a councillor, I have lived through similar times and it is not a pleasant experience.
In the context of this debate, the particular problem faced by Surrey is that of maintaining the safety of the minor roads system. For much of southern Surrey, it is the network of small local roads which serves scattered villages, farms, houses and small businesses. Where I lived, south of Dorking, I could have many miles to drive, depending on where I wanted to arrive and when. Sometimes the main road was the best option but sometimes it was not. Yet, in winter on south Surrey clay, water would collect on the minor roads, traffic would veer on wet roads towards the deep ditches on either side, and freezing weather would break open last year’s efforts to patch up the worst spots. I am sure that all Members of your Lordships’ House who live away from towns will know what I am talking about. Nevertheless, there are many businesses which need to deliver or collect goods along those roads; children need to get to school; and mothers and fathers need to get to work. The network is essential—not just for a spin in the motor on a summer’s day but for all the activities which affect family and business life.
Unfortunately there is never the money available to ensure that this network, much of it based on ancient tracks, is really safe and fit for the traffic that it carries. That is particularly the case this year as bad weather exacerbated the damage and dwindling funds make it hard to finance the restoration of roads. It is not just in the relatively sparsely inhabited countryside that there are problems. In Surrey’s towns and suburbs there are problems with cold weather damage that cannot all be dealt with. Engineers are obliged to prioritise the repairs. Those who benefit from those repairs are thankful; those who do not benefit complain.
However, whether damaged roads are in the country or in the towns and villages, their poor condition prevents them serving the economic needs of the people. I have made only a brief speech and I want to ask two brief questions. Can we yet estimate how much money there is to deal with post-weather damage to the roads? Are the Government satisfied that utilities are meeting their obligations correctly when they have to repair the highways?
Lord Berkeley
I, too, congratulate the Minister on opening this debate, but in doing so I reflect that he must be feeling a bit lonely. Eight Liberal Democrat colleagues are speaking but none of his own Back-Benchers. It makes me wonder whether his Back-Benchers support the coalition’s transport policy; perhaps he will tell us when he winds up.
Two months after the election, I thought that I would have a quick review of the progress of the coalition’s policies on transport. The policy on page 31 of the coalition programme states:
“We will stop central government funding for new fixed speed cameras”,
and use drug analysis instead. They are rather different in their effect—and their cause, probably. The Minister mentioned that in his opening remarks. First, can he explain how removing speed cameras will contribute to a reduction in road accidents? As we are talking about roads, perhaps he can also explain whether the Government will reduce the blood-alcohol limit from 70 milligrams to 50 milligrams, which I understand would save 200 deaths a year. That sounds good but maybe we will not get that either.
Secondly, on the HGV road user charges, perhaps he will explain what is green about that policy. It will help the UK haulage industry to compete with foreign lorries but unless the charge is quite high it will not help the environment very much.
Thirdly, the coalition programme states:
“We are committed to fair pricing for rail travel”.
However, in the Financial Times a week or so ago, the Secretary of State for Transport said that he would increase rail fares more than inflation. As the noble Lord, Lord Snape, mentioned earlier, that would surely reduce the number of passengers using the railways and encourage more people to go by car. What is safe and green about that?
Fourthly, the programme states:
“We will support sustainable travel initiatives, including the promotion of cycling”.
Will the Minister confirm whether the Government are removing the advance stop lines at many intersections, which are there to create a nice green box for cyclists to go into? Apparently Ministers believe that cyclists are slower than cars so the cars should get away fast. That is a policy for reducing rather than increasing the number of cyclists on our roads.
I am pleased that the Government will,
“reform the way decisions are made on which transport projects to prioritise”.
I think that is longhand for looking at the new approach to transport appraisals, which I welcome. Perhaps the Minister can explain when they are going to start.
Lastly, I want to concentrate my remarks on the Government’s statement that they,
“will make Network Rail more accountable to its customers”.
I fully support that. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, got there first and I am grateful to him for his declaration on my behalf. I am also one of the 100-strong membership of Network Rail, to which my noble friend Lord Snape alluded.
Lord Snape
Perhaps I may exempt my noble friend personally from any criticism of the 100 members of the board.
Lord Berkeley
I am grateful to my noble friend, but perhaps he had better wait to hear what I have to say. Infrastructure management and privatisation became Railtrack’s responsibility and most noble Lords would, I think, agree that that was a disaster. In management and engineering terms, it was a good way of siphoning perhaps £4 billion of public money straight from the Government to shareholders, but it did not last very long.
The new Network Rail is, I believe, much better than Railtrack in the sense that the network is in a much better condition. It is reliable and there has been a lot of investment in it. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, and others have said, the costs are getting very high. The Office of Rail Regulation has required Network Rail to halve its costs over 10 years, and we are about half way through that, but it still has a long way to go. As regards the value-for-money study chaired by Sir Roy McNulty, the document referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, is very significant. He was given a number of options and was told, first, to cut services; secondly, to grow services with increased costs, which is clearly unacceptable; and, thirdly, to do it cheaper—and if you do not do it cheaper, you have to close things. We need to work out ways of getting Network Rail and to some extent the train operators to do it cheaper. But we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath-water.
Noble Lords and people outside have come up with many ideas about what to do with Network Rail, which could range from a new management team to deliver cultural change, to breaking the company up into regional businesses, and, of course, the usual story of vertical integration—nationalised or in the private sector. However, we must be careful about the problem that we are trying to solve. It is easy to refer to benchmarking and great savings, but one must look at the detail and I suggest that the devil is in the detail.
I am against breaking Network Rail up. I certainly support Merseyrail’s idea of having a separate network there, probably extending to Wrexham, and to do a little bit of benchmarking. Of course, Transport Scotland is promoting a new line to the Borders, which will be designed, built and operated entirely without Network Rail. Therefore, that will produce some benchmarking. However, I calculate that if, for example, Scotland was separated off into its own infrastructure, there would be five passenger operators there and as many freight companies. The bureaucracy of the extra agreements between all these people in different areas would make it more complicated rather than less.
The problem with Network Rail is that, although it is far from perfect, the extra costs are in what we might call the sticky bits—the laws, the processes, the standards and the procedures that seem to govern every action. The other day, I was on a train going down a freight branch line when we were stuck on the main line for about half an hour. I asked the Network Rail person on the train, “What’s the problem?”. He said, “Well, they’re unpadlocking the points. In my day, 20 years ago, it took one person five minutes and now it takes three people 20 minutes”. It is the same job, so why does it take that long? Yesterday, I received an e-mail from some people stating that it was time that the railway did some research into dogs and their owners walking perhaps on a footpath beside continuously welded track. They said that the dog might get excited or worried by the whine of a train approaching and pull the owner on the lead towards the train and hurt the owner. I thought: why do we want to bother with things like that? If people cannot control their dogs and have the lead wrapped around their hand several times, why does the industry need to talk about research? Those are two stupid examples, but unless we start at the bottom and ask, “Do we need those standards at all?” and all that goes with them, we will not get anywhere.
Some suggest that Network Rail should be sold off, but we tried that with Railtrack, did we not? I think that we should improve what is there and define what kind of company it should be. It has decided on its own that it should emulate a public limited company and get efficient going forward with maximum achievements and, of course, maximum bonuses. That is its decision. No one has asked it to do that; the Government have never asked it to. It justifies that on the basis that it is like a plc. It is nothing like a plc, because it cannot go bust. We all know that no one would allow it to go bust, and, anyway, there are no shareholders. I am one of the 100 members, and our liability is limited to £1, which I suppose is comforting.
Should it not have some public interest duty to influence its activities? I do not think that the membership structure has worked. Network Rail effectively still appoints most of the members. We do not hold the company to account; that will not change. There are various alternatives which I hope that the Minister will consider. One of them has been mentioned before: a two-tier board, with the higher one to ensure that the public interest in the railways is maintained. Alternatively, members could all hand over their membership to the Secretary of State. When I put that to a Minister he said, “That’s fine. What happens if the members don’t want to hand over their membership?”. The answer is simple: turn off the finance. That might focus their thoughts. The third alternative is a mutual, with a small number of members elected by all interested stakeholders. That would give members legitimacy and a smaller number.
The real issue is that the board and the management need to reflect Network Rail’s public interest role, as well as driving efficiencies. It must drive them much more strongly from within. Iain Couch has done well up to now, but we now need someone else. It needs a new team dedicated to creating the most cost-effective, cost-efficient and least bureaucratic infrastructure manager in the world. I suggest that the figure of two to three times the best cost, which we have heard in this debate and from the regulator before, comparing Network Rail with other infrastructure managers, is mainly due to bureaucracy. It is the bureaucracy that must be cut through with a sword, because I do not want bits of the network to be lopped off because we cannot do it cheaper, we cannot run Parry People Movers or anything else. As someone else said in this debate, we do not need high-speed lines for Parry People Movers.
I hope that the Government, in considering what to do with Network Rail, will not throw the baby out with the bath-water but will make strong intentions clear that it must change. Whether that should be done from without or within, I do not know, but I will certainly support such change.
Viscount Falkland
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley—in fact, I have changed the order of my speech, which will be devoted to two-wheeled transport, to start with cycling, whereas I had intended to start with what are inelegantly now called powered two-wheelers. He made some interesting remarks about cycling. Not only do I follow him in speeches, I follow him on the road on many occasions. He is much quicker than I am, although we have a similar bicycle. He rides expertly. His bicycle is more highly geared than mine because it has been hotted up. He rides speedily with extreme expertise and I only wish that most of the other cyclists that one comes across rode in such a mannerly way. That is part of the problem with cycling in terms of its relationship with other road users.
The noble Lord raised an interesting point, of which I was not aware, about the discussion about doing away with cycle spaces at traffic lights. That seems an odd idea because cycling is increasing as an activity. More and more people are taking their fate into their own hands, because cycling is fairly perilous at the moment if you are not experienced and careful. If they do away with the space, as the noble Lord suggests, I do not know how they will avoid more accidents taking place because the numbers of cyclists, motor cyclists and cars that gather at a traffic light, all rushing to get home—particularly if they are going to watch a football match or something—will cause a great many problems. I look forward to hearing much more about that.
Lord Berkeley
Just for the avoidance of doubt, I say that I am not recommending that the front stop line should be removed; I am complaining about it.
Viscount Falkland
I understand the noble Lord’s point. I thought that I intimated that I agree with him. He did not mention the unfortunate accidents, often involving young women, at traffic junctions, although I hoped he would. They get caught between the kerb or the side of the road and a large lorry turning left. A lot of those who have been caught in that situation bear some responsibility. One is enormously sorry for the injuries that they suffer and the deaths that occur, but there is a lack of road sense. However, we cannot expect everybody to have the road sense of the noble Lord. Quite apart from making the lorries put special mirrors on, local authorities and the Government must look carefully at making sure that there is some kind of marking or indication at those junctions to make vehicles go wider, so that if people do find themselves in that unfortunate position they have some way of escape.
The problem with cycling generally is that a lot of people are inhibited from cycling, and I do not blame them, as I have said before in your Lordships' House. Yesterday, I took a ride from Kensington Gardens across Chelsea Bridge. The other side of Chelsea Bridge, alongside Battersea Park, is notorious because all the cycle lanes are full of parked cars. On a Sunday, traffic is particularly bad because people are out at the weekend and are not paying particular attention. I had to stop before a car that was parked in the cycle lane to let the traffic, which was going so fast, pass. I felt so insecure until it had gone past, and then I went into the middle of the road again.
My original question on this subject was answered well by the previous Government, but nothing is done about it. They explained to me what constitutes illegal use of a cycle lane. Yesterday, those vehicles were blatantly in the wrong place and creating danger. How can we expect people to enjoy cycling and to encourage their children to go cycling when they meet that kind of hazard at a weekend?
The last Government’s approach, which I hope will be continued under this Government, was to have a cycling policy that encourages people to take up cycling. However, I hope that they will take special care for the safety of cycles, particularly by enforcing certain basic laws. There is absolutely no excuse for cycles to be ridden at night without lights. Not only does it endanger cyclists themselves, it puts motorists into a position where they could be involved in a fatal accident for which they would have no responsibility whatever. I hope that there will be a drive by the Government to ensure that riding without lights is stopped. I find it more alarming than people using mobiles in their cars, which is bad enough, so it is essential that this is dealt with. Certainly it is one of the laws that I would like to see enforced.
With the Olympics coming up and more cyclists expected to come to London to enjoy our parks and the good aspects of cycling in the city, unless something is done before 2012 the Government ought to put out a warning for cyclists coming from countries which have a more favourable cycling culture. I mention Holland, France and others. The warning should say, “You are coming to England. Enjoy yourself and bring your bike, but be careful because you are going to meet indifference to cyclists on the part of other road users”. Taxi drivers look upon cyclists as a necessary nuisance, something they do not do to motor cyclists. Also in London, vehicles have a way of coming alongside cyclists and intimidating them. That is not something you would find in Paris, Brussels or Madrid, and I have cycled in all those places. As I say, unless something is done, there are going to be fatalities. Foreign visitors are going to die. Therefore to have a hire scheme, as the Mayor of London is suggesting, would be excellent if you ignore all the dangers. But to do that with the situation as it is—bad roads and rude, uncivil and intimidating road users, whether they be in commercial vehicles or in cars—encouraging people to come here and hire cycles or bring their own is just not fair.
I do not want to take too much time, so I shall move on quickly to motor cycling. Successive governments seem to have shied away from having an integrated policy as regards motor cycles. Motor cycling in Britain is not an inconsiderable activity. We are told that, if one includes those who ride scooters and mopeds, around 15 million people are riding regularly. It brings around £7 billion into the economy. The manufacturing business, which disappeared almost entirely at the end of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s in the face of Japanese competition, is now coming back. British manufacturers, on a smaller scale, are actually doing rather well. I refer particularly to the Triumph Company. Some 20 years ago the name was bought and the business has been built up to become one of the most successful motor cycle manufacturers in the world. There are factories in Hinckley, near Coventry, which I have visited many times. The company has incorporated the best technology from around the world, particularly from Japan. Mr Bloor, who started the company, is dedicated to having a British business. He hoped to use more British components in the machines, but he did not reach his target because of lingering differences with the Japanese with regard to maintaining quality and delivery, which, I am afraid, is still part and parcel of our industrial heritage.
Motor cycling is an important area, but I am bothered about the Government’s seeming hesitation over creating a properly integrated policy that includes powered two-wheelers—I use the expression again—and wonder whether it is to do with an overriding fear about safety. Safety is always a problem with a vehicle as unprotected as a motor cycle. However, motor cycles are actually very safe these days. The powerful ones have a capability for high speeds, of course, but the smaller ones are just as dangerous. Unlike in other countries, most accidents take place not because of speed on fast roads but at junctions, roundabouts and places of that kind. Most accidents are due to rider or driver fault, lack of road sense and so on.
The main attitudes prevalent on the roads these days are those of not caring or not having consideration for other road users. That is the overriding concern. It is why the previous Government incorporated the European Commission’s plan for testing new riders. The new test, which is taken almost as it was constructed and designed in Brussels, has been adopted and a great deal of money has been spent on testing centres and new testing programmes. It has proved a disaster so far. The test is far too complicated and there have been a number of injuries when people are required to show how to skid properly. You learn that through experience, when you are being careful, I hope; you do not need to be tested. In the old days, when you were tested by a man with a millboard who poked his head out from around a wall, the test was perfectly adequate. There were no more accidents in proportion with other road users than there are now.
Young people trying to get into motor cycling now find it extremely difficult. It may be the aim of the Government not to encourage motor cycling but to get rid of it altogether. I do not think they will be able to do that but, given the way in which they are locating these new testing centres an average of 23 miles away from an applicant’s home, and given that the cost to a young man of a licence for a larger bike is more than £1,000, it will not encourage young people to take the test. One of the great hazards on the road is the number of people who are riding without insurance and road tax. Although the police have increased their methods for finding such people, the more of them who are on the road because they cannot afford to take the test—somehow they get hold of a bike and manage to avoid the police—the more chances you have of accidents. If the Government are producing the test to reduce the number of accidents, it will do the opposite.
That is the end of my observations on two-wheelers for today. I intend to come back to the issue as the coalition proceeds. I hope that we will see something a little less lily-livered from the department than we had with the previous Government. I stood down from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Motorcycling because I did not like the way in which my colleagues were paying lip service to what I thought was the uninformed and rather condescending manner of visiting Ministers and officials, none of whom had ridden a motor cycle as far as I know. Having said that, I am on the warpath; I hope others will join me.
Lord Clinton-Davis
I am very much involved with BALPA, having been the president of the British Airline Pilots Association for 30 years—far too long, some say.
Like so many other transport issues, aviation, unfortunately, has disappeared from the Minister’s radar. It is not his fault, I hasten to add, but is essentially the fault of the Government, who have failed to address so many vitally important transport issues. My task today is to speak about aviation. I spent more than 36 years involved with the topic—as Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the House of Commons; then in opposition; four years in the European Commission; and finally in the House of Lords as a Minister—besides being the president of the British Airline Pilots Association.
Aviation is an essential part of Britain’s economy. It accounts for about 1.5 per cent of our GNP. It generates more than £80 billion in gross value added to the economy. It is a massive employer. It contributes nearly £5 billion in tax revenue. It carries no fewer than 240 million passengers per year and well over 2 million tonnes of freight. European aviation makes a huge contribution to the economy of the whole area.
Of course, there is an emissions problem—we hear a great deal about that in this place—but the 6 per cent of carbon emissions for which it is responsible is far less than that of power stations, domestic sources and road transport, which respectively account for 31 per cent, 22.5 per cent and 21 per cent of our emissions. So let us get this problem in perspective. Enormous environmental gains have been accomplished during the past 30 or 40 years. Air transport is now infinitely quieter. Fuel efficiency has virtually matched this. Air traffic management and flight control have improved. I am absolutely certain that progress in all these respects will continue, notwithstanding the present economic difficulties from which we are suffering.
Safety is of course paramount. By any reckoning, the United Kingdom’s fatal accident rate, which is something like 0.08 per million flights, is absolutely remarkable. Although it dwarfs the worldwide accident rate, which is still very low, this statistic is worth emphasising. I do not want to tempt fate, but the history which British aviation has to relate is very significant.
To perform well, aircraft need airports. Heathrow, our principal airport, has reached saturation point, yet the argument for a third runway, approved by the previous Government, is now rejected by the present coalition. What is proposed? We cannot get by on silence, yet that is what we get from the Government; that is what was asserted today from the Minister. To pretend that we can get by with Heathrow as it is is fanciful. In this respect, they are the do-nothing Government.
There are, of course, other airports, as my noble friend Lord Rosser pointed out. They would welcome this inertia—Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam—and BA proposes that Madrid may be the answer, but that cannot be so for the multitude of potential passengers in northern and middle Europe. The effect of this sterile situation on British aviation would ultimately be disastrous. Heathrow and British aviation would not altogether go down the tube, but they would be consigned to the role of bit players compared to their rivals. Inevitably, that would leave a deadly imprint on our economy.
I turn to the immense challenge to aviation, indeed, to our way of life, posed by volcanic ash, which has not so far been mentioned. Unfortunately, the world’s scientists have not fully comprehended this particular problem. There is a real risk that there may be another eruption in the near future and once again we may be confronted by another imponderable event. I recognise that this represents the gloomiest view, but it should motivate us to learn more and listen to the volcanic scientists with increased care and a greater degree of urgency than we have so far exhibited.
My own union’s chairman and general secretary visited Iceland in the past few days in a quest to procure more information at first hand. Although it is still early days, we will await their report recognising that it will add to our knowledge of the problem and, let us hope, point the way to solutions. It goes without saying that, if their report should prove to be helpful, it will certainly be made available to Ministers.
So far, the loss sustained by the first volcanic ash eruption is immense. No less than £5 billion is the total cost to our gross national product matched by tremendous losses in productivity. Airports were shut down and no fewer than 67,000 passengers in Europe were affected by this phenomenon. A possible repetition of this disaster cannot be dismissed.
As my noble friend Lord Adonis, who was Secretary of State for Transport under the Labour Government, has stressed, the role of the EC and Eurocontrol must be co-ordinated in Europe. Supporting the Single European Sky initiative in a speedier way is absolutely imperative, besides other essential work. Inconveniences to passengers, losses to airlines and the evaluation of risk have all got to be undertaken. Indeed, as a result of the work so far done by the EU Transport Council, that is happening. I hope that notwithstanding the present Government’s hostility to Europe, that invaluable work will continue unabated. Perhaps the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, can give us an assurance as far as that is concerned when he winds up.
There must be international action in this field. That is why the Transport Council has called for international experts in a working group to examine scientific methods of investigating and combating these threats in time for further and urgent consideration. We will have a meeting of the ICAO General Assembly in September, so it is urgent to have answers to these problems from the Government. This natural phenomenon may strike rather earlier than September. What would happen then? Of course, the effects would be inflicted on airlines and airports, but passengers would also be affected. What have the Government got to say about that possibility?
In conclusion, first, my hope, and that of the British Airline Pilots Association, is to ensure that flight-time limitation regulations are scientific and that there is no regression from UK standards. Secondly, I hope that there will always be complete honesty and openness in promoting flight safety. There can be no room for doubt about that. I should like to make two further pleas, which I think should prevail. Future legislation should provide for flight data monitoring as a tool to identify safety trends and not for disciplinary or discriminatory purposes. We should avoid any legislation which would allow cockpit video recorders to become mandatory. I hope that these matters will all be considered by the Minister and the Government, not necessarily today, but certainly in the near future, and I hope that the Minister will write to me about them.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno
My Lords, we all have aspirations and we know how we could spend a tremendous amount of money in improving the travel facilities in our country. In Wales, we would love to see the electrification of the line from Paddington to Swansea and possibly for it to go even further. Some day that might happen. But we wonder sometimes if the money already spent was wisely spent. We have the new signalling project on the Cambrian line, which cost £90 million. I wonder what the Minister will say about what will happen. Will that pilot be continued in other places? This expenditure seems to have been rather wasted. We could have had instead, say, 90 new railway carriages or much else, if only that money had been thought through at the beginning.
Other problems are arising and needing attention in Wales. I live quite near the port of Holyhead, which is a major port linking not only the UK mainland but also the European mainland with Ireland. There are dreadful worries about the crossings. It is a long journey for someone from eastern Europe who wants to drive a 40-tonne or more lorry from Dover, the north-east of England or other places on the south coast to Holyhead. What is the problem? I have been told that the problem is secure rest areas where lorries, including their freight, can be safeguarded. There needs to be immediate attention to providing such rest areas with adequate toilets and washing facilities. What does the Minister have in mind to tackle this problem on the journey from England to the north-west of Wales?
The reverse journey is easier because the drivers are not tired. They will have had a rest on the ferry crossing from Dun Laoghaire or Dublin to Holyhead. They are rested before the journey through the spectacular scenery of north Wales. There are problems. Then they go over to England and there is a long journey back to Poland, Lithuania or wherever.
How can we tackle this problem in a positive way? We know that many of the vehicles on that road have been found to be defective in one way or another. The Dalar Hir examination centre near Holyhead has a stopping point where these vehicles are examined. The figures I have are for 2008: 2,270 lorries were examined and 1,167 failed these compliance checks—that is, around half. Of these, 10 of the 11 from Romania failed the test, as did 10 of the 12 from Italy, 136 of the 229 from Northern Ireland, 688 of the 1,322 from Ireland, 135 of the 312 from the UK and 51 of the 129 from Poland. Why did they fail? Failures were often due to bad brakes or excessive weight. There are on-the-spot penalties now, and since they were introduced, something like 22,000 foreign drivers and 12,500 UK drivers have been penalised.
Someone suggested that we should look at the effectiveness of VOSA, that it needs to be reviewed and its remit widened so that it includes co-operation with highways agencies, the police and the UK Borders Agency. We should look again, at the BMA’s suggestion, at reducing the legal limit for alcohol from 80 milligrams to 50 milligrams. That would bring us into line with the rest of the European Union.
Accidents can also be reduced—they will not happen—by very simple and inexpensive measures. I stand here as a proud Welshman today because the A40 between Llandovery and Carmarthen has been described by the Road Safety Foundation as the UK’s most improved road. I am delighted at that. Junctions have been upgraded—it was mentioned earlier that road junctions are the most dangerous places for motorcyclists, cyclists and ordinary vehicles—and there has been extensive resurfacing. There has been a 74 per cent reduction in accidents. I was told that as many as 20 lives could have been saved because of this upgrading.
The most persistently dangerous road in the UK is said to be the A537 between Macclesfield and Buxton. I would say to the people there, you want to follow the example of Carmarthen and Llandovery.
I was travelling along that road only last Friday, and already foliage and branches are hiding the wording on the road signs. I have travelled that road hundreds if not thousands of times, but I found myself thinking, “Oh. Am I going the right way? Am I going to Conwy and Betws y Coed, or wherever it might be?”. Someone who was not familiar with the road would be even more confused. Confusion leads to distraction, and distraction will lead to accidents.
We are happy that there are fewer accidents on our roads. Comparing 1994 to 2009, in Wales there has been a reduction of 45 per cent in accidents to pedestrians and cyclists, which is something to rejoice in, and a 26 per cent reduction in car accidents, but only a 17 per cent reduction in accidents to motorcyclists. Clearly we have to look at this again and pay extra attention to the safety requirements of motorcyclists. I am sure that some of my colleagues on these Benches will be able to give us a great deal of advice on that.
Finally, secure rest stops for lorry drivers could be introduced without being very expensive. On the ferry crossing from Holyhead to Ireland, people could have a rest, but perhaps those who are unfamiliar with the English language—and less familiar with the Welsh language, which is on so many of our signposts—could use that time to learn a few of the phrases and to understand a few of the road signs that they will meet along those Welsh and English roads.
Viscount Simon
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl on his appointment and wish him well.
It is rumoured that the consultation document A Safer Way is suffering in a policy vacuum under the new Government and that we could be back to square one with regard to road safety strategy beyond 2010. I wonder what priority the Government are giving to the publication of the road safety strategy and targets beyond, say, 2012. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in expressing deep concern that road safety professionals working at local level may no longer be able to argue their case for road safety funding and that road safety research could be dramatically scaled back. Success in road safety over the past years is evident, but the trend will not continue without effort and adequate funding.
On the matter of funding, I should add that the amount of road safety support grant that is spent on speed cameras is lower than the amount that is brought in from fines, although this is reducing annually due to alternative solutions such as average-speed cameras and speed awareness courses.
I wonder, as an aside, whether the Minister is aware that if police vehicles in all 43 forces were the same in appearance and had the same equipment on board, there would be efficiency savings. Forces already receive substantial discounts through shared procurement contracts, but there are yet further savings to be made by standardising vehicle design.
On the subject of vehicle design, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, mentioned battery-powered vehicles. That set me wondering. What is the price of a second-hand battery-powered vehicle? If the batteries are no longer powered, what is the cost of replacing them? How long do they last? What levels of CO2 emissions are produced in manufacturing new batteries?
The North report has, in general, received solid support and would bring us into line with most European Union countries. It has been acknowledged that alcohol increases the risk of having a collision, as other noble Lords have said. It is estimated that up to 65 lives—some think that the figure is higher—would be saved annually if the drink-drive limit was reduced. That does include drink-related casualties in Scotland. It makes sense to reduce the blood alcohol level and I ask the noble Earl when this will take place, as rumours are flying around that the Government might not implement the recommendations.
The North report also calls for new powers for the police to do random breath testing. We know that in practice the police can stop any vehicle that they see being driven on a road without reason and, if they suspect the driver to have been drinking, they can ask for a breath test. However, most drivers do not realise that. If the police had the ability to do targeted random breath tests, that would increase the perception of risk of being caught and discourage that small number of people who are still prepared to drive while over the limit. I should add that random breath testing is being successfully used in a number of other countries. I declare my interest as an honorary member of the roads policing central committee of the Police Federation of England and Wales.
When the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill was passing through our House, I had two amendments accepted that, I have to admit, some people might have considered to be of more relevance to another Bill. However, the purpose of one of those accepted amendments was to introduce roadside evidential breath testing. The kits are, I believe, already in production, but there is not yet an agreed technical specification against which they can be evaluated. As such, they are not yet approved for evidential use in this country.
The benefits of these breath kits are very wide and they would be an excellent addition to lowering the limit according to the North report. At the moment, somebody who fails the breath test at the roadside is taken to a police station where an evidential breath test is taken. The time between the two tests can be up to two hours, depending on how busy the police station is, during which time there is a reduction in the alcohol level. The roadside kit would give the actual reading at the time the driver was stopped and can be used in court. In turn, this would create the potential for huge savings in bureaucracy, and increase public perception of the risk of detection. I ask the Minister when approval will be given to these meters.
We read that 80 per cent of drivers understand that speed cameras are an essential part of the approach to casualty reduction. As the support grant has been reduced and pre-emptive action is based on perceptions of ministerial comments, it seems that the system is under review. However, it is an offence to exceed the speed limit, so people who receive points on their licences are in control of their vehicles and should not complain. There are alternative casualty reduction measures such as average-speed cameras, active speed management and the potential for technological solutions to mobile phone use and other distractions. I understand that the NDORS scheme—the National Driver Offending Retraining Scheme—which reduces recidivism, has been well received and therefore must save lives. Average-speed cameras are obeyed by most drivers and should be used more widely.
Roads policing is fundamentally important. It is often forgotten, or overlooked against local policing considerations, that the biggest and most transient community is on the roads. The roads are also the place where our citizens face the greatest risk of death, injury and damage to their property. Criminal activity and the networking of criminal groups are facilitated by using road vehicles and carry a whole host of examples of criminals, poor drivers and aggressive people with behavioural problems when behind the wheel. Most people think that the roads policing officer is concerned only with bad driving or exceeding the speed limit. That is not so. I always say that they are police officers first and roads policing officers second. Therefore, their arrest record for non-driving offences is very high. However, when a road is closed for investigating a serious collision, people become very angry. It has to be considered as a crime scene, with time spent on extracting and tending to the living, removing the bodies and examining the debris and marks left on the road. After all, there is always the issue of dignity, respect for the dead and the right of the family to know how their loved one came to die. I often wonder why this attitude differs completely when a road is closed for, say, examining a house fire that might involve arson or the death of a person. That road might be closed for some days but people do not complain, even though the scene is off the public road.
Finally, and to provide a little food for thought, when next held up by a road collision, just think to yourself that motorists are held up more by road works than they are by road collisions.
Lord Bradshaw
My Lords, we have had a wide-ranging debate tonight. I do not envy the noble Earl who has to sum up in a few minutes’ time. He has been shot at from all directions. I first make a suggestion to him. There is probably the scope for immediate cost reductions in the way we run our railway. There has been an offer from ATOC—the Association of Train Operating Companies—and, I believe, the roscos which hire the rolling stock, to be allowed to make some suggestions on how money might be saved. There is such a thing as the service level commitment, which makes franchises run certain trains which must stop at certain stations. In these times, when we are searching for economies, the opportunity should be taken to allow the professionals in the industry to put forward suggestions on how money can be saved. I assure him that a lot of money is involved and that it would be worthwhile doing this.
I am sympathetic to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, on the Equality Act. I raised this issue when the Act was going through your Lordships' House and was told that the House of Commons was dealing with it. However, it did not deal with it and the issue remains a very serious threat to British flagged shipping. If the regulations are carried out, our merchant fleet would be greatly diminished. However, I cannot share his sympathy for the Greek shipping magnates who found New York a less comfortable place. I wonder whether they find Athens any better at present.
I am pleased to hear that there will be an effort to make foreign lorries pay for using our roads. I am anxious to see some sort of lorry charging scheme introduced because, apart from anything else, it would be a way of managing the use of our roads. If we are not going to build any new roads, we must better manage those we have.
The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, referred to the next generation of propulsion for heavy lorries. Although we can look forward to electric cars, I do not think that the prospect of electric lorries is very near, certainly not at the weights proposed. The need to expand the rail freight network and the rail terminals is urgent.
I was rather interested in the renaissance of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, who managed to contain much of his criticism when he sat on the government Benches but now seems to believe that he can open fire with all barrels at the coalition, which has existed only for a very short time. Much of what he said comprised speculation about what might happen, not a response to announced policies.
I shall be a little controversial now and talk about the bus industry, which is in a parlous financial state. It is burdened by the concessionary fare scheme, which was introduced by the previous Government without the necessary funding. I believe that the Treasury intends to cut the bus service operators’ grant, which used to be known as fuel duty rebate. If the Government do not have enough money, it may be necessary to make a small charge for concessionary fares. If local authorities and the bus industry do not have the money, the ironic situation will arise in many shire counties whereby people may have a free bus pass but there will not be any buses on which to use it. Thought needs to be given to that.
Like other noble Lords such as the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, I welcome the North report, which is expertly argued. I look forward to hearing the Government’s intentions with regard to implementing the random tests and the new blood-alcohol level tests.
I noted what was said about phasing out speed cameras. However, one of the greatest problems is people who drive without insurance. While they are not necessarily picked up on a speed camera—although they might be—the automatic number plate recognition vehicles are very good at picking out uninsured and unlicensed vehicles. I should have thought that most law-abiding citizens and law-abiding motorists would welcome further use of those to remove from the roads people who are not paying their share.
I believe that the best hope for new investment in the railways is reform of the franchise process. The noble Earl will no doubt have seen the article in the Times this morning in which Virgin Rail says what it would do if its franchise were extended, and no doubt it would do so. But I take what it says there as the first instalment of what we should expect from it. It has done pretty well out of the current franchise and we should expect passengers on that railway to be amply rewarded for any extension given. The Minister with responsibility for railways made a Statement in the other place on 17 June, inviting comments on the reform of franchising. I hope the noble Earl will make sure that copies are available in the Library of this House so that people here also can comment.
My noble friend Lord Dykes referred to cheaper European standards for railways and light rapid transit. This is a very serious issue. When we say that it is cheaper on the continent, we mean that it is half price or less on the continent. It is not a small gap. The Government should investigate carefully why the costs here are higher because we need to know the answer.
My next point is the serious issue of railway and bus fares. Talking as an economist, I would point out that the elasticity of demand for railway and bus travel used to be 6 or 7 per cent, so that if you increased fares by 10 per cent, you lost 6 or 7 per cent of the passengers but you were better off. The latest research, to which I direct the noble Earl’s attention, shows that the current figure is nearer to 13 per cent. So if you increase fares by 10 per cent, you will lose 13 per cent of your passengers and you will be worse off—fewer people will be travelling and more will be diverted to the roads. This is an extremely serious issue and proper attention needs to be directed to it before any snap decisions to increase rail fares are made.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, I am concerned about the whole question of appraising transport projects. At the moment, this is done by an exceedingly complicated econometric process which employs large numbers of staff in the department, and by consultants who get most of the work. Work is also done at the local government level. I trained as an economist, but, at about the third or fourth page of such appraisals, there were so many Greek symbols and equations that I could not understand what they were saying. I am sorry, but any system of appraisal that is too complicated for the average person to understand is probably past its sell-by date. We need something new.
I support the noble Lord, Lord Snape, in saying that the sooner Merseyrail is transferred away from Network Rail and the sooner it can maintain its own network, the better it will be. That will allow cost comparisons, perhaps not between the costs on Merseyrail and elsewhere but between what Network Rail quoted for doing the work in Merseyside and what it would cost Merseyrail to do the work itself. There is no safety implication because Merseyrail is run by Serco and NedRailways, both of which are very respectable and unlikely to let standards drop.
There was an article yesterday in the Independent on Sunday about the successor to Iain Coucher, stating that Network Rail had engaged head hunters to scour the place for international big hitters to come in. Perhaps I may suggest to the Minister that we have probably had enough of international big hitters. If I could choose, I would go for someone who had successfully run a train operating company and experienced the obduracy and total incompetence of parts of Network Rail, and he could go in and put these things right. This is a time for imagination—picking someone who can do the job rather than someone who appeals to the City, although I should think that that does not matter much bearing in mind that Network Rail does not have any shares anyway.
I endorse the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, about the signalling system on the Cambrian line. It might seem a minor point, but Network Rail has spent £90 million developing the scheme, which does not work—and it proposes to spend more. Occasionally you have to say, “Enough is enough, we are not going to be pioneers in this technology but followers when other railways elsewhere have ironed out the bugs from the system”.
Electrification is an extremely important thing. I say to the noble Earl, for goodness’ sake get the priorities right—electrify those parts of the railway that give the quickest return for cash flow. Here I speak against my own railway, the Great Western. I would not spend money there because it is so long before you get any return. However, if you electrified the Midland main line north of Bedford, you would get immediate returns—and as you move north to Leicester, Sheffield, Leeds and Derby, more cash would come in and the scheme would quickly be self-financing. We must remember that the diesel trains on the route are capable of being fitted to pick up electric current, because they have diesel-electric engines.
I will finish with two points. First, I bring to the noble Earl’s attention the fact that railways can be a significant growth engine. Most noble Lords will remember what Iain Duncan Smith said last week about people living in houses where they had security of tenure, but who had never worked. He talked about moving those people somewhere where there was work. I draw the attention of the House to three examples: the line from Alloa to Stirling, the line from Falmouth to Truro, and the Ebbw Vale railway. Each has caused a large increase in the use of the railway, much of it by the sons and daughters of the people who live in houses, who have taken to commuting to Cardiff, Edinburgh or places like that. The Ebbw Vale work was done by local government in Wales, because Network Rail not only quoted a much higher price, but said that it could not do it anyway, which was hardly encouraging.
Lastly, the noble Earl referred to the continuing support for Crossrail. It is very important that we continue with Crossrail and Thameslink. It is important that the problems with Thameslink at London Bridge are sorted out—and whatever we do in the way of economies, we should not economise on the central sections of those lines. We should provide full-length platforms so that, as demand grows, we will be able to provide the most comprehensive service. I hope those few points will give the noble Earl something to think about.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, I, too, begin by congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, on his new ministerial role with regard to transport. Of course, I point out what is evident from this debate; he plays his part in a Government who are not without their internal tensions, which are evident already, as my noble friend Lord Berkeley pointed out. In winding up the debate for the Opposition—this is the first time that I have played this role—I must say that I had not realised how difficult it was. It was bad enough on the other side having to answer questions, but when one finds the whole content of one's speech already pre-empted by the contributions in the debate one is somewhat at a loss for points to emphasise.
My noble friend Lord Berkeley pointed out that every member of the governing parties speaking in support of the Minister in the debate was a Liberal Democrat. Not a single Conservative is interested in transport, or if they are they fear the worst—namely, that with the former Chief Secretary as Secretary of State for Transport, the cuts will be implemented with a degree of force and venom. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, will have recognised—not just from Labour Benches this evening, forcefully though the points were made there—that sustainable transport, and its role in generating future economic growth and prosperity, requires some government expenditure and investment. That point was also put ably and very strongly by those on the Liberal Democrat Benches.
I hope that the Minister will recognise that some of the more obvious generalisations that he made in his opening remarks will not suffice to meet the very real questions that have been raised on both sides of the House during this debate. To take one obvious area, what did he mean when he said that Heathrow needs to be better but not bigger? What does that mean in terms of the airport’s effectiveness? What is feared on all sides is that the approach to Heathrow will merely benefit competitive international airports as Heathrow is unable to cope with the expansion of traffic. The noble Earl may be suggesting that growth in aviation will somehow be choked off by the depth of the recession, but it would be a double dip with a vengeance if we reached that stage. I hope that, in replying to the debate, he will address the crucial aspects of aviation.
I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, who made a typically thoughtful speech. He always speaks so well on railways but this evening I was very grateful to him for being the only contributor to mention buses in any depth. The Labour Party is concerned about the future of bus transport in this country because it is by far the most critical form of transport available to the least well off in our society. The least well off will have to sustain the impact of the reductions in benefits and support systems that have already been heralded, and if bus services are withdrawn that burden will also be borne by them.
We have our anxieties. After all, it was clear during the election that the Conservative Party took an entirely opposite view from its Liberal Democrat coalition friends. No doubt some form of reconciliation will be worked out at some point during the coalition, although I have not seen much sign of it yet. It was clear during the election that the Conservative Party was against the continuation of bus quality contracts, yet there cannot be a single contributor to this debate who is not aware of the anxiety across the country about bus services. I mention one area alone on which I have received representation. There are great anxieties that Arriva, with its new bus programmes and schedules, could cause very real difficulty for Milton Keynes, whose structure depends on buses for effective movement across the city. Not everyone has access to a motor car, and it is just as well that they do not. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, emphasised transport and climate change. If we increase road transport—by that, I mean cars—to make up for the loss of buses, there will be a severe deterioration in our prospects of reducing carbon levels. Very important questions need to be asked about buses, and I hope that the noble Earl will give us some assurance in his response. If the Government intend to remove bus quality contracts or to ensure that no further contracts are established, will he indicate how bus services will be sustained in the localities where they are very much needed?
The second great issue emerging from the debate—I pay great tribute to the Liberal Democrat coalition Benches here—was the need to separate out some necessary cuts in public expenditure. We all recognise the driving force of the necessity for cuts but we are concerned to ensure essential long-term investment. Without that, we will have no possibility of delivering the rail system that has been rightly identified on all sides as an important contributor to the transport system of the 21st century. We cannot deliver that rail system without the necessary investment. That means choices, of course, but there is concern about electrification, which must go ahead, as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, emphasised in his contribution. It also means the HS2—the high speed rail system. It is important that the Government are called on that issue. I know that there are general expressions that nothing has been abandoned yet, but neither has there been the slightest evidence of any action that would suggest a government commitment to high speed rail.
A number of other issues were raised. I know that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, began the debate by emphasising road safety. As a former president of RoSPA, I took that almost as a personal compliment and raised my hat to him, metaphorically at that stage—it has to be metaphorical even at this stage as I have not brought my hat with me. A number of other noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Simon and the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, emphasised road safety. It is important that the Government pay due attention to that. No huge expenditure is needed to effect improvements, and some clear ideas were suggested in the debate. I have to say that for the noble Earl to make road safety the top priority in his opening remarks might look to some of us, perhaps suspiciously, as a slight cloud to cover the inadequacies of the Government’s proposals on other more critical issues.
It is quite clear that rail is all about investment. My noble friend Lord Snape raised the issue, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, emphasised it, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley, with his vast experience, suggested that the Government should look closely at the question of governance. I know what the Government are doing now; they are considering how Network Rail can effect economies. That is no bad thing; I will not criticise the Government for starting at that point as long as they consider more than economies, not just how they can lop a few token thousand pounds off some bonuses and pretend that something is being achieved. My noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, emphasised the effectiveness of governance of the railways. That needs to be addressed.
I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, will again recognise that we addressed the issues through Network Rail after inheriting an absolutely chaotic system from Railtrack. It is clear that through experience we have seen areas in which Network Rail is not working as efficiently and effectively as it needs to, and I hope that the noble Earl will address himself to that.
I hope also that he will consider the rather more different perspectives that were expressed in the debate. My noble friend Lord Liddle indicated the significance of the national parks, particularly in Cumbria and the Lake District. They are concerned about the extent to which their beauty and the very thing that they seek to protect is being threatened and partially destroyed by an excessive amount of road traffic from people going there to appreciate them.
On road pricing, the nettle must be grasped at some stage. I know that the Conservative Party in opposition had to defend Chelsea and Kensington—after all, a vast number of representatives of their position in this House live in Chelsea and Kensington. I am therefore not at all surprised that it was concerned about congestion charges there. However, if the Government think that we can address road transport issues in the longer term without making progress on road pricing in areas of intense congestion and on the overuse of the motorcar in areas that need protection, they will not be as farsighted as they ought.
There is a range of issues for the noble Earl to address, but he did not take on his role expecting an easy ride. He will certainly not get an easy ride from his noble friend Lord Falkland, who will continually berate him on uneasy rides on two wheels, whether they are cycles or motorbikes. I know that that will be raised in future debates.
Foreign trucks were mentioned again today, and the issue of road pricing ought to commend itself to the Government and be examined. We were concerned about the extent to which those trucks do not meet safety standards, but there is also the question of whether foreign heavy lorries ought to meet their proper costs when using British roads. I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, will address himself to those more distant issues.
Another important issue that may not have been entirely anticipated—that is, until we saw the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, on the speakers list—was marine traffic. I am today in a blissful position on the opposition Front Bench of not having to answer his five questions. It is the responsibility of the Minister to identify marine transport and trade issues and to respond to them. None of us should underestimate their significance to the British Isles, and although the noble Earl may not have time to address himself to every single point in his wind-up speech—I know how difficult that exercise is—I hope that he will at least write to the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, with answers to his questions.
This has been a fascinating debate and I await the Minister’s response with the greatest interest.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, first, I thank all noble Lords for their kind words about my new appointment. We live in a country with a proud transport history, where for generations a network of canals, rail, road and international gateways have underpinned the strength of our economy and the freedom of our society. I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions today. Without exception, they have been thoughtful and interesting, and valuable to me. I have long been a strong believer in the potential of transport, and I am honoured to be able to initiate and respond to today’s debate. This is the first debate to which I am responding for the Government, so I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if there is any room for improvement.
I see my role as representing and answering for my department in the House of Lords and, most importantly, drawing your Lordships’ views to the attention of relevant Ministers. We are fortunate that my right honourable friend Mr Philip Hammond, the Secretary of State, is already providing clear direction and strong leadership in the running of the department. We have always enjoyed robust and constructive debate on transport matters in this House, and we are passionate about safety. My right honourable friend has made it clear to me that he values our views and that he expects me to articulate them, as appropriate, at ministerial level. That is one reason why this debate is so important. I assure noble Lords that I will personally review Hansard over the next few days.
Noble Lords have already privately been making very helpful suggestions about how to secure best value for limited funds while avoiding the trap of special pleading. Every area that we ring-fence or protect will mean greater reductions elsewhere—I am sure that all noble Lords understand that.
The noble Lord, Lord Snape, referred to my note to him. If the result is a speech of the value and quality that he made, I will invariably write to him when I initiate a debate. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, talked about the coalition. I attend ministerial meetings several times a week and I can assure noble Lords that they are very good and benefit the coalition.
Spending cuts are obviously difficult. We are in the early stages of a new Government, and Ministers are considering the full range of transport policies. In the coming spending review, we will be adopting a rigorous approach, reviewing all the department’s projects and programmes to ensure that they represent value for money and are consistent with the Government's objectives, including the need to reduce the deficit.
Many noble Lords talked about Network Rail. It is vital that Network Rail’s governance structure enables the company to work effectively on behalf of passengers, freight customers and wider industry stakeholders. Only an accountable and responsible infrastructure operator, one able to offer the best possible results for both operators of rail services and their users, can enable a modern, 21st century railway network. We are thus examining the current structures and incentives of the industry to see where there is room for improvement and where more accountability is needed. Of course, the McNulty report will help. The needs of passengers must be at the heart of the UK's railway. The independent Office of Rail Regulation, which already oversees the safety and efficiency of the railway, is well placed to promote the interests of Network Rail's customers, and we will work with ORR to explore how it might require changes to make Network Rail more responsive to the needs of both passengers and train operators. As the 2010 annual report and accounts of Network Rail demonstrated last month, it is all too clear that the best performing train is the gravy train of Network Rail.
Turning to franchise reform, my right honourable friend Theresa Villiers announced on 17 July that the Government had launched a franchising policy review. That resulted in the cancellation of two outstanding competitions, Greater Anglia and Essex Thameside. A consultation will be launched later this month, and will focus on coalition agreement priorities, such as increasing franchise lengths and giving operators incentives to invest. The conclusions of the consultation will be announced at the end of the year.
Many noble Lords have talked about high speed 2. The Government propose to establish a national high-speed network as part of our programme of measures to create a low-carbon economy. Given the cost and scale of such a network, the Government recognise that it will need to be achieved in phases. Demand for travel between major British conurbations is expected to increase significantly over the next 20 to 30 years, leading to severe congestion and overcrowding on our existing systems. The previous Government therefore set up HS2 in January 2009 to look at the feasibility of and the business case for a high-speed rail line between London and the West Midlands. It also considered high-speed services linking London, northern England and Scotland.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, talked about the condition of local roads and related issues. I read the ICE report State of the Nation and the markings for local roads were not good. The Government have confirmed that the £84 million announced in the Budget in March for repairs to local authority roads in England, following the damage caused by last winter’s severe weather, is not part of the £683 million in savings. It is for each local highway authority to decide how best to use that money, but Department for Transport officials wrote to each authority in March emphasising the need to consider using long-term treatments rather than ad hoc patching.
The noble Lords, Lord Teverson and Lord Rosser, talked about electric vehicle infrastructure. In our coalition agreement, we are committed to mandate a national recharging network for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. Detailed planning work will need to establish how many charging points and what type of technology will be necessary to achieve that commitment. Understandably, motorists fear not being able to recharge away from home, but the reality is that most journeys will not require a recharge because they are so short.
Many noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Rosser, Lord Clinton-Davis and, particularly, Lord Davies of Oldham, talked about Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted. In addition to our commitment in the Queen’s Speech to reform the economic regulation of airports, in a Written Ministerial Statement on 15 June, we announced the creation of a taskforce made up of key players from across the industry. Their remit will include identifying and investigating options for making the best use of this capacity, including the scope for improving airport efficiency, reducing delays and enhancing the passenger experience. Our plans for a national high-speed rail network linking our major cities and including links to Heathrow and, potentially, other airports, could provide passengers with an alternative for many short-haul journeys, which would ease some of the pressures on airport capacity. Heathrow will continue to be our international hub airport, with particular focus on long-haul operations, but our judgment is that the environmental impacts of a third runway, both local and global, are simply unacceptable. Our priority is to develop sustainable growth in a low-carbon economy less reliant on aviation. A key element will be promoting high-speed rail which offers an alternative for many short-haul flights.
The noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, talked about the problem of volcanic ash. With regard to ash and aviation, safety is obviously paramount. In response to this unprecedented volcanic ash situation, aviation authorities followed clearly established international protocols. The whole of Europe has been in the same position acting according to the same aviation safety rules ensuring that safety was not compromised while uncertainties remained about ash concentrations. Europe’s initial reaction to this unprecedented volcanic ash situation was to follow established international guidance based on experience that aircraft should avoid encounters with volcanic ash. The Government and the Civil Aviation Authority continue to work with the industry to facilitate work on this programme.
The noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, talked about aviation growth outside the south-east. We have not yet decided on airport expansion at airports other than Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, but have created a task force, chaired by my right honourable friend the Aviation Minister and made up of key players from across the industry to develop a fresh approach to making best use of existing infrastructure and to improve passenger experience.
The noble Lord, Lord Greenway, in his interesting speech, talked about the problem of equal pay in the shipping industry. The European Commission’s view is that Section 9 of the Race Relations Act 1976, which currently allows seafarers on UK flagged ships to be paid differential rates of pay according to their nationality, is in breach of European law. We agree that Section 9 is in breach and propose to use a regulation-making power within the Equality Act 2010 to correct the position. We are aware of the possibility that some ship owners may flag away from the UK if differential pay is outlawed and there remains the option of allowing differential pay for non-EEA nationals if the Government wish to do so. We are aware of the serious concerns of interested parties and are anxious to test the arguments and evidence before reaching a conclusion.
The noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Berkeley, and the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, talked about cycling. The Government are keen to promote sustainable travel, including cycling and walking. Future central government spending decisions on walking, cycling and sustainable travel initiatives will be part of the spending review, but local authorities are still able to fund such initiatives through their grants from central government. The noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, asked about the safety of cycling. I have to tell your Lordships that I was first on the scene of a very serious accident involving a cyclist and a lorry. There are a number of initiatives under way at present aimed at improving cycle safety, including the promotion of Bikeability, cycle training, promoting the Highway Code and safe road use, providing more safe cycle routes and guidance to local authorities on the design of safer road infrastructure, improvements to motor vehicle driver training and testing, and new measures on lorry mirrors to improve the visibility of cyclists and pedestrians. The noble Viscount also talked about motorcycle testing. He will be aware that my honourable friend Mr Mike Penning has instigated a review of this.
The noble Lords, Lord Clinton-Davis and Lord Berkeley, and the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, and others referred to the North review. Sir Peter North’s report covers a wide range of issues that we need to consider carefully with other government departments. In doing so, it is important that we investigate fully the economic impact of any suggested changes to the law, taking account of the current financial and economic situation. Our priority will be to tackle drink and drug driving in the most effective way possible to protect law-abiding motorists. We will respond to Sir Peter’s report in due course and I look forward to reading it carefully during the Summer Recess.
The Government have made a clear commitment to introduce devices for drug driving. The law does not need to be changed to permit screening either in a police station or at the roadside, but does require devices to be type approved by the Home Office. We hope to see a specification published before the end of the year so that devices can be assessed against the required standard. If devices meet the standard, or can be adapted quickly to do so, it may be possible to have drug screeners in police stations within a year or so.
Lord Berkeley
I thank the noble Earl for allowing me to intervene. Can he explain what the economic benefit is if 200 fatalities are avoided each year when the drink drive limit comes down? I do not quite see the link between the economics and death.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, there are considerable costs involved in implementing Sir Peter’s report, particularly in terms of court time, the whole of the offender management system, and the result of banning people from driving when they are not currently being banned. There could be unintended consequences. I suggest that, as I will do, the noble Lord reads the report very carefully.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raised the issue of speed cameras. We recently announced reductions in local government funding, and road safety funding will contribute £38 million to the savings of £309 million from transport. It will be the responsibility of local authorities to decide how to manage these budget reductions in a way that will allow continued delivery of local priorities. The reduction in the road safety grant does not indicate a reduction in the importance that the Government place on this crucial area. We remain strongly committed to road safety, recognise the importance of local activity and therefore expect safety spending to remain a priority. That is precisely why we have recently written to local authorities asking them to continue to focus on and invest in road safety. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, pointed out, it is not particularly expensive, but leadership and guidance are necessary.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, and others referred to buses. The Government acknowledge the importance of good local bus services in providing access to facilities and employment opportunities, particularly for those without access to a car—a point strongly made by the noble Lord, Lord Davies. We are committed to encouraging partnerships between bus operators and local authorities to improve these services. At the same time, there is huge pressure on the country’s finances and bus services must be economical. We are determined to get value for money from bus services supported by the public purse.
On the question of quality contracts, yes, they are in place. As the guidance related to quality contract schemes has been published in full, local transport authorities are perfectly entitled to consult residents on their plans to make use of the new regulations to improve local bus services for passengers as they see fit. The Government are waiting for the outcome of the ongoing inquiry into the local bus market before making any decisions on whether changes are needed to the current regulatory framework for bus provision.
The noble Lords, Lord Teverson, Lord Liddle, Lord Bradshaw and Lord Davies of Oldham, asked about road charging. The coalition agreement states:
“We will work towards the introduction of a new system of HGV road user charging to ensure a fairer arrangement for UK hauliers”.
The Secretary of State has ruled out for the duration of the Parliament national road pricing for cars on existing roads and any preparation for such a scheme beyond that time horizon. Details of how a national HGV road user charging scheme could operate and the delivery timescales are being actively considered. Any compensation mechanism for UK hauliers is for Her Majesty’s Treasury to decide.
The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, raised the issue of NATA, a subject which is very important to him. As noble Lords are aware, the coalition agreement of the Government promised to,
“reform the way decisions are made on which transport projects to prioritise, so that the benefits of low carbon proposals (including light rail schemes) are fully recognised”.
We will in due course consider to what extent the NATA framework should feature in this, alongside other inputs to prioritisation decisions.
I hope I have satisfactorily answered all the questions. Where I have not, of course, I shall write to noble Lords. We have heard many points of view, a lot of which I agree with and some of which provide me with food for thought. However, there is one thing above all on which we can agree: only through securing a system of safe and sustainable transport can we be confident of generating future economic growth and prosperity tomorrow.
State Pension Credit Pilot Scheme Regulations 2010
(14 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Freud
That the draft regulations laid before the House on 10 March be approved.
Relevant Documents: 11th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, Session 2009-10; 16th Report from the Merits Committee, Session 2009-10.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, I confirm that in my view the statutory instrument is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
Britain used to have a pensions system to be proud of but, due to years of neglect and inaction, we are left with fewer people saving into a pension every year, and the value of the state pension has been eroded, leaving millions of people in poverty. We are taking action to address that and will deliver on our responsibility to reinvigorate the pension landscape. But too many of today’s pensioners are already paying the price exacted by allowing the value of the basic state pension to be eroded over time.
We will halt that decline by ensuring that the basic state pension rises in line with whichever is the greatest of earnings, prices or 2.5 per cent. But for those who are already paying the price—those who have been let down by the pensions system—it is absolutely critical that they get the help that is available from pension credit.
Pension credit means that no pensioner needs to live on less than £132.60 a week—or £202.40 for couples. Those with severe disabilities, caring responsibilities and/or qualifying housing costs may be entitled to more. But, like other social security benefits, pension credit has to be claimed, and we know that significant numbers of pensioners are not getting the help that they are entitled to.
Latest figures show that some 2.7 million pensioner households, which equates to 3.3 million individuals, are in receipt of pension credit. However, it is estimated that more than 1 million pensioners could be entitled to the benefit who are not claiming it. Research shows that this is due to a range of factors. Predominantly, these include pensioners incorrectly thinking that they are not entitled to any help. Others are reluctant to go through what they see as a demeaning means test whereby they are required to open up their bank books to the state to verify the details of their personal finances. This is in many ways unsurprising. Due to what my honourable friend the Minister for Pensions has called “the curse of incrementalism”, the system of support for older people in this country has under successive Governments become one of Byzantine complexity. Although pension credit can be claimed with one simple telephone call, it cannot surprise us that many older people are bewildered by the system and that many still do not claim what is rightly theirs.
It is quite clear that we have to explore new approaches, but we have also to be sure that taxpayers’ money is properly targeted. For some time, lobby groups such as Age UK have argued that we have all the information that we need to do away with the need for pensioners to make claims at all, and to make automatic payments.
Data that we already hold about people’s financial circumstances have been used to help target take-up activity. However, this information is not specifically collected to decide entitlement to income-related benefits. The indications are that the department is not yet in a position to estimate entitlement with sufficient accuracy to offer a fully automated pension credit payment system now. Indeed, I think it has been generally accepted that the study that we are now planning to conduct is not intended to see whether a system of automatic payments can be rolled out in the near future. The previous Minister of State for Pensions acknowledged this when she said, in reply to a Question, that the previous Government had,
“no current plans to introduce wholesale automatic payments of pension credit”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/7/09; col. 1316W.]
I am not interested in what we cannot do, but rather in what we may be able to do by using more effectively the information that is already available to us. We need to start from somewhere, and this study will help us to understand what might be possible in the short to medium term. It will help us to explore what opportunities there are to use data more innovatively to drive take-up in the longer term, while ensuring that, in this difficult economic climate, taxpayers’ money continues to be properly targeted on those in the greatest need.
We therefore propose to take forward a modest research study later this year in which awards of benefit will be made for a limited period of 12 weeks to a random sample of some 2,000 pensioners resident in Great Britain based on the information that we already hold and without the need for a claim. The study is being designed with a view to meeting the following objectives: to provide information about how a system that makes more use of personal information that the Government already hold to pay people pension credit might be received by potential recipients; to evaluate ways of using the data available to us to improve take-up under the present pension credit regime; and to deliver evidence about how, in the long term, a reshaping of the benefit or acquisition of better data might enable us to radically streamline the process for awarding pension credit. On the study's conclusion, there will follow an extensive and detailed evaluation of the pilot to see how it has delivered against those objectives.
The regulations make provision for the study. In particular, they set out the provisions for identifying potential participants, calculating the amount of any benefit payable and the manner of subsequent payments. We have spotted that the reference to the regulations coming into force should be in accordance with Regulation 1(2) and not “2(2)” as drafted. That typographical error was noticed after the regulations were laid. While it makes no difference to the content or the effect of the regulations, I assure noble Lords that we will of course amend the reference prior to publication.
The development of these draft regulations has involved the ongoing input of a number of external stakeholders such as Age UK, to name but one. However, I express my gratitude to all those who have been involved in getting these regulations into the shape we see before us today. I commend them to the House.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for introducing the regulations. It comes as no surprise to those of us who served on the Committee for the proceedings of the Welfare Reform Act 2009. Section 27 presaged the Motion tabled by my noble friend Lord Freud this evening. To that extent, it is business as usual.
These are interesting regulations, for a number of reasons. I would like to use the context of this evening’s debate to raise one or two issues. It is a tactical provision and an important piece of legislation for a number of reasons that I will come to the moment in terms of how it widens the extent of well understood and well honed social security tenets of legislation.
It is tactical because it seeks to underpin the concept of means-testing. In so far as that gets more money into pensioner households which are eligible and which are not claiming, that is welcome. But at the outset of this Government, if we are looking in the long term and thinking strategically, is more efficient means-testing what we are really trying to be about? That is an important strategic question.
It is early days for the new coalition Government to come to a final conclusion about that, but we are beginning to run out of time on a wider horizon. If you look at the proposals that were contained in the Turner commission some years back, the understanding that the noble Lord, Lord Turner, had when he made his recommendations was that there would have been more discernible movement by now in the direction of a universal basic state pension, which produced a threshold of earnings, such as 30 per cent of average earnings. It would be a base; a first-tier provision on which other things could be built. We are not getting there fast enough.
This is a limited project both in terms of time because it will run for a 12-month period, and in terms of scope, because we are devoting only £1 million of the DWP departmental expenditure limit—although that is £1 million not available for other things in very trying circumstances over the next comprehensive spending review.
We have got to think carefully about the signal that this is sending. We have to ask whether it is credible, even if this pilot is swimmingly successful, that the 70 per cent of pensioner households which do not currently get the entitlement which they are due suddenly become, as if by magic, able to get this automatic payment after a deemed application. Where does that take us? All it does is encourage people to think more about means-testing. If that is the long-term goal, I would be much happier if we were to think more carefully and strategically about developing the basic state pension in a sustainable way.
The State of the Nation report, which was helpfully produced by the department just after the election, talks at page 38 about the disincentives to save that can be created by means-testing. It refers specifically to pensioner credit in that regard. Although this is a very limited project—it pays benefit automatically for 12 weeks to families and the Pensions Policy Institute certainly suggests that as things stand 30 per cent to 40 per cent of pensioners will be eligible for pension credit and means-testing in the future—we have to bear in mind that this may be a project that ends up being of little value if the strategic decision is to go in the other direction and to head down a unified first-tier pension provision which gives a sustainable income for pensioner households.
It is an important signal in that you could raise expectations in the minds of pensioner households that this would be the way forward and that they would be sent money through the post. I do not think that we can do that. Looking at the financial framework that we are facing for the next three years, I do not think it is realistic that the department could find the money out of the annual managed expenditure of the departmental settlement—whatever it is—on 20 October. If this pilot is successful and a way to automatically send pension credit to pensioner households is found, it could cost £5 billion. I will put it no higher than this, but I doubt that there is £5 billion in the annual managed expenditure of the budget over the next comprehensive spending round to pay for that. We need to be very careful about how we evaluate this, how we sell it and how it fits into the long-term strategy of the coalition Government.
As I said earlier, deeming applications to have been made is a substantial revision of social security law, as is the automatic payment. The idea that people can be sent money in the post without having made an application in the first place is a radical departure from everything that we know and it needs to be treated with very great care.
I hope that my noble friend will look very carefully at the use of pilots. Perfectly understandably, he is still finding his way around the department. I do not say this critically because most of the pilots had a merit in their own right when looked at individually, but over the distance they became completely incoherent. It was impossible for observers to track the evaluation and what happened to them. I suspect that many of them bit the dust quietly. The whole notion of “pilotitis” was getting out of hand in the previous Administration. I am just warning my noble friend that the department might encourage him to do that. He has to be very stern and very sure that if he introduces pilots he really means them. He must take the value out of them and make sure that they are not just a waste of time for everyone involved.
Staff resources will be involved because it is complex. I am absolutely sure that my noble friend is right. Trying to stitch together the bits and pieces of data that are available legitimately and lawfully to the department in order to establish who will get these automatic payments will not be easy. If anyone is unsure about that, they should look at parts 4 and 5 of these regulations which have completely separate definitions for income and earnings that have to be laid on top of an already complicated situation. People will have to do staff training to carry out these pilots, which will be random across the whole of the United Kingdom. Only 2,000 people will be involved, but that does not mean that a whole lot more people in the staff complement will not need to know about these things. There may well be a single helpline telephone number, which I would welcome. People will need to know how to deal with folk who ring up and say, “I have just been sent a lot of money by the department in the post. What is all this about?”. I know that a lot of care is being taken over getting the letters of explanation correct and I welcome that, but there are staff resources involved in this and it will involve complexity of some kind.
On the operational questions, a lot of the problems have been ironed out in the extensive consultations that have been conducted. I welcome that. I recognise too that the stakeholders who have been asked are a lot more welcoming to the order than I am sounding today. However, there are still some questions in my mind. For example: why is this money being paid for only 12 weeks, monthly in arrears? Did someone guess that, or is there a reason for having 12 weeks of payments and then they stop?
A second question that is obvious but to which I think I know the answer is that if an underlying entitlement is detected from this automatic payment, presumably people are entitled to pursue that genuine entitlement. Once week 13 comes along and the money stops coming, they can go to the Jobcentre or phone the Pension Service and get a proper claim. I assume that that is axiomatic and will not be a bar to long-term entitlement, if entitlement is indeed found.
I have a slight objection to the pilot excluding people who do not have access to direct credit. The people with bank accounts are the people who are organised; the people who we are trying to help most are the folk who do not have bank accounts and are still using alternative means. Now, there are not many of them, and statisticians may say, “If you take too many of them into the pilot, that may skew the pilot”, but some of them should be in the pilot to draw statistical conclusions from, because there are still significant numbers of people in that category across the United Kingdom.
Why we are excluding religious orders is an interesting question. “What have we got against monks and nuns?” I ask myself. I have no way of understanding that, except maybe that they live in a residential setting.
May I have an assurance, just for Daily Mail purposes, that this money will not be sent to people in Spain? I think that regulation 10 means that people in Spain will not be sent cheques automatically, having been deemed eligible for pension credit, because that would be in nobody’s interests.
I hear myself sounding quite niggardly about this, but there are some important issues here that I hope the Government are thinking through. My question to my noble friend is this: “Is it really credible to say that this pilot is determined to achieve an algorithm that will produce automatic payments of pension credit in future to the 30 per cent of pensioner households that are not currently collecting it because they do not know that they are entitled to it and that we have the money to pay for this in the short to middle term?”. That is an important question that the Government need to think about carefully before they implement these pilots.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of the order before us. I will not rise much to his opening salvo about the state pension, except perhaps to remind him gently that it was a Conservative Government who broke the link with earnings, and it was the previous Labour Government who, on coming into office, had to address the abject situation that many pensioners found themselves in, hence pension credit. That is how the previous Government lifted hundreds of thousands of pensioners out of relative poverty. Perhaps, though, that is for another debate.
It goes without saying that we support the pension credit pilot, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, acknowledged, has as its basis the provisions of Section 27 of the Welfare Reform Act 2009. Maximising the take-up of income-related benefits is an effective way of tackling pensioner poverty. We know that, despite considerable take-up activity, a significant number of people who are entitled to pension credit are still not claiming it.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, said that the regulations are, in his view, basically tactical in enshrining means-testing as part of the system. I remind him that the package on which the pensions system is based stems from the Turner commission: improvements to the basic state pension, relinking it to earnings, and improvements to S2P, particularly the flat rating. The other component is, of course, auto-enrolment, on which we await the results of the review that is under way. My noble friend Lady Hollis, who is not with us today, has strong views about wrapping pension credit, S2P and the basic state pension into one pot.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Indeed, among the advocates of that I include the noble Lord and possibly even the Pensions Minister, although we shall see what will flow from that.
We note that the limited consultation that the DWP undertook before the election showed general support for the pilot, although, as ever, with some reservations. Clear communications are, as the DWP’s response to the consultation acknowledges, of paramount importance. We are likely to be dealing with many people who are vulnerable and who could be distressed at seeing ad hoc credits appearing on their bank statements.
A condition of eligibility of receiving benefit under the pilot is that a person must receive retirement pension that is paid by way of direct credit transfer to a bank or other account, a point that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, probed. I am not sure whether the Minister has information to hand—if not, perhaps he could write—but we would be interested to know what percentage of people in receipt of retirement pension are now paid other than by these means. Are there data covering the extent to which such people are underrepresented or overrepresented in the entitled non-recipient category? We ought to know that.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, also touched on a question that arose about the design of the pilot, which involves the payment of just three four-weekly amounts. Is that sufficient to provide the information to satisfy the objectives of the pilot? Given the set-up costs of the pilot, it would be a pity if the opportunity were missed to provide a secure evidence base. On what basis is the Minister satisfied that the three-month period is sufficient to meet the objectives for which the pilot is designed?
The pilot is to cover both the guarantee credit and the savings credit, so the spread of amounts of payments could be quite wide. Is the Minister also satisfied that the proposal to select 2,000 at random from the entitled non-recipient population will pick up a sufficient range of circumstances to enable a comprehensive evaluation of the differing reasons for lack of take-up?
Of course, the pilot has to be seen in the context of other campaigns that are under way to improve the take-up of benefit. Perhaps the Minister could give us an update on these. Specifically, could he tell us about the outreach programmes and the current volumes of face-to-face visits that are being undertaken? What progress is being made on the programme that allows one phone call to access three benefits—pension credit, council tax benefit and housing benefit? Will this continue alongside the pension credit pilot payment?
The noble Lord will recall our deliberations towards the end of the Welfare Reform Bill on the renaming of benefits and the campaign by the Royal British Legion to improve the take-up of council tax benefit by designating it as council tax rebate. If memory serves, we had common cause on this; the noble Lord indicated that it had the support of his party, particularly the now Prime Minister. Will the Minister tell us what progress has been made on this and the current timetable to bring it to completion?
The relationship between pension credit and housing and council tax benefit is important. I understand, for example, that no capital limit is applied to the latter two if a person is in receipt of the guaranteed credit. Both elements of pension credit can be the passport to social fund payments, both discretionary and regulated. Do the amounts paid under the pilot not count for these passporting purposes? If this is the position, is there a risk that, by claiming housing benefit separately during the course of the pilot and/or refraining from claiming pension credit until the end of the pilot period, an individual might miss out, albeit for a short period?
We welcome the pilot. As I have said, it is another means of improving the take-up of pension credit. It is encouraging to see it move forward, notwithstanding the more disagreeable rhetoric that typically emanates from this coalition Government around the welfare system, focusing on fraud and error and itself creating a climate that will deter some people from claiming their just entitlement. This is all against the backdrop of draconian cuts to be visited on government departments and local authorities, with knock-on effects for the voluntary and third sectors—collectively, the support system for helping the most vulnerable to obtain their rights. It is to be hoped that the benefits of this pilot will not be swept away in the deluge of cuts, which would impair the functioning of those whose efforts are directed at helping the poorest and most disadvantaged.
Lord Freud
My Lords, this has been an interesting debate. Several points have been raised, which I will endeavour to respond to. I start with the question of my noble friend Lord Kirkwood on means-testing and the signal that it gives out. Whatever system we end up adopting—whether we go for a higher basic pension, as he suggested he supported, or stay with means-testing—there will always be the need for some sort of safety net, given that it is a contributory system. That does not send a message that the Government want more means-testing at the heart of their vision. Nevertheless, it remains the case that we want to ensure that pensioners get what they are entitled to.
The noble Lord asked this pointed question: if there are no plans to roll the system out nationally, what is the point of spending a goodly sum, £1 million, in the present climate? When you look at the scale of the problem, with 1 million pensioners not getting the help that they are entitled to, despite the efforts of PDCS and third sector organisations, we need to think innovatively. Clearly, we are not in a position to roll out a fully automated system today, and we need to build up the evidence base to establish what kind of information we need to get people more of the help that they deserve. The cost of the study was queried by my noble friend Lord Kirkwood. The current revised estimate of the cost of the whole study is £800,000.
Will we have the necessary information to evaluate at the end of the study? There are several elements to the evaluation. We will be asking a sample of the customers to participate in a face-to-face interview and using research contractors who know how to encourage participation. The interviews will be carried out in the place most convenient to the participants—probably in their own homes. Then we will track the take-up of the pension credit of people who have participated in the pilot. Those data are gathered automatically as part of the administrative system. Finally, we will gather the claims data from those who claim pension credit as part of the pilot. Again, that will be done via our own systems.
Homing in on the point on which I touched just now on national rollout, there are no plans for a national rollout. This is a study to help build the evidence base to see what we may be able to do in this area in the future. The complexity and the staff training required are not as daunting as my noble friend Lord Kirkwood suggested. The study will be run by a centralised team rather than small groups across the country. The definitions of income and capital are very much based on the definitions used in standard pension credit. If there are any changes, these will be introduced to make them simpler. We do not have any concerns about our ability to train staff to administer these payments effectively.
My noble friend mentioned the Daily Mail in connection with possible stories about lots of money whizzing off to the Costa Brava. The pension credit is not an exportable social security benefit. Therefore, I assure him that we will select people to take part only if they are resident in Great Britain.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked about process. Pensioners can claim housing benefit and council tax benefit alongside pension credit in a single phone call without the need for a signed claim form. Their calls to the 0800 claims number from a BT landline or from the six largest mobile phone networks are free. The noble Lord asked whether 2,000 was sufficient as a sample size. We are confident that 2,000 participants will deliver a sufficient range of circumstances to build a meaningful evidence base. He asked about recovery of money in different ways in terms of the interplay with other claims. I make it absolutely clear that under no circumstances will anyone receiving a payment under these regulations be asked to repay a penny. We will make sure that participants in the study are made fully aware of that fact.
Both the noble Lord and my noble friend asked about the 12-week length of the pilot. It was important to balance two factors; namely, to make the pilot long enough to collect enough meaningful information and to protect public funds which are in short supply. The determination is that 12 weeks is a reasonable compromise between those two objectives.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked about passporting and the exclusion of housing benefit and council tax benefit, as it is called at the moment. If we had added in those two benefits, it would have added a significant level of complexity and cost to the pilot. From the outset it was never the intention that the interaction between pension credit and housing benefit and council tax benefit should be factored into this study. Clearly, we expect to learn more about issues such as people’s attitudes to receiving automatic payments of benefit, which may have wider application to other benefits such as housing and council tax benefits.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Perhaps we can just be clear on this fairly narrow point. If somebody in receipt of payments under the pilot refrains during that period from making a claim for pension credit, is there a risk that they could be disadvantaged? If they have a claim for pension credit, I think it will open up some passporting opportunities. I was probing whether that passporting will exist in the interim if a payment is made under the pilot which is not the result of an actual claim to pension credit at that stage.
Lord Freud
I thank the noble Lord for that question. I will go back and double check this, but my understanding is that this pilot is entirely separate from any other activity. If an application which took in the passporting opportunities was made in the normal way during this pilot, there would not be a countervailing claim on the money paid by the pilot.
I have just received some support, for which I am more than grateful, confirming my understanding—it is therefore more than my understanding. The position is that there is no risk of disadvantage. If someone claims pension credit, they will get the full claim plus any passporting money, in addition to the pilot funds.
I turn to the question raised by my noble friend and the noble Lord on how many pensioners are paid directly into a bank account. More than 90 per cent of pensioners receive their pensions through direct payments into either a bank account or post office account. I refer to the standard pension to which they would be entitled. We are talking about a small group who do not receive their payments in that way.
I shall write to the noble Lord on his question about the number and content of visits to customers to encourage their take-up. I do not have that information to hand.
Let me draw my remarks to a close. The research study, through these draft regulations, will allow us to explore what potential exists to use data more effectively to improve the take-up of pension credit, to make more automatic awards of pension credit in the future when better data are available, or to simplify the benefit rules. Importantly, it would also help to throw light on whether people are happy about personal data being used in this way. I therefore commend these regulations to noble Lords.
Motion agreed.