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Oral Answers to Questions
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
1. What aid his Department has provided for economic development and good governance in Pakistan in the last 12 months; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
In the last 12 months, my Department has provided aid to Pakistan to help to put more children into school, improve macro-economic stability and support the efficient and effective delivery of basic services.
Andrew Stephenson
I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. Oxfam has said that 1 million Pakistanis fleeing from fighting remain in overcrowded camps and depend on emergency relief to survive. What is being done to help internally displaced persons and refugees in Pakistan?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend is right to identify that particular problem in Pakistan, and it was one of the problems I specifically looked at when I was in Pakistan some three weeks ago. My hon. Friend will know from his own very close relationship with members of the Pakistani diaspora in Britain that, as the Oxfam report makes clear, extensive work is being done in all the affected regions of Pakistan, but we are looking at our whole programme to see whether there is anything more we can do.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State agree that, although the aid for Pakistan is welcome, the Pakistani authorities must realise that the appalling murder, persecution and torture of the Ahmadiyya Muslims in Lahore, with the complicity of the authorities, must cease?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman is a Birmingham Member of Parliament, as am I, and, like me, he will have received representations from the diaspora in Birmingham on that specific point. I had the chance to visit Lahore in January, and I will carefully consider what he has said and see whether additional action is required.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
2. What steps he is taking to ensure transparency of his Department’s expenditure on aid.
The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
I launched the aid transparency guarantee on 3 June, which will ensure that UK and developing country citizens have full information about British aid.
Nadhim Zahawi
I am sure my right hon. Friend is aware of recent surveys showing that, in these difficult times, public support for international aid is waning. Does he agree that if we are to win the argument for his Department’s budget in the court of public opinion, we have to ensure that the transparency agenda is linked to achieving the goals of the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and it is always important to underline that there is strong cross-party commitment to this important budget partly for moral reasons, but also because it is very much in our national self-interest. My hon. Friend will have heard the words of the Foreign Secretary and myself about the importance of wiring more closely together defence, diplomacy and development, and he has my assurance that we will continue to do that with great care.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
In last Thursday’s debate, the Secretary of State was transparent enough to admit that he did not yet know how the extra £200 million for Afghanistan announced by the Prime Minister will be spent. Given the question asked by the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) and the increasing speculation that DFID money in Afghanistan will be spent on things over which the Secretary of State’s Department has no control, can he tell the House whether the Foreign Secretary—or, indeed, the Defence Secretary—has made any suggestions to him as to how that £200 million should be spent?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman will understand that a Government who are properly co-ordinated and working together will discuss all these matters to make sure that, as I have said, we wire together in the best possible interests defence, diplomacy and development. However, as the hon. Gentleman is well aware, as he has been a junior DFID Minister, the OECD Development Assistance Committee rules are what pertain in the spending of money on development, and the coalition Government have confirmed what his Government said: those rules will persist.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s initiative in setting up a more effective watchdog for transparency and accountability and to publish what DFID funds in more detail from January. That will provide a welcome reinforcement of the value of our aid. May I also say that the Select Committees are very anxious to start their work and anything he can do to ensure that they are constituted will help to enable the International Development Committee to take evidence from him next Thursday so we can expand on these issues?
Mr Mitchell
I am grateful to the Chair of the International Development Committee for his comments. He knows a great deal about these matters. The transparency guarantee is enormously important, first in reassuring British taxpayers by enabling them to see where the money is being spent and that it is being well spent; and secondly, in assisting in the building of civic society to ensure that people in the countries we are trying to help can hold their own political leaders to account. I look forward to discussing next week with his Committee these and other matters, especially independent evaluation.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
3. What funding his Department plans to allocate to the media high council in Rwanda in 2011-12.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Stephen O'Brien)
The UN-led programme of support to six oversight institutions in Rwanda, including the media high council, comes to an end in this financial year. There are no plans for further DFID support.
Mary Creagh
I thank the Minister for that reply, and I am relieved to hear that we will not be funding the media high council given that it has recently suspended Rwanda’s two leading independent newspapers, Umuseso and Umuvugizi, and given that a leading Rwandan journalist, Jean-Léonard Rugambage, was murdered in Rwanda in June. Will the Minister make urgent representations, through his Department, to the Rwandan authorities and make sure that we fund things that promote freedom of speech, particularly in the run-up to the elections?
Mr O'Brien
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for highlighting these issues. I assure her that when I visited Rwanda between 15 and 17 June I raised these very matters at all levels, including the very highest levels, in the various meetings I had. It is important that as part of the general support that DFID gives to help the Rwandan people, we press for the opening up of political space and that we make sure that pertains up to the election. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will take the opportunity, later this week in a meeting with the Rwandan high commissioner, to press the issues that the hon. Lady has rightly identified.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
4.. What support his Department has provided to the 1GOAL Education for All summit on 7 July 2010 in South Africa.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Stephen O'Brien)
DFID has given the 1GOAL campaign £804,800 so far and will give a further £195,200 this financial year. In addition, DFID offered support to the Government of South Africa for a summit during this World cup, and we have received an invitation to that summit this very morning. It will take place this Sunday and we are considering who should attend.
Luciana Berger
I am grateful to the Minister for his reply. There have been a great many goals in this World cup, but signing up to a road map to deliver education to 72 million children around the world by the next World cup could be the greatest goal. How will he ensure that the momentum of today’s education campaign summit is not lost between now and Brazil 2014?
Mr O'Brien
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her excellent question. She, like all hon. Members across the House and particularly Her Majesty’s Government through DFID, is passionate about the need to boost education, particularly for the millions who have yet to receive the benefit of a primary education. There are few bigger prizes to grasp, and she is right to say that we need to maintain the momentum of the 1GOAL campaign, which we have been very pleased to support. The summit that is about to take place should help to boost that momentum and we shall do all we can to help to maintain it.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
Will the Minister join me in congratulating the pupils and staff of Eaton Mill primary school in my constituency, who, like those in many schools up and down the country, have made an enormous effort to raise awareness of the 1GOAL project and the aims of improving education throughout Africa?
Mr O'Brien
I am delighted to join my hon. Friend in congratulating the school in his constituency that has so eagerly taken part in this campaign. About 8,000 schools in the United Kingdom have asked for supporter packs from the 1GOAL campaign, so it has had a real impact. There have also been lesson plans and other activities for schoolchildren and I dare say that many Members across the House have had similar experiences to my hon. Friend. That is a measure of the impact and success of the campaign to date.
Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister’s support for the 1GOAL summit, and I hope that he or one of his ministerial colleagues will accept the invitation that has been extended to the ministerial team. The Secretary of State has repeatedly told the House in recent weeks that he is focused on outcomes, so will the Minister tell me what steps, if any, he will take in the coming weeks and months to help to finance the removal of school fees, for how many children and in which countries?
Mr O'Brien
As part of the broad attempt to ensure that the millennium development goals are met, we are keen to do everything we can to boost access to education. What matters is what works, and we need to push very hard in a number of countries through programmes to ensure, if we can, that user fees are removed. In some areas vouchers could be used, but the main thing is to focus on what works, and we are certainly focused on that.
Mr Alexander
I note the lack of detail in the Minister’s response, and that he mentions vouchers. Does he still intend to implement his plans for voucher schemes, which were described by the director of UNESCO’s global monitoring report on education as
“using vulnerable people to advance an ideologically loaded, market-based vision for education, which would exclude millions of kids from school”?
Mr O'Brien
I am only interested in what works, and of course the precise detail will come out of the bilateral aid review that we are undertaking, of which the right hon. Gentleman is aware. Of course we will be happy to try to ensure that we learn the lessons of the experience for which he was responsible as regards the use of vouchers, particularly in relation to maternal health in south-east Asia.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
5. If he will conduct a review of the effectiveness of his Department’s programmes in Caribbean countries.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)
Yes, we will. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has commissioned a review of DFID’s bilateral aid programme to ensure we target UK aid where it is needed most and where it will make the most impact. The Caribbean programme will be included in that review.
Julian Smith
Much of the Caribbean is very poor, and it is currently being carved up by countries such as Taiwan, China and Venezuela. May I urge my right hon. Friend to recall the historical Commonwealth links and huge good will towards Britain in that region as he develops his policy in this area?
Mr Duncan
We do indeed have strong historical links with the Caribbean. This Government, rather unlike our predecessors, very much value our links with the Commonwealth and fully recognise our responsibilities to the overseas territories, including those in the Caribbean. We give support especially to combat crime and insecurity as well as the effects of climate change, and we stand ready to help in the event of any natural disaster.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
In relation to international development and the money that goes to the Caribbean countries, illegal trade in children from Haiti to the Dominican Republic has taken place and has been very apparent in the news in the last while. Can we use our influence to ensure that the money available through international development goes to stop that trade?
Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
6. What aid his Department is planning to provide to Colombia in 2010-11; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)
DFID does not provide direct financial assistance to the Government of Columbia. We provide aid primarily through multilateral organisations, including the European Commission and the World Bank. In addition, DFID supports a number of projects through non-governmental organisations to support human rights and poverty reduction. We are, of course, reviewing our programme and Colombia will be part of that.
Jim Sheridan
I thank the Minister for that response. Will he assure the House that any direct or indirect aid is channelled through humanitarian groups such as the International Red Cross? He is aware that Columbia is an extremely dangerous place to be for those who oppose the regime and, just recently, President-elect Santos ordered his troops to dress up in International Red Cross uniforms to carry out illegal activities. I am sure that the International Red Cross would welcome the opportunity to meet the Minister to talk through this issue.
Mr Duncan
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising this point because it is extremely important. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will meet the head of the International Red Cross next week and this will be a significant matter on the agenda for that meeting.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
7. Whether he plans to bring forward legislative proposals in this Session of Parliament to ensure that 0.7% of gross national income is spent on aid.
The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
The Government are fully committed to our pledge to spend 0.7% of national income on aid from 2013, as defined by the rules of the OECD Development Assistance Committee, and to enshrine that commitment in law. We are looking into the best way to proceed and will inform the House when a decision has been taken.
Albert Owen
I am grateful to the Secretary of State and I share his view that our aid commitment is both a moral imperative and in the UK national interest. Will he be more specific, however? The legislation that he is talking about will not cost the Chancellor a lot of money, so it will be easy to bring forward very quickly. Is he not a little worried that his Back Benchers might not be with him 100%, as many of them are uncomfortable ring-fencing his Department’s money?
Mr Mitchell
I do not know of any Back Bencher who is not a strong supporter of this law. I share with the hon. Gentleman a frustration about the length of time it is taking to bring forward the legislation, but he will have seen the wise words of the Select Committee Chair in the debate last week when he made it clear that it would be sensible to look carefully at the precise terms of the law. There is some gentle disagreement among members of the development community and it is obviously right for us to consider all these matters before proceeding.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
The Secretary of State will recognise the concern about recent newspaper reports of the amount of his Department’s budget that was spent on trade unions in this country and other politically correct causes. Given also the money that goes to China and India, and other money wasted by the EU, does he not accept that all that taken together undermines the case for the 0.7% requirement, particularly in this age of austerity?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend makes an important point about value for money and the effectiveness of British aid. That is why we have set up our bilateral review of every place where Britain is spending this important budget, so that we can be sure, as I said earlier, that for every £1 of hard-pressed taxpayers’ money, we are really getting 100p of value. He specifically mentions China. He will know that, on the day that the Government took office, we announced that we would stop all aid to China. The bilateral review is of course looking at India.
On trade unions, I would make two points. First, trade unions spend overseas money well on building the capacity of societies to hold their leaders and politicians to account. What is wrong, in my view, is funding development awareness. Sadly, the former Secretary of State felt it was right to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of British aid and development money on supporting Brazilian dance groups—
Mr Speaker
Order. We are grateful to the Secretary of State, but we do not need any more; the answer is simply too long.
Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)
8. What objectives he has set for the forthcoming UN millennium development goals summit in New York.
The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
The Government aim to reach international agreement on an action agenda to achieve the MDGs by 2015. That will require developed and developing countries to make results-based policy and financial commitments, including on the most off-track MDGs, such as those on maternal and child health.
Mr McCann
We know that the Prime Minister will be unable to attend the UN MDG summit in New York because of his impending paternity leave. I congratulate him on taking advantage of that family-friendly policy, championed by trade unions and many Opposition Members. Now that the Deputy Prime Minister will take over those duties in New York, how many times has the Secretary of State personally discussed the objectives for the forthcoming summit in New York with him?
Mr Mitchell
I have discussed the matter frequently with the Deputy Prime Minister. Indeed, shortly after this Question Time, I will hold a meeting with him specifically on that. The country is fortunate that the Deputy Prime Minister, with his deep knowledge of these matters, will go the MDG summit.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
I know that my right hon. Friend is aware of the recent UN report on the lack of progress on some MDGs that cites unmet commitments, inadequate resources and a lack of focus and accountability. As he is so interested in this subject, what further lead can he give at the New York summit later this year so that we make better progress?
Mr Mitchell
I had the opportunity to speak at the UN last week, specifically on the importance of injecting real vigour and energy into trying to ensure that we have a proper road map for progress in the last five years of the MDGs. [Interruption.] They have produced a real opportunity to reduce poverty and hunger around the world, and I am certain that the extensive work that will be done in the run-up to September will be effective in achieving that. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Far too many private conversations are taking place in the Chamber. It is very discourteous both to the Member asking the question and to the Minister, however strong a voice he or she may have, answering the question. We need a bit of order.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
9. Whether his Department plans to provide funding for tackling climate change other than by means of official development assistance from 2013.
The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
Decisions on UK international climate change finance will be determined through the comprehensive spending review.
Julie Hilling
I find that answer somewhat difficult at the moment. Clearly, we need to know what will happen in terms of any such division: will there be separate funding for climate change, or will all the money come from the international aid budget?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Lady will know that the fast start funding for climate change, which will come from the development budget—something that was confirmed by the previous Government when they were in office—takes up to 2012, but I hope she will understand that long-term decisions on climate change funding will need to come from the comprehensive spending review, and that work is happening at the moment.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
What account will the Minister take of the increasingly emerging conflict of interest and information on climate change as he develops the development goals?
Mr Mitchell
I am not sure that I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s point about disagreements on the basic science. I think there is agreement on the basic science, and an authoritative Dutch report published this morning underlines that very point. I would be happy to engage with the hon. Gentleman on what those doubts are, perhaps by letter.
Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)
10. What mechanism is used by his Department to decide what funding to provide to projects.
The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
All project proposals are developed within agreed strategies, discussed with relevant partners, and subject to careful appraisal. We are reviewing all major spending areas to ensure that they represent value for money.
Penny Mordaunt
In the case of countries in receipt of UK aid that also have considerable wealth and are pursuing an aggressive economic growth strategy, such as India, what mechanisms will also be in place to encourage and support them to ensure that they sort out their social problems in an equally aggressive manner?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend makes an important point that is at the heart of the bilateral review of British aid spending, which we are conducting at the moment. She specifically mentions India, but India is different from China in that an Indian’s average income is only a third that of a Chinese. India has more poor people than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, and, through the Commonwealth, we have deep links with India. We will consider all these matters in the context of that bilateral review. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I appeal to the House to calm down. A number of Members, including very senior and distinguished Members, are conducting animated conversations from a sedentary position, but I want to hear Andrew Gwynne.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
11. When he plans to assess the effectiveness of the operation of the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Act 2010; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)
I acknowledge the success of the hon. Member in initiating this important Act, which is a key part of action against so-called vulture funds. It means that UK courts of law can no longer be used to pursue excessive claims against some of the poorest countries on their historic debts, ensuring that resources are available to tackle poverty. We will review the effectiveness of this new Act before the sunset clause expires next June.
Andrew Gwynne
May I take this opportunity to place on record my thanks and appreciation to Sally Keeble, who successfully steered the Bill through while I was recovering from illness? Given the importance of this legislation to the 40 most indebted countries, will the Minister please ensure that it continues so that these important measures remain in place in the UK and that never again will a British court be used to take the third-world debts from these countries?
Mr Duncan
I acknowledge the work of the hon. Gentleman and the former hon. Lady in putting the legislation on the statute book. It was there as a result of the wash-up in the last Parliament, and so enjoyed cross-party agreement. The Act has been in place for only a month, and we will examine its effectiveness in the hope that it can be shown to work and can be renewed in the future.
Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)
12. What his most recent assessment is of the effectiveness of his Department's contribution to the achievement of the millennium development goal on the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Stephen O'Brien)
While globally MDG 1 is the most on-track MDG, we recognise that in Africa and some parts of Asia it is still well off track. DFID is fully committed to meeting the target. For example, in Ethiopia we are helping 7.5 million people to access more and better-quality food, and in Bangladesh we are providing 1 million people with agricultural services, helping to increase incomes by 50%.
Richard Ottaway
Is not the most effective way of achieving those millennium development goals to stabilise world population growth? What focus is his Department giving to that programme?
Mr O'Brien
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his election as Chair of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, and I pay tribute to his expertise in the House on population, and, above all, to his recognition that, as part of all our reviews and DIFD programmes, we are embedding the choice for women to decide whether and when to have children, and to ensure that that helps to underpin not just MDG 1 but many of the other MDGs.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
As the millennium development goals have been developed, what financial and technical support will the Department give to the newly created UN Women’s Agency to make a genuine difference to women in poverty in the third world? It is well recognised that direct help for women is the best bet for both families and communities.
Mr O'Brien
We pressed for that to take place, and I am aware that the candidates who will be considered for the post are well forward in the process. We are encouraged that that is going to be taking place, and it has our full support.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
13. What steps he is taking to seek to ensure that the millennium development goals relating to education are met.
The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
Achieving the millennium development goals, including those for education, is at the heart of the Government’s development policy. We are reviewing all our programmes to ensure we focus on those that deliver maximum value for money.
Mr Williams
I thank the Secretary of State for that response, but may I also commend to him the Global Campaign for Education’s work on this matter, in particular its request that the UK Government commit themselves to a 10-year sector plan for education? If there is one thing that education needs, particularly primary education, it is stability in those funding streams.
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about consistency and clarity of funding, and we will be looking at all these points in connection with the bilateral review of how we spend money in each of our target countries. As he knows, an important conference is taking place this weekend in South Africa, which I hope a Minister will be able to attend.
Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 7 July.
The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
As the House will be aware, today is the fifth anniversary of the 7 July terrorist attacks on central London. I am sure that everyone in the House and people in the country will remember where they were, and what they were doing, when that dreadful news came through. Our hearts should go out to the families and friends of those who died. They will never be forgotten. Our thoughts are also with those who were injured, physically and mentally, by the dreadful events of that day. It was a dreadful day, but it was also a day that will remain—I believe—a symbol of the enduring bravery of the British people.
This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Alun Michael
Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating the people of Somaliland on the successful, peaceful and transparent election of a new President? As the Somaliland republic has now been a beacon of democracy in Africa for nearly 20 years, will the Prime Minister ensure that the UK keeps its promise to increase engagement with a new Government with democratic credentials?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman is right to raise this important issue concerning an area of the world of enormous importance for our own security. I join him in welcoming the peaceful and credible elections in Somaliland. They are an example of genuine democracy in an area of the world not noted for it. The UK provided funding for election supervision, and we are keen to engage with the new Government. I believe, and I am sure the whole House would agree, that the key is to prevent terrorist groups from establishing a foothold in Somaliland, as they have done in Somalia. That is vital, and, yes, the Government will continue to engage.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
The Prime Minister will not be surprised to hear that I intend to continue campaigning to keep the Hercules fleet at RAF Lyneham in my constituency as long as I can. However, if, at the end of the day, it moves to Brize Norton in his constituency, and takes with it the jobs and economic prosperity that go with it, will he at least use all his good offices to ensure that we find some way of bringing jobs and economic prosperity back into the vacated site at Lyneham?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend has fought a long and noble campaign on this issue, and has made very strong arguments—I know how strong they are, because every time I get into a Hercules, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere, the pilots always immediately complain about having to move from his constituency to mine. He makes a good point about economic development, and we will ensure that, if this goes ahead, we will see good, strong economic development in his constituency.
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
I support what the Prime Minister has said on the fifth anniversary of the terrible 7/7 bombings. Today we remember those who were killed and injured, and their families and friends. We pay tribute to the emergency services, which responded with such care and such courage, and we stand with the Government in our determination to defeat those who would bring terror to our streets.
There has been a lot of progress on tackling domestic violence, but still every year hundreds of thousands of women are victims of it. Many of the perpetrators are sent to prison—rightly, in my view—but now the Justice Secretary has embarked on a sentencing review, and has suggested that short sentences do not work. However, often what is needed in domestic violence cases is not rehabilitation, but a clear message to the perpetrator that it must not be repeated, and a clear message to the victim that the justice system takes this seriously. That is what a short sentence can do. Will the Prime Minister confirm that the sentencing review will not stop magistrates giving short prison sentences for domestic violence?
The Prime Minister
First, I thank the right hon. and learned Lady for what she said about the anniversary and the tribute that she rightly paid to the emergency services, which played an unbelievably brilliant role on that day, and to the many people who helped them.
The right hon. and learned Lady is absolutely right to raise the issue of domestic violence. For too many years it was an issue that police forces and prosecutors did not deal with properly, and to be fair to the last Government, good progress has been made over the past decade. I agree that there are occasions when short sentences are required, and indeed the Lord Chancellor takes exactly the same view. He said in the speech—[Interruption.] It is very important to read the speech, not just the headline. He said:
“In my opinion, abolishing all short-term sentences altogether…would be a step too far. We need penalties for the anti-social…recidivist.”
We need to ensure that magistrates have that power, but the review is important to try to ensure that we get this right.
Ms Harman
I thank the Prime Minister for that reassurance. It is reassuring that the promise that the Liberal Democrats made at the election is not going to be carried forward. I notice that the Justice Secretary is not looking very cheerful; perhaps he should go down to Ronnie Scott’s to cheer himself up.
May I congratulate the Prime Minister on, instead of listening to his new partner, listening to his mother? In the election he told us that his mother was a magistrate and that she told him that magistrates needed the power of short sentences. Quite often, it is the right thing for somebody not to listen to their new partner but to listen to their mother, so I am glad that he has done that on this occasion.
I turn to something else mentioned in the election campaign. The Prime Minister said that any Minister who comes to him with cuts to front-line services
“will be sent straight back to their department to go away and think again.”
Does that apply to the Home Secretary?
The Prime Minister
First, may I say that in my experience there are very few people more cheerful than the Lord Chancellor. He is celebrating his 40th anniversary in this House, and he likes to point out that he was elected before the Chancellor of the Exchequer was born. He brings enormous experience and good humour to all our counsels.
I am delighted that the right hon. and learned Lady has brought up the issue of my mother, who served on the Newbury bench for many, many years. I have to say that one of the biggest challenges she had—[Interruption.] As well as me, one of the biggest challenges that she had, and one of the reasons why she needed to hand out so many short sentences, was badly behaved CND protestors outside Greenham Common. [Interruption.] I do not know whether the right hon. and learned Lady was there. Anyway, if she wants to have more episodes of “Listen With Mother”, I am very happy for that at any time she would like.
On the Home Office, of course we have to make savings. We have to make savings across Government. It is not going to be easy, but absolutely we must ensure that we do everything we can to protect the front line. However, I simply do not believe that when we look at the Home Office budget there are not examples of waste and inefficiency and things that we can do better. The right hon. and learned Lady went into the election calling for 20% cuts in every Department. That was her policy—a policy of 5% cuts each year. Ours is 6% cuts each year, so these are Labour cuts as well.
Ms Harman
We went into the election very clear about protecting police numbers. I am asking the Prime Minister a straightforward question, which he has so far failed to answer. At Prime Minister’s questions, he was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) this very simple, straightforward question:
“Will there be fewer police officers at the end of this Parliament”—[Official Report, 23 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 287.]—
compared with now? He skirted around her question and did not answer it. Will he answer it now?
The Prime Minister
Of course there will be difficult decisions, but let me—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] A simple question was put to the shadow Home Secretary before the last election. [Interruption.] Wait for it:
“Andrew Neil: Can you guarantee if you form…the next government that police numbers won’t fall?
Alan Johnson: No”.
Ms Harman
But my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) went on to say—I think that that was selective quoting—that we would guarantee the funding that would ensure police numbers and the numbers of police community support officers. We were absolutely clear about that. The Prime Minister’s Lib Dem partners said that they would have 3,000 more police officers on the beat, while he said that he would protect front-line services. Is either of those promises going to be kept? People who are concerned about crime want to know.
The Prime Minister
There is nothing selective about the word no. That is what the shadow Home Secretary said when he was asked whether he could guarantee that there would be no cuts in police numbers. Let us remember why we are here. We have a £155 billion budget deficit. The Labour party went into the last election promising 50% cuts in capital spending and 20% cuts in departmental spending. We are clearing up the mess that Labour made. I sat at the G20 table last weekend and, looking round the table, thought, “Who’s got the biggest budget deficit? Is it Brazil? No. Is it Spain? No. Is it Argentina? No.” Labour left us in a situation where we get lectured by Argentina on the state of our budget deficit.
Ms Harman
If the right hon. Gentleman had read the Office for Budget Responsibility report, he would have seen that its forecast for Government borrowing was lower than the forecast that we made before the election—if he had read it, he would probably also have found that the Chair would not have resigned immediately after being appointed. Is it not clear that these are the Government’s crime policies—that the right hon. Gentleman is threatening to take away the police officers people want on the beat, cutting down the right of local residents to CCTV and making it harder for the police to use DNA evidence? Those are his policies. Let me ask him a straightforward question: does he think that those policies are more likely to make crime go down or go up?
The Prime Minister
The point is that under the last Government violent crime and gun crime went through the roof. The right hon. and learned Lady—[Interruption.] They almost doubled.
The Prime Minister
The shadow Foreign Secretary is shouting and shaking his head. Gun crime and violent crime almost doubled under the last Government. There is going to be a rush of new Labour memoirs coming up, so perhaps hon. Members should start with the report of the spin doctor who worked for the last Prime Minister, who—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am very clear what is in order and what is not, and that is the end of the matter.
Ms Harman
Before the election, we were hearing all about tougher policies and more police from the Conservatives; now all that seems to have sailed off with those prison ships that the right hon. Gentleman was promising to buy. We were clear: we said when we first came into government that we would bring crime down, and we did. Will he promise that under his Government he will keep crime coming down? If he will not make that promise, it is only because he knows, as we all know, that his policies will put crime up.
The Prime Minister
Mr Speaker, I was only trying to boost sales.
I can promise the right hon. and learned Lady one thing: I will not be wandering round my constituency in a stab-proof vest. That is what it came to under the last Government. Gun crime went up, violent crime went up, reoffending of prisoners went up, every prison place cost £45,000, more than 10% of prisoners should not have been there because they are foreigners, half of them are on drugs and 40% of them commit a crime on the way out of prison. That is the record that we have inherited, and that is what we will be clearing up.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
The latest report from the US Department of Defence to Congress highlighted the speed and decisiveness of insurgent propaganda in Afghanistan as a key threat to allied forces. What can the coalition do to counter this threat, given that the longer it goes on, the harder our task becomes?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point, which is that we are not just fighting a war on the ground; there is a propaganda war as well. We have to demonstrate the progress we are making in training up the Afghan army and the Afghan police, and in spreading security and governance across Afghanistan—particularly, in our case, in southern Afghanistan. I can tell my hon. Friend that we will be publishing a monthly update and having quarterly statements in the House to ensure that we keep the British public fully informed and on side as we take difficult decisions in this conflict.
Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)
Q2. In the run-up to the general election, the Conservatives claimed to be the party that would support small businesses, yet in their first Budget they cancelled tax breaks for the computer games industry, which is crucial to my constituency. Can the Prime Minister tell not only me and the House but the hundreds of people in Dundee who are employed in the computer games industry and the students who study at Abertay university exactly why his Chancellor feels that that tax break was poorly targeted?
The Prime Minister
We believe that what matters is having low tax rates, and what we did in the Budget—which the House voted on last night—was to cut the small company rate of corporation tax back down to 20p from 22p and set out a path for getting corporation tax down to 24% by the end of this Parliament. That would give us one of the lowest tax rates in the G8, the G20 or anywhere in Europe. That is what we will benefit from, but I note that the Labour party voted against those tax reductions.
Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con)
Q3. How can my right hon. Friend reassure my constituents about the planning system? Under the last Government, my local councils turned down some massive developments such as the Pyestock mega depot, only to have those decisions overturned by Ministers who had never even visited the site. How can we re-engage local people in these local decisions?
The Prime Minister
I want to reassure my right hon. Friend, because it is right that local authorities should be taking decisions that affect people and that those decisions should be taken as locally as possible. We are scrapping the targets and the bureaucracy that we inherited from the Labour party. I can tell him that, since the election, we have managed to scrap the new unitary councils; the comprehensive area assessments have gone; regional spatial strategies—gone; regional assemblies—gone; home information packs—gone; and Labour’s ports tax and bins tax have both gone.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
If the respect agenda is to mean anything, surely it should include proper consultation with the devolved Governments and legislatures on fundamental constitutional and political reform, which affects all parts of the United Kingdom and will affect the composition of the devolved legislatures. Will the Prime Minister therefore undertake urgently to enter into discussions with the representatives of the devolved Administrations and, if necessary, revise his proposals in the light of what they have to say? Let us have a proper respect agenda.
The Prime Minister
Of course these discussions need to take place, and they will take place—[Interruption.] Let me answer the question very directly, because I listened very carefully to the statement by the Deputy Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) on this issue. The date and the nature of the referendum are Westminster Parliament issues and it is right that they should be brought before the Westminster Parliament first; it does not make sense to take them in front of other Parliaments and Assemblies first. That is the way to do it—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Members should not shout at the Prime Minister in that way. First of all, it is rude. Secondly, it delays the progress of our proceedings, and we really must not have it.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
Q4. Can the Prime Minister reassure concerned Equitable Life victims in my constituency that the Government remain committed to ensuring justice for policyholders?
The Prime Minister
I can certainly give my hon. Friend that reassurance. We are committed to a Bill in this Session. This needs to happen. It was in 2008 that the parliamentary ombudsman referred to a “decade of regulatory failure”. The fact that we have had to wait until now for this to be done is wrong. The last Government had plenty of opportunities to grip this, but I am afraid that, in quite a cynical way, they were just waiting and waiting, so that more of the Equitable Life policyholders were dying off. That is disgraceful, and we need to get this done.
Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)
Last Saturday afternoon, I joined the community of Stonehouse in my constituency to welcome home Sergeant Gary Jamieson. Sergeant Jamieson, from the Scots Guards, lost both legs and his left arm in an explosion in Afghanistan. The most humbling aspect of meeting Sergeant Jamieson was his distinct lack of bitterness. He fully supports the mission in Afghanistan, and strongly believes that the British forces there are making a difference. May I ask the Prime Minister to join me in paying tribute to a true British hero, and does he agree that the most fitting way in which to pay tribute to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, and those who have suffered the most terrible injuries, is to stay in Afghanistan until the job is done?
The Prime Minister
I certainly join the hon. Gentleman in paying the tribute that he has rightly paid to Sergeant Jamieson and to all who have served. Anyone who has met some of the soldiers—when visiting Headley Court, or elsewhere—who have lost limbs in combat, through improvised explosive devices or in other ways, cannot help being incredibly impressed by their spirit and bravery, and their determination to go on and live as full lives as possible.
We have set out very clearly what we want to achieve in Afghanistan. This is the key year, when we surge up the military forces and surge up the political pressure. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence will make a statement later today about how we can best do that, and how we can ensure that our forces are properly spread across Helmand province so that we can really have the effect that we want.
Let me be clear. Do I think that we should be there, in a combat role or in significant numbers, in five years’ time? No, I do not. This is the time to get the job done, and the plan that we have envisages our ensuring that we will not be in Afghanistan in 2015. We have already been in Helmand for four or five years, and, obviously, we have been in Afghanistan since 2001. It is time to maximise the pressure now, and then to bring our forces home as we train the Afghan army and police force to do the job that needs to be done, which is to keep the country secure. That is our goal, that is in our national security interest, and that is what we will do.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
Q5. Park home owners are often elderly and vulnerable, and some suffer greatly as a result of the actions of a small minority of site owners. They suffer threats, intimidation and neglect. Will the Prime Minister meet a small delegation, and me, so that we can discuss how park home owners may be better protected?
The Prime Minister
I have every sympathy with what the hon. Lady has said. I suspect that many Members—including me—have encountered problems with park home owners who have been really badly treated by, frankly, pretty disreputable site owners. We all know of cases in which people who want to sell are put under pressure, and the rules are used to prevent them from obtaining fair value. It is not right, and it is not fair. The Minister for Housing, my right hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), is looking into the issue, and I think it is probably best for the hon. Lady to meet him in order to ensure that we have robust rules and the right approach, so that the rights of park home owners are respected.
Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)
On Friday, my constituent Zac Olumegbon was murdered in a planned attack close to his school. He was just 15, and I know that the thoughts of the entire House will be with his family at this very difficult time. He was the 13th teenager to lose a life needlessly in our capital city. Can the Prime Minister tell me, the rest of the House and the country what his Government are doing, and will be doing, to stop this happening in our communities?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise that case, about which everyone will have read. It is absolutely horrific, and it seemed so planned and premeditated. It is appalling to think that things like this happen on our streets. What will we do about it? I think that we need short-term measures, and then much longer-term measures as well.
In terms of the sentencing review, it is clear to me that we need to send the strongest possible signal that carrying a knife on our streets is just unacceptable. We need to send the signal that it is not a defensive measure, that it is not a cool thing to do, that it should not happen, and that the punishment will be tough. That, in my view, is the short-term measure that we need. As for the longer-term measures, we must do more to strengthen communities, to strengthen families, and to give people an alternative to the gangs towards which they will otherwise be drawn. Too many young people join a gang because they do not have other networks, help, respect and hope in their lives. That is a long-term agenda, it is an agenda that I know is shared on both sides of the House, and we must pursue it.
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
Q6. Can my right hon. Friend give an assurance that he will resist further moves towards economic governance of the United Kingdom by the European Union, and that we will not see the vetting of our Budget plans by the European Commission before those plans are presented to the House?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is entirely right. The UK Budget should be shown to the UK Parliament—the Westminster Parliament—before it is shown to anyone else, and that will always be the case under this Government. I am pleased to report that subsequent to the publication of our Budget, a number of international bodies—such as the OECD, the EU, the G8 and the G20—have recognised that it is an extremely good Budget that will help to put this country back on track.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
Can the Prime Minister give the House a clear pledge today on child poverty? Will there be fewer children in this country living in relative poverty by the end of this Parliament—yes or no?
The Prime Minister
We are absolutely committed to meeting the child poverty targets. I remind the hon. Gentleman that this Budget, despite all its difficulties, does not add a single family to child poverty, in contrast to the last Government, who put up child poverty by 100,000—[Interruption.] They shake their heads. Check the figures and come back to me.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
Q7. Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that all new academies that will be set up will be obliged to accept children with special educational needs?
The Prime Minister
I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance. Academies will be required to ensure that pupils with special educational needs are admitted on the same basis as other schools. Children with special educational needs have special needs, and a compassionate, decent and tolerant country will ensure that they get the help, support, education and love that they need.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
The chief executive of Sheffield Forgemasters, Dr Graham Honeyman, was last year presented with a lifetime achievement award by the Institute of Directors, but various Government Front Benchers have made unwarranted personal attacks on him in the media. Will the Prime Minister apologise now for those unjustified attacks on a highly regarded business man?
The Prime Minister
I am sorry to disagree with the hon. Lady, but no one has made an attack. This is an excellent company. The question is whether it is an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money to give it to a business that could raise that money by diluting its shareholding. Labour simply does not understand. It handed out money before the election without asking whether it was value for money. No wonder we are in such a complete mess.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
Q8. The UK has a splendid reputation for the quality of its agricultural science and research, and these skills will be needed to face up to the challenges of climate change and an increasing world population. Will the Prime Minister confirm that Government and EU policy decisions on such matters will be taken on the basis of sound science and proportionate regulation?
The Prime Minister
I know that the hon. Gentleman is a member of the all-party group on science and technology in agriculture. These are difficult issues, but my view is that we should be guided by the science. We should also be guided by what consumers want, and it is vital that we have accurate labelling. That will really be the key to ensuring that we make progress with this issue in a way that keeps the public on side and allows them to understand what it is that they are buying and consuming.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
The whole House will be aware of and concerned by the ongoing incident in the north-east. The killing of Chris Brown and the wounding of Samantha Stobbart took place in my town of Birtley, and our thoughts and prayers should go out to their families and friends, and to PC David Rathband and his folk. Can the Prime Minister update the House on this issue, and can he assure us that all lessons will be learned from this incident? Can we especially look again at getting guns off our streets?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman is right to raise this case, and the whole country is thinking of those who have lost their lives and those who have been injured. It is a horrific case. I do not think that it is right now to start to talk about learning lessons: this is an ongoing case. The Home Secretary has been briefed by the chief constable and I know that the House and the country will wish the police well in their search for this individual, so that we can put a stop to the horrendous spree that is taking place.
Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)
Q9. Voting by non-resident home owners in regions such as Cornwall is becoming a contentious issue. Councils are not checking whether people are voting in two locations in the same election, and local residents are worried that sometimes election results might be skewed. Will the Prime Minister meet me, or invite one of his ministerial colleagues to do so, to discuss this issue?
The Prime Minister
I am very happy that one of my colleagues should have a meeting with the hon. Gentleman. It is important that we make sure that electoral registers are accurate. It is also important to recognise that it is an offence to vote at a general election in two different places. However, I think that there are problems with saying whether second home owners can vote. I think that a number of hon. Members might take rather a dim view, as some of them might not be able to vote in their own constituencies, but I am happy for the hon. Gentleman to have a meeting with the Minister responsible for electoral registration.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
Q10. What discussions he has had with ministerial colleagues on the future funding of the decent homes programme.
The Prime Minister
First, may I welcome the hon. Lady to the House?
Good quality social housing is vital, especially in areas such as her constituency. It is completely unacceptable today that 58% of the housing in her constituency is not of a decent standard. We have a huge backlog of work to be carried out. We have ploughed £170 million back into social housing schemes this financial year, which the last Government promised but did not fund. Clearly, the decent homes programme will have to be looked at in the spending review, but I understand the force of argument in her constituency particularly.
Rushanara Ali
I thank the Prime Minister for that reply. Is he aware that some 7,000 council homes in Tower Hamlets still need to be brought up to the decent homes standard? The previous Government committed £220 million towards addressing the problem. Will his Government honour that commitment to my constituents?
The Prime Minister
As I said, we have filled in some of the black hole left by the last Government because a promise of extra spending was made but the money was not found. While we made the £6 billion-worth of cuts to start sorting out the finances, we used some of the saved money to fill in the black hole so that those social housing schemes could go ahead. Clearly, the decent homes programme is important. We have to make sure that it provides value for money, but the hon. Lady’s constituency has very great needs, with so many substandard houses.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
Q11. My nine-year-old constituent, Paisley Ward, says that she and her brother learned to swim because it was free. Paisley is worried that her little sister will not be able to learn because this Government want to charge. In her letter, Paisley says, “please, please stop this madness”. Will the Prime Minister listen to Paisley and have a rethink?
The Prime Minister
First, may I congratulate the hon. Lady? Many people in this country think that this is a good time to leave politics and go into the media. May I congratulate someone who left the warmth of the GMTV sofa in order to sit on a green Bench here?
The hon. Lady raises an important case, but I have to tell her that not all Labour councils were able to deliver the free swimming pledge. I am afraid that this is one of the things, like many others, that it will not always be possible to guarantee in the incredibly straitened times that we are living in, when we have a £155 billion budget deficit to deal with.
Blockade of Gaza
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
I have a petition on behalf of Mrs Elizabeth Morley and other constituents from Ceredigion on the subject of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
The petition states:
The Petition of the people of Ceredigion,
Declares that the Petitioners believe that the Government should take all actions within its power to end the blockade of Gaza.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to condemn the blockade on Gaza and Israel’s attack on peace activists in international waters; and urges the Government to demand of Israel the release of all activists detained and to urge all international institutions, including the UN, the EU and human rights agencies and organisations to work towards ending Israeli impunity.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
[P000842]
Afghanistan
(14 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
Mr Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to update the House on our operations in Afghanistan. As the Prime Minister has said, we intend to make regular updates to the House.
As this is a complex subject, I have made maps available to assist hon. Members. I am grateful to you for your support, Mr Speaker. These are now available in the Vote Office, and the Whips on both sides of the House are distributing them. In addition, I will obviously be happy to arrange further briefings at the Ministry of Defence, should Members find them useful.
The Prime Minister reminded us today of the ongoing sacrifices made by our armed forces in Afghanistan. In the face of such losses, we should be in no doubt about the importance of the mission—particularly today, the fifth anniversary of the London bombings in 2005. It is vital to our national security that we have a stable Afghanistan that is able to maintain its own security and prevent al-Qaeda from returning.
As I made clear in Washington last week, we are a committed member of the international coalition of 46 countries in Afghanistan. We have a clear political strategy, and a clear military counter-insurgency plan to support it. The focus now is on delivering, and we can be confident that General Petraeus will build on the considerable success of General McChrystal.
We face many challenges. Progress has been slower in some areas than others, particularly on the political side. We can expect success in counter-insurgency to be gradual, cumulative and hard won, but there has, nevertheless, been considerable progress. Through a UK lens, it would be easy to assume that all of Afghanistan is like Helmand. In fact, many parts of the country are largely secure, with low levels of violence. In Kabul, the Afghans themselves have assumed responsibility for security, and have proved themselves capable of dealing with the localised threats that have emerged.
We are also making good progress on building up the Afghan security forces, so that this pattern can be repeated elsewhere. The Afghan army has been growing steadily over the years—and by 20% in recent months—to about 130,000 troops now. We are playing our part, and the Government have recently approved the expenditure of up to £189 million on new surveillance, communications and logistics equipment for our bases, as part of Britain’s ongoing commitment to support the effective partnering of the Afghan security forces.
In southern Afghanistan, the story of this year has been one of the Afghans themselves increasingly coming to the fore in the fight against the insurgency. In Kandahar, and under the direct oversight of President Karzai, Afghan security forces are leading operations as part of a rising tide of security in order to set the conditions for improved Afghan governance. In Helmand, Afghan and international security assistance force units have together succeeded in expanding the authority of the Afghan Government to 11 out of the 14 districts, by driving insurgent fighters out of the population centres of Babaji and Nad-e-Ali, while consolidating previous gains in Lashkar Gah, Now Zad, Nawa and Gereshk. The situation in Marjah remains challenging, but counter-insurgencies are about progressively winning the confidence of the local people, and the US Marines are well placed to succeed.
Elsewhere in central Helmand, where our presence is more established, we have seen considerable success. In Nad-e-Ali, British troops have been operating alongside the Afghans to secure the district centre and allow unfettered access to local roads Improved security is allowing effective governance to flourish and trade to grow. In May, for example, around 3,000 Nad-e-Ali residents elected a more representative district community council. ISAF now intends to reinforce this success. For that reason, I have accepted an ISAF request for a temporary deployment of elements of our theatre reserve battalion, the 2nd Battalion the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment. The theatre reserve battalion is a standing force based in Cyprus, which I have instructed should be used only for time-limited deployments to fulfil specific tasks. This deployment will meet those criteria. The additional forces will be used to give commanders additional flexibility to reinforce progress in central Helmand this summer.
In a counter-insurgency campaign, the people are the prize. It is hugely important that we strike the right balance between the numbers of the civilian population and the size of the security forces available to protect them. The Prime Minister and I regularly argued in opposition that British troops in Helmand were too thinly spread and that we had insufficient force densities for effective counter-insurgency. That is why we welcome the arrival of more than 18,000 US Marines, whose presence is allowing us to deliver a better and more realistic distribution of tasks within the international coalition.
As the House is aware, ISAF has already transferred security responsibility for Musa Qala and Kajaki to US forces, who are building on our achievements there. Lieutenant General Rodriguez, ISAF’s operational commander, will today announce the next phase of this process—I understand that he will do so within the next hour. ISAF intends to restructure its forces in the Farah and Nimroz provinces so that it can consolidate a US marine brigade in northern Helmand, which will assume responsibility for security in Sangin later this year. This will simplify current command arrangements and enable UK troops to be redeployed to reinforce progress in the key districts of central Helmand. The theatre reserve battalion will then withdraw. The result will be a coherent and equitable division of the main populated areas of Helmand between three brigade-sized forces, with the US in the north and south, and the UK-led Task Force Helmand, alongside our Danish and Estonian allies, in the central population belt.
We have been closely consulted by ISAF, and fully support this plan. In Sangin, UK forces have made huge progress in the face of great adversity. The district centre has been transformed. Helmand, as a whole, is a safer place as a result of our endeavours and sacrifices there. I am sure that the whole House will join me in paying tribute to those who have lost their lives in Sangin, and those who continue to serve there.
The operations in Afghanistan, though geographically distant, are of vital importance to our national security. On the ground, we continue to make progress. There will be hard days ahead, but the further changes that I have announced will mean more manpower and greater focus for the key terrain of central Helmand. We have the right strategy, and we are determined to succeed. I commend this statement to the House.
Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)
I thank the Defence Secretary for his statement, for early sight of it and for the indications that he gave me yesterday about the broad outline of what he was going to say today. That is good news for our ability to continue to support, from all parts of the House, our forces’ operations in Helmand province.
I welcome what the Defence Secretary said about his commitment to regular updates to the House, and his offer of briefings in the Ministry of Defence, but will he consider continuing the direct military briefings that started last year for Members here at the House of Commons? They were appreciated by Members on both sides, and I know that the all-party Army group has written to him and asked him to continue them. If he could, that would be appreciated. I know that it is onerous in terms of his time, but I ask him to consider doing so.
I totally agree about the purpose of the mission. Our forces are in Afghanistan to protect our national security and to keep us safe. The right hon. Gentleman says that we have a clear counter-insurgency plan and the military tactics to support that plan, but he knows that there is some concern and confusion over whether there are deadlines. Will the Government do their level best to clear up that confusion, so that people know the exact commitments? Is our combat mission in Afghanistan to continue on a conditions-based footing until the Afghan forces can take over, as was the situation, or is there a very clear deadline from the new Government stating that our combat mission will end on a particular date, irrespective of the conditions in Afghanistan? It is enormously important to clear up that point.
The right hon. Gentleman felt the need to say that, in opposition, he and the current Prime Minister repeatedly said that there were issues of force density, but I ask him to accept that it was not only he in opposition who felt the need to concentrate on and deal with force densities, because we in government had exactly the same priorities. Before force densities could be addressed, however, we needed to have someone to hand those districts on to, so, before the arrival of the American uplift, we could not hand on Musa Qala, Kajaki or Sangin to anyone other than the Taliban. Thankfully, the American uplift now gives us an opportunity to rebalance our forces in Afghanistan, and we have been doing that for some time. I understand that his announcement today is simply a continuation of an ongoing process. Does that effectively end the need for force rebalancing? In the British area of operations, do we now have the same ratio of forces to population as the Americans have on their side of the line?
The right hon. Gentleman said that Marjah is very challenging. Does he intend to deploy elements, as he said, of the theatre reserve battalion to the American—Marjah—area of operations? If so, for how long, and in what numbers? He says “elements”. Does that mean the whole theatre reserve battalion? Do we now, effectively, have no reserve for the rest of the deployment, or are some elements of the theatre reserve battalion still available to cover other contingencies that might arise?
We had already agreed in principle to hand command in Sangin over to the American brigade. I understand that the Secretary of State is now saying that it is not only in terms of command—the Americans themselves will take over in Sangin. When will that happen? Has he any idea what forces will be deployed, and in what numbers, into the Sangin area?
Does the Secretary of State accept that there will be mixed emotions, and pretty deep emotions, among many elements of our armed forces who have served in Helmand—not only those who have experienced injury, but those who have lost loved ones, which includes families back here, and everybody who has served in the most dangerous part of our theatre of operations? Our forces went out there on a daily basis to patrol, fully knowing the risks that they faced, and the whole House must pay tribute to the immense bravery, courage and resilience that they have shown over a period of time. They have achieved some considerable improvements in Sangin, but I think that the Defence Secretary will accept that we are still handing on a challenge. We have not got as far as we ideally would have hoped to get in Helmand before this hand-on.
Dr Fox
I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his support for the specific proposals that I have set out today and for his general support on the mission in Afghanistan. He was very generous with the briefings that he made available to the Opposition when he was in government, and we will continue the same courtesy. I also fully intend to continue the briefings for Members of Parliament begun under the previous Government; they are very valuable. In addition, as I said, if we are able to provide more detailed briefings in the Ministry of Defence, we are happy to do so. We should not, in any way, shape or form, be shy about providing any Member of this House with the information they require to make better sense of what is happening in this most important national security mission.
The shadow Secretary of State is entirely correct that it took until the American surge was fully under way for us to be better able to have sensible force densities. He asked me directly about comparisons between the British and Americans. Combat Team North has a population of 441,000, which is 37% of the population; Task Force Helmand has 388,000, or 32%; and Combat Team South has 370,000, or 31%. These are much better matches in terms of force density. He asks if this will effectively be it. Well, not necessarily, as there will be changes in the mission, but we will want to continue this pattern, or shape, in terms of force density. As he says, we have reached the end point, at least for now, of a process that began some time ago.
On the size of the theatre reserve, we will have some 300 personnel, and they will stay there until October. The size of the current UK force is about 1,000—I think that the exact number is 1,008. The exact number that the Americans put in will of course be for their commanders to determine in terms of the security situation that they find.
As regards 2015, I can only repeat what the Prime Minister has said—that British troops will not be there in a combat role, or in significant numbers, in five years’ time, but we can expect them to still be there in a training role. There will be a continued need for us to ensure that the quality of the Afghan national security forces is adequate. I echo the point that he made by saying that we are very fortunate in this country to have a volunteer Army—people who are willing to put their life and limb at risk on a voluntary basis for the security of this country, its people and its interests. We are deeply honoured and privileged to have such people in our armed forces.
Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and particularly what he said about the ratio of troops to local population.
General McChrystal instigated a change of policy so that our troops should fire only when they were absolutely sure that Afghan civilians would not be put at risk. Inevitably, that put our troops at a greater degree of risk, but with the longer-term aim of maintaining the support of the local population. Is any change to that policy being considered?
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
Although I am not completely convinced about the reasons for the movements that the Secretary of State described today, in fairness, I do not have the facts and intelligence that he has. I am also concerned about the Prime Minister’s statement that we should be out of Afghanistan in five years, which has been repeated. Will that statement encourage or discourage the Taliban in their operations against our forces?
Dr Fox
We intend to follow the strategy through. We believe that it is the correct strategy, and that it is likely to produce success in the time scales outlined. I should reiterate to the hon. Gentleman that General McChrystal initially assessed that the Afghan national security forces would be able to take on the role themselves in 2013. We amended that as part of the strategy, to 2014, because we believe that that is a more realistic target. What the Prime Minister set out is entirely consistent with the strategy. The Afghan national security forces can be expected to take full control of their own security by 2014, as set out in the strategy by General McChrystal.
Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Con)
Five years ago to the day, we were attacked not by Afghans, but by Yorkshiremen. They were trained not in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan and the Lake district. The previous Government insisted on telling us that conventional military operations would somehow impede that sort of attack in future, but that is clearly nonsense. Will the Secretary of State come to the Dispatch Box and explain that we are involved in a regional war that stretches right the way from Iran to Russia, that that is as much about fighting for Pakistan’s stability as Afghanistan’s stability, and that the lives and blood of our servicemen and women are being shed in a crucial cause?
Dr Fox
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for the points he makes, which will resonate across the House. It is clear—as it always has been, to the credit of the previous Government—that this is not just about Afghanistan, but about Pakistan. Increasingly, on both sides of the Atlantic and throughout the international coalition, it is recognised that we are dealing with a regional problem, and that without success in Pakistan and the full co-operation of the Pakistani authorities in dealing with the Pakistan Taliban and the Afghan Taliban, we would find the mission in Afghanistan much more difficult.
I am happy to reiterate my hon. Friend’s points. This is a vital national security mission. We cannot simply wish it away. If I could make one wish, it would be that all countries in the international coalition show the same resolve displayed by our armed forces in burden sharing effectively, with the minimum of caveats, to ensure that we are absolutely able to deliver the maximum effect for the international coalition’s mission.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
I disagree with the broad consensus on Afghanistan, and have done so for some time. Is the Secretary of State aware that the question every Member of the House should ask whenever they sit in the Chamber is this: how many more British soldiers—I pay tribute to their bravery—will die or be seriously injured before the talks begin with the enemy? General Richards, the most senior British general, says that such talks are more or less inevitable. I believe that the war is unwinnable, and that it does not help in the fight against terrorism; other hon. Members say that the war is essential in that.
Dr Fox
There are a number of points to make in response to the hon. Gentleman. I fully accept that he has long held the view that the war was not justified, but we must agree to disagree on that. I believe that it is a vital national security mission for this country. There has never been any doubt that ultimately there must be a political element. The international coalition, the previous Government and this Government have always held the view that we cannot win the wider regional conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan by military means alone.
There is difficulty in determining who is reconcilable to the Afghan constitution and Government and who is not—that is an ongoing process—but I fundamentally disagree with the hon. Gentleman. The measure of a conflict or war is not the number of those who, sadly, die, but whether we succeed in our mission and strategy. I believe that we should at all times see our armed forces not as victims, but as champions of the freedoms and security that they are trying to bring for our country. I am sure that that is how they would like to be seen: as victors, not victims.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is undoubtedly the right man in the right role, and he is loyally defending a strategy even though it might not be the right one. Does he accept that there is a fundamental tension between classic counter-insurgency warfare down among the people, which takes many years to bring to a conclusion, and the statement made by the Foreign Secretary yesterday? He said that
“there will not be British troops in a combat role or in significant numbers in Afghanistan in five years’ time”—[Official Report, 6 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 168.]
If we are not to sacrifice our strategic interests in the area, will the Defence Secretary hold himself open to the possibility that a plan B might be necessary if plan A does not work out on schedule?
Dr Fox
The Government believe, in alliance with the United States and the other members of the international coalition, that we have the correct strategy. We believe that the counter-insurgency aim of protecting the population, and of providing them with security so that there is a space for better governance, is the correct strategy.
There is a difference between our national security mission to ensure that Afghanistan can develop in a way that enables the Afghan forces to look after their own security, and the wider mission of reconstruction and development—that is complementary to, but not the same as, the national security mission—which will have to be undertaken for a very long time, given the social state of Afghanistan.
Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)
I support the Secretary of State’s response to the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick). On the question of dialogue with the Taliban, we need to be clear that it would be entirely unacceptable for us to discuss the future of Afghanistan with them at the same time as they are killing our soldiers in that country. Should not we draw on the lessons from Northern Ireland and other theatres of conflict? We should require a clear and unequivocal ceasefire by the Taliban and some degree of commitment to non-violent principles before there can be any question of dialogue with them.
Dr Fox
Although in principle I do not disagree with the right hon. Gentleman, we must be clear what we are dealing with. The Taliban covers a broad range of different groupings—there is no single Taliban commander or a Taliban army with a Taliban uniform—and it is advantageous to find the groups among them who are reconcilable to the process, and to bring them on board to create a critical mass of support. That can only help us in our wider counter-insurgency aims. We should also reflect on the terms we use—not just “the Taliban”, but “the insurgency”—and ask whether there are a number of discrete insurgencies rather than just one, just as there are a number of discrete groups that we tend to call “the Taliban.” If the House accepts that we are dealing with greater complexity than is sometimes described, we might find it easier to understand the complexity of some of the solutions that we and the Afghan Government must find.
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
The Afghan national army is now larger than the British Army. The Secretary of State referred to the international coalition of 46 countries in Afghanistan. I pay tribute to Denmark and Estonia, but the simple fact is that none of our major European allies have had troops on the ground in Helmand province. Bearing in mind that soldiers from 16 Air Assault Brigade will this September make their third deployment to Helmand, will he confirm that the new surveillance equipment will include additional unmanned aerial vehicles, because they must be a great way of identifying insurgents and those planting improvised explosive devices?
Dr Fox
My hon. Friend is correct. We have to make available the full range of ways in which we can deal with IEDs, including UAVs. The subject of our NATO allies has been raised by previous Defence Secretaries, and I raised it at the NATO ministerial meeting, where there was what I would have called when I was in the Foreign Office a full and frank exchange of views on burden sharing in NATO. I would flag up just one issue, however. As we move into the transition phase in Afghanistan, with districts being handed over to the Afghan Government, it would be very unwise for the alliance to believe that that was an excuse for it to leave Afghanistan, or for any members of the alliance to do so and thereby leave only a small number of countries in the most difficult areas. During the transition period, it is essential that we look to have a NATO strategy that ensures that burden-sharing continues to the end of the mission, and that there is not an easy bail-out for those who just happen to have been in some of the quieter areas.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
This October will be the ninth anniversary of the deployment of British troops into Afghanistan, 300 of whom have died. Thousands of Afghan people have also died, and the war has spread over into Pakistan and is in danger of spreading into other countries as well. What on earth would the Secretary of State say constitutes victory in Afghanistan, before the withdrawal inevitably takes place?
Dr Fox
“Victory” is a word I do not use; I talk instead about success in Afghanistan. On the national security mission we have set ourselves, I would describe success as a stable enough Afghanistan that is able to manage its own internal and external security without the need for external intervention. There is of course the Pakistani problem to be dealt with as well, which will require us to give considerable help in a number of different areas to the Government of Pakistan. There is not going to be a moment when we can hoist up a flag say, “This is a victory.” There will be ways in which we measure success in terms of national security, but the regional problems are likely to continue for some time, and if we are serious about the national security of the United Kingdom we cannot simply turn a blind eye and wish them away.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree, however, that we went into Afghanistan on the wrong premise? We were told we were going there to protect Londoners going to work. We now know that al-Qaeda has moved most of its operations to Pakistan, and that most of the Taliban whom we kill die within 20 miles of where they were born, so why are we there? Is it to hold territory, which nobody has ever succeeded in doing in Afghanistan—not even the Soviets with 240,000 people? If it is to fight a dirty war and keep heads down, why do we not place more reliance on special forces, rather than let the British Army carry on bleeding to death?
Dr Fox
My hon. Friend knows that we never comment whatsoever on special forces and what they do, but we are in Afghanistan to give the Afghan Government space to develop the skills in governance and security, so that when we do leave we do not leave behind an ungoverned space into which, as a security vacuum, elements of transnational terrorism are once again drawn.
I sometimes wonder whether the general public remember the chronology correctly. I was in the United States last week, where a woman said to me, “If we hadn’t been in Afghanistan, we would never have had 9/11.” We need to remember that we did not seek this confrontation; it was brought to our streets and cities against our will. We did not seek this conflict, but we will see it through to its conclusion.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
This morning some of us met Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan, who pointed out the importance of the mission to women in Afghanistan. They have returned to the professions and to the schools, and that should not be underestimated. Perhaps there are never enough women in the Ministry of Defence, because this point is never made in the Chamber.
Dr Fox
As I said, we are providing the security environment in which the Afghan Government can, over time, develop not only their own security structures but better governance, and part of that better governance has to be a full understanding of human rights, and that human rights apply irrespective of race or creed or gender.
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
Many years ago during the Gulf war, I accused the BBC of being the Baghdad broadcasting corporation. I am very concerned that there is now a similar situation with the Taliban, in that they are getting far too high a profile. The news this morning is that, apparently, it is a defeat that we are moving troops around in Sangin. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the media must be very responsible when reporting propaganda from our enemies, and that they need to take a close look at this?
Dr Fox
I think it is good counsel for the BBC and the media generally, and for Members of the House, that we use reasonable language and are balanced in our views when discussing this issue. We have a large number of serving men and women in Afghanistan, and they will listen to what we say and to what the media say. That is also true of those who are our enemies in that part of the world. Clarity and honesty would be two very useful tools. I also think, however, that we need to use information. For that reason, I have asked a group of our national newspaper editors to come to the MOD in the near future for a detailed briefing, simply in order that they can understand the facts on the ground and get them first hand from the military, so that there is no excuse for misreporting the facts in future.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
Can the Secretary of State update us on the progress that has been made in recruiting to the Afghan national police force, which is just as important as the army?
Dr Fox
Good progress has been made on the number of Afghan national police, but to be frank with the hon. Lady, that is not really my concern. My concern is the quality of the recruits to the Afghan national police, and what we need to do is not to have them recruited and then trained, but trained and then put in place. That is a vital mission for the whole of the international coalition. The issue was widely discussed at the NATO ministerial meeting at a number of different levels, and I think there is growing acceptance that providing policing and law and order, not at a Supreme Court level but in terms of dispute resolution and effective policing at the very lowest level, is one of the ways to deny the political and social space that the Taliban will otherwise occupy.
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
From the British perspective, progress in Afghanistan is often measured through the lens of Helmand. Is that a fair reflection of the security situation across the whole country?
Dr Fox
All countries tend to see Afghanistan in different ways depending on the focus of their national media. There are countries that see Kandahar as being Afghanistan, and there are countries that see Kabul as being Afghanistan. We tend to see Helmand as being Afghanistan. It is useful if people understand that across the country as a whole, a lot of progress has been made on security. Those Members who have been travelling to Afghanistan over a period of time will have noticed that, for example, in Kabul there is a great difference in the security arrangements and how easy it is to move around the city. Clearly, that has not yet spread to enough parts of the country, but we are getting close to transition. While it is understandable that we and our media focus on our casualties and the fatalities that we, very sadly, have taken, we also need to show the other side of the ledger to the public—the successes being achieved in Afghanistan. That is vital if we are to maintain public support, which is a very important part of our resilience in a democracy.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
Unusually, I find myself in agreement with the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) on these matters. Can the Secretary of State tell the House how many of our 46 coalition partners have set a date for the end of combat operations, and if he were a Taliban commander in Helmand, would he be more encouraged or less encouraged to continue his insurgency knowing that such a date had been set?
Dr Fox
I think the best way to deal with the elements of the Taliban is to show our commitment to the strategy itself—to show that we are willing to put the forces on the ground and that we are in full support of the strategy as set out by General McChrystal and now being carried forward by General Petraeus. I hope the increase in US troop numbers and some of the movements I have set out today will leave our enemies in Afghanistan in no doubt as to our seriousness about taking and holding territory and improving security on behalf of the Afghan Government.
Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Does he agree that the challenge in Afghanistan is to turn military success into “hearts and minds” success on the ground, so that the public there see some advantage from our military success? In doing that, we will achieve two things: we will make it less likely that it will be a training ground for terrorists, and more likely that we will get a political settlement.
Dr Fox
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. As I said earlier, it is not possible to separate entirely the military elements from the wider political elements. Indeed, the whole point of the counter-insurgency strategy is people-centric: it is there to give greater security to the people of Afghanistan and to give them greater confidence in the ability of their Government to provide that security later. When we are making some of these arguments, we must also remember that as we win what he describes as the “hearts and minds” battle in the counter-insurgency strategy, that also provides us with better intelligence. The greater the proportion of the Afghan population who feel secure, the more likely we are to get information that will tell us who is planting IEDs and where. That is what ultimately happened in Iraq, and that counter-insurgency strategy and those same themes will apply in Afghanistan.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. One of my concerns, which has been voiced by other Members, is about media speculation. Some of the papers referred to retreat today, but there is no retreat: the fact is that some soldiers’ tour of duty is coming to an end. Will he state clearly to everyone, including those in the media who perhaps do not have the ears to listen but who need to listen, that what is being done is tactical and is not being done for any other reason? Earlier, the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) spoke about his constituent who had lost two legs and an arm, and about his great courage. One could not fail to be touched by his comments. On behalf of the soldiers who have returned injured and the 99 who have died, we need a commitment from the media to support the troops in the way that we clearly have.
Dr Fox
What I have announced today makes complete military and strategic sense. It is what commanders in ISAF wanted to happen to make full use of the forces that we have. Our forces in Sangin have done a wonderful job, as will the US Marines after them. When our forces leave Sangin and move into central Helmand, they will do so with their heads held high, rightly proud of their achievements. Any attempt by anyone to describe that as a retreat is quite contemptible.
Mr Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) (Con)
I pay tribute to my old regiment, the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, who are currently serving in Helmand province and who will be not only delighted but encouraged by the fact that the redeployment will bring better focus. Working closely with the United States makes them remember that they are not alone. Is it only the US that is going into Sangin, or will other international partners be joining in that redeployment?
Dr Fox
It will be the United States that goes into Sangin, but to enable US forces to be fully deployable to Sangin, other nations will be taking up some of the territory currently occupied by the US. I hope my hon. Friend understands that, although I am aware of which forces they are, I have been asked by ISAF commanding forces not to say who they are yet.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
I am reassured to hear the Secretary of State repeating the Government’s support for the comprehensive approach. We will not find security in Afghanistan and be able to leave until the Government of Afghanistan, nationally, regionally and locally, are respected and trusted by the Afghan people; it is they who have to win the hearts and minds of the people. What is the governor of Helmand province doing to reach out to all sections of the non-insurgent population and their political leaders to incorporate them in government? What is being done to start talks with those sections within the insurgency who can be talked into laying down their arms and joining constitutional government?
Dr Fox
I have met the governor in Helmand on several occasions, and he is one of the most impressive and bravest politicians in Afghanistan. Despite a number of attempts having been made on his life, he continues to get out among the population. A good example of the projects he has been spearheading includes the distribution of wheat seed and fertiliser, which I personally saw him being involved with.
The hon. Gentleman is correct that it is not only the governance of Kabul that will matter, but the governance at ground level. As I said to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) earlier, simple issues such as dispute resolution at the very lowest level will be required if we are to deny the Taliban the space they will otherwise occupy. We need to be very clear that if we are not there, they will be, and we have to make some of those small details available. When I spoke to a farmer—I think I have mentioned this in the House before—he said, “When I sold poppy, I was given a farm price by the Taliban and I sold it at the farm gates. When I take wheat to market, I have to go through several checkpoints and it costs me money every time I go through a checkpoint.” It is the small things on the ground that we sometimes have to focus on and get right if we are to have wider success in the big strategic picture.
Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)
May I ask the Secretary of State how splitting Regional Command South assists with the ISAF mission in Afghanistan?
Dr Fox
This was simply a common-sense approach to have greater clarity in our command structures given the increased size of the force, and it has shown just how well the coalition is now working together. I remember criticisms being made in the House in the early part of the deployment in Afghanistan that there were too many command structures, and that no one was talking to anyone else. Anyone who has spoken to General Parker or General Carter recently will have discovered that we have very clear lines of communication and command. That has been a major improvement over the years in what is happening in Afghanistan.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving this update on what is going on in Afghanistan. I am a little encouraged by what he says will be the likely situation in 2015, but can he assure the House that every possible diplomatic avenue will now be pursued with the greatest possible vigour, so that we can come out of there as soon as possible?
Dr Fox
It is very important that our concentration, diplomatically, is on getting all the parts of the international coalition to do everything they can to support the success of the mission. It is also important, as I said earlier, that as we move to transition, we do not have a coalition in which some members think it is permissible for them to leave without making any further contribution. There will be a very important diplomatic effort in the months ahead to hold the international coalition together, so that we see through this strategy to a successful conclusion.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I very much welcome today’s statement and the focus on central Helmand that it implies. If I have understood the Secretary of State correctly, the deployment of the theatre reserve battalion will effectively mean an increase in our forces on the ground in Afghanistan of about 10%, which will be of concern to some people. Will he confirm that that deployment will simply be until the Americans take over in Sangin, when the battalion will be withdrawn, so that effectively, the number of our troops will remain the same as the current number?
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
May I press the Secretary of State further on the ongoing combat role of our troops? He will keep his options open, will he not? If in three, four or five years’ time there continues to be a need for a significant number of British troops in a combat role, he will be prepared to keep them there, will he not?
Dr Fox
I do not intend to give any comfort to the Taliban by talking about what might happen if we are not successful. We intend to see this mission through, to do what is required to put in the numbers needed to make the mission a success, to ensure that the equipment is there and to play our full part in the international coalition. We intend that the strategy as set out by General McChrystal will be met within the time scale he set out.
Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)
I join the rest of the House in paying tribute to the courage and commitment of our forces, the burden of which is reinforced by this redeployment, which shows what they have undertaken on their own so far. Will the Secretary of State outline what effect the new military reconfiguration will have on the provincial reconstruction team and on engagement with civilian communities in those areas?
Dr Fox
The provincial reconstruction team will continue as it is. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me this opportunity, which I should perhaps have taken earlier, to praise the work of the PRT. Its success will be central to the long-term stability of, and thereby the governance support for, the security situation. It is a leading example of what is possible and is internationally admired.
Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)
I welcome the statement from my right hon. Friend. What efforts are being made to encourage the Pakistan armed forces to take greater responsibility for Taliban activity south of the border with Helmand?
Dr Fox
Every effort is made, including substantial talks undertaken by the Foreign Secretary in Pakistan recently. All contacts at a political, diplomatic and military level are used constantly to emphasise to the Government of Pakistan the importance of their role in dealing with this wider security issue. As has been mentioned already, this is not simply a problem that relates to Afghanistan within its own borders. There is a regional element and unless we have the full co-operation of Pakistan and success in Pakistan, any success we might achieve in security in Afghanistan would naturally be undermined. We take every opportunity to tell the Government of Pakistan that we stand ready to help them in their important contribution to this mission.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will be fully aware that for there to be any sort of success in Afghanistan, we need to win the propaganda war, yet the latest report to Congress from the US Department of Defence clearly highlights that we are not succeeding on this front. What more can we do to turn this around? Success in a counter-insurgency war can soon become a pyrrhic victory if we do not carry the people with us.
Dr Fox
One of the elements of asymmetry so often talked about is the fact that, whereas we, in a democracy, must take our people with us, the Taliban do not have the problem of having to influence democratic opinion. It is vital, as my hon. Friend says, that we should do so. It is incumbent on us in this House, on the Government as a whole, on the media and on our armed forces to show the British public that there are two sides to the ledger. Yes, we have fatalities and casualties, but there is also success. We are beginning to see greater stability across much of Afghanistan. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage) said earlier, if we stopped viewing things entirely through the prism of Helmand and started to view them across the country as a whole, perhaps the electorate in this country would get a better and more accurate picture.
Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, given that the Taliban continue to draw their funding from the illegal drugs trade, we must tackle them successfully on all fronts—not only militarily, politically and diplomatically, but economically too—by getting to grips with the illegal drugs trade and cutting off their funding at source?
Dr Fox
I agree with my hon. Friend that dealing with the drugs trade has to be part of the long-term way in which we improve stability, security and governance in Afghanistan. If we are to do that, we must find alternative incomes for some of the poorest people on the planet. Until we can provide alternative incomes for those who are basically subsistence farmers, in many ways, we are unlikely to win hearts and minds—or, indeed, the economic case that my hon. Friend so correctly points out.
Points of Order
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Are you aware that the BBC is reporting that the Education Secretary is to apologise for the inaccuracies in the information given to this House on Monday about cuts to the school building programme? Are you aware of such an apology and has the Secretary of State made any representations to you about making it to the House? I ask this because the BBC reports that the apology is to be in the form of a letter to you, Mr Speaker. Surely any such apology should be made in this Chamber. Chaos on Monday has turned into farce on Wednesday.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and for a few minutes’ advance notice of that point of order. In response to his first point about whether I am aware of the BBC news report, the answer is an unequivocal yes, for the simple reason that he apprised me of his point of order. The second point that I would make is that I have had no communication from the Secretary of State on this matter, so I am reading the report in the way that anybody else might read it. It is of course always open to Ministers to come to the House to make statements, including to make apologies if they deem it appropriate. I have a sense already that it would be regarded by Members as more helpful in these circumstances and perhaps more apposite if the relevant Minister were to seek to come to the House to make a statement. I should emphasise that we have an important Opposition day debate to follow, and that such a statement, if it were to be made today, would have to be made after the Opposition day debate.
As for revealing matters to the media before revealing them to the House, including revealing an intention to say something at a later stage, my ruling stands. If people have things to say, they should come to the House to say them. The House expects to hear before anybody else does. I hope that that is a satisfactory response.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) looks as though he is overflowing with enthusiasm. I am quite concerned about him and I think we had better hear what he has to say.
Dr Lewis
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for your customary indulgence. Further to that point of order, is it in order for me to inquire whether the shadow Minister who raised that point of order informed the Minister concerned that he was going to mention him from the Dispatch Box on this occasion?
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman may ask that. I do not know the answer, but there is no breach of order if a Member comes to raise a point of order about someone else without notifying that person first. The hon. Gentleman is a very courteous man—I will have known him for 27 years in October of this year—and he might well expect that as a matter of courtesy there would be advance notification, but there is no obligation to notify. He has put his views on the record and contributed enthusiastically to our exchanges.
Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. As you know, a number of schools in my constituency have been affected by this misleading information. I tried to phone the Secretary of State yesterday, but he was not courteous enough to return my call. I heard Mr Andrew Neil announce that the Secretary of State was going to apologise for this matter and I assumed that he would do so to the House. Do we have any remedy to try to ascertain what the Secretary of State is doing? I have already cancelled a meeting to come here and it would be unfair and discourteous if he made Members cancel any other meetings.
Mr Speaker
There are a couple of points to make in response to the hon. Gentleman. The first is that the Secretary of State is an extremely busy person and it is not for me to comment on the nature or frequency of telephone conversations that he has. I can say only for myself that if the hon. Gentleman were to telephone me, I would always be delighted to hear from him and would regard it as a matter of some priority to have a telephone conversation with him. Secondly, I think that I have made the overall position very clear and people on the Treasury Bench will have heard it. What I am saying, in short, is that if the Secretary of State has something to say to Members, he should say it here. If he has something to say to me, he could usefully say it here and it would be a jolly good thing if he came to the House to make a statement at a suitable time—that is, at or shortly after 7 o’clock.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. During his statement on Monday, in column 35 of Hansard, in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson), the Deputy Prime Minister indicated that the reason why he had not consulted the devolved Administrations about the parts of his constitutional proposals that affect the devolved Administrations of the United Kingdom was that it was necessary for him to announce them to this House first. That was repeated today by the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s Question Time. Will you confirm, Mr Speaker, that it is perfectly in order—on a Government-to-Government basis through the UK civil service, which exists for that purpose—for the Prime Minister or Deputy Prime Minister to discuss proposals affecting the devolved Administrations with Ministers on a ministerial basis prior to making an announcement to this House? In fact, in the case of Northern Ireland, if they did not do that, one could not imagine the consequences.
Mr Speaker
I am very sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but although I listened with interest to his point of order the truth of the matter—he might think it a sad truth—is that it is not a matter for the Chair.
Mr Speaker
The day would not be complete without a point of order from the hon. Gentleman.
Chris Bryant
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am sure that you will be aware that the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 stipulates that only 95 Ministers, including Whips, may sit and vote in the House of Commons at any time. In addition, “Erskine May” recognises only two kinds of Whips: Government Whips and Opposition Whips. Until yesterday morning, only 95 Members were Ministers, but three additional Lib Dems were appointed as Whips yesterday. That takes us to the number of 98. The Act makes it very clear that those additional three people cannot sit or vote in the House of Commons—unless they are not Government Whips, but Opposition Whips.
Mr Speaker
As always, I am engaged, not to say fascinated, by the product of the hon. Gentleman’s lucubrations. I will look into the matter, but I am sure that the House will eagerly await, with bated breath and beads of sweat on its collective brow, any thoughts that I may have thereafter. The appetite for points of order has now been satisfied.
Opposition Day
Jobs and the Unemployed
(14 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
18:59 - The House divided: - Ayes: 243 / Noes: 331 - Question accordingly negatived.
Mr Speaker
I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes with grave concern that the emergency budget will increase unemployment; calls on the Government to publish the HM Treasury analysis of jobs that will be lost in the public and private sector; condemns the Government’s decision to axe the Future Jobs Fund, the Youth Guarantee and the Jobseeker’s Guarantee, scrapping hundreds of thousands of jobs and training places for the unemployed; further notes that the Government is cutting employment support to help people into jobs at a time when growth is still fragile; regrets that the role of the voluntary sector in helping people into work is at risk; further notes that the current claimant count is half the level it was in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of the support and investment the previous Government provided for jobs and getting people back to work; further notes the cost to communities and the economy of long-term unemployment; and condemns the Government’s decision to abolish regional development agencies with potentially damaging consequences for regional economies at a time when the recovery is not yet assured.
Mr Speaker, you said in response to the points of order that Secretaries of State are busy, but that it is very important that Ministers are accountable to the House. At 11.45 this morning, I took a call from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who is not in the House today. He rang to tell me that he would not be here today and that he would not answer the debate because he is speaking to civil servants. Instead of giving a speech to Parliament, he has gone to speak to a London conference for civil servants. He has decided that he cannot rearrange making that speech, despite the fact that he is speaking at a three-day conference organised by the same civil servants who work for and answer to Ministers and advise them on the importance of answering to the House. So the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has chosen to turn his back on Parliament and the debate. A debate in Parliament on support for jobs and the unemployed is clearly not important enough for him.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
Will the right hon. Lady confirm to the House that, during no fewer than three of the last six Opposition day debates held under the previous Government earlier this year, the Secretary of State in the previous Labour Government failed to appear in the House?
Yvette Cooper
The right hon. Gentleman will know that, on many occasions, the then Opposition did not put up their shadow Cabinet Minister to open the debates. He will also know that Members have given reasons for not attending. I was ready to take the call from the Secretary of State, had he told me that he had a family emergency, a health problem or a European event to attend. The Minister has an engagement in Brussels, and I understand that he will therefore not be here for the close of the debate. I completely understand that; of course, he must fulfil his international responsibilities. Of course, we recognise such responsibilities, but to choose to attend a three-day conference for the very hour at which the Secretary of State should be present in the House to discuss support for jobs and the unemployed is a dereliction of his duty not only to the House, but to the unemployed he should be trying to help.
We think that this is an important subject. That is why we have chosen it for our third Opposition day debate. This month, many young people will leave school, college or university, and they are looking for their first jobs. It is not an easy time to look for work. We have just come through the worst global recession for many generations, and across Britain as in many other countries, many people have been hit by job losses and unemployment as a result.
Next week, the June unemployment figures will be published. The House will know that the International Labour Organisation unemployment figure currently stands at 2.47 million, more than 500,000 less than many experts predicted when the recession and financial crisis started and more than 500,000 less, too, than in the 1980s and 1990s recessions. The claimant count is 4.6%—less than half the 10% that it reached in the ’80s and ’90s recessions and almost 750,000 less than expected in last year’s Budget, thus saving us £15 billion over the next few years.
Of course, those figures are too high, families are still struggling and we need to bring down unemployment, but it is worth understanding why unemployment has been kept lower during this recession, because it reflects the work that businesses and employees have done to protect jobs. People have been working fewer hours, often cushioned by tax credits—a cushion that Government Members now want to take away. To help to save jobs, businesses have cut other costs. The fact that unemployment has been kept lower reflects the extra support for the economy—the VAT cut, the public sector construction contracts, the car scrappage scheme and the maintenance of public spending and public sector jobs through the recession—all opposed by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. It reflects, too, the extra help to get people back to work faster than in previous recessions—the youth guarantee, the extra education training places, the stronger jobseekers’ regime run by Jobcentre Plus—all support that the new Government now want to take away.
I pay tribute to the work that Jobcentre Plus did during the recession to help as many people as possible to get back to work much faster than in previous recessions, but this is a dangerous time. Too many people, especially young people, are still struggling to find work. If we look at the lessons from history, we see that this is the time when the labour market is at its most fragile. This is the time, just as the economy is coming out of recession, when there is most risk of people getting stuck in long-term unemployment. If we look at what happened in the 1990s, we see that it was a long time before unemployment started to come down after the recession finished. Youth unemployment rose for 18 months after the recession finished. If we look at what happened in the 1980s, we see that unemployment rose for years after the recession finished. Youth unemployment rose for four years after the recession finished.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
On youth unemployment, has my right hon. Friend noticed the total absence of Liberal Democrat Members from this debate? Does she believe that they are unwilling to come to the House to defend their complicity in scrapping the future jobs fund?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point. In fact, the welfare spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats said that his party had no plans to cut the future jobs fund and, indeed, that it supported help to get young people into work. He is not here either, despite the fact that he is a Minister in the Department that is responding to the debate.
In the ’80s and ’90s, the then Conservative Government turned their back on the unemployed, particularly the young unemployed, and unemployment rose for years as a result. But unemployment scars. Unemployment causes people problems for years to come. If people lose their jobs and cannot get back to work quickly, they can find it much harder to get back into jobs, even when the economy is growing again. That is what happened in the 1980s. It took a long time to get new job growth in many communities across the country, and by the time that we did, many people had been scarred for life and some have never worked again.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend share my fear that the problem basically is that the Conservative party believes that the only reason people are unemployed is that benefits are too generous, that we do not need job creation projects and that all they need do is to cut benefits and, somehow, unemployment will magic itself away?
Yvette Cooper
The troubling approach that the new Tory-Liberal Government are taking is to cut the help to get people back into jobs and to cut their benefits when they cannot get back into work. The Secretary of State has claimed to be concerned about intergenerational poverty and worklessness, but the truth is that many of the problems that the Government worry about have their roots in the unemployment and hopelessness of communities without work in the 1980s. If they are really serious about tackling long-term poverty, they should act to prevent long-term unemployment now. They talk about broken Britain, but the truth is that their party broke Britain in the 1980s and now they are trying to do the same thing again. Let us look at their actions in the first four weeks: cuts of £1.2 billion in support that was getting people back to work; cuts in the future jobs fund; cuts in the youth guarantee and in help for the long-term unemployed just when they need it most; and a Budget that cuts the number of jobs in the economy so that there are fewer jobs than there would have been, not just next year but in every year for the rest of the Parliament too.
Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Many of the previous Government’s measures helped some people into work, but the 3 million workless households where no adults of working age were working were barely touched in the Labour years. It is all very well to talk about the 1980s, but what was happening between 1997 and the last election? Precious little. Many of those people never saw anybody from Jobcentre Plus or anyone else. They were just left to stew.
Yvette Cooper
I can tell the hon. Gentleman what happened after 1997. In fact, there was a reduction of 350,000 in the number of people claiming inactive benefits, as a result of the extra support that was put in. That was in strong contrast to the early ’90s recession when we saw an increase of more than 450,000 in the number of people on incapacity benefits. In this recession, we have had a reduction of more than 70,000 in the number of people claiming those long-term sickness benefits, despite the difficulties in the world economy.
Miss Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)
One reason why young people find it so difficult to get into work is that they do not have experience, and the future jobs fund and the youth guarantee were very good for young people because they gave them that experience and made them much more employable. Has my right hon. Friend done any analysis of the effect on these young people of the scrapping of both those schemes?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. She obviously brings great experience to the field, having been a member of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions for many years. She is now its Chair, and I look forward to hearing more of her views on this in the House. We have been talking to many young people about the impact of cutting the future jobs fund. Yesterday afternoon, I met 10 young people who have just started work thanks to the future jobs fund. They are all working for charities and social enterprises, have jobs in fundraising, in office work, in organising charity events and in repairs and maintenance, and some had fantastic jobs in creative design. Several are graduates who had struggled to find work because of the recession. Many had tried unpaid internships and voluntary work—anything to get a foot in the door. It was only the future jobs fund that had made the real difference to them. One of them said to me, “It’s a life saver.” Another said, “It’s given me confidence. It’s a proper job. It’s a huge boost to put this on my CV.” A young woman I spoke to in my constituency who was training to be a car mechanic, thanks to the future jobs fund, told me, “I tried and tried to get something, and this is just like the light at the end of the tunnel. In fact, it’s the only opportunity I’ve been given. I don’t understand why they want to cut it.”
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
On that point, my right hon. Friend might be interested to know that a constituent recently came to see me at my surgery who had been offered through the future jobs fund an opportunity to work by the Royal National Institute of Blind People, and on arrival at Jobcentre Plus was bitterly disappointed to be told that the list was closed because of the Government’s decision to cut the future jobs fund, and now faces the prospect of not having an opportunity that would otherwise have been available. Is it not ironic that with all the talk of a big society, jobs that would have been available to people in the third sector are now being cut by the Government?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. This is happening now to young people throughout the country. One of the young women I talked to yesterday also told me about a job with the London Wildlife Trust. It had asked her if she would be interested in working for it through the future jobs fund, and when she contacted them to say yes, it said, “Sorry, too late. The programme is closed.”
Ministers try to claim that there are no cuts in these jobs. The Secretary of State said:
“we are not cutting any jobs at all. We are saying that we will stop the part of the programme relating to jobs that were not contracted for.”—[Official Report, 14 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 584.]
According to the Secretary of State, if the contract has not been signed, it has not really been cut. He says that these were only notional jobs. The trouble is that he has not cut notional money. He has cut real money—£290 million this year, and hundreds of millions of pounds in future years. That money would have funded 90,000 future jobs fund jobs for 90,000 people—real people who will struggle longer on the dole as a result.
Chris Grayling
Before the election, the previous Administration were planning public spending cuts of £50 billion. Where did the right hon. Lady expect to make those cuts in the Department that she was then heading?
Yvette Cooper
We were clear that the best way to cut welfare spending was to get more people into work. The very fact of getting people into jobs was cutting £15 billion from welfare bills over the next few years. That is substantially more of an impact than the right hon. Gentleman could possibly have by cheese-paring bits from employment programmes that end up putting more people on the dole and pushing up the bills for unemployment. That, in the end, is the right hon. Gentleman’s problem.
Gordon Banks (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the pressures placed on the private and public sectors in recent weeks will deliver a potential skills shortage in the UK? Without investment in our young people today, we will have a skills shortage tomorrow, which will be detrimental to our growth in future years.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. This is about investing in our future, because this is about the young people who will support us all for very many years to come. If we do not give them the start in life that they need, if we do not give them the work experience that they need to get into jobs, if we leave too many of them stuck on the dole for years, we will pay the bills that result from their being unemployed for years and we will lose their potential skills and talents that could contribute to our economy for many years to come.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
Is not the biggest burden on the young people about whom the right hon. Lady talks so eloquently the massive debts that her Government left behind? They are already shackled by the previous Government’s policies, and that will be a burden on them and their employment opportunities for the future.
Yvette Cooper
If those young people cannot get jobs, if they end up stuck on the dole for years—that is what happened to young people whom I left school with in the 1980s—that will devastate their entire future. They will struggle to get work for many years to come and that will push up the deficit. The hon. Gentleman seems to fail to understand that if unemployment is high, that pushes up the bills for unemployment benefits and cuts the number of people who are working in good jobs and paying their taxes, not just this year and next, but for many years to come.
Richard Fuller
In my constituency, the unemployment rate doubled under the last Administration. In the last 10 years, unemployment has gone up. We recognise in Bedford and Kempston that we need small businesses to create the jobs that will employ people, not just in five years’ time, but in five months’ time. The one thing that small businesses in my constituency want is to know that the Government have control over the deficit, that their taxes will be down, and that regulation will be reduced. Surely that is the way in which we can create jobs.
Yvette Cooper
Unfortunately for the hon. Gentleman, if we cut the deficit at the pace and scale that his party wants, that will make it harder for businesses. It will make it harder for small businesses and companies across the economy. His party’s own appointed Office for Budget Responsibility confirms that. It says that there will be fewer jobs in the economy, not just next year, but each year for the rest of this Parliament as a result of the Budget. It is hitting businesses and employers throughout the country, making it harder for them to take people on. That is the complete fallacy in the arguments of Conservative Members. They are stuck in the mentality of not just the 1980s, but the 1930s, which says that so long as the deficit is cut, things will suddenly be hunky-dory. It will not. It cuts jobs and makes it harder for people to get back into work, and it pushes up the costs of failure too. That is what is so irresponsible.
Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)
I have a lot of sympathy with the right hon. Lady’s argument and she is right to stress the fragility of the economic recovery at the present time and the fact that the Budget proposals will cut jobs, but I am sure that she is aware that the previous Government imposed cuts of £400 million on the devolved Scottish Government in the very teeth of the recession, knowing that it would cost jobs and jeopardise recovery. If her argument holds water now, why did it not hold water then?
Yvette Cooper
In fact, the additional support we put in through things such as the future jobs funds and support for the economy helped Scotland. Indeed, Scotland benefited from thousands of future jobs fund jobs, which were funded by the Government, in addition to the money that went directly to the devolved Administrations. Every part of the Government had to make efficiency savings, and unfortunately the Scottish Administration consistently set themselves efficiency targets considerably lower than those set and met in Whitehall Departments across government. It was fair to expect the Scottish Administration to pay their fair share and to contribute to those efficiency savings.
We believed, however, that it was right to keep supporting jobs in Scotland through things such as the future jobs fund, which is why the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations said, in response to the cuts in the future jobs fund:
“We know of many third sector organisations in Yorkshire who were ready to place people into jobs and were mid-way through bidding for FJF money to make that possible when the funding was cut. Among the placements that were to be created were jobs to support women in the community through a Women’s Refuge. Now those women won’t get the extra support and Yorkshire won’t get the extra jobs.”
Real jobs in Yorkshire gone—because of the Secretary of State’s plan!
Miss Begg
It is third sector providers who often help to get people facing particular barriers into work. It is hard enough for young people to get into work anyway, but if they have barriers such as drug dependency or homelessness, it is particularly difficult. The future jobs fund was being used by organisations such as Aberdeen Foyer in my constituency to get those marginalised youngsters into work and to break that cycle of poverty, which the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Mr Heald), who sits with me on the Work and Pensions Committee, talked about earlier.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right, which is why all young people, no matter what the difficulties they face, should have a guarantee of a job, training or support to get into work. She might also be interested to know that significant numbers of the people going into the future jobs fund were disabled, so it was providing additional support for people who might have found it more difficult to get their first job elsewhere in the economy and to get that start and get into work.
The former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws), told the House that DWP officials had advised that the future jobs fund was not effective and not working. That is not what young people and voluntary sector providers are telling us. For example, the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations said:
“It is obviously very disappointing that the Future Jobs Fund is not continuing as it was a highly successful initiative which was popular with employers and employees”.
Angie Wilcox, whom I met, from the Manor residents association in Hartlepool, said that
“in one area alone, manor residents have recruited 118 young people, of which the first 17 finished their six months last month, all 17 secured sustained employment...This is a vital programme that must stay”.
So what advice did DWP officials really give to the Treasury? The Employment Minister, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), has so far refused to publish any advice or evidence that it is not effective. That is because, in the end, he does not have any. He has commissioned a detailed evaluation of the future jobs fund for 2011, so there is no evidence to show that the fund is not working and plenty of testimony from young people and employers across the country that it is transforming people’s lives. The Government did not talk to a single voluntary sector provider before they axed the fund, and they did not talk to a single young person on the fund before they made their decisions—actually, the Prime Minister did. He talked to young people at a social enterprise in Liverpool, and told them he would keep the fund. He said that
“it is a good scheme, and good schemes we will keep.”
Was he setting out to deceive those young people, or does he just not care about the broken promises from the election?
The Employment Minister has, I understand, been back to that same corner of Liverpool to see the same social enterprise. He has told us in previous responses that he has not received any representations about the decision to cut the future jobs fund. Yet someone who was at the meeting said that
“when Chris Grayling visited Everton on the 26 May we raised with him the very negative impact cutting the Future Jobs Fund will have and 2 local people said the difference having a future jobs fund position was already having on their lives, their self esteem and their long term job prospects...We asked him specifically about whether his replacement scheme was going to give at least the minimum wage. He couldn’t guarantee that at all...The FJF has already made a big difference to us in Everton... Young people on the FJF have got their heads back up and are going for it.”
So what other excuses have the Government given us for cutting the future jobs fund and the support for the unemployed? The Secretary of State claimed on 8 June that the cost of the programme was “running out of control”. That is rubbish—it is a fixed-cost programme. It costs just over £6,000 per job and is paid when the job is delivered. Furthermore, the taxpayer saves six months of benefits too. It is a fixed cost, so it cannot escalate out of control.
The difference between us is that we want 90,000 people in jobs. The Government would rather have them on the dole than pay for the extra support that those young people and long-term unemployed need. So, from next year, they are cutting the rest of the guarantee. In total, they are cutting £1.2 billion from support for the unemployed—and they tell us it is all right because there is going to be a Work programme. But where is it? The soonest the Secretary of State will be able to deliver it is next summer, but what about the people in the meantime who need support and help? What about the young people leaving school, college or university this summer who need help? What about the people who have been unemployed for six months and who need support now? Yet now is the time when he is cutting future jobs fund opportunities in favour of a Work programme that cannot be in place for at least another 12 months.
Yvette Cooper
I shall give way. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can provide some clarity on that point.
Nadhim Zahawi
The right hon. Lady talks about the young people coming out of schools and colleges. Did she think about them when she was in government and borrowing £500 million a day? Did she think about their future while the Government were borrowing £100 for every £300 they were spending?
Yvette Cooper
Had we not increased borrowing during the recession, we would have seen recession turn into slump, millions of people on the dole being scarred for life, and huge increases in repossessions. Unless the hon. Gentleman is prepared to support the economy and growth, he will never see the deficit come down. The best way to get the deficit down is to keep the economy growing, and the only way to get us through the recession was to support the economy at a very difficult time. He seems to want to return to the madness of the 1930s when economies across the world were pushed into depression and slump as a result of the kind of narrow-minded, short-term policies that he is now advocating.
Nadhim Zahawi
I have to come back on that point. Your policies have mortgaged and remortgaged the future of those young children, so for you to stand up and say that without borrowing you cannot sustain the recovery is inaccurate. You have to admit that borrowing £500 million a day—not a week or a month—is unsustainable.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. May I remind Members to use the third person? When Members refer to “you”, it means me. I have just been accused of a few things that I do not own up to.
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) should learn a few lessons from economic history. He should look at what happened not just in the 1980s, when there was not the same scale of world recession, but in the 1930s and at the orthodox views being put forward then by Bank of England Governors and senior politicians and the devastating consequences that they had. Keynes was led to write his general theory because of the deeply destructive approach that so many people in senior positions took and the consequences that devastated the lives of millions of people who were pushed into unemployment and poverty. Businesses were destroyed for many years as a result of that approach—the approach that the Conservatives seem to want to go back to.
I agree that borrowing needs to come down, and of course we need to ensure that the deficit comes down in a steady and sensible way as the economy recovers. However, by cutting an extra £40 billion for ideological reasons in a way that will hit jobs and the economy, the Conservatives are turning their back on the unemployed. Ministers need to tell us what they will do to help young people this summer. What are they going to do to reassure parents that their sons and daughters will not be stuck on the dole for more than a year? All that they promise is a Work programme sometime in the future, with incentives for private sector companies to help people find work but no guarantees to young people or anyone else that they will actually get work. There are no jobs for them to go to.
Ministers also want people to move house to help the labour market, but it is not clear where they want them to move to. The Secretary of State has said that he wants the unemployed to move to more affluent areas where there are more jobs. In fact, if they do not and they are out of work for a year, their housing benefit will be cut. At the same time, the Government are telling working people on housing benefit in affluent areas that they have to move to cheaper areas because their rents are too high. If they do not, their housing benefit will be cut, too. The Secretary of State is telling my constituents that if they do not move south to get a job he will cut their benefit, and his own constituents that if they do not move north to get a cheaper home he will cut their benefit too. Presumably they can wave at each other as they pass somewhere along the A1.
The Secretary of State wants people to give up cheaper housing to find work, but he also wants people to give up work to find cheaper housing. He is telling people to get on their bikes, but with no clue about where they are supposed to go. That is the same Secretary of State who said last year that he wanted to maintain community ties. He said:
“It is getting more and more difficult for parents in some poorer backgrounds…that extended family link is often severed by the fact that they can’t get living near their parents.”
Yet those are the very same community ties that the Government’s policies on employment and housing would rip up right now. They are cutting help for people to get jobs and cutting their benefits too.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government’s contention appears to be that the future jobs fund is simply training without a job guarantee? Is that not just snobbery, as they do not put forward the same argument—nor should they—that people accessing degrees should have a guaranteed job outcome? Quite simply, is it not true that the Tories have never believed in parity of esteem between vocational and academic training routes and still believe that unemployment is a price worth paying?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. I know that his constituency was hit very badly in the 1980s as a result of the decisions that previous Conservative Governments took, and that that is why he feels so strongly that we should not take those decisions again. We have to do everything possible to help people back into work.
The Guardian has even reported that Ministers want jobcentres to give out charities’ food vouchers, so now they are turning the clock back not just to the 1980s but to the 1930s. It is looking less like welfare to work and more like welfare to the workhouse.
Miss Begg
Before my right hon. Friend moves off the subject of housing benefit, I wish to mention that Aberdeen is one of the areas where there are jobs—unemployment in my constituency is 2.6%, which is higher than we would like but relatively low. The problem is that rents are high. A constituent who came to see me on Friday is finding things very difficult, because in the private rented sector she is already subsidising her rent despite being on full housing benefit. It is therefore impossible for people to move into Aberdeen to get a house and a job without falling foul of the Catch-22 situation that my right hon. Friend describes.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right, and that is why it is difficult to reform housing benefit without considering the consequences for the labour market. The two things should be examined together, not in isolation in a way that can have destructive consequences.
Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)
May I confirm that the matter has nothing to do with snobbery but is about the best way to handle the situation? Can the right hon. Lady confirm that at present, the number of 18 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training is at its highest, at 837,000?
Yvette Cooper
If the hon. Lady is concerned about young people who are not in education, training or employment, why on earth is she supporting her party’s decision to cut the future jobs fund and help for young people to get into jobs? The number of 18 to 24-year-olds who are on the dole is about half the level that it was in previous recessions.
Esther McVey
I think there needs to be clarity of purpose on a way forward; you have left us with a record deficit—[Hon. Members: “She.”] Sorry; the right hon. Lady’s Government have left us with a record deficit, and new times require new measures. Working together, we will provide clarity and look for greater apprenticeship schemes.
Yvette Cooper
I advise the hon. Lady that asking me to give way and answer another question when I have not yet answered the first is probably not the best way to get her question answered.
I ask the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) where is this Work programme and this extra support? All that we see so far is £1.2 billion-worth of cuts. There are cuts to the future jobs fund, a programme that is already in place and delivering real opportunities. She should go and talk to the voluntary sector providers in her constituency and constituencies across the country about the great work that they are doing. Social enterprises, charities and organisations in the public and social sectors are doing some great things to give young people a chance, and her party wants to pull the plug on that. That would be madness at a time when young people need our help.
Sarah Newton
I wish to return to the right hon. Lady’s point about giving out food vouchers. What is compassionate about a benefits system that is leaving people hungry in their hour of need? Voluntary organisations in my constituency, such as Church organisations providing food banks, are barred from offering vital necessities to people in jobcentres who are literally starving. That is ridiculous when people are going hungry.
Yvette Cooper
I am interested that the hon. Lady is concerned that people are not getting enough support and believes that they should have more help. I wonder why on earth, then, she has voted for a Budget that cuts £11 billion from benefit support for those on the lowest incomes in the country. What she is arguing for are cuts in Government and taxpayer support, and for people simply to depend on charities instead. That would be a return to the Victorian approach of the workhouse and the pre-Beveridge, pre-welfare state approach of not supporting families across the country, which would be deeply unfair. There may not be the type of charity that she happens to have in her constituency in every constituency and working with every jobcentre in the country. We in the Labour party believe that we should support people, which is why we have not proposed cutting benefits by uprating them only by the level of the consumer prices index, which will take £5.8 billion out of the value of benefits for some of the lowest-income people in this country.
Chris Grayling
Can the right hon. Lady confirm to the House that before the election, she did not at any stage give serious consideration to increasing benefits in line with CPI? Can she make it clear once and for all—did she consider that or did she not?
Yvette Cooper
I can say very clearly to the right hon. Gentleman that my view was always that it would be unacceptable to increase benefits in line with CPI. I wish to make that very clear, and I am sure that papers will testify to that effect. It will be unfair on people such as those who are severely disabled or on the lowest incomes, who will see the real value of their support cut by hundreds of pounds over the next few years. For the Minister to try to defend the Budget as “progressive” when it will hit people who are severely disabled and cannot work, people who are on carer’s allowance and some of the most vulnerable people in the country who may be struggling to support their families, is a distortion of the meaning of the word.
Welfare to work does not work anywhere in the country if there is no work for people to go to. That is the real tragedy of this new Government. At a time when growth is fragile and too many people are out of work, they have introduced a Budget that cuts growth and jobs. It is shocking.
Even on the assumptions of the Government’s own appointees in the Office for Budget Responsibility, this emergency Budget means that there will be more than 100,000 fewer jobs in the economy, and not just this year. There will be fewer jobs every year for the lifetime of the Parliament as a result of the Budget. The Budget cuts consumption, through the VAT hike and benefit cuts; it cuts Government spending; and it hits private and public sector jobs. The Budget will also push up the bills of unemployment. Even on the optimistic assumptions of the Office for Budget Responsibility, the taxpayer will fork out around £2 billion on unemployment over the course of this Parliament as a result of the Budget. That is £2 billion that we could have spent on the future jobs funds, school buildings or other support to help people into work.
Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)
Does the right hon. Lady agree that that is merely the thin end of the wedge? Many of the young people who find themselves unemployed and many of the communities where unemployment is ingrained are also more reliant on other benefits and public services such as health. The mental health and well-being implications for those communities are enormous, but they have not been factored into those calculations.
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Lady is right. We are having this discussion in the light of the Budget measures and the initial cuts in support for jobs, but we know that there are spending cuts to come as part of the spending review, to which the Government have added £17 billion to the amount to be cut from Departments. The consequence is that the Government’s policies will keep more people on the dole, not fewer, and more people out of work, not fewer. That is what the Budget does, and that is on an optimistic reading, because we know that the Treasury’s real assessment is worse.
The only reason why the Government think that employment will be growing at all is that they are counting on around 2.5 million net jobs being created in the private sector over the next five years. However, that is something that John Philpott of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and other respected economists have said is simply unrealistic. The Government are living in cloud cuckoo land. In fact, the Financial Times survey of major private sector employers found that none was planning to increase recruitment on a large scale just because the public sector was cutting back. Arriva said:
“We are not planning a recruitment drive any time soon. Everybody is watching their costs at the moment.”
Today’s KPMG survey found that the number of new recruits is at a seven-month low, just at a time when it should be increasing. Business confidence has been hit by the Budget and the austerity approach that the Government have been pursuing.
The Government have abolished the regional development agencies, which were supporting jobs in the regions, and cut Building Schools for the Future and other capital projects that were supporting construction jobs. The Government are hitting jobs in the public sector and the private sector, all at a time when the economy is still weak. They say that this is unavoidable, but that is simply untrue. They do not need to cut £40 billion extra from the economy; they have chosen to do so, even though that will cut jobs and hurt the unemployed. The Government do not need to cut the help for the unemployed that is getting them into jobs; they have chosen to do so, even though it will increase long-term unemployment. They do not need to push up the costs of unemployment; they have chosen to do so, even though that will cost us more. They do not need to scar young people for years to come; they have chosen to do so, just as they did in the ’80s and ’90s.
Why are the Government doing that? It is because they say that they have to get the deficit down. Why are they introducing a savage Budget to cut the number of jobs in the economy? They say that that has to be done because of the scale on which they want to get the deficit down and the pace at which they want to do it. In the 1990s, the Conservatives said that unemployment was a price worth paying to get inflation down. Now they are saying that unemployment is a price worth paying to get the deficit down. However, unemployment is not a price worth paying; unemployment will stop the deficit coming down. This year’s school leavers will pay the price, our young people will pay the price, and we will all pay the price for many years to come. Unemployment is not a price worth paying. It is time that the Government ditched the failed ideology of the 1980s and the 1930s, and supported jobs for the future. That is what our party will do, and I commend the motion to the House.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:
“welcomes the emergency budget which will tackle the unprecedented legacy of debt over the next five years by reducing borrowing from a projected £149 billion this year to just £20 billion in 2015- 16; notes the Office for Budget Responsibility’s projection that unemployment will fall in every year of this Parliament as a result of the Government’s policies to stimulate private sector employment by reversing the damaging increase planned for employer national insurance contributions, introducing a £1 billion Regional Growth Fund, reducing the corporation and small profits tax rates and increasing the Enterprise Finance Guarantee, resulting in the creation of a projected two million new private sector jobs by 2015-16; further welcomes moves to implement a single work programme that will provide personalised support to help people move into sustained employment, to introduce a £1,000 increase in income tax personal allowances which will incentivise work, to reform the benefits system to ensure that work pays and to provide 50,000 new apprenticeships and 10,000 new university places for young people, thus stimulating growth, delivering jobs and creating a fairer society for all.”
May I start by passing on the apologies of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to the House? Despite what the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) said, he has an important job to do in helping to lead our public sector out of the mess in which the previous Government left it, and he has an important leadership role with the people who will help him to do that. I am sorry that the right hon. Lady is disappointed to be debating against me this afternoon. I am rather pleased, frankly, to be debating against her and I was impressed by her lively form. I somehow think that the wrong member of her household is running a Labour leadership campaign.
Listening to the right hon. Lady, one would think that the past decade had been one of economic triumph and effective employment policies, and that the previous Government had left behind a golden legacy of wise and effective policies. Well, they did not. What they left behind was an economic hangover that we will all be dealing with for years to come, and I am not referring just to the huge deficits or the huge planned spending cuts that Labour had lined up. Indeed, one would think from listening to her this afternoon that the previous Government had no plans to cut spending. Actually, the opposite was the case. What they did not do was give us any detail whatever on where that money was going to be saved.
If we look back over the previous 13 years, the story is a pretty sorry one, with 400,000 more unemployed people today than when Labour came to power in 1997, a higher level of young people not in education or employment, and a lower proportion of people in work. Over that period, Labour spent billions of pounds on projects to try to get people back into work. They spent billions through the recession on supported programmes, but things have actually got worse. What we on the Government Benches know is that long-term sustainable jobs are created by the private sector, not by Government schemes.
Even when jobs were being created over that decade, Labour completely failed in its mission of trying to get people into work. Large numbers of people managed to come into the UK from overseas and find jobs, yet through the years of Labour Government, we consistently had some 5 million people stranded on out-of-work benefits. Many of them could have worked and many of them should have worked, but under Labour it just never happened. So much for “Things can only get better”.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
A particularly poisonous legacy of the previous Government and their economic failure was the plight of young people. We now have 1 million young people who are NEET—not in employment, education or training—but even before the credit crunch came, there were as many people NEET at the end of that period of economic growth—albeit unsustainable growth, as we now find—as there were when Labour came to power. The previous Government let down young people, scarring them for life. We now have 1 million young people unemployed because of Labour, yet we have had no apology. What we need is this Government to sort out the mess that the previous Government left behind.
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I would ask the House this question. Why would we take Labour Members seriously on youth unemployment when they had such a terrible record on youth unemployment over 13 years in government? What we saw from Labour in office was at best incompetence, at worst a wilful disregard for taxpayers’ money, and a failure to understand how to create long-term sustainable jobs in the economy.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
Has the right hon. Gentleman made any estimate of how unemployment will increase because of his Government’s policies?
Chris Grayling
We have taken a decision—and rightly so—to push out of Government the job of economic forecasting. That is the purpose of the Office for Budget Responsibility. Its analysis, independent of Government, is that unemployment will fall and employment will rise as a result of the decisions that we have taken in the Budget. That is the direction in which we should be heading.
Those in the previous Government cannot simply blame the recession for this mess. Despite 10 years in power, even before the global banking crisis started, more than 15% of our children—1.75 million children—lived in households where no one worked. We have one of the worst rates of workless households in the EU. I am therefore delighted to take on the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford on employment today, and to remind the House and this country what a terrible record the previous Government had in their 13 years in office.
There were fewer jobs in manufacturing. We have heard a lot of talk today about the 1980s, but let us be clear: the big drop in manufacturing employment in this country and the big slump in the proportion of the economy taken up by manufacturing took place under the Labour Government, between 1997 and 2010. Labour should be ashamed of the previous Government’s calamitous record on supporting manufacturing business in this country and creating a regulatory environment that drove so many firms out of business and overseas. The previous Government constantly missed their targets on apprenticeships. We heard again and again of how they were going to deliver hundreds of thousands of apprenticeships, but they never hit their targets. They spent massive amounts on employment programmes—designed in Whitehall but ineffective in practice—and they left the biggest deficit in our peacetime history. After all those promises about ending boom and bust, Labour finished with the longest recession in the western world.
Toby Perkins
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned that some programmes were ineffective. One of the programmes that he has cut is the future jobs fund. I tabled a written question about that for his Department, but it was completely unable to tell me how many jobs had been created in my constituency. As the Department obviously does not know whether the future jobs fund was successful or not—it is too early—and as it is unable to provide any evidence that it was not, why does the right hon. Gentleman not just admit that cutting the scheme was a decision made for ideological reasons rather than because it was not working?
Chris Grayling
What we sent to the hon. Gentleman in the written answer was the details of the future jobs fund placements in his area. We have to be careful with taxpayers’ money, and it would therefore not have been prudent to collect data down to constituency level. However, the information is there for him to see, and when he looks at those data, he will see that the success of the future jobs fund in creating jobs has been consistently below target all the way through.
Let me lay to rest one myth today. We have not stopped the future jobs fund. Tens of thousands of additional places will be created over the next few months under the future jobs fund. We have said, however, that we need to take tough decisions in the light of the mess left behind by the previous Government. Also, by next spring, we will be bringing on stream the Work programme, which we believe will provide long-term support for those who are looking to get back into work. I shall say a bit more about that in a moment.
Mr Heald
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the overall picture of Labour’s employment schemes shows that they helped into work the people with the highest levels of skill, and people aged between 25 and 49, and that a vast population was simply left behind that could not compete with the people who were coming into this country and taking the jobs that were on offer?
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend makes an important point. What we learned from the new deals was that people were simply cycled round and round. They went through the system again and again because they were not placed in sustainable employment. That is one of the problems with Labour’s approach.
Let me tackle the issue of the future jobs fund head on, because we have heard a lot today about Labour’s flagship scheme. Around 100,000 future jobs fund jobs are still being created under the current scheme, costing up to £6,500 each. As the right hon. Lady said, most of them are in the public and voluntary sector. I could be wrong, but my idea of sustainable employment is not a six-month work placement in the public and voluntary sector. It is about getting people into long-term roles in the private sector, which can provide a long-term career for them. That is why our emphasis has been on creating apprenticeships, and 50,000 new apprenticeships have been created in a very early move by this Government.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
Is it not insulting to people who work in the voluntary and public sector to imply in this House that those are not real jobs? Would the right hon. Gentleman like to withdraw that last statement?
Chris Grayling
That is not what I said. The right hon. Gentleman clearly was not listening. A six-month work placement in the public and voluntary sector with no guarantee of a job offer at the end of it, and no certainty that the role will involve the kind of skills development that an apprenticeship would offer, is a poor relation compared with the programme of apprenticeships launched under this Government.
Mr Lammy
I know that the right hon. Gentleman is an educated man. He has said that the country is in a recession. Is it not axiomatic that, in recession, private companies tend not to invest in employment? The purpose of the future jobs fund was precisely to create employment in the public sector, because the Government had leverage over the public sector.
Chris Grayling
But the way that we will create long-term jobs for the future will be to revitalise and energise our private sector. The reality is that the Labour party went into the general election campaign promising to increase the tax on employment and to make it more expensive for the private sector to employ people. How can the right hon. Gentleman think that that is a route to long-term sustainable growth and opportunity for employment in this country?
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether there will be a job guarantee with the 50,000 placements that will be arranged under the apprenticeship programme? Also, where is the logic in making people wait so long? There are still many unemployed people in my constituency. After someone has been unemployed for six months, the private sector will treat them as long-term unemployed. How can it be right to leave people waiting until next spring before giving them something to work on?
Chris Grayling
I know that the hon. Lady is a new Member, and she might not be aware of the changes made by the previous Government. One of the things they did was to extend the period that people had to wait before they could receive support on employment programmes. In the case of young people between the ages of 16 and 25, the period was extended from six months to 12 months. I agree with her that things need to happen sooner, and one of the things we will do in the Work programme is to give that support sooner.
The coalition Government are committed to supporting people in sustainable employment, providing opportunities that will provide skills, open doors and help people to stay in work. Our goal is not to get people off the unemployment register temporarily, but to work with them to achieve a goal of lasting employment. That means plotting a different course. The same tired old policies will not work. For too long, economic growth in Britain has been unbalanced, driven by the accumulation of unsustainable debt and a bulging public sector. We have been forced to deal with the largest public spending deficit in peacetime history, and the crisis in the eurozone has shown that the consequences of not acting are severe.
Yvette Cooper
I have heard what the Minister is saying, but how does he account for the fact that, in 2012-13 and 2013-14, employment will be 110,000 lower as a result of his Budget than it would otherwise have been, according to the assessment of the Office for Budget Responsibility? If there are fewer jobs in the economy, how on earth does he think young people are going to get more of them?
Chris Grayling
If the right hon. Lady looks at the figures, she will see that the OBR is forecasting an increase in employment of 1.5 million jobs in the wake of the Budget over the next few years. My goal, and the goal of this Administration, should be to ensure that as many of those jobs as possible go to people who are on benefits, many of whom have been on benefits long term. The big mistake of the past decade when jobs were being created was that that simply did not happen.
Yvette Cooper
Again, I ask the right hon. Gentleman to confirm the OBR’s forecast that, as a result of this Budget, employment will be lower. Before the Budget, it forecast 29.47 million jobs in the economy for 2012-13; after the Budget, it forecast 29.36 million jobs for the same year. Will he confirm that the consequence of his Budget will be to cut the number of jobs in the economy?
Chris Grayling
The right hon. Lady has continued to operate on the basis that the public sector could somehow remain as it was, and that we could carry on spending the same amounts of money. She does not seem to understand the consequences of carrying on with the same level of deficit. They would include higher costs for business and higher interest rates. We can see the consequences in the eurozone of not getting to grips with the deficit. We are interested in creating long-term, sustainable employment, which is why we want to deliver schemes and support that will encourage the private sector to grow and develop. That will not happen if we maintain a deficit, however.
Yvette Cooper
But will the Minister confirm that the reason for the lower number of jobs forecast for 2012-13 is that the private sector will have been hit by the consequences of his Budget?
Chris Grayling
Last week, the right hon. Lady was criticising us for theoretically planning job reductions in the public sector. She cannot have it both ways. We cannot have an increase in employment, a fall in unemployment and a fall in public sector employment without the private sector beginning to take people on again. This might be a point of difference between us, and I can accept that, but I believe that, over the next 10 years, we shall need a successful, flourishing private sector that can create sustainable jobs. I am sorry that the Labour party appears to be reverting to type in believing that the public sector can somehow carry it all. This is a point of difference between us, but I believe that we will not create opportunities for those young people unless we have proper, sustainable private sector employment.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Chris Grayling
If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I would like to make some progress.
We will introduce radical reform and follow policies that will encourage growth and development in the private sector. We will also radically reform welfare, with a real focus on helping people to find sustainable work. We will reform the benefits system so that work pays. We will tackle endemic worklessness and the intergenerational cycles of disadvantage that it creates. We will halt the tragic waste of human potential that exists when people are out of work. When I listen to Labour Members talking about unemployment, I simply remember their record over the past 10 years, and those 5 million people who have consistently been on benefits.
Next year, we will launch the Work programme to provide a coherent package of support for people who are out of work, regardless of the barriers that they face or the benefits that they claim. We will end the programme complexity that we have seen over the past decade, and replace all the paraphernalia of programmes with a single, integrated package of support. It will not be a one-size-fits-all scheme, however, because we have had too many such schemes from Whitehall. We will trust the professionals on the ground who deliver back-to-work support to find the right way of delivering that support to individuals. We will look to investors in the private, public and voluntary sectors to provide the support, and we will judge the organisations that participate on their success rate.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
Of course I want whatever new scheme the Minister comes up with to succeed, but does he share my concern about the possibility that the private contractors whom he wants to employ will charge more for their services because the changes the Government have made in the Budget will result in fewer jobs in the economy than there would otherwise have been?
Chris Grayling
That is not my concern. My concern is to ensure that, if the OBR forecasts are correct and we see employment growth amounting to 1.5 million more jobs in the next few years, we do not make the same mistake in government as the hon. Gentleman’s party did and fail to get people off benefits and into work to take those jobs. I do not want to see a steady and unchanging level of millions and millions of people on out-of-work benefits over the course of a decade while jobs are created around them, effectively operating outside our mainstream society. That must change. I want opportunity for those people. I want to see them back in employment. I am sure the hon. Gentleman shares that goal, but what we aim to do is make it happen this time around.
Miss Begg
I am sure the Minister is well aware that the increase in the number of people claiming incapacity benefit is a result of mental health problems. He may also know that, in response to most surveys, 60% of employers say that they would not employ someone who has had a mental health problem. How will the Government solve that conundrum?
Chris Grayling
The hon. Lady has made an important point, which I am sure her Committee will want to address. In fact, I was going to refer to the work capability assessment. These are important issues, and we clearly face a big challenge. There are 2.2 million people on old-style incapacity benefit, and we must do all we can to help as many of them as possible to return to work. Of course, not all of those people will be able to work and many will need to continue to receive unconditional support throughout their lives; but every organisation I have ever worked with, come across or talked to that works with people with disabilities and long-term sickness problems would like to see more of them back at work. We all believe that work will help those people, and I am determined that this part of the Work programme will make a huge difference to them.
Chris Grayling
I will give way once more, but then I really must make some progress.
Toby Perkins
I am grateful to the Minister, who has raised the important issue of people on incapacity benefit and the large number of people with mental health problems. Given his belief that the solution to those problems lies in the private sector, is he aware of many private sector employers who are rushing to employ people with a history of mental health problems or with a serious history of incapacity problems?
Chris Grayling
The key to supporting people with mental health problems and other disability issues is winning the confidence of employers, and the role that can be played by providers—whether in the private or the voluntary sector—in forging relationships with employers. I believe that as that relationship strengthens, as people start to obtain work placements and as employers start to work with some of those who have been on incapacity benefit, employers will become more ready and willing to provide extra opportunities.
I have no doubt that many businesses in this country want to do the right thing. I believe that, in general, members of our society recognise that we cannot go on with the same number of people stranded on incapacity benefit. I am confident that if we get the programme right and deliver effective back-to-work support for those people, the opportunities will be there and will grow as time goes by. I know there is consensus across the House on this proposal. We came up with it originally, and the previous Government adopted it. Now we are taking it forward, and we will work hard to refine the work capability assessment to ensure that we get it right. I look forward to working with the Select Committee and the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Miss Begg) to achieve that. It is fundamentally important that we actually make a difference to those people, about a quarter of whom have claimed incapacity benefit for more than 12 years. That has had a devastating impact on the people themselves, and it is a burden we have had to carry as a society. We must do all we can to help as many as possible of those people to make something better of their lives.
All that, of course, is in addition to the support that will continue to be provided by Jobcentre Plus. I agree with the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford that its staff do a first-rate job, which in recent years they have done under great pressure. I am glad that that work is recognised on both sides of the House.
Our package of reforms is not just about getting people into a job, and it is not just about saving money; it is all about helping people to make more of their lives. We have heard so much from the Labour party in recent weeks about its policies and how they would have made all the difference, but I do not buy that; I do not think they are right. What we inherited from Labour was a series of commitments it could not afford and a series of plans that involved short-term solutions to its political problems, rather than long-term solutions for the individuals concerned and for our country. We need a fresh approach, which is why we believe so strongly in focusing on apprenticeships rather than the future jobs fund.
Apprenticeships provide an opportunity to learn new skills that are actually valued by employers. They give people a chance to learn a trade and to embark on a career, while also improving productivity and developing a talent pool. A Labour Member mentioned skills. I happen to believe that a well-run apprenticeship is a much better way of giving someone a platform for life. That is why we are spending £150 million on a programme involving 50,000 apprenticeships that can make a difference.
Chris Grayling
I will give way once more, but then I must wind up my speech so that others have a chance to speak.
Rushanara Ali
May I ask once again whether there will be a job guarantee for those 50,000 apprentices? My question was not answered when I asked it earlier, and it is the kind of question to which my constituents want an answer. There is no point in people joining those programmes if there is no opportunity for them to get jobs when the programmes end.
Chris Grayling
We intend to continue the young person’s guarantee until the launch of the Work programme. However, there is no guarantee of a job at the end of any programme. The programmes are intended to create opportunities for employment. None of the last Government’s programmes involved a guarantee of a job at the end. The best we can do is to ensure that people are as work-ready as possible, and then try to provide an environment in which jobs are being created for which people can apply.
Chris Grayling
I said last time that I would give way only once more, but I will give way to the hon. Lady because I have not done so before. Then I must make progress and wind up my speech.
Alison McGovern
I am grateful to the Minister. It is fantastic that in my part of Wirral we saw a tenfold increase in the number of apprenticeships between 1997 and 2008. Does the Minister agree that the best thing we can do with apprenticeships—we all agree they are vitally important—is not to try to rewrite history or cut our way out of the recession, but to try to build business confidence so that investment in apprenticeships continues in my constituency and others?
Chris Grayling
One of the disappointing things about the last Administration was that we kept hearing the then Prime Minister make promises about numbers of apprenticeships. Year after year, we looked at how many had actually been delivered, and saw that they never hit the target. I hope we will not make the same mistake, and I believe that the 50,000 apprenticeships we have announced will make a difference to a large number people who will take them up as part of the Skills for the Future programme.
Chris Grayling
No; I am going to wind up my speech now.
I want to end by making a point about the overall context of our proposals. We are trying to create an environment in which business can grow, develop and flourish. The Budget was about that as well. The Chancellor announced measures to stimulate growth, including a reduction in the main rate of corporation tax and the rate of corporation tax for smaller companies, a reduction in the main and special rates of capital allowances, an increase in the enterprise finance guarantee, the creation of a growth capital fund, and the regional support with which we intend to help private sector employers to grow and develop in our regional areas. We also stopped the Labour jobs tax. All those measures are designed to create an environment in which small, medium-sized and larger businesses can grow, develop and create jobs in the next few years, and they have all been welcomed by business groups.
Yvette Cooper
I thank the Minister for his generosity in allowing me to intervene again. He referred to support for the private sector and for private sector growth. Will he confirm that according to the OBR’s own assessment, in 2012-13 private sector employment will be 260,000 lower than it would have been under Labour’s Budget?
Chris Grayling
When will the right hon. Lady recognise that the Labour Budget was not affordable? It was taking the country down a path we could not afford. We have seen in the eurozone what happens if nations try to do things they cannot afford. Labour Members keep going on as if nothing had happened—as if all would somehow have been swimmingly good if they had returned to office, and all the problems would have been sorted out—but it is not like that. Labour Members are living in a fantasy land, but the reality is that business groups welcome what we have done.
Richard Lambert, director-general of the CBI, has said:
“There was clear recognition of the role that business needs to play in getting the economy back into shape, and generating the jobs and wealth needed to sustain economic recovery.”
The British Chambers of Commerce has said:
“The government’s decisive moves to cut the deficit will have positive effects on business and investor confidence. Even more importantly, the Chancellor's message that Britain is open for business will be welcomed by companies the length and breadth of the country, and across the globe."
That is what we need to do to create the environment in which Britain is a good place to do business again, and in which jobs are being created.
It has been interesting to listen to Labour today. To be honest, it has been like a Westminster version of “Life on Mars”. Suddenly we are back to the old Labour rhetoric of the past. They seem to believe that what we need is big Government to create jobs, and if we spend just a bit more all will be well. That is nonsense. We know that we need flourishing businesses if we are to create jobs for the future. We know that we need the right skills and technologies for the future. We also know that we need to ensure that everyone in our society has the chance to find the right opportunity for themselves. We heard some of those messages from new Labour in its heyday, but they were never followed through. We are all paying the price now. This Administration will not make the same mistakes that Labour made.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
I was unable to intervene on the Minister of State on the role that big firms will play in creating the jobs of the future. I wondered whether he had seen the survey by the consultancy and accountancy firm Deloitte which concluded that big firms fear that a new recession will hit the UK. It said that business confidence has been knocked, in large part by the shroud-waving and fiscal hysteria from the Conservatives in creating the mood music for this draconian Budget. The survey of finance directors from 32 FTSE-100 companies and 93 UK companies accounting for 28% of the equity market showed that the net percentage of those who were more optimistic had dropped from 40% to 24%.
The hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) made a point about small business investment, but businesses need confidence if they are going to invest in the future. They will not invest in creating the jobs of the future if they are worried that this deflationary Budget, which will knock 1.3 million jobs out of the economy, will leave them high and dry. The money that they would otherwise invest could be kept for a rainy day or a potential future run on the bank.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
The hon. Lady says that what business needs is confidence. I do not disagree, but most of all business needs money. It was her Government that deprived people of the money to make their businesses work.
Mary Creagh
That is an extraordinary allegation—that somehow the Labour Government took money away from businesses. I thought that it was the banks—[Interruption.] There was a failure of regulatory oversight, but it was not just in this country. It happened across the world. In future, economic historians will look at the psychological group-think that prevailed across the world in all Treasury departments. There was an economic orthodoxy that the level of growth was sustainable. In the end, the bubble burst and it was not sustainable, but we made the decision not to allow the collapse of a bank to mean that people lost their savings.
We also decided to follow the Keynesian route back to employment. For those Members on the other side of the House who are unaware of Keynesianism, I recommend an excellent article in The Independent by Robert Skidelsky, who was Keynes’s biographer. He is no left-wing madman: he is a sensible and respected economist. He has an interesting analysis of the Budget that makes sobering reading, and I recommend it to all hon. Members of whatever party.
Mr Graham Stuart
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. As ever, she speaks with passion if not on this occasion with quite so much knowledge. Business is struggling because when the economy was booming and it was necessary to curb the lending of the banks, the Labour Government did the opposite and loosened the conditions for lending. After the collapse, the Labour Government did the opposite and tightened the requirements on the banks so that they were unable to lend. That is how the Labour Government both fuelled the boom and boosted the bust and that is why business is struggling so much to recover from Labour’s disaster.
Mary Creagh
I am so grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that basic lesson in economics. He may not be aware of my past working as an adviser to small businesses and to MBAs at Cranfield university on how to set up small businesses. Our economic record between 1997 and 2005 was extremely good when it came to ensuring that new businesses were created—[Interruption.] Would he care to listen to my answer or does he just want to keep commenting from a sedentary position? He claims that we turned the tap on too fast and then turned it off. It is understandable that when Governments end up owning majority shares in banks, they want to ensure that credit flows to businesses—and we ensured that that was happening through the small firm loan guarantee scheme. Now, the banks are almost in a monopoly position, and we need more competition for high street banks and to change their risk aversion when it comes to lending to small businesses.
We are straying from the point, which is the effect of the Budget on unemployment. The OBR has had an extraordinary few weeks. It was set up and has published its little forecasts, but now suddenly Sir Alan Budd—who set it all up—is to leave. I have been in politics a few years now and when someone leaves unexpectedly, I try to work out why. Why is it that someone in a brand-new, start-up situation who wants to perform a public service is leaving? I wonder whether there has been a row. Perhaps in the future we will find out the real reason—perhaps that he was leant on for the employment figures, which are heroically optimistic. The OBR claims that more than 2 million jobs will be created in the private sector over the next five years, but John Philpott, the chief economist at the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development, has said:
“There is not a hope in hell's chance of this happening. There would have to be extraordinarily strong private sector employment growth in a…much less conducive economic environment than it was during the boom.”
The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) says that we funded small businesses through the boom, but the OBR and the Treasury now claim that we will have a similar level of employment growth—another boom—but there is no credit to finance it and, by the way, they are cutting huge amounts out of the public sector. I will give way if any Member opposite can tell me how that will happen. I thought not.
Mary Creagh
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and many skilled IT workers and other professionals will lose valuable public sector contracts as the so-called bureaucratic back-office functions are scaled back.
One of the ways in which the Minister proposes to help the unemployed is by laying off 2,000 jobcentre staff in the next few months. It takes a particular sort of genius to do that in a recession, and I bow to the greater knowledge of the Conservative Members. How will they help people back into work with fewer people on the front line?
George Freeman
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way to the greater prowess on this side of the House. I appreciated her comments earlier about the importance of the private sector. The fundamental truth in this debate is that the private sector does something that the public sector does not—it pays for the public sector. It pays for itself and its profits pay for the public sector. The hon. Lady nods, which is nice to see. As she worked in the private sector helping small businesses, does she agree that the biggest fear of people in the private sector is not cuts to the public sector, but the threat of a rising debt crisis with interest payments alone—now she shakes her head—forecast to rise to £67 billion a year? The effect that that would have on the sovereign debt crisis and the threat of rising interest rates could plunge this country into a serious economic crisis.
Mary Creagh
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. We are in danger of rehearsing the arguments that we had at great length on the Finance Bill last night. I chose not to speak in that debate, because otherwise it might have dragged on even later than it did. However, I do not think that someone running a corner shop in south Wales is worried about the interest payments on Government debt. Interest rates on Government debt are historically low, and the repayment period here for such debts is, at 14 years, longer than in the US and Greece.
Government Members need to be very careful about the shroud-waving that they have done in connection with the Greek fiscal deficit. The UK is in no way comparable to Greece, which is an island economy based on tourism—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) listens, he might learn something. Greece has 178 different public sector pensions, and none of them is funded. In addition, matrilinear succession means that the wife inherits when a man dies, and that the daughter inherits when the widow dies. Trying to compare Greece to the UK is absolute madness.
George Freeman
Will the hon. Lady confirm first of all that I did not mention Greece? She has mentioned pensions, but the second thing that concerns the private sector is unfunded public sector pension liabilities, which also saddle the private sector economy. She seems to talk as though the public sector can somehow carry on spending money, but it is the private sector that has to pay for it.
Mary Creagh
In the end, we all end up paying for it. We made pension reforms to try and get people in the private sector to enrol in pension funds, because companies in that sector tend not to pay pensions or enrol their staff in stakeholder pensions. As a result, the taxpayer—the state—picks up the bill and we all end up paying for it. The important point is that the state is, in the end, the lender and the funder of last resort.
Mary Creagh
I will not take any more interventions, as this debate is turning into another Second Reading of the Finance Bill and I want to talk about unemployment and the future jobs fund.
In my constituency of Wakefield—which is well known to my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper)—700 places were allocated under the future jobs fund. We are not clear how many have survived the Government’s hatchet job, but I was privileged to welcome 50 young recruits to Wakefield council.
In addition, with my right hon. Friend I met three future jobs fund recruits at the Able project, an environmental scheme that uses a piece of disused land owned by Yorkshire Water that lies next to a sewage treatment works. One could not hope to find a less glamorous environment, but the project has created something very beautiful. Its organisers have worked with Nacro and the mental health trust to get people digging, growing, learning and being out in nature. The land is between a sewage works and a railway line, but it is an area of environmental beauty. The project has become a green business, coppicing the hazel and willow that grows there.
I met two young workers there, and we were able to buy some of the honey that they had made. They told me that they had had an apprenticeship but that the collapse of the business meant that they could not carry on. After six months on the dole, they were desperate to get something.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford and I made the visit in March, and the young workers told us that they did not know what was going to happen at the end of the six months. They asked us to try and make the period a year, as that would mean that they had a year’s experience under their belts. One young man was working visiting schools and showing children how to build nesting boxes.
The Able project is run by a third sector organisation, but I was aware that, at the end of his time there, the young man I had spoken to would have carpentry skills and experience of working with children. He was going to have all sorts of facts about nature and growing things at his disposal, with the result that a range of different organisations in the area could employ him.
I feel really heartbroken that that young man, the person whom I also met who is a support worker at Reconnect, a project that befriends older people across Wakefield who are at risk of isolation, mental health problems and loneliness, and the three people for whom I was trying to find work as wardens in Thornes park, are all now facing an extremely uncertain future.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady agree that one of the challenges for the future jobs fund is that, because the placements last only six months and have been taken up almost entirely by the public and charitable sectors, they do not provide future jobs? I have spoken to several charitable organisations in Gloucester, just as she has in her constituency. They have got people doing things very similar to what she has just described. They make the same points that she does, but they recognise that these are not apprenticeships. They are different: they do not provide jobs, but really just take people off the unemployment register for six months.
Mary Creagh
The point is that they are entry-level jobs. The future jobs fund takes people off the unemployment register for six months, but the important thing is that those people then have a CV that does not say, “I’ve been on the dole and I don’t know how to get up in the morning. I don’t know how to set an alarm because no one’s ever taught me. I’ve got used to staying in bed till half past 10 and then watching daytime TV.” Instead, their CVs say, “I’ve been doing something productive and am able to get myself to work. I’m committed and I’ve developed my communication skills.”
The young people involved may have failed at school and may not be academically successful. They need every chance that they can get: they may need a series of six-month placements to build up two years’ worth of experience, because it may take them much longer to enter the employment market than someone with an Oxbridge degree.
Mary Creagh
I have not finished, but I will give way to the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham).
Richard Graham
Does the hon. Lady agree that a real apprenticeship that lasts three years, like the 50,000 new apprenticeships that this coalition Government are committed to providing, is a much more genuine gateway to a real job than a series of six-month benefits and training programmes that has no real guarantee of leading anywhere?
Mary Creagh
I think that we should have both. I do not think that 50,000 apprenticeships will be enough; nor do I think that cutting Peter to spend money on Paul is a fair way to allocate resources.
Steve Rotheram
I am a product of something similar to the future jobs fund. In the late 1970s, there was something called a pre-apprenticeship scheme. I did six months on that and was very fortunate to complete it. The scheme was not just academic, as it gave me some transferable skills. It taught me to get out of bed and it led me, in later life, to do a master’s degree in contemporary urban renaissance. That is the sort of opportunity that the future jobs fund is providing.
Mary Creagh
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He truly is a renaissance man, and I hope that many of the young people whom we met who got their entry-level work through the future jobs fund end up sitting on these green Benches. I hope that they can make the same incredible progress and journey that he has made in his life.
I turn now to the Work programme set out by the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). I have a great deal of concern about it. In a speech on 27 May, the Secretary of State spoke about
“a single scheme that will offer targeted, personalised help for those who need it most, sooner rather than later”.
If it is a matter of sooner rather than later, why are we waiting until next year for it to come in? I suppose that that has to do with the fact that the Government want to set up what I presume is a national contract with large-scale training providers. I tried to intervene about this earlier, because the Government are asking those providers to bear the risk of training people even though their contract payments will depend on outcomes.
That raises a series of questions. First, at a time when deflation, very low growth or even a double-dip recession are all possible, why does the Minister think that the private sector will turn to the banks for loans to cover this training given that, as we heard earlier, the banks are averse to risk and not very good at lending? Output-related funding is currently calculated on the basis that it takes six or nine months to get a person into work and then 13 weeks to ensure that he or she has lasted in that job. Why does he think that organisations in the private sector such as Capita or BT will line up to take on the massive risk involved in training people and employing them, when there is such a huge amount of uncertainty?
I have another question for the Minister, and I will give way to him if he can answer. How does he think voluntary sector organisations such as Nacro—the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders—will be able to do this? Such organisations have specialist programmes working with the most difficult, hard to reach and disadvantaged people—prisoners, young offenders and ex-offenders. They have the benefit of being present in and running training courses in prison and are then able to offer some sort of continuity when the offender leaves. I am also thinking of providers such as Rathbone training, an organisation that I had the privilege of serving as a trustee for seven years. These are small-scale organisations—Rathbone’s turnover when I left it in 2005 was £40 million. Why does he think that they will go to the bank—or their trustees would say that they should go to the bank—and borrow up to £20 million at a time, with a personal guarantee of the trustees, who are jointly and severally liable, who are for a programme when it is not clear that they will get the rewards from it?
Chris Grayling
I am happy to intervene briefly to confirm two quick points for the hon. Lady. The first is that, as she will recognise, this is an established marketplace that has grown. What we are talking about, in particular, is scale as a result of the incapacity benefit migration. We are pushing the envelope further than it has been pushed before, but established principles are involved. She is right about protecting voluntary sector organisations. I would be making another speech if I explained the full detail of how to do that, but I can assure her that I regard those organisations as important as she does.
Mary Creagh
I am relieved to hear that, but I am afraid that that was not an answer and I am unable to wait for another speech from the right hon. Gentleman to hear these plans emerge. Let us consider the position of an organisation 90% of whose budget depends on public sector contracts. Organisations are planning next year’s budget now. They will be signing off budgets that need to be ready in February and the finance directors will be making those budgets ready in October, November and December. How will such an organisation make plans for 90% of its funding—that could be £35 million, or £37 million at 2005 prices—without knowing what the system and financing mechanism will be for voluntary sector bodies? If the right hon. Gentleman is to grant the voluntary sector privilege, will he not be in danger of doing something about which we have heard a lot—will he not be risking crowding out the private sector? I shall leave those thoughts hanging in the air.
Rathbone training works with teenagers who have had chaotic homes lives and who have encountered poverty and unemployment. Many of them have failed at school and many have had babies early in their lives. Rathbone carried out a survey of those young people, asking them which profession they would like to pursue. Everyone in the Chamber will probably be relieved to hear that only a handful wanted to be footballers, pop stars or WAGs. Instead, the majority of Rathbone trainees preferred more everyday jobs such as car mechanic or office worker. That was summed up by a 17-year-old lad from Newcastle, who said:
“I’m happy at the moment training to be a bricklayer.”
I just hope that he has a job to go to in the construction industry when he finishes his bricklayer training. On the current prognosis, I am sceptical about that happening.
I am concerned about the incapacity benefit reforms and the assertion that such a one-size-fits-all approach will be better. Why will it be better than programmes run by people in the public sector? I am not so sure that it will be. I am concerned that we are going around in a circle—we are going back to the 1980s, as my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State said, and back to the 1930s. We are going into the failed Thatcherite schemes of the 1980s—a youth training scheme mark 2. In the current plans, however, there is no enterprise investment scheme—and that did exist in the 1980s. We have heard a lot about the need for a vibrant and flourishing small business sector, but these reforms contain nothing, as yet, that allows would-be entrepreneurs in constituencies such as Wakefield and Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, as well as those in Liverpool, to set up their own businesses. I hope that the Minister, who is no longer in his place, will examine that.
Mr Graham Stuart
Does the hon. Lady regret the devastating effects on manufacturing of the past 13 years under the Labour Government? Does she have any thoughts on what can be done to encourage manufacturing? This is not just about construction and other private sector jobs, because we need to restore and rebuild manufacturing, which was growing in the last few years of the previous Conservative Government but has been devastated during the past 13 years under Labour.
Mary Creagh
I can perhaps turn the question around on the hon. Gentleman by asking him whether he regrets what happened to cities such as my birthplace of Coventry, where I grew up in the 1980s. All the car factories that I grew up around—the Massey Ferguson tractor plant, the Carbodies taxi plant and the Alvis plant, which used to make tanks, and the Coventry Chain Company—were all replaced, either by housing or by retail parks. The factories were all shut down during the short few years between 1984 and 1989, when thousands of incredibly skilled workers in those factories were lost. In addition, does he regret the fact that the previous Conservative Government shut down the coalfields of Wakefield, which could now be doing something to reduce our dependence on foreign energy supplies? I shall leave that matter for another debate.
I am concerned about the effect of benefit cuts on women. I am keen to hear from Conservative Members about the move to employment and support allowance and to jobseeker’s allowance. A little piece in the Red Book says, “After you have been on JSA for more than a year, your housing benefit is cut by 10%.” I am keen to hear from the Conservative Front-Bench team whether women with children—these children may be only a year old—will be affected by that proposal. If they are affected, that is an incredibly draconian policy.
I have no problem with women who have children going out to work. I am a mother of two children and I came back to work here when my child was six months old. I have no problem with encouraging mothers to get out of the home and into the workplace, and expecting them to begin the search for work when their child is three and has access to the free nursery place is very important. The idea that one can say to a mother with a babe in arms, “You have to put the baby into child care and go out to look for a job otherwise your housing benefit will be cut by 10%” is, as my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State said, a return to the Victorian values of the workhouse and the notion of dividing the poor into two segments: the undeserving poor and the deserving poor. I leave that thought with hon. Members.
I shall now discuss the issues associated with people moving house to find work. I have no problem with mobility, because people should look around, think and open their horizons in the search for work; my parents are Irish and they came to this country on the boat—not on a bicycle—in the 1960s, finding gainful employment in Birmingham and then Coventry, where they settled and got married. However, we need to examine carefully the psychological impacts of asking people to leave their homes to look for work. One of the great untold stories of the Irish diaspora is the psychological impact that emigration has on the mental health, the alcohol dependency and the level of premature death of a particular community. The Irish are the only community whose life expectancy decreases upon emigration to this country. That is perhaps a little-known fact, and I can see the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) is thinking it through.
That is what happens when people move away from their communities, so it is very important that we ensure that we have the structures in place so that people can be supported if they want to move. I would turn the question around by asking another one. Let us consider what would happen if someone from Wakefield or a high unemployment area wanted to move in order to work, found themselves a job in London and went to one of the city centre local authorities, such as Hackney, Camden or Islington, asking to be put at the top of the housing waiting list. What would that do to the Islington, Camden and Hackney residents waiting to get out of overcrowded accommodation? How would seeing people coming in from outside and getting houses affect them? Would any such provision have to involve a minimum time that someone keeps a job? Would people have to stay in their job for three months, six months or a year? If they lost the job after 12 months through no fault of their own, could they keep the house or would they be expected to make the long train journey, or the long car journey back up the M1, to the city that they left?
I conclude by discussing unemployment and what it means to Opposition Members. For us, unemployment is not a theory, an abstract thing or a thing that has to be tackled. For us, unemployment is what happened to our families, friends, communities and, in the recessions of the ’80s and ’90s, ourselves. As for the idea of the big society, I say to Government Members that our society is not broken. Over 13 years, our Labour Government spent a lot of time, energy, money and thought trying to mend the broken society that Thatcher and Major bequeathed us in 1997.
In 1979 there were 1 million people on the dole, and the Conservative party won that year’s election with the posters of unemployment queues and the slogan, “Labour isn’t working”. Three years later, 3 million people were on the dole, a level of unemployment that had not been seen since the depression of the 1930s—a particular type of genius that the Conservative party has in pursuing flawed and deflationary economic policies.
I remember, during my childhood, coming down to breakfast and hearing the figure for the number of cities where riots had taken place in 1981, and I could not believe the number of places where people had spontaneously gone out and created mayhem and anarchy because they were tired of being left behind. I remember the songs, such as “One in 10”, about the one in 10 unemployed, and the song about my city of Coventry, “Ghost Town”. It was a ghost town. That is how I grew up, and I do not want any child or constituent of mine to grow up in a ghost town. Opposition Members will continue to focus on unemployment, because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford said, for us it will never be a price worth paying.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. This is an important Opposition debate, and I want to give some gentle guidance. Hon. Members will be horrified to learn that we cannot go on until half-past 2 in the morning today, and that we intend to call the winding-up speeches at about half-past 6. If everyone wants to get in, and if people speak for wildly longer than 12 minutes, not everybody will be satisfied.
Also, I love interventions, which I think help the debate, but if they become mini speeches fewer people will get in. So, if we show some restraint, that will be very welcome to the entire House.
Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
The House appreciated the passion with which the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) put her case, but if she were being frank she would accept that, in the 1960s, 1970s and, again, in the 1980s, this country faced some difficult economic problems. If she looks back at the history of interventions in the job market, she will see that since 1979 we have tried various options. Indeed, there has been some success in putting people back into work by using employment-market interventions, but I am sure that in her heart of hearts she will accept that we have let many people, particularly during the past 13 years, fall by the wayside.
The people who were getting jobs through Labour’s employment schemes had skills or were in the age bracket of 25 to 49 years old. Many other people became part of that workless group whereby 3 million homes had no adult of working age in work at all. Those people were not seen on programmes, and very few of them were seen at all, so we need to consider a programme that really challenges that situation and looks to provide the help that people need in all aspects of work. Too many schemes have been based on just one benefit: if people were on one particular benefit, there was a scheme for them; and if people were from one age group, there was a scheme for them. However, we need something that captures all the issues and removes all the barriers to employment, so that everybody gets a fair deal from the Government.
There are some encouraging signs in the labour market. The Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development’s latest quarterly survey shows for the first time in six quarters a plus 5 figure for the employment intentions of employers: they do intend to employ people. The figures for the south-east are particularly good, showing a strong intention to employ. Equally, Reed in Partnership, an excellent contracting company, has shown that the number of advertised vacancies is up by 5%, so there are some encouraging signs. However, the real question is whether the increase in private sector employment will be enough to deal with the undoubted fall in public sector employment and the likely redundancies there. That is the challenge for the next few years—to ensure that private sector employment increases sufficiently.
At The Times CEO summit last week, Sir John Rose, chief executive of Rolls-Royce, one of our best companies, was reported to have said that we as a country were very self-satisfied about the services boom in the Labour years, but that during that time manufacturing capability and competitiveness were on the slide. He noted that in higher education we are educating 7,000 people a year in media studies, at a time when China is educating technicians and people who will have skills in the nuclear industry. He rightly said that during that period we did not concentrate enough on investment in technical education at the secondary and tertiary levels, and that we need to address that issue if we are to have a future of success in the private sector.
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
On Reed in Partnership’s job index, the hon. Gentleman mentioned the figure for growth, on which the organisation comments in its press release, but that growth is predominantly in financial services, accountancy and insurance. The index also states that, compared with February, the figure for this month in charity and voluntary work is minus 30 index points; in construction and property, it is minus 7; in engineering, it is minus 8; in health and medicine, it is minus 19; in scientific, it is minus 6; in social care, it is minus 8; and in training, it is minus 15. In the north-east—my area—the salary index has also fallen, so fewer jobs are being advertised for less money.
Mr Heald
I think the hon. Gentleman is wrong, because the headline figure shows an increase of 5% over the past six months, but he is right about the differences between sectors and regions. He makes an important point, which we should not ignore, and I shall return to it later in my remarks. However, Sir John Rose’s point was also well made. On the question of what needs to happen in this country, the role of apprenticeships should not be ignored, and 50,000 more apprenticeships are welcome, particularly given the good quality of education that they provide in technical areas.
In the latest CIPD survey, there is a lot of criticism of the abilities and work-readiness of our graduates, and there is a lot to be said for schemes such as internships, which get people ready for work so that they can do a good job as soon as they enter employment. I represent North East Hertfordshire, and a good thing about Hertfordshire is that we, as a county, have a series of institutions that are business-facing but educational. Our colleges are business-facing, and our university is well known as business-facing, which means that the county asks businesses what skills they need and our university provides the skilled workers. In terms of the employment service in Hertfordshire, if a graduate who is placed with a Hertfordshire company needs an extra skill, our university will teach them it, and our colleges all feed into that. It is no coincidence that we have the lowest number of NEETs in the country.
Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
Teesside university, the university of the year, is basing itself in my constituency, and I am quite interested in the hon. Gentleman’s idea about graduates not being prepared for the workplace. Will he please identify exactly when in the history of university education employers said, “All our graduates are prepared for the workplace”? When was that golden age of preparedness?
Mr Heald
The hon. Lady makes an extremely good point, which is that we are not good enough as a country at preparing people for work. If we look at why we have so many workless families, and why employers are dissatisfied, it goes right back to the beginning—to school. The fact is that 40,000 young people leave school every year in this country who cannot read, write and add up properly. It is not good enough that we do not have the technical people we need in business coming through. This is a failure of the whole system that needs to be addressed. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady chunters, but Sir John Rose is probably one of the most eminent chief executive officers in the country, he is running a company that is a great success story, and he is right to highlight the need to do better on technical education and skills.
Over the years, we have had a range of employment programmes that have not succeeded as well as we would have hoped. A few years ago, the Work and Pensions Committee looked into what contractors can achieve. We did a major report on how the Department for Work and Pensions commissions employment programmes and the role of prime contractors. We were encouraged by the international examples. We looked at what had happened in Australia and visited the Netherlands to look at what was being done there. That seemed to show that contractors were able to provide programmes more cheaply, but also to get better results. Professor Finn, who was advising the Committee, found that Australia was achieving, through “contractorisation”, an improvement of about 10% in job readiness and people’s ability to find placements. In the Netherlands, we were told very strongly that the people who ran these contractor companies were able to specialise provided that they were given enough flexibility in respect of the barriers to employment that there have been and still are.
Looking at the picture overall, I have reached the view that as soon as a person is not working, and we are aware of that, they must be interviewed to find out what the barriers to employment are that they face and start to tackle them. If somebody has basic skills problems, we need to get on to that at an early stage and tackle it—and equally, if somebody needs child care or has a problem with addiction. These are all areas where action is required. In relation to the work capability assessment for incapacity benefit, a lot of people have not been seen for many years, and the on-flow that has been examined so far seems to suggest that many of them are capable of doing some kinds of work, but not necessarily all kinds. Those people need considerable help.
If we are to help people who have the classic problems suffered by those on incapacity benefit—musculoskeletal problems such as back injuries, and mental health problems such as stress, and worse—it is very important to get in with an early intervention. More can be done by employers, the NHS and the system as a whole—including, perhaps, the companies that provide insurance for people who are unable to work—in getting together to see whether they can do more to get this help in quickly. It is not acceptable that somebody of working age who has a back injury and needs physiotherapy has to wait 10 weeks for an appointment whereas if they were seen quickly they could get back to work. I ask the Minister whether it is possible to have liaison and discussion with the NHS, employers and insurance companies to try to do better in getting involved more quickly and stopping some of these conditions becoming chronic in the first place. With back problems, that means physiotherapy; with mental health problems, it may mean talking therapies as well as the drug treatments for depression of the sort that are available these days.
Yesterday, I talked to people at the National Ankylosing Spondylitis Society, who said that all too often they have to wait a long time for the treatment they need to deal with their condition. For people of working age, we need to prioritise their health and have something amounting to a national occupational health approach so that we do not end up with a lot of people who become chronically ill. It is well known that someone who has been out of work with a disability for two years is very unlikely to work again.
I welcome the Work programme. The criticisms that have been made of it are a little unfair, if I may say so. The fact is that the economy has been put into a terrible situation by the previous Government. The future jobs fund is a scheme that has only just started, and it is not as though it is not being replaced by something that is probably better—namely, more apprenticeships. It is a bit disingenuous to describe it as a jobs fund, as though these are permanent jobs, when they are really job placements for six months.
Tom Blenkinsop
Speaking of disingenuous elements, the Government’s amendment refers to
“policies to stimulate private sector employment by reversing the damaging increase planned for employer national insurance contributions”,
which implies that that was a jobs tax. Is it not really the case, particularly for the north-east, as I have been advised by the North East chamber of commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses in the north-east, that the real jobs tax is the VAT increase that the Government have proposed?
Mr Heald
If the hon. Gentleman thinks about when we got 2.5 million extra jobs in our economy in a three-year period, he will recall that it was under the Conservatives in the 1980s. That was done by allowing businesses to have lower taxes and to be less regulated—by really giving them a boost. We need to do something similar to help business and to get off its back. We also need to provide the technical training that Sir John Rose talks about, together with a scheme that helps the workless—the people who have been left behind in the plethora of employment schemes that we have had for the past 30 years.
Mr Heald
If the hon. Gentleman looks back at the mess that this country was in when the Conservatives came into office in 1979 after the Labour years, he will see that it was not an easy period to be in government. He must accept, surely, that if we can improve on what has gone before, that is the best thing to do. We need to listen to somebody who is a thoughtful CEO saying that we need better technical training; to look at the idea of apprenticeships as good-quality training, which we all agree about really; to try to have internships so that our graduates are job-ready; and, on top of that, to have a Work programme that does not leave anyone behind, that is streamlined, and that involves contractors sooner rather than later. Surely that is the wisdom of our time.
Tom Blenkinsop
Interestingly, the majority of men and women on site in the steel and chemical industries in my area are in either their late teens or early 20s, or in their late 40s or early 50s, which suggests an 18-year period when apprentices were not taken on.
Mr Heald
The hon. Gentleman is right that in periods of our history, both sides of industry have not distinguished themselves in supporting apprenticeships adequately. I do not know whether he agrees with that, but now is the time to do the right thing, and to support apprenticeships and technical education. We need a scheme that works on the Work programme side, and hopefully this country can come roaring back from the mess it was left in by the Labour Government.
Gordon Banks (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the contribution of the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Mr Heald), but I want to talk about the construction industry and my constituency, and I am sure we will come across other related matters. I refer the House to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I was involved in the construction industry for more than 30 years before I was elected to the House in 2005. Frankly, I am shocked at what has happened in the industry in the past few years, and I greatly fear what will hit us in the near future. I started my own business in 1986, so I have weathered a few storms, but I fear that the future has something terrible in store for the industry. If it is bad for the industry, it is bad for jobs.
In the past few years, the construction and housing sectors have contracted massively. With that contraction in activity has come a contraction in the number of jobs. When the banks went into meltdown, the previous Government reacted appropriately. There was action to protect investments and to support failing banks, and genuine attempts to get money back into the marketplace. Although that proved a little more difficult than I would have hoped, that positive action saved jobs. However, now we risk all that effort.
It was necessary for the public sector to step in when the private sector failed—let us not forget that that is what happened. My background is in the private sector, and I am proud of the UK’s private sector—or at least part of it. It should be a driver of growth and the major contributor to addressing our budget deficit, but how will that happen when the private sector remains very fragile and the public sector is faced with ill-thought-out, ideological cuts?
The construction sector is a good example of that. The industry has some 250,000 businesses and employs more than 2 million people in the UK, with turnover of about £6 billion. We had the second largest output in the European Union—I do not know whether we still do—and we all know the role that the industry has played in the UK’s progress in recent years. It is a private sector enterprise, but its clients are both public and private sector. Businesses generally need the construction sector to expand, as does the state, when they are intent on improving the quality of life of citizens.
There are vital sub-sets in the construction sector. Construction product companies have annual turnover of more than £40 billion and employ more than 650,000 people in 30,000 companies. In Scotland, almost 12% of the work force are employed in construction or in some form of building-related activity, whether as a joiner on site, a planner in a local authority office or a lorry driver delivering materials to a building site. Sadly, that is changing for the worse. All those jobs are under threat.
Mr Graham Stuart
One great mystery of the past 13 years is that there were record levels of immigration under the Labour Government and record lows in the number of houses built, particularly affordable housing units. I do not know the explanation for that, but I would be interested hear whether the hon. Gentleman, with his background in construction, has any thoughts on how we can increase the number of housing units in this country, so that we can tackle homelessness and boost the construction industry, jobs and employment.
Gordon Banks
I will address that in greater depth and detail in a few minutes, but the right solution is a joint public and private sector solution. The solution cannot be driven by one of those alone—it is not an either/or question.
The housing sector enjoyed some useful periods in recent years, prior to the recession. When it delivered large profits for many developers, it also delivered jobs in our economy. The sector was a driver for the economy, but the current situation in the private house building sector is absolutely desperate. There were 40,000 home loans in April 2010, which, if projected over a year, would be fewer than half a million. If that is the annual figure, it will be the lowest since 1974, yet the need for housing is ever growing, as the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) pointed out. Our desire to own our properties continues to grow, and we should encourage such aspirations.
To generate jobs in the housing construction sector, we need to increase the number of higher loan-to-value products, and reduce the 25%, 30% and 35% deposit demands from the mortgage industry. The mortgage products that were on offer before the recession were unsustainable, and we had the ridiculous situation of lenders lending 125% of the value of properties. Everybody has responsibility for that—the Government, lenders and borrowers—but I am concerned that the cuts in interest rates in the past few years have not been passed on to mortgage deals. That is stifling the market, and therefore costing jobs. Although interest rates are an issue, the loan-to-value ratio is the main problem.
Catherine McKinnell
Does my hon. Friend share the concern that a constituent of mine raised with me this weekend? He and other young people he knows who work in the public sector in Newcastle are all in fear of losing their jobs. They had planned to move house, but they have put that on hold because of that fear, and they know that many of their contemporaries are in the same situation. There is a real worry about great damage being caused to the housing market, particularly in my region.
Gordon Banks
That is very well put. It is a real problem and so, too, more broadly, is the effect of public sector cuts on the private sector. That will stop the private sector growing and providing the jobs and profits that the Conservatives expect it to create to get us out of the mess we are in.
We need to get to a sustainable level of 90% loan-to-value mortgages to generate jobs in the sector, but it does not stop there. If someone buys a new car they put fuel in it, and because of efficiencies it is probably a lot less than they had to put in their old car. However, people who buy a home spend additional money. Ask any retailer and they will say that they need a buoyant housing market, both new and second-hand, for the high street to be a busy place. Home buyers purchase carpets, furniture, white goods, televisions, curtains and more. This is therefore the one industry that directly feeds the spending of considerable sums of money into other sectors.
In 2007 there were 357,800 first-time buyer mortgages, and the Halifax produced data that suggested that the cost of furnishing and equipping a new property is about £6,000, so that equates to about £2.14 billion of high street spend from first-time buyers alone. If we multiply the original figure by the number of people in each property purchase chain, we see that the true amount of high street spend might be double or three times more. In short, support for jobs in the housing sector is delivered by the availability of appropriately priced mortgages, but that is lacking today.
Turning from housing to construction, I supported the last Government’s commitment to bring forward capital spending projects, and I should pay tribute to the councils in my constituency and the last Labour Scottish Executive, who delivered six new secondary schools in recent years, and the health board, which has delivered a new community hospital. I am also grateful for the introduction of rail services to Alloa and the new Clackmannanshire bridge.
All those projects were started under Labour. They are now finished, and because of the failure of the Scottish National party’s Scottish Futures Trust there is nothing coming along behind them to match the brick-for-brick commitment we have been given. We heard in the House just this week about the Government’s plans for the Building Schools for the Future programme, damaging our infrastructure, not giving children the best possible start and throwing people on to the scrap heap in what might be called the triple whammy. We need to invest in our infrastructure. Doing so improves the infrastructure, improves lives and creates jobs.
We also need an active home improvement market, but I fear that the recent announcement of the 20% VAT rate will decapitate what was beginning to look like a possible lifeline to the industry. The loss of 1.3 million jobs will not help either, but let me first deal with the VAT effect. Many Conservative Members derided the effectiveness of the last Government’s reduction of the VAT rate to 15%. They said it would be ineffective, but we all know that that was not the case.
There are real worries in the building industry about the new VAT rise. It will harm in many ways. First, it will chase people away from embarking on improvements, and in doing so it will cost revenue and jobs—and if it costs jobs, it will cost even more revenue. It will encourage a black market as people turn to cash-in-hand jobs to save that 20%, and what will that do? It will lead to a loss of revenue. Cash-strapped home owners will become increasingly vulnerable, and the £170 million that was estimated to be taken on the housing sector black market this year looks set to grow.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
I am listening very closely to what my hon. Friend is saying. As a former Minister with responsibility for construction, I think the VAT increase on environmental improvements to homes is a major error, because it disincentivises people from making homes more energy-efficient. I cannot see a more short-sighted measure in the Budget.
Gordon Banks
My hon. Friend is right, and it is not just about the environmental or green side; it is also about quality of life. The quality of a property has a knock-on effect on children’s ability to grow up and learn, so there will be a negative effect all round. I am not sure that he, as a former Minister with responsibility for construction, will enjoy what I am about to say, but I think there is a strong argument for reducing VAT to stimulate the economy, just as the last Government did, but in a more targeted way. Reducing VAT to 5% on the labour element of home maintenance repair and improvement work could, as argued by Experian, create an extra 55,000 jobs this year alone. What the Government are doing will cost jobs. The views we have heard today about job growth are not shared by the Federation of Master Builders, which argues that 7,500 jobs will be lost in small and medium-sized enterprises in the construction sector this year alone as a result of the VAT increase. When the multiplier effect is taken into account, the effect on small and medium-sized construction companies in this year alone could be the loss of between 23,000 and 25,000 jobs.
There is another cause for concern. If firms go bust, close down and lay off workers, they will be in no position to train apprentices for the future.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The hon. Gentleman mentions the construction industry, which I think is relevant to all hon. Members in the Chamber; it is certainly relevant to the area I represent. Does he agree that the Government should try in particular to help those aged 50 and over who have worked in the construction industry all their lives? They cannot get jobs anywhere else and find it hard to retrain.
Gordon Banks
I do agree, but I would much rather see them retained in the construction sector. There is a strong argument that the construction sector can drive economic growth in this country, and I would like the Government to take that forward.
As I said earlier when I intervened on my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), if we do not deliver skills learning for apprentices today, we will have a skills shortage in future and that will have an economic impact. That should not be tolerated, but we have to understand that struggling businesses do not take on apprentices; they survive day to day and fight day to day. The last thing they are thinking about is having an apprentice, because they are thinking about getting through the day without the bank phoning them.
When the construction industry loses jobs, there is a lack of focus on the resulting suffering because it does not affect 2,000 or 3,000 people all under one roof. They are in different places around the United Kingdom, and when jobs are lost, it is 20 jobs here and 40, 50 or 100 there. That makes it very difficult for the construction sector to show the impact of policies and to get through to the Government and people in general the impact of decisions. It is very easy to see what is happening when a car plant or a big manufacturing location is threatened with closure, but it is very difficult to take on board everything that is happening in the construction sector because it is so disparate and is spread throughout the UK.
Before I discuss my constituency, I make one last plea for the construction sector. It is vital for training, revenue and business growth, and it is vital for improving public services, which I want to improve. It is also vital for improving the quality of life of UK citizens. I strongly urge the Government to recognise that and to invest in it accordingly.
My constituency is quite large and varied, with a rural aspect to much of it. We have industry, of which we are very proud. Some of it is excellent. There are businesses such as Highland Spring, Vector Aerospace, Owens-Illinois and Diageo, and I want to focus on two of those, their interdependence and the impact of the VAT increase. Diageo has long had an interest and a presence in Clackmannanshire. The county is very proud of that business, as it is of Owens-Illinois—or the Glassworks as it is called locally. The interdependence is that one of the companies produces the packaging for the product that the other produces.
My concern is that the VAT increase will impact negatively on product sales, which will impact negatively on the requirement for packaging. If that occurs, the safety valve will be jobs. It is not rocket science—it is simple and straightforward. In my opinion, and as we heard yesterday, the recent reduction in the budget deficit is a result of increased tax take arising from businesses getting back on their feet, from people being in work and from a return to growth. The VAT increase puts all that at risk. It is regressive, hits the poorest hardest and will result in job losses. It will not deliver the revenue necessary for the Treasury, and it could have a negative effect that might deliver a downward spiral. The VAT increase coupled with the axing of the future jobs fund makes the outlook anything but secure.
We have discussed today why the future jobs fund has been cut, and I am afraid that I and my Opposition colleagues do not understand why it has been cut. We also do not understand why the Prime Minister, who thinks it is a good idea, has decided to cut it. It is interesting to see some Liberal Democrats in the House this afternoon, because they think that the future jobs fund is a good thing, too, but have played their part in cutting it. In fact, the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), said:
“We have no plans to change or reduce existing government commitments to the Future Jobs Fund. We believe that more help is needed for young people, not less”.
In Scotland, some 11,000 young people will be discarded as a result of the Prime Minister and the Lib Dems going back on their word. Much more can be said about the Government’s support for jobs—or lack of it—but I will end by saying this. The VAT increase will cost jobs, axing the future jobs fund will cost jobs, and failing to recognise the importance of the construction and housing sectors will cost jobs. They will all cost revenue, ruin lives and put the recovery at risk. None of them are a chance worth taking.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Before I call the next speaker, I would appreciate it if Members could try to aim for 11-minute speeches. If they do not, not everybody will get in. I did not want to put the clock on, but I am being tempted. I understand that Members have a lot to say, but I ask them not to forget, if they take interventions, that if they can stick to around 11 minutes I will be much happier.
Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)
We have heard a lot of talk from the other side of the House about jobs and growth, but over the past 13 years we have seen illusory growth and illusory jobs that have been fuelled by public spending and paid for by unsustainable debt. Let me give an example: the National Audit Office published a report that suggested that between 2002 and 2007 the jobs created by regional development agencies cost £60,000 each. For every new job, the Government effectively spent £60,000. Such a level of public sector job creation is not the way that we will increase jobs in the long term.
There has also been a lot of talk about evidence, but if we consider the evidence of what creates growth and what creates jobs—I have looked at some international Treasury studies on this—we see that the most productive area of public spending as regards growth is infrastructure spending and the second most productive in terms of growth and jobs is education spending. That is where the Government should be focused and that is where we are rightly focused.
Mr Lammy
In the light of what the hon. Lady has just said, which was put very well, will she make representations to the Government about the closure of the Building Schools for the Future programme, which is at the centre of both education and infrastructure in this country?
Elizabeth Truss
The evidence suggests that the most productive education spending is that on the quality of teaching, not on the quality of the buildings. I am happy to discuss that further with the right hon. Gentleman, and I will do so by letter if he likes.
Moving on to the reports that demonstrate that infrastructure spending is the most effective way to spend, it is not just those in ivory towers who think that—indeed, the Library agrees—but local businesses in my constituency do, too. I asked them to give me their priorities for what the Government should do for South West Norfolk businesses. They said, “No. 1: improve the road and rail links. No. 2: get the performance up in our schools, so that we have the skills that we need locally.” That is what people say.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
In the light of what the hon. Lady has just said, will she say a few words about the cancellation of the A14 project, which is vital to her region and my region in the east of England?
Elizabeth Truss
I am in the process of making representations on the A11, which is a crucial project that would open up businesses in Norfolk. We should assess such projects—I shall come to this later in my speech—on the basis of economic return. We have a very small pot now, owing to what has happened and the money that has been spent in the past few years, and we need to use that pot wisely. I should like to see the evidence on those various roads and consider the highest rates of return. That is my answer to the hon. Gentleman’s point.
Given that businesses would like growth to be created in that way, so that they can create jobs, where have the last Government spent the money? Have they spent it on infrastructure? The World Economic Forum report suggests that Britain is sixth in terms of gross domestic product. Where do hon. Members think that we are on the infrastructure table after 13 years of Labour Government? We are thirty-fourth. That record has created the problems that we see: new jobs are not being created in the private sector because the money was not spent. Not only did the last Government fail to fix the roof while the sun was shining, they failed to fix the roads while the sun was shining, and we are left with that legacy. We are left with a difficult position. Not only are there potholes in our roads, but there is a huge hole in our budget. We must ensure that we spend on things that provide value for money.
Gordon Banks
Is the hon. Lady carrying on from where I left off and advocating significant investment in the construction industry? A simple yes or no would be good.
Elizabeth Truss
Such decisions should be based on the economic return, as I have said. That is how we should consider spending our money. The problem with the previous Government is that the money has gone on politically motivated white elephants, to gain good results in Government elections or to placate interest groups. We have not seen value for money.
Mr Edward Timpson (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)
Is one of the other areas on which the previous Government wasted a huge amount of public money the most convoluted procurement processes for the spending of taxpayers’ money? That money should have been spent on the infrastructure that my hon. Friend has spoken about so well.
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Not only was the analysis of where the money was spent incorrect, but the processes by which it was spent were cumbersome. I believe that the Building Schools for the Future process had nine stages. That has taken a lot of money that could have been used to create real jobs in our economy, by improving our infrastructure and education. I completely agree.
We have heard a lot of arguments from Opposition Members about how people would support a particular fund or a particular level of spending, but we have not seen a cost-benefit analysis. We have limited funds. We need to prove that those funds are better used on one project, such as the future jobs fund, or another project, whether that is the A14 or the A11. We have not seen such analysis. What we have heard from Opposition Members is a number of anecdotes. I do not think that anecdote is a good way to conduct government. We need to conduct government on the basis of evidence.
John Howell
Would my hon. Friend put the £13 billion spent on regional development agencies since 1999 in the same category as the white elephants that she has been describing?
Elizabeth Truss
I would. That is not to say that everything spent by RDAs was wrong. There have been many good projects. But the way it was spent and prioritised did not use Government money to its best effect. That is my point. That is why I want to see the Government assess projects on the basis of economic return, as I mentioned earlier to the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker). I want the way in which the projects are assessed to be fully open and transparent, so that we can have a proper debate about the best way to spend our limited money.
It will be growth on the basis of real jobs and on the basis of decent infrastructure, good railways and roads, that will seal our economic future in the right direction, not pursuing the initiatives and schemes that we have seen time and again during the past 13 years, frittering away valuable money. It is our money, not the Government’s money. Ultimately, it is the money of all those in my constituency who pay taxes.
Alison McGovern
It is interesting to hear how fearful the hon. Lady is about incorrect spending on infrastructure projects and what she said about how the Labour Government wasted money. My region has seen great benefits from the improved infrastructure on the west coast main line, and we were looking forward to reconnecting the whole of our region, led by the RDA, with the Manchester rail hub. Will she call on Government Front-Bench Members to commit to those infrastructure projects? Will she acknowledge to the House that the money that was spent on infrastructure by the Labour Government was extremely helpful in resetting our national economy?
Elizabeth Truss
I am afraid that the hon. Lady’s intervention illustrates the problem with Labour Members. They present schemes, but there is no ex-post or ex-ante analysis of their economic benefits. The hon. Lady asks a question, but does not produce the evidence. Again, I would be happy to discuss that with her later, but she did not present the evidence. We must have debate. Not only are we talking about what we are putting in, we are also talking about the benefits that we get out. We need an economic policy that is based on the costs and benefits and that talks about the important areas of spending. I am pleased that the Chancellor in his Budget decided not to reduce capital spending further, but to make sure that it will go ahead so as to have a proper basis for economic growth and jobs in the future. That is the important area that we need to be looking at.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I am delighted to follow the interesting speech of the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) on the need for an economic benefit analysis of every decision that is taken by Government. That is one of the factors that led to the devastation of many of the regions, because some things cannot be measured in pure economic benefit alone. There is also the social value of projects. That is why I want to address the House today on the disproportionate and unfair impact of Government spending cuts on the north-east of England—and, I am sure, on many other regions, but I speak for my own today.
In Newcastle upon Tyne North, we have many public sector workers, but we also have several major private employers, including Sage, Nestlé and Sanofi Aventis. Projects in recent years, such as Newcastle airport industrial estate, Newcastle Great Park developments and the development of many retail outlets, have diversified the local jobs market in Newcastle. None the less, many of my constituents are long-serving and dedicated public servants who stand to be directly and swiftly hit by the Lib-Con austerity drive.
In Newcastle upon Tyne North, the current situation has come as no surprise, because during the election campaign the now Prime Minister publicly identified the north-east as a region where spending was unsustainable and where public sector employment was simply too high. The first wave of public cuts were announced on 24 May, and now we have the ideologically motivated cuts laid down in the Budget.
Jim Shannon
It was not only Newcastle that was mentioned; it was also Northern Ireland. The Prime Minister was quick off the mark there. However, the level of public sector economic activity in Northern Ireland is almost 27%—5.2% above the UK average—and the dependence on public sector jobs is perhaps greater there than in other parts of the UK. I say to Government Members that it is important that the private sector is increased before anything happens to the public sector. I want everyone to be aware that the impact will be great, as the hon. Lady has said.
Catherine McKinnell
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is absolutely correct that those two regions were identified by the Prime Minister as specific targets for cuts. Recent announcements have made it clear that the future is particularly distressing for regions such as mine and that of the hon. Gentleman.
Mr Timpson
The hon. Lady suggests that the cuts announced in the Budget are ideologically driven, but does she accept that she stood on a manifesto promise at the last election to implement a 20% cut in departmental spending and a 50% cut in capital spending?
Catherine McKinnell
I thank the hon. Gentleman for highlighting the fact that the Labour Government stood on a manifesto accepting that cuts were necessary to reduce the deficit. That seems to be forgotten on many occasions when I and my hon. Friends are accused of not having announced any cuts.
Gordon Banks
Does my hon. Friend agree that we have seen a significant driver coming through—the 11% increase in the tax take this April-May compared with April-May last year—because of the growth in the economy? Does she also agree that growth is the best way to get the country out of recession and into growth, and to cut the deficit?
Catherine McKinnell
Absolutely, and I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. It is notable that, since the emergency Budget that we debated yesterday was announced, the growth forecasts have reduced as a result of that Budget.
I return to the subject that I want to address today: the impact of the Budget on the north-east. Approximately 266,000 people in the north-east are employed as public servants—almost one in three workers—and many of those individuals, and the families they support, live in Newcastle and the surrounding areas. Large-scale redundancies in the public sector, which are now certain, will be disastrous for the city’s economy, which is, in turn, an engine for regional growth. The likely result will be lasting unemployment and an enforced exodus of talented professionals from what, during the past decade, has been a rapidly emerging region.
That is not the full picture, however. The public sector is so economically vital that it is not hard to imagine the impact of large-scale redundancies on private firms in the region. Simply throwing public sector workers out of their jobs will mean not only a loss of direct employment, but the devastation of private firms. More than in other areas of the country, such firms in my region depend upon revenue from public sector organisations.
That is directly linked to my next point, which is my deeply held opposition to the abolition of my region’s very popular and highly respected development agency, One NorthEast, which is located in my constituency on Newburn Riverside park. Owing to massive cuts in Government spending on regional development, combined with the Liberal-Conservative pledge to transfer RDAs’ functions to local authorities, the Government have announced, after damaging indecision and backtracking, that One NorthEast is to be abolished. Its closure will remove a vital local driver for recovery and eliminate a key means of building a stronger local private economy.
In March, the National Audit Office published its report on RDAs and concluded that £3.30 had been generated for every pound of Government funding given to them. A year ago, another investigation into RDA effectiveness, this time carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers, showed that for every public pound invested there had been a return of £4.50 to the private sector. The ill-thought-out shunting and transfer of some of the RDAs’ roles—I presume not all of them—to under-resourced local authorities will be totally unworkable.
Nadhim Zahawi
The hon. Lady cites the PricewaterhouseCoopers report, but the Institute of Directors also produced a report on the RDAs, which showed that only 18% of directors thought that they made a contribution, and 60% thought that development would have taken place in the regions without the RDAs being in place. To cite selectively from PricewaterhouseCoopers is slightly misleading.
Catherine McKinnell
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, because it highlights my point that these issues cannot be examined as a whole across the UK. The situation in each region is incredibly different and unique, which is why the RDAs were so successful in particular parts of the country and why the removal of the north-east’s RDA, which is successful and which business leaders across the region accept as a major driving force in the private economy, is a travesty.
Alison McGovern
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Does she agree that regions are different, and that the previous Government used the movement of public sector jobs to regions such as the north-east and the north-west partly to save costs to the public purse?
Catherine McKinnell
Absolutely, and my hon. Friend rightly draws attention to some of the worrying consequences that will come out of the Budget. It will drive up unemployment and difficulties and increase public spending, particularly in the regions.
Gavin Shuker
Within the context of the debate about the evidence basis for RDAs and the benefit that they give, does my hon. Friend agree that financial information about the amount of money that goes in and comes out of the public purse is a much better guide than ideological points about how people feel about regional development agencies?
Catherine McKinnell
I absolutely agree, and my hon. Friend makes his point very well indeed.
A large number of my constituents lack any formal educational qualifications. Such individuals, should they be already unemployed or, as is likely to happen in my region, should they be made redundant, will be hugely affected by the cuts announced to the DWP’s job creation and training schemes, which have been widely debated today. They will no longer have the necessary help to prepare themselves to take advantage of new opportunities arising from the eventual recovery, and that is especially concerning in relation to youth unemployment. The future jobs fund has been abandoned, and the £1,000 incentive for businesses to employ a person who has been unemployed for six months or more has been scrapped. Extended periods of unemployment and a lack of appropriate training mean that those vulnerable groups will be dangerously ill equipped to enter the future jobs market. The decision to ask the Department for Education to make huge cuts is also disproportionately damaging. It is clear that, because only 10,000 of the promised 20,000 extra university places are now available, access to higher education for state school pupils will inevitably be restricted.
Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)
I am listening to the hon. Lady with great interest. She is clearly making a passionate case, expressing her genuine concerns about the cuts, but she mentioned ideological cuts. Does she really have no ideological problem with the debt interest that this county pays out every year potentially rising to as much as £70 billion? That would mean £70 billion not spent on public services and a debt for the next generation in the north-east and elsewhere to repay.
Catherine McKinnell
I do not have an ideological concern about the debt that is the current deficit, although I share the concern of all Labour Members that the deficit needs to be reduced. Fundamentally, however, it needs to be reduced in a way that does not throw thousands or millions of people on to the scrap heap, in the way that they were left there in the 1980s. I know that this is not taken very seriously by Government Members, but generations of people were left on the scrap heap.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?
Catherine McKinnell
I think I need to make progress.
Finally, some additional cuts have been announced and, although they have perhaps not been talked about today, I believe that they will fundamentally affect future jobs and the ability of people in the north-east to take them up. I refer to the cuts to child tax credits. Although the Liberal-Conservative Government have announced a £150 increase in the per-child element of child tax credits, that is nothing but a fig leaf for the abolition not only of the Sure Start maternity grant, worth £500, but of the baby addition to the child tax credit and the health in pregnancy grant, as well as for the decision to reject Labour’s proposals for a £4 a week supplement—a toddler tax—for each child.
For people on low incomes, tax credits are fundamental to empowering families to support their children and ensure that they get the best start in life, thereby breaking the cycles of deprivation that we see in so many parts of the country, particularly the north-east. As the mother of two small children, I know from experience how vital financial help can be. To be honest, I have been stunned by the callous manner in which that help has simply been abandoned by the Liberal-Conservative Government. Some £3 billion-worth of cuts have been made to support for families. Such decisions will be devastating for parents, preventing them from getting out to work or creating either a work environment or the capacity to work in their households, thereby breaking the cycle of deprivation that can so often take hold in workless households.
Joined to the unfair rise in VAT—a tax that punishes the poor—those cuts will have an impact on unemployment and child poverty in my region, thereby causing further unemployment in the long term. The national economy remains weak, especially in areas of the country such as Newcastle, where large numbers of children, unemployed people and low-income families are already struggling and will struggle more under this Budget. They are the people who must be protected and not punished by the Government’s policies during this difficult time.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. Before I call the next speaker, I remind the House that I asked hon. Members to limit the amount of time they took. Can we try to stick to 10 minutes? Hon. Members should please not take as many interventions, because otherwise people will miss out. I did not want to turn the clock on, but I am getting more tempted by the minute.
Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)
I rise to speak in this debate concerned about youth unemployment and job prospects, and I do so as we discover that the number of 18 to 24-year-olds not in employment, education or training has reached an all-time high of 837,000. That is 17.6% of our 18 to 24-year-olds neither earning nor learning.
The previous Government did not meet their apprenticeship targets, but they did leave us with a record deficit. That is a disastrous combination for the next Government not only to pick up but to clear up. We have unfulfilled targets, sluggish economic growth and a record deficit—a triangular tragedy for youth and unemployment. In my patch of Wirral West, we have some of the worst unemployment rates for 16 to 24-year-olds in the north-west. We were ranked seventh worst of the 39 local authorities in September 2009. The number of my constituents claiming jobseeker’s allowance has risen in the last year, and we are also below the national average for 16 and 17-year-olds in education and work- based learning. It is particularly worrying that those who are not in education or employment now will continue along that path, and it is vital that the Government put every effort into getting young people into work and training as soon as possible after they leave the compulsory education system.
The cost to the economy of youth unemployment is not insignificant. According to estimates, each of these so-called NEETs who drop out of school at 16 will cost the taxpayer almost £97,000 over their lifetime, when their unemployment benefits and their inability to pay taxes are taken into account. We have heard a lot about the economy today, and about what unemployment costs the country, but I want to look beyond the economics of the situation to the well-being of each individual, and to their physical and mental health, their self-esteem and their morale. To stare into an unknown expanse of time, not knowing how it will be filled or paid for, erodes the soul and destroys the spirit. That suffering cannot be quantified, but it seeps into the common unconscious of our nation.
We already have some of the highest levels of youth unemployment in Europe, and we need to be creative about how we are going to get out of that situation. We need to think of a new way forward. I like to think that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and I would like to bring to the attention of the House the Wirral Apprentice programme, which is leading the way in the apprenticeships field. It has created more than 100 new opportunities for young people by offering private sector organisations an 18-month wage subsidy for a minimum two-year apprenticeship. Working with the National Apprenticeship Service, the Wirral Apprentice scheme is delivered by Wirral council’s children and young people’s department and provides a dedicated member of staff to support each business that takes part. It has been hugely successful, and it is now in its second year.
The Wirral Apprentice scheme is heavily oversubscribed, however. Last year, more than 1,000 people submitted 3,117 applications but fewer than 150 businesses took part. It does not take a genius to see that many people will be left without an apprenticeship. The scheme is oversubscribed and under-resourced. Such oversubscription is not specific to Wirral or the north-west; it is to be found throughout the whole country, and we need to look at what we are going to do about it.
Alison McGovern
As a Wirral MP, I totally back what the hon. Lady says about Wirral Apprentice—it is a cracking scheme—but how does she think her Government’s cuts to local authorities will help Wirral to keep that fantastic scheme going?
Esther McVey
The Government are planning to get best value for money. They want to increase the apprenticeship scheme across the country by 50,000, and they are planning to put a significant amount of money into it. That is what we need to do. We need to look at places where the apprenticeship scheme is working. As I have said, however, the scheme is oversubscribed and under-resourced and we need to look at that as well. Perhaps the hon. Lady and I can do that together with the Government. The scheme is working, but we need to expand it so that more people in Wirral, the north-west and the rest of the country can be fulfilled.
As the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) recently said:
“Demand for apprenticeship places is growing and one of our priorities is to encourage more employers to participate. Apprenticeships are both a route to key competences for employees and a vital way to help employers”.
I should like to extend an invitation to the Minister or the Secretary of State to come to Wirral to see how the scheme is working, and also to use what limited funds we have put aside to extend apprenticeship schemes. We do not need a new generation of our youth not knowing how to fill their time or how to pay their way.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to speak from the Back Benches under your chairmanship, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I hope that all of us in the House share a passionate commitment to what we might generally call human dignity. When we think about human dignity and where it comes from, we think of the component of family and love, and of how beneficial education and nurturing are as the centre of that human dignity. I think we would all agree, too, that for very many people purpose in life comes from employment, and in particular from skilled employment. I hope that all of us can agree on that basic principle.
Listening to what has been said this afternoon, I have reflected on my memory of standing at a bus shelter in Tottenham high road as an 18-year-old, wearing a suit a little cheaper than the one that I am wearing today and with a big Afro—looking a bit like the Michael Jackson figure before all the plastic surgery—and being approached by other people in the neighbourhood who imagined that I was there for one of two reasons: either I was on my way to the local magistrates court, or I was on my way to church. That was the context in which wearing a suit was seen in a community like that, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The dignity of work was something not experienced by far too many young people in that community.
In the 1980s, unemployment reached 20% and, in some parts of the community, 40%. When we came to power in 1997, it was at a record 28% in the constituency of Tottenham. Tottenham has the highest unemployment in London, but today the figure stands at just under 11%. This is paradoxical, but I sincerely wish the Government well in ensuring that we do not see another generation of, in particular, young people left floundering, feckless, restless and workless in communities like those that we saw before.
What concerns me about the Government’s policy is their ideological commitment to slashing the deficit so quickly. They seem to imagine that it is possible to take £113 billion out of the economy by means of cuts, and that if they cut the public sector, in a short space of time the private sector will move in to provide the necessary jobs. I have seen it done before; it did not work then, and I am not convinced that it will work now. I ask the Government to think again.
Many of us who are in the Chamber must remember the old youth training scheme—the YTS—run by the Manpower Services Commission. I recall that 58% of those on the scheme left before time, and that 50% of those who stayed ended up with no qualifications and no employment at all. It became a joke scheme, not just in this country but internationally. When I hear about the Work programme that will be presented to the House in a few months’ time, it has the imprint of the old YTS scheme. When I am asked to believe passionately in the 50,000 apprenticeships that the Government claim they will provide, I recall that this is the same party that left us with 67,000 apprenticeships in the entire country when they left office last time. We built the number of apprenticeships back up to 250,000, and it was hard because persuading the private sector to offer those apprenticeships took considerable effort.
When the Minister winds up, perhaps she can tell us how many apprenticeships the Government have been able to encourage the private sector to provide since the announcement of the 50,000. By what date will the 50,000 be provided? So far, I have seen only one apprenticeship, and that is the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. I look forward to the numbers that will join him, and to some of my constituents being able to take up these apprenticeships.
There are constituencies where, historically, the private sector has not been present as it has in other areas. My constituency is certainly one of those. Most of my constituents, since the beginning of the welfare state, have been employed in the public and voluntary sectors. That is where they have always looked for employment and I say, with no shame, that because of historic discrimination black and ethnic minority people in this country have always looked to the public sector. Through the race relations legislation in the 1970s, we brought the public sector into the frame to ensure that employment, so they have always looked to the public sector—the very public sector that is now being slashed.
The slashing of the public sector sits alongside the Conservatives’ proposals on higher education, which are a double whammy. Higher education is a key sector for economic growth, but it is not ring-fenced or protected. It is outside the commitments that the Government have made on health and schools, and it will see its budget cut by up to 40% in the spending review to come. One part of the coalition is committed to the abolition of fees and the other is probably committed to a marketplace in fees. The likely result is a quagmire, a gap that will not be filled, and the issue will be kicked into the long grass. That means that universities will not get the money and that the expansion we have seen in constituencies such as mine will not continue.
That is the outlook for higher education. We are unlikely to see a growth in apprenticeships—we do not know the time frame or how many are likely to be created. We also see the scrapping of the future jobs fund that was a buffer and an ideological commitment that we must stand by on this side of the House. We borrowed £1 billion to create the future jobs fund, working with the public and voluntary sector, to ensure that we did not see another wasted generation. We believed that that commitment to young people would mean growth in our economy—that it would come good. We believed that because we had seen the evidence, not least from after the war when we built the NHS. We saw the evidence in the new deal that was set up by Roosevelt in much harder times in the US. That was our commitment to young people and, in the Government’s first few days in office, it is gone. There will be a reduction in employment in constituencies like mine, and there is a real prospect that the 1980s and 1990s will visit our communities again.
I shall end on a tough point that I believe with conviction. Very sadly, in parts of our communities in London, there are young people who would pick up a knife and who have experienced really chaotic lives. Their parents are the same age as me, and they are precisely the people who were failed previously. That is the social consequence of this ideological mistake that the Government are set on. I ask them to think again.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
I shall keep my speech brief, Mr Deputy Speaker, as instructed.
One key element of our response to the recession and the pressing need to create jobs has to be a recognition of the value of the green economy. I think that more or less all of us now accept that it would be a mistake to try and recreate the conditions that brought us the crisis in the first place, but we have an opportunity to raise from the wreck of an economy built on housing bubbles, uncontrolled public spending and financial services an alternative that is both stable and sustainable.
Whether or not we are concerned about climate change, it is worth recognising that clean technology is an emerging global market that is expected to be worth trillions of dollars in the coming decades. In fact, that market globally is already worth hundreds of billions of dollars. This is a massive opportunity for job creation, by any standards, and Britain should be at the forefront, but unfortunately we have just a 5% stake in those clean companies.
We should be a leader in innovation: we are not, and in the past decade we have seen virtually no sign of a coherent programme. We have seen no real investment in carbon capture and storage—
Mr Anderson
Does the hon. Gentleman recollect the closure in 1986 of this country’s coal mining industry by the Conservative Government? That included closing the most advance clean-coal technology site in the world—at Grimethorpe colliery in Barnsley.
Zac Goldsmith
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Times change: the case now for clean coal has been renewed on the back of emerging evidence for climate change. If he does not mind, I will not go back 25 years, but I shall continue with a very brief description of what I regard as a huge failure over the past 10 years.
I mentioned carbon capture and storage, but there have been no effective incentives for home owners or organisations in the commercial sector to pursue energy efficiency. There have been virtually no incentives to develop renewable energy: as a result, we have seen virtually no progress over the last 13 years.
The CBI said last year that it is politics and policy, and not the recession, that have prevented green investment in the UK, and it pleaded with the Government to just “get on with it”. When Jonathon Porritt stepped down after nine years as the chair of the Sustainable Development Commission he also accused the Government of gross failure. He added, sarcastically, that the UK had become
“a world leader in green rhetoric.”
We should broaden our economic base to include more green technologies and more engineering and high-value manufacturing. We need to reconfigure our energy systems and find a way to wean ourselves off our dependence on imported hydrocarbons. That dependence is dangerous environmentally, economically and politically. We need to turn Britain into a world leader in green innovation, and we have the chance to do that now. In my view, the existing commitments of the coalition Government will set us absolutely on the right path
Paul King, chief executive of the UK Green Building Council, described the green deal as follows:
“This is a bold and welcome move. The biggest barrier to low carbon refurbishment—the upfront cost—is set to fall. Pay As You Save is a radical scheme, which could”
create
“at least 100,000 new jobs, saving money and conserving energy.”
The green deal is just one initiative, as the Chancellor has announced plans to create a green investment bank to facilitate investment from the private sector in new clean-energy technology companies. In addition to that, we have plans to create a number of large-scale marine energy parks. It is extraordinary that this country has 14,000 miles of coastline, yet we have barely begun to tap this extraordinarily valuable resource. We have plans—indeed, we have a commitment—to roll out smart meters and the feed-in tariff. If the example that Germany has shown us is to be believed, the feed-in tariff will lead to a revolution in decentralised energy and to huge job creation.
We have plans to lay out a national recharging network. It will trigger a shift, which we absolutely need, from the traditional, conventional car to electric vehicles and hybrid plug-ins. I realise that time is short, and I could cite endless examples of Government initiatives that will foster the shift we are going to see. At every stage of the shift, we will see huge opportunities for job creation and wealth creation, and we need to tap into those.
In green policies, as in most policies, the most powerful role the state can play is not to dictate or direct, but to empower. Instead of introducing a mind-numbing array of quangos, conflicting initiatives and schemes, all aimed at micro-managing our way towards a low-carbon future, we need to establish a clear framework, set the signals and let the market deliver. In truth, that is our only option. We cannot rely on public money because, as we all know, there is none. Instead, we have to find ways of ensuring that existing money flows in a new direction and if we are successful, we will prosper on the back of an economic recovery that might last. We will have done the right thing and we will be rewarded for having done so.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Historically, Birmingham and the midlands was the industrial heartland of Britain. In the 1970s, the regional economy outperformed the national average, but in the 1980s Birmingham and the midlands was blitzed by the effects of the Conservative Government and 200,000 people lost their jobs, overwhelmingly in manufacturing. A proud region paid a terrible price. Sadly, decline has continued since, and the area has gone from being at the top of the league to the 7th best region on economic performance. If my region had matched the UK average on output per head, the regional economy would have benefited by an additional £16.5 billion.
The human cost of that long-term decline starting in the 1980s has been immense. Four of the five most deprived wards in Britain are in Birmingham, 10 of the 20 most deprived wards in Britain are in the midlands and the constituency I am proud to represent—Birmingham, Erdington—is the sixth most deprived in Britain. The statistics are stark and so, too, is the appalling human price that I see day in, day out in my constituency. Birmingham and Erdington both believe in a tradition of self-help, but the problems we face are incapable of resolution, other than through the role of good government. The role of government is not to wash its hands of responsibility for the unemployed, because that is a Pontius Pilate approach towards those who need the help of government.
I wish to focus on Advantage West Midlands, which is the most successful regional development agency in Britain; the National Audit Office’s recent report gave it a rating of four out of four, and for every £1 of public money spent, the regional economy benefits by £8.14. AWM is a constantly improving RDA with an outstanding track record. Sir Rod Eddington’s transport study said that its work on transport infrastructure was the best in Britain. The Treasury review of June 2009 said that AWM was the most cost-effective RDA in Britain. I have seen at first hand the power of its work. I remember that when Rover was saved from closure in 2000, it was thanks to what AWM did in diversifying the supply base that when Rover tragically went under in 2005, tens of thousands of jobs that would have gone in the supply chain in small and medium-sized enterprises were preserved. I, too, experienced that terrible day when 5,000 workers lost their jobs at Longbridge. Advantage West Midlands swung into action immediately, and in nine months, by way of effective programmes, 4,000 of those 5,000 workers had been found alternative employment.
The transformational change has been remarkable. The development of the Longbridge innovation centre and Bournville college has meant 10,000 new jobs and 1,450 new homes. The development of our regional infrastructure, with the New Street Gateway, the single-biggest investment by any regional development agency, involves £100 million of public money, but it levered in £2 billion of private sector investment, with enormous economic benefits, including 10,000 more jobs.
There have also been solutions for business. Since 2002, 5,000 manufacturing companies, overwhelmingly small and medium-sized enterprises, have benefited from the world-class advice of the Manufacturing Advisory Service, adding £150 million to their turnover. It is little wonder, therefore, that the midlands business community strongly supports Advantage West Midlands. The voice of the business community, Business Voice WM, having consulted its members in June, said to the Government, “Do not abolish the regional development agency. An intelligent debate about change and reform? Perhaps. But do not abolish the regional development agency.”
John Howell
How much of Advantage West Midland’s programme reflects the wishes of local councils, rather than those of central Government?
Jack Dromey
I shall come in a moment to why it is important to have a regional structure by way of co-ordinating local authorities, because sometimes the competing views and demands of local authorities do not necessarily work in the best interests of the regional economy.
I shall provide a practical example of why, right now, we need an effective regional development agency. There are 150,000 people working in the automotive cluster in the midlands—from the major manufacturers such as Jaguar and its plant in my constituency, through the machine tool, logistics and component companies, to the universities and research and development institutes. All work together in an effective cluster, with the regional development agency bringing together local authorities and the private sector to work in partnership and galvanise and consolidate that which is absolutely key to the success of our regional economy.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
Is there not an arbitrary nature to the structure of regional development agencies and the areas they cover? That automotive cluster would not include, for example, Cowley in Oxford, which is part of the south-east region. My constituency is also in that region, which covers an area stretching from Dover up to Oxford and Milton Keynes. Some of the structures do not necessarily fit the economic realities of local areas.
Jack Dromey
I accept that, and I am very familiar with Cowley because I have been to the plant there many times. However, if we want that automotive cluster to succeed, there is a simple reality to acknowledge. I am in discussions right now with Jaguar Land Rover about its decisions for the future. It says that the power and effectiveness of that automotive cluster is absolutely vital for its organisation, and in turn Advantage West Midlands is crucial to the cluster’s success.
Why destroy a success story and replace it with—what? I am all in favour of an intelligent debate about, for example, how one might have sub-regional arrangements in the midlands. Crucially, however, if we throw away the advantage of that regional, strategic approach, with it will go the co-ordination and initiative, working with strong business leadership, that has been absolutely key.
We need the Government to clarify their approach to the issue. I hope that during the debate the Minister will respond to that point, because there are mixed messages: on the one hand, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills says that he is open-minded about the retention of a strong regional structure if that is the wish of the midlands; on the other hand, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has taken an ideological position, which says, “We will wind up the RDA and not have a strategic approach, come what may.” We need clarity. I am in dialogue, right now, with local authorities, with the business community, and with many others who want that intelligent debate on what kind of structure we have for the future. Are the Government open to the retention of a strong regional strategy, which is what the midlands wants?
We have heard it said that according to the Treasury’s leaked documents, as yet unpublished, 1.3 million jobs will go, while the hope is to create 2.5 million new jobs. With the greatest respect, if we look at the history of job creation in Britain, believing that, in the current climate, with the savage cuts being made to public investment, 2.5 million jobs are going to flourish in the private sector is as respectable a view as that of the economist in the 1930s who argued that what caused the recession was sunspots that interfered with the mechanisms of the market and the minds of the bankers in the marketplace. The simple reality is that all informed sources, including the CIPD, have said, “There’s not a hope in hell.”
We look to the Government to respond constructively to the dialogue that we want on the future of Advantage West Midlands. We also want them to think again about some of the decisions that have been made: the abolition of the future jobs fund; the cutting back of the working neighbourhoods fund, with £4 million of cuts in Birmingham, the largest cut anywhere in Britain, despite the deprivation that we face; the cutting back of Connexions, with £2.7 million of cuts in Birmingham, the second largest cut in Britain; and the impact of the jobs tax—the VAT increase.
All this from a marriage of convenience—two parties that have come together. On the one hand, there is a party with a once great progressive tradition, the party of Lloyd George, Beveridge and Keynes; on the other, there is a Conservative party that once had a different tradition, that of Harold Macmillan, who, scarred by the memories of the 1930s, said, “Never again.” Sadly, in the 1980s the Conservative party, in the immortal words of Julian Critchley, got taken over by the garagistes, and in the 21st century it has been taken over by the bankers. Those parties are abandoning their own traditions whereby they remember the bitter period of the 1930s and know that if we walk away from the unemployed, this country pays a terrible price. The Con-Dem alliance may do that; this Labour party never will.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
I shall try to be brief, as I have been told, and I will certainly keep my comments shorter than some of the contributions made last night.
I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate on support for the numerous measures already taken by the new Government to assist the unemployed and encourage the creation of new jobs, particularly in the private sector. Let us be clear: we face an extremely difficult employment situation. The dire economic recession has seen unemployment jump to just under 2.5 million, while the number of inactive people of working age has increased to a record high of 8.2 million. To put it simply, we cannot continue to sustain such economic inactivity.
A new approach is required, and key to any lasting Government support will be the creation of an economic environment in which private enterprise can compete and invest with confidence. I therefore welcome many of the measures in the recent emergency Budget which are designed to do just that. For example, lowering corporation tax to 20% will attract new business investment to the UK while giving us the lowest rate of this form of taxation in the G7. Meanwhile, combining that move with the small business rate relief will benefit more than 500,000 businesses up and down the country. If we are serious about driving down unemployment, we must welcome such moves to drive up private sector competitiveness.
In addition, if we are to achieve true economic recovery, we must ensure that those areas of the country whose economies were unbalanced even before the recession receive additional focus and Government support in the recovery. The sad truth is that regional disparities grew under the Labour Government. In my region of Yorkshire and the Humber, workplace-based gross value added per head increased by only 18.5% between 1997 and 2008, compared with a 37% increase in London in the same period. Indeed, all northern cities experienced slower rates of economic growth than the rest of the UK in the past decade. Frankly, if the Labour Government’s aim was to support the economies of the north, they failed. In contrast, the new Government have already announced that a new £1 billion regional growth fund will be set up in 2011 to help those areas that will be especially affected by reductions in public spending.
Another unfortunate aspect of Labour’s legacy was to leave areas completely dependent on public sector employment. That cannot be allowed to happen again, and I urge the new Government to do all they can to encourage the transition to private sector-led investment and growth locally, regionally and nationally. Empowering local communities will involve empowering individual business owners. By providing small and medium-sized businesses outside London, the south-east and the east of England with tax relief on national insurance contributions, the Government are indeed encouraging small businesses to employ and expand in the next three years, particularly in the neglected areas I discussed.
In addition to providing support to business and encouraging private sector-led employment and growth, it is also necessary for the Government to provide support for those who find themselves unemployed. Measures must be taken to ensure that a negative cycle of dependency does not take hold in the areas that suffer the most unemployment. Support must be targeted and streamlined, because for too long, the previous Government’s various employment schemes were overly complicated, frustratingly bureaucratic and woefully inefficient. Owing to the number of schemes, people slipped through the net and were lost in the system or not contacted. The new Government’s Work programme needs to be accessible and straightforward, so that anyone who finds themselves unemployed can get the help and advice they need swiftly and effortlessly. Support for the unemployed must be personal, local and flexible, and it must put the individual first.
Launching the Work programme, delivering personalised support to the unemployed, cutting corporation tax and introducing regional growth funds are together the ingredients for a far more business-friendly environment in which our economic recovery can take place. The recovery, however, is far from secure, and it is essential that the Government continue to address unemployment and job creation with the same vigour and determination as they have shown to date. I strongly believe that the initial measures taken by the coalition are setting us on the right course. However, those policies need to be implemented swiftly and reviewed regularly if we are to have progress on the ground.
I urge the Government boldly to push forward on this crucial matter. We have inherited a horrendous financial situation, and only the most robust and ambitious policies will get us back on the road of rising employment, job creation, economic stability and long-term growth.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
I want to talk about jobs in south Wales, and the future jobs fund in particular. I do not believe the Government’s Budget will help boost employment in my constituency and in Wales. Instead, there is a great danger of the Budget reducing growth and increasing unemployment. Jobs are important in Blaenau Gwent. My constituency has the high unemployment rate of almost 12%. We used to rely on coal and steel, but those days are gone; now we need to develop a more balanced economy. We need green jobs, digital jobs and better services. We need to help those who have been unemployed back into work. We need the future jobs fund or a similar employment initiative, and, most importantly, we need it now.
Before I elaborate on my argument, however, I want to talk about an important event that took place in Blaenau Gwent last week. On Monday 28 June we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Six Bells mining disaster. That commemoration was a tremendous event; thousands were there, including many relatives of the men killed that day. I met a Mrs Evans, a former senior nursing officer of the National Coal Board in Wales, who said that, apart from Aberfan, helping attend to the bodies taken from the pit that night was the worst evening of her career. Wayne Thomas, secretary of the south Wales National Union of Mineworkers told me that the wonderful steel and stone memorial is the biggest mines memorial in the country. I encourage Members to visit the Six Bells memorial, as it is a terrific reminder of the importance of coal and how it has sometimes left a tragic mark on our communities. It is a wonderful, evocative and powerful piece of art, and it is also a reminder that while coal is still part of the south Wales valleys, it will never again be the big employer it once was.
I had hoped that the Minister would talk today about policy plans that I would have found encouraging for Blaenau Gwent, but I have been disappointed by what I have heard. For me, the Government’s plans must include those that will deliver the programme. While Ministers have been quick to attack the future jobs fund, many important lessons have been learned from that project. That is certainly the case in Blaenau Gwent: that important initiative has been managed by our borough council and it has led to our streets being cleaner, our environment being cleaned up and our youngsters being kept out of trouble. Furthermore, the local people given work include redundant workers, those who find it hard to keep down a job and young teenage mums and dads. All those are groups that I would hope the Government would want to support back into employment and, in Blaenau Gwent, more than 500 people have, or will have, benefited from this initiative in recent months.
I must also say that I believe the Government have made a big mistake with their austerity Budget. At this difficult time, a better judgment would be to recognise that the best way to boost employment is to grow the economy, not cut it back. In south Wales, it is likely that the Government will find that the private sector is too weak to pick up the slack after Con-Dem cuts in the public sector. In the Financial Times last Wednesday it was reported that the private sector is not ready to employ the hundreds of thousands of public sector workers likely to be laid off as a result of Budget cuts. There was a study of 12 companies employing more than 375,000 people in various sectors, including household names like Morrisons, Jaguar, the Co-op and Arriva, and those companies said they had no plans to grow as the state shrinks.
Several companies have said that the financial situation is still too uncertain to consider recruiting. Experts such as Tim Leunig of the London School of Economics believe the economy is too frail for the private sector to grow and absorb jobs in the way it has in the past. That fatally undermines the Government’s argument. Mr Leunig has said:
“If the government thinks the private sector is automatically going to step into the gap left by the public sector, it is sadly mistaken.”
While there may be regional growth in the south-east, and the home counties may prosper early as we come out of recession, we need investment in Wales through the Assembly Government and local councils. We do not need a hope-and-a-prayer policy that somehow assumes the private sector will ride to the rescue, as all our experience in recent years has been that that will not happen.
I understand that the Government’s programme is not set to start until next summer. Also, it appears to include no guarantees that everyone will get work or training regardless of how hard to help they may be. Given what we know so far, it seems that this is an untested experiment on a large scale and carries considerable risk to the country and constituencies such as mine.
All this compares badly with Labour’s employment record. There are about half the number of young people signing on now than in the recessions under the Tories. Long-term youth unemployment is under a third of what it was when Labour came into office. Furthermore, because of Labour’s welfare reforms, investment in child care and family-friendly working policies, 365,000 more lone parents are in work now than in 1997. That good and important record will be undermined by the Government’s Budget.
Losing the future jobs fund is a mistake. It looks as though it will be followed by another initiative in the medium term, but in the meantime we will lose important momentum and delivery, and hundreds, if not thousands, of people will miss out. The Government should listen now to the agencies that are doing the hard yards on job delivery. The indications are that employment growth in the economy is still in the balance and that there is a real danger of much higher unemployment in the months ahead. I am grateful that the Under-Secretary of State for Wales has agreed to come to Blaenau Gwent in the coming months to talk about employment. That is generous of him, but if he is to make good on the Prime Minister’s recent fine words about this fantastic work programme, he has much to deliver on. In the meantime, some very good work and much good will is being squandered.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
Thank you for letting me join this important debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. I want to pick up where my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Mr Heald) left off. He talked about the lessons that must be learned from the past regarding welfare-to-work programmes. It is a great pity that Opposition Members will not join the Government parties in what should be one of the most important challenges—uniting to make sure that people in this country get the work and employment they need. Taking the bold and decisive action of creating a single Work programme that will streamline and focus help for all those who need to get into work is essential.
Taking action on employment is about creating a fairer society and social justice. Work is the way out of poverty and dependency, and it helps people to reach their potential. The gaps in our society have grown in the past 13 years, and nowhere more starkly can the consequences be seen than in health inequalities. The Marmot review which was published in February clearly demonstrates the links between the social and economic circumstances of people and their health. Key to closing the gap in average life expectancy is improving people’s educational and work opportunities. We need to create an enabling society that maximises individual and community potential. The benefits of reducing health inequalities are economic as well as social. The review states:
“The cost of health inequalities can be measured in human terms, years of life lost and years of active life lost; and in economic terms, by the cost to the economy of additional illness. If everyone in England had the same death rates as the most advantaged, people who are currently dying prematurely as a result of health inequalities would, in total, have enjoyed between 1.3 and 2.5 million extra years of life. They would, in addition, have had a further 2.8 million years free of limiting illness or disability. It is estimated that inequality in illness accounts for productivity losses of £31-33 billion per year, lost taxes and higher welfare payments in the range of £20-32 billion per year, and additional NHS healthcare costs associated with inequality are well in excess of £5.5 billion per year.”
The current time of financial austerity is an opportunity—a time to plan to do things differently. The welfare state and the NHS were born in a time of austerity after the war. Today, we need to do the same and to have the same courage and determination to ensure the well-being of future generations.
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this debate, which is important not only for the country but for my constituency. When we face difficult economic times, the primary task of Government is to protect existing jobs and to provide all possible assistance to get people who are out of work back into employment. If not tackled, unemployment can have long-term effects on society. It destroys communities, ruins lives and tears the very heart and fabric of society.
I was brought up in the south Wales valleys and I well remember my first day at secondary school in 1987. I remember a teacher saying to me, “I’ve one tip for you, boy.” I said, “What’s that?” He said, “Have no ambition, because nobody from round here ever amounts to anything. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a job in a factory—if there are any factories left when you leave school—but most probably you’ll be signing on.” For me, that summed up the attitude of the Tory Government in the 1980s, and I have not come to this place to see that happen ever again.
I must tell the House that it has been only in the past few years that our communities in the valleys have begun to recover, with the confidence that new jobs bring. Without the right Government support to encourage job creation, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past. To ensure we develop the right environment for new jobs to be created, it is vital that we maintain growth.
The Government have been keen to express sympathy for those facing unemployment. For Ministers, describing unemployment as a “tragedy” and mentioning helping the “forgotten millions” of unemployed workers into jobs might come easy, but it is action that counts. In contrast to those sentiments, the Government’s main labour market policy so far has been to cut support for unemployed people. The Government claim that the measures they are taking are necessary—after all, their tough words about getting people off benefits and into work will be meaningless if there are no jobs to get people into.
To create real jobs we need real investment across the country. Getting unemployment down requires two things: businesses must offer more jobs and the unemployed must have the necessary skills to enable them to take the new jobs as they become available. That means that the Government must invest in people and create the environment in which the private sector can invest to create jobs. If we cut too quickly, we will leave no room for the Government to work with the private sector and make job creation possible. We need a real partnership between Government and the private sector. That requires the Government to spend money to create jobs. The question is how we can minimise job losses and prevent another lost generation in constituencies such as mine.
The Government believe that if they cut public sector employment and slash departmental spending, the private sector will ride to the rescue and fill the void. They seem to have forgotten, however, that many private sector jobs are dependent on Government contracts. If departmental spending is slashed, those contracts are vulnerable, as are the jobs that depend on them. If we do not think seriously about the scale of cuts, there is a real risk that they will remove vital support for private sector industry and, crucially, for private sector jobs. Equally, however, it is vital that as companies develop, their employees’ sets of skills develop, too.
That is where Train to Gain has been so important. Across the country, 1.3 million people go to work every day without the skills that they need to do their jobs well. That affects productivity and limits how successful those employees can be. Often, though, employers are unwilling or unable to provide the extra training needed for their staff to realise their potential. It is only when the Government offer assistance that training opportunities can be realised and employees can fulfil their potential. It is therefore critical to our economic future that we invest in training and upskilling our people. In the US, 80% of people in work have been back in a training situation since leaving school. In Germany and Japan, the figure is 56%, but it is only 30% here. That is the measure of how far we still have to travel to improve training and opportunities for our people.
Train to Gain benefits both employers, by increasing the abilities of their workers, and employees, by giving them the skills they need to succeed. That in turn is good for the whole country and for our economic future. The Welsh Assembly Government—the only Labour-led Administration in the UK—have introduced ProAct, a progressive scheme that offers funding for employee training and a wage subsidy while the training is being undertaken. Companies are eligible for ProAct money only when they are on short-time working and when, without ProAct funding, the company would have to consider redundancies. ProAct not only keeps people employed when they might otherwise be made redundant but gives employees a wider skills base, meaning that companies can use quiet periods to upskill their staff. That is precisely the sort of thing that should be happening across the United Kingdom. It has a positive impact for employers, employees and the wider economy.
In addition, to help employers to keep people in work, the Government also need to help those who are currently out of work. It is particularly important that we get young people who have never been employed into their first jobs. That is why the young person’s guarantee and the future jobs fund were so crucial, yet that flagship policy has been scrapped.
The Government claim that their new Work programme will meet the needs of unemployed workers. However, there are several flaws to that argument. Nearly 2.5 million people are unemployed now, and the impact of the cuts is that less support will be available to them and any other people who lose their jobs over the next year. In addition, the Work programme is essentially replacing the flexible new deal initiative. The experience provided by the future jobs fund and the guarantees was in addition to new deal measures. So far, no details are available on the funding for the Work programme. It seems likely that, even when it is introduced, overall investment in tackling unemployment may fall.
At the end of March 2011, the future jobs funds will have funded more than 100,000 jobs, the majority of which will have gone to 18 to 24-year-olds who have been out of work for six months. Given that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has said that he wants to get young people off benefits and into work, it absolutely beggars belief that one of the first acts was to cut a scheme that does exactly that.
I should like to take this opportunity to point out to the Secretary of State that, if people are to be asked to travel to find work, it is vital that transport links are good enough to support them in doing so. In south Wales, there is no train link between Newport and Islwyn. Although there are plans to establish such a link by opening the Gaer junction, there is still no timetable for doing so. I ask the Government to ensure that that project goes ahead, so that the people of Islwyn and Blaenau Gwent can commute to work in Newport and the surrounding areas.
We should be striving for growth, but the Budget will mean lower growth and more unemployment. The Government are making the wrong decisions in all those areas, and it shows me that they believe, as they believed in the 1980s, that unemployment is a price worth paying to cut the deficit. [Hon. Members: “Oh!”] Yes, they think that unemployment is a price worth paying.
Chris Evans
No, I am making progress.
Those of us who represent areas that lost out the last time that the Tories were in government know that the cost of unemployment is too high. I urge the Government to reconsider before they condemn areas such as mine to large-scale unemployment all over again.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
There have been quite a lot of references to history in this debate. In the first few hours, which I sat through and enjoyed, many such references were made, including by the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), who said that she left school in the 1980s and that many of her friends became unemployed in the early ’80s. As I was born a decade earlier, I had a ringside seat in the decades that led to the 1980s. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, various Labour Governments presided over truly disastrous industrial intervention policies.
I, too, come from Coventry, as does the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), who also contributed to the history lessons in the debate. She will remember the creation of British Leyland, the demise of our car industry, the massive subsidies that those Labour Governments poured into failing companies and failing industries, combined with marginal personal tax rates of up to 98%. In the end of course, as we all know, the country had to be rescued by the International Monetary Fund. That is what led to unemployment in the 1980s, not the Governments led by Margaret Thatcher.
A pattern developed during those previous Labour Governments, just as it has done in the past 13 years, and it results in the end in rising unemployment. Every Labour Government, I believe, have left office with unemployment higher than when they came to office. We must not forget that in a debate on unemployment. Unemployment among the young is greater now than it was in 1997. During the past five years there has been a 72% rise in my constituency of people on jobseeker’s allowance, more than a quarter of whom are between the ages of 18 and 24. Much has been said about the tragedy of unemployment among this age group with which I agree.
Alison McGovern
Does the hon. Lady think that it is appropriate to compare unemployment in 1997 with unemployment today, at two completely different points in the economic cycle? That is not how economists would normally do it.
Margot James
The previous Government inherited falling unemployment in 1997, and it steadily increased during the first decade of this century. We have been through a couple of economic cycles during that time, but historically unemployment is always greater when a Labour Government leave office than when they arrive.
Rising unemployment under Labour Governments is always followed by a lot of well-meaning interventions to try to support people back into work. That is a laudable aim, with which we all agree, but it leads, as it has during the past five or six years, to a confusing array of individual benefit programmes that create a flourishing array of different funding streams and agencies, and they grow like Topsy. They beget a flourishing cottage industry of providers, all of which make money out of the taxpayer in trying to deliver the same services. It is imperative that the Government simplify, as they are doing, the 12 support-for-work programmes. I congratulate the new team on the steps that they have taken to integrate everything into a single get-back-to-work programme.
I do not want to be wholly negative about the interventions under the previous Government. I was a governor of Stourbridge further education college in my constituency, and a good programme was developed with Westfield, the company that manages the retail centre, and it was known as the retail academy. It took long-term unemployed people, such as women who had left the workplace to have a family, who had not been able to get back into work and who had lost their confidence. They did not have to lose their benefits. The programme was a 9-to-5 commitment, and more than half of them managed to get proper long-term jobs in the retail sector. I would not want to imply that all the individual programmes were a waste of money—of course some of them helped, and I am sure that we will learn from them—but simplification and better co-ordination is key, as another example that I want to share with the House demonstrates.
A few weeks ago, like me, some Members will have visited the manufacturing insight conference that took place just off Westminster Hall. I was struck by the story of a managing director of a small business in Lincolnshire employing about 30 people who wanted to access training for her finance staff. They wanted NVQ level 2 finance training, but in order to qualify she had to guarantee that eight people from her workplace would attend the course. She did not have eight people who needed the course, but there was only one provider that she could approach, and it was subcontracted by another provider that had the contract with the college.
All these providers and subcontracted providers take a slice of taxpayers’ money, which is another reason why we must simplify and codify the work, so that just one company or social enterprise is charging the taxpayer a fee for delivering a much-needed service. Business needs support, but it knows, for the most part, what it needs to employ people, and we must give companies much more direct access to the funding. They should not have to go through all these multiple layers of provision, and they should not have to go through regional development agencies, Business Link and so on—they should be able to access the vital help much more easily.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that laudable aims sometimes have perverse consequences? She will no doubt have come across people on the doorstep—usually women—who want to work more, but because of the extremely complex tax credit system built up by the former Government, it is simply not worth their while working. They therefore have an incentive to stay at home and remain on benefits, which cannot be right for them, their families or the wider community.
Margot James
I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. It is absolutely true. We have to create a situation in which people do not fall off the face of a cliff when they lose their benefits overnight, as soon as they take on a job for not that many hours a week. It is a poverty trap—it traps the children as well as the parents—so we have to address that. He raises an important matter.
We have talked a lot in this debate about various Government support initiatives with which we will continue under the new simplified Work programme. However, let us not forget that what the private sector really needs is a vibrant economy. First and foremost, that is what drives jobs. It is not rocket science: we need an educated and skilled work force; controlled immigration, so that businesses are not tempted simply to seize on quickly available, easy and cheap labour—we really must stop that—a benefits system that does not discourage people from going into work, as my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) said; and, above all, a low tax and a light regulatory regime that encourages investment, rewards risk and stimulates growth. That is our golden vision on the Conservative Benches, that is what we will deliver over five years, and that is what the Budget was all about.
I am pleased to say that, despite the dire economic circumstances we are having to deal with, and the deficit reduction plan that has been forced upon us, we are making great headway in creating the conditions for business that I just described. I will conclude by running through some of the excellent programmes that will drive the recovery. For a start, the employers’ national insurance increase will be tempered and the planned increase on the employers’ side will not go ahead. Although the employees’ side will go ahead, it will be compensated for by the raising of the nil rate on personal tax allowances. We are also looking at tax relief for small businesses, and the first 10 members of staff in any business will be exempt from national insurance contributions.
Whenever I do a survey of businesses in Stourbridge, I find that one of the biggest complaints is the cost of business rates, and by increasing the small business rate relief for one year from October, we will help an estimated 500,000 small businesses. Furthermore, as a west midlands Member, I can say with great passion that the regional growth fund and the commitment of £1 billion will help areas and communities particularly affected by the spending reductions forced upon us. There are other regional policies designed to correct the balance as far as we can. The number of jobs in the boom years created in London, the south-east and the east rose at 10 times the rate of new jobs everywhere else in the economy. Having come from the west midlands, worked for many years in London and gone back to the west midlands, it is deeply striking to me how we have almost become two nations. I am therefore delighted that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer is so committed to helping regions outside London, the south-east and the east.
Finally, I wish to acknowledge the words of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, who has said that
“the Government’s role is to create the right business environment and the right skills base. The Government cannot simply keep writing out cheques.”
That is the nub of how we propose to stimulate the recovery that this country so urgently needs.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
I wish to focus my remarks specifically on young people, and with that in mind I should like to comment on what my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) said. Like him, I grew up in the 1980s in a part of the world where it sometimes felt as though very few people had any faith in us. That motivated many of us in the House who come from such parts of our country to stand for election and stand up for investment in young people today.
With that in mind, I wish to say a few words on business confidence and its importance for young people’s employment prospects. I was concerned to read about the Deloitte survey of FTSE 100 directors of finance that was reported this week. The report explained that those finance directors saw an increased probability of a double-dip recession, up five percentage points from a 33% to a 38% likelihood in the past three months. That was attributed to the Government’s policies. That concerns me, because the last thing that I want is falling business confidence that will cause this country similar problems to those that we saw in France and other European countries years ago. At times when business did not want to invest, people at the start of their careers were disproportionately affected, and young people suffered much more than others in their career progression in times of downturn. I call on the Government to guard against that.
In addition to the importance of business confidence and the Government demonstrating counter-cyclical measures, I have a few comments to make at a practical level. Throughout the election and since being elected to the House, I have been concerned about what is happening in my local Jobcentre Plus. The people who work at that centre in Bromborough, about a mile away from where I was born and grew up, work incredibly hard and responded very well throughout the recession to help people who had been made redundant and suffered unemployment.
Over recent months, there has been a real threat of that jobcentre losing some of its work force. They have built up their capacity and skills to try to encourage people back to work and to find the best avenues for them, but now the centre is working under the shadow of the threat of losing its work force and their skills when they are most needed. I call on the Government to consider the matter carefully and not cut away front-line Jobcentre Plus staff at the very time when we need them most.
Members have mentioned the future jobs fund. Although my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State has already referred to the Prime Minister’s comments, it is appropriate for me to say again that when he visited Liverpool, he said that the future jobs fund was “a good scheme” and that
“we’ve got to help people who are unemployed for a long time and social enterprises like this help. It demonstrates where giving more power and control to projects like these works.”
I was struck by the comments made to me by my friend John, who is a trustee of an older people’s charity in Wirral. He told me about the two young men who came to work for the organisation, doing practical tasks in the building where the charity is housed, and described the confidence boost that this had given them and the important skills that they were learning. Those jobs would not necessarily be jobs for life, but they were going to keep the CVs of those young men consistent. That example, along with the evidence from the Prime Minister, shows that perhaps the Government could have thought more carefully about the future jobs fund. The Government’s decision, added to the loss of the young person’s guarantee, has caused me real concern about the prospects for young people in my constituency and the part of the world where I grew up.
I hope that the House will permit me a small amount of partisanship.
Mr Stewart Jackson
Before the hon. Lady continues, let me say that the House would be slightly more accommodating of her partisanship—which is no doubt coming—if she were willing to admit that the number of NEETs under her Government was the highest ever and that the further education capital programme was a calamitous disaster. The corollary of that negative news is that this Government are setting up 50,000 more apprenticeship places and expanding higher education. In the spirit of fairness, surely she can concede that her Government made mistakes and that this Government have new and fresh ideas.
Alison McGovern
I will certainly concede that any plans to increase the number of apprenticeships are welcome. Such plans are vital for my constituency and, I am sure, the hon. Gentleman’s constituency too. When I meet the people from Wirral borough council who work on the Wirral apprenticeship scheme and they tell me about the proactive way in which they have helped young people not in employment, education or training in my area, I can only applaud their work and hope that we will support them on a cross-party basis to continue that work. In that regard, where there are increases in the number of young people who face the threat of unemployment or who are not in employment, education or training, we all need to redouble our efforts and find what can be done. We are all aware of the potentially scarring impact of that not just on those young people, but on their families and communities.
The tenfold increase that we have seen in apprenticeships in Wirral since 1997, which I mentioned in an intervention, has been so welcome partly because of its intergenerational aspect and how it has built up our community. Parents no longer feel that the options for their young people are university or nothing very much. They are now starting to feel that there might be some options; so, to respond to the hon. Gentleman, as Members of this House we must redouble our efforts to focus on apprenticeships and encourage business to invest. However, that needs to involve the public and private sectors working hand in hand. It is important to recognise that we cannot expect those in the private sector to take a chance on young people where the public sector locally is not working alongside them.
As well as talking about those who go into apprenticeships, I want to say a few words about graduates. In this discussion about unemployment, we need to recognise that getting a degree these days is no magic bullet for securing a future career, and we must not pretend that it is. In fact, we need to encourage young people, both pre-university and while they are there, to gain the work-relevant skills that will assist them with their careers.
Alison McGovern
I will make a bit of progress, if that is okay.
We should recognise that the downturn that we have faced has been worse for graduates from lower-income backgrounds, and there are a few reasons for that. Graduates from lower-income backgrounds are much less likely to go on to further study. When I was studying philosophy at University college London, at a time when the economy was growing, I remember my tutor saying to me that downturns were always good for philosophy departments, because they kept hold of people who would otherwise have gone straight into the City, as their parents could pay for them to do a master’s degree or something like that for a few years.
We need to recognise that graduates from lower income backgrounds are less able to progress their careers, because they are less likely to have the informal networks that will help them as graduates to take the first steps into their careers. Unless we are able to rebuild business confidence, even graduates will continue to face difficulties. I return to my original point that the key to unlocking the problem of unemployment, especially among young people, is to improve business confidence and to ensure that the private sector and the public sector continue to invest in jobs.
In liaising with the CBI in the north-west on apprenticeships, I heard about companies in Wirral that were very keen to employ local young people. I talked to those companies at length about how we could support them in their endeavour to build new infrastructure in Wirral while training young people in my area. Those companies were working on vital infrastructure projects such as Building Schools for the Future, and the problem with the Government’s decision to cut the deficit more quickly than we would have liked is that the withdrawal of Government input into the economy will be counter-productive because those companies will no longer feel that they have the backing of the Government to hire young people and build up their skills.
Alison McGovern
I should like to make some progress. I do not want to prevent others from speaking in the debate.
I fear that that withdrawal of Government input, especially in areas where the employment picture, though recovering, is historically fragile, will result in more people on the dole, which will make it even more difficult for us to reduce the deficit.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
I want to talk about one of the biggest challenges that the coalition Government, the House and the country face: jobs and unemployment in our country, and what the Government can do to tackle them. The Opposition motion would be hard to support in any circumstances, but it would be more credible if it had started with an apology. Nearly 2.5 million people are now unemployed. To put that in perspective, that is 500,000 more than the entire population of Slovenia, a nation that we recently played in the World cup. That is a terrible figure, and also a terrible legacy to have inherited from the previous Government.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Nadhim Zahawi
I will not, as I would like to make some headway in my speech.
Following the election of the new Government, it immediately became clear to us that we faced a series of immense challenges in tackling unemployment and worklessness. Let us be honest—those problems have not come about purely because of the recession. Over the past decade, the very fabric of this nation has been altered. This is now a nation of huge government and huge inefficiency, and one that does not do much for those looking for work. Instead, it seems to encourage those who do not want to work. Those factors have undermined this country’s competitiveness, its efficiency and—perhaps most importantly—its social fabric.
This is a self-aggravating situation. Those who are brought up in workless households are themselves more likely to experience worklessness, welfare dependency and poverty in later life. This is not an issue we can ignore. It is vital that we address the causes and begin to secure solutions to these enormous problems. That can be done by making changes to the way in which the welfare state is operated. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, alongside the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and John Hutton, the former Member for Barrow and Furness, have the historical credibility and experience to make a real difference. Focusing on key issues such as the long-term unemployed and the high level of youth unemployment is critical.
Business is another key area in which a real impact can be made. Supporting our businesses and reducing the regulation that strangles them will lead to more opportunity and more jobs. That is a tried and tested solution and one that I, as a business man, will address shortly, but for now I feel that I cannot ignore the record of those sitting opposite me. After 13 years of a Labour Government, huge numbers of people are living off the welfare state. A whole swathe of society has been led to believe that the culture of aspiration and hard work on which Britain has long prided itself can be ignored in favour of welfare and idleness. Yet I do not blame those people, because it is the last Government who allowed that culture to become ingrained in the British psyche. It is the last Government who bloated not only the welfare state but the public sector. I would never accuse them of doing that for reasons of self-interest, but the questions have to be asked: why was it allowed to happen, and what can we do to rectify it?
Let me turn briefly to the figures, for they do not lie. As I mentioned earlier, unemployment is now just shy of 2.5 million, with nearly 1.5 million people claiming jobseeker’s allowance. We also have 1.7 million people who are long-term unemployed, having been without a job for at least 12 months. Of those, 1.4 million have been on out-of-work benefit for nine or more years; that is a deep rut that is hard to climb out of. I should also make it clear that that does not take account of the 2.6 million people in receipt of incapacity benefit and employment and support allowance. Ours is the nation with the highest number of workless households in Europe. There were 5.9 million working-age benefit claimants in November 2009, and we have an incapacity benefit system that makes it more likely that those on it will die or reach pension age, rather than getting another job after two years of claiming. That is the legacy we have been left.
The last Government have clearly failed. They led this great nation for 13 years, and that is the record that has been left. They may point to and blame the recession; they may claim that factors out of their control led to this situation; but I say no, they cannot so easily shirk the responsibility that the people of Britain placed on them in 1997. They claimed that they would take “Britain forward not back”, yet it is backwards that we have gone: back to the dole queue, back to unemployment, and back to poverty. It is now up to us, the coalition Government, to rectify the mistakes of the past and ensure that once again we “Get Britain working”.
Of course, an enormous number of areas must be discussed if we are both to understand and to begin to deal with this problem: the welfare system and what we can do to change and streamline it, the huge problem of youth unemployment, and what we can do to help lone parents back into work. But as a business man myself and a keen believer in the power that enterprise in the UK has in job creation, I intend to focus on that area. I am a firm believer in creating real jobs in the real economy. We have made it clear that a key element of our programme is boosting economic growth and, as a direct result, creating jobs to ensure that Britain has an economic climate in which private enterprise can compete and invest with confidence. It is vital that we ensure that jobs are available both for those looking for work, and for those whom we will try to get into work.
Mr Stewart Jackson
Does my hon. Friend agree with my comparison between what the Conservative party did in government in the 1980s, when they brought about a real transfer of wealth and capital to working people through shared ownership and the right to buy, and what the Labour Government did, which was to ossify social mobility and widen the gap between the richest and the poorest 10% in our country?
Nadhim Zahawi
My hon. Friend is right. One example is the way in which the gap between the south-east and the rest of the country has grown. Labour Members just do not seem to understand what it takes to create an enterprise economy.
Mr Anderson
Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), a lot of people were made wealthy in the 1980s, and 200,000 coal miners got £20,000 to go on the dole queue—paid out of the public purse.
Nadhim Zahawi
And your point is? At the end of the day, you only have to look at the facts. The facts are that you have left us with a legacy of £500 million a day—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I did not leave anybody with a legacy of anything.
Nadhim Zahawi
It is not sustainable to follow the path of the previous Government and bloat the public sector. Business needs confidence to invest. Our first Budget last month has laid the groundwork for these aims. We will drop the headline rate of corporation tax by 1% each year for the next four years, lowering it to 24%. We have ended the disastrous jobs tax that the last Government tried to introduce for employers, a key policy in ensuring that our businesses once again begin to hire people.
The measures in this Budget are intended to give businesses the confidence to invest for the long term, and to reduce the burden of tax and regulation. One area where we need to, and can, do more, is in funding for business. If we expect business to take up the slack of the reduction in the size of government, we must send it a clear message on funding. There is a disconnect between what the banks are telling us regarding the amount they are lending and what businesses are experiencing and telling us about the access they have to funding. I hope that in my new role as a member of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee we can spend some of our time inquiring as to how we can alter that dynamic.
Nick de Bois
Will my hon. Friend add to that the outrageous attack on many SMEs, with banks inflating margins for captive customers with nowhere else to go? Does he welcome the opportunity for competition in that marketplace?
Nadhim Zahawi
My hon. Friend is right, and that is one of the areas I am passionate about.
Thomas Docherty
I am deeply puzzled that the hon. Gentleman argues, on the one hand, for less intervention and regulation, and on the other that the privately owned banks have to be instructed to lend more money. Which argument is he making this evening?
Nadhim Zahawi
That is not the point I was making. If the hon. Gentleman had been listening carefully, he would have realised that my point is that we have to inquire into what is happening. I am not talking about instructions, but about understanding the dynamic so that we can create a similar environment to that in Silicon valley, for example, where people can get access to funding more easily than in our country.
As a business man, I also know first hand the damaging effects that over-burdening business with regulation has on British companies. It is imperative that we reduce regulation. The coalition Government aim to do just that. The level of regulation in this country is simply staggering, and another example of the top-down bureaucratic approach taken by the last Government. The Institute of Directors has estimated the annual cost of regulation to UK business at £80 billion, and has stated that the ever-increasing burden of paperwork hinders business from growing and, ultimately, creating jobs. That is why we have announced plans fundamentally to review all regulations scheduled for introduction over the coming year. We will put in place a system of sunset clauses so that regulations cease to be law after seven years, and we have also created the one in, one out rule to reduce for ever the regulation created in Whitehall. All of these are key measures in ensuring that our businesses have the opportunity to thrive and, more importantly, to hire.
The level of unemployment in this country is a huge problem, but I am confident that, with the new coalition Government in power, we can address and reduce it. This issue requires a complete set of solutions, all of which need to be implemented together in an effective and decisive manner.
If we balance the books of Government, hold down interest rates, encourage business to invest and reduce the regulation that strangles business, I believe that, at the very least, we will ensure that there are jobs available for those who want them and an economy that can support them.
I support the amendment to the motion.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. There are still several Members who wish to catch my eye. The Front-Bench speakers will be called at half-past 6, so the House will see that we have only 40 minutes or so. I hope, therefore, that hon. Members will show restraint and try not to go over six minutes, although the one maiden speech that is to be made may be slightly longer.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
Thank you for allowing me to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I wanted to speak in this debate because employment is of such great concern in my constituency. It is absolutely vital that we invest in the talent of local people in different areas around the country, and that their talent is not wasted. The hopes and aspirations of people who want to contribute to our economy must not be cast aside in the way that I believe that this Government will do.
In Bethnal Green and Bow, unemployment is just under 11%, significantly higher than the national rate. The experiences of white working-class groups and of ethnic minority groups—especially those of British-Bangladeshi or Somali origin—are particularly challenging. They face the double whammy of trying to find work in difficult circumstances and in a difficult economic climate, but also of the social class barriers, and the ethnic penalties that are well documented by Cabinet Office research.
Unemployment in my constituency is faced by people who live only a stone’s throw from the City and Canary Wharf. They see the wealth and opportunities there, but struggle to reach them. Even during the boom years, unemployment was higher than the national rate, and youth and graduate unemployment were also high. Businesses in the City and Canary Wharf made efforts to recruit people, but not enough. We need the private sector, Government and local agencies to work together to create opportunities, and we need the Government to support those opportunities and enable that sort of cross-organisational working.
We also need the voluntary sector. Through organisations such as City Gateway in my constituency, and with the help of the future jobs fund and the working neighbourhoods fund, it has made enormous progress in trying to get people into work. Funding like that is an enabler, and we need that kind of support if we are to get people into work.
Tower Hamlets has managed to cut unemployment—not enough, but it has made significant progress. The current proposals stand to damage that progress. In my constituency, a lot of positive work is being done across sectors. I hope that this Government will look at ways to enable that to continue.
I am saddened that £1 million of the working neighbourhoods fund has already been cut. That is not a good sign. Figures show that 9.6% of young people are NEETs—that is, not in education, employment or training—and that is too high, but in Tower Hamlets we have managed to reduce that proportion to 6%. That is a fall of 40%, and it could not have happened without help from the Government, or without the September guarantee and the future jobs fund.
I remind the House that 8,500 young people across London managed to stay off the dole queue thanks to the help of Government interventions. I also appeal to the Government not to delay the introduction of the programme of setting up 50,000 apprenticeships that has been announced. If they do delay, it will be a case of “too little, too late”: we cannot afford to waste the talent and potential of people in this country.
The Conservative mantra in the 1980s was, “If it’s not hurting, it’s not working.” The unemployment rate then was very high, but that is not a price that is ever worth paying. I hope that people across the House recognise that. Research by Cardiff university found that unemployment was associated with a doubling of the suicide rate, so let us not forget the kind of damage that can be done, especially by unemployment of men.
Jake Berry
Does the hon. Lady agree that, after 13 years of a Labour Government, it is a disgrace that one in five people under the age of 24 are out of work? Does she think that has been a price worth paying for 13 years of a Labour Government?
Rushanara Ali
The Labour Government made every attempt to help people into work. There are great challenges and complex circumstances in helping and enabling people to work, but at least the Labour Government did not shirk their responsibility. At least they tried to support people, as Labour Governments will always do. I appeal to the coalition Government to try to provide support, so that people can achieve their potential. This is not about handouts; it is about giving a helping hand. That is the progressive route to supporting communities.
Rushanara Ali
I am short of time, so I would like to make some progress and share the following example. At a recent employment fair in my constituency, 10,000 people were queuing up for jobs, but there were only 1,000 places at the work fair. That does not show that people are not interested in jobs or that people will sit idly by waiting for opportunities to come to them; they want to work, they want opportunities and they need support from the private sector, the Government and the voluntary sector. I hope that that is the spirit in which this Government will seek to work.
The cost of unemployment is ill health, depression and anxiety; it is many social consequences that we cannot afford. I regret that unemployment remains high for some sections and that some people continue to feel left behind. I acknowledge that my party did not achieve as much as it would have liked, but the fact is that my party never walked away from people who needed support in constituencies such as mine.
Matthew Hancock
I thank the hon. Lady for a very thoughtful speech. Will she join me in welcoming the new Government’s proposal to increase the number of apprenticeships, because she mentioned that earlier?
Rushanara Ali
I welcome any effort to try to help people to get work but, as I said in my earlier intervention, it is important to ensure that training programmes are meaningful. I would say that to my own party and my own Government—in fact, I lobbied my Government to keep making progress, because that is the right thing to do. The point is that there is no guarantee of a job at the end of this. Young people, with whom I have spent some years working, need to be convinced that when they get involved with these programmes, there will be a result and the programme is meaningful, not a fudge. That must be our focus. I welcome the 50,000 apprenticeship opportunities, but people will have to wait until next spring. What am I meant to say to my constituents, who have been waiting for help from this Government? We contributed support. The problem is that the recent announcements, whereby all this is to be left until next spring, are not good enough.
I wish to conclude by saying that we must not fail the challenge of trying to help people get into work. We must give them hope, we must realise their potential and we must help them to meet their aspirations. We have not seen evidence of investment in the aspiration that the Prime Minister talked so much about when he was campaigning. I hope that we will see that, and that this Government will not turn their back on the people who want to contribute to this society and this economy, and whose potential we need for economic growth. I hope that this coalition Government will deliver a progressive solution, not one that leaves people behind.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to make my maiden speech in this important debate about jobs and unemployment. I take my seat in the shadow of three eminent predecessors, all of whom have been gracious enough, with some help from the Boundary Commission, to cede portions of their constituencies to the new Mid Norfolk constituency. They are my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson), who represented Mid Norfolk with great distinction, my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) and the former Member for South West Norfolk, all of whom are held in the highest esteem locally and in this House.
Mr Deputy Speaker, you are no doubt thinking, “Where is Mid Norfolk?” Indeed, its boundaries have baffled many of its constituents since being redrawn. Centred on Dereham, the ancient heart of Norfolk, it includes the three market towns of Attleborough, Watton and Wymondham, and 110 charming villages. I should like to take the House on a quick—130-mile—tour that I have had the great pleasure to make by bicycle in stages over the past three years, in the spirit of past parliamentarians, such as most famously, William Cobbett, on horseback, and more latterly my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), on foot. Following the instruction of the former Member for Chingford, and more recently the example of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister—perhaps the only time that they have agreed—I opted to go by bike.
We start at The Crown in Colkirk, the northernmost point and only a few furlongs south of the magnificent Fakenham race course. We then pass through Beeston, home of a new micro-brewery and the excellent “Worth the Wait” ale, which I hope the House might feel is worth a glass after my maiden speech; Dereham, the capital, which received its charter in the 16th century; Swanton Morley, the home of the Light Dragoons, whom I know the House will want to thank for their brave service to our country; Hingham, the home of Abraham Lincoln’s family and the relaunched Lotus motor racing team; Wymondham, with its famous abbey, crucible of Robert Kett’s revolution and home to Wymondham college, a rare state boarding school, and Wymondham high—two of the top state schools in the country—Attleborough, home of Banham Poultry, our largest local business, and Liftshare, the world’s fastest-growing car-share company, set up in a former turkey shed by a local entrepreneur; and Watton, heart of the Wayland valley and home of the famous horse fair.
Eschewing the metropolitanism of Norwich, Fakenham, Thetford and Swaffham, which guard its perimeter, Mid Norfolk is the rural core of this most rural and historic county, a county that I need hardly remind the House has given us our first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, our greatest military hero, Horatio Nelson, and the seeds of the agricultural and, therefore, industrial revolution, courtesy of Coke of Holkham and “Turnip” Townshend. The turnip is a vegetable that has had a tricky press of late, but it is held in the very highest esteem in Norfolk.
My constituency has come of late to feel increasingly marginalised, however. Tackling that sense of marginalisation in order to unlock the talents and aspirations of its people is, and will remain, the central theme of my work as its MP. The people of Mid Norfolk feel marginalised by the decision-making process and too often forced to change in ways that they have neither chosen nor like. The small, local, voluntary and rural is all too often crowded out by the big, national, professional and urban. As reported this week, rural Britain has been especially hard hit by unemployment during this recession, and my constituency has pockets of rural deprivation which are often hidden and invisible to the passer-by. Pensioner poverty can be especially invisible.
Post offices, pubs and village shops close, while more and more people are forced to commute increasing distances from the mass housing estates that have been forced on our market towns and councils. In my three-year candidacy I insisted on another way. Opposition Members might call it a third way, but we call it the Norfolk way: a vision of a vibrant rural society based on a renaissance of rural enterprise; smaller pockets of mixed housing spread more fairly and sustainably; fast-growing small businesses and jobs back in our villages and towns; less commuting; a richer mix of ages; and blue and white-collar jobs in active communities.
Some may ask, “Where are those new jobs and businesses to come from?” Let me tell the House. Situated between Norwich and Cambridge are two of the world’s leading centres of scientific research and innovation in food, biomedicine and the clean technologies of which my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) spoke earlier, all of which are so vital to the global challenges that we face, Mid Norfolk is perfectly positioned to become a hub of entrepreneurial activity and new jobs. With the world-leading John Innes centre, the Institute of Food Research, world-class agriculture and high-tech engineering along the A11 corridor, we can lead those new economic sectors on which we will increasingly depend.
As someone who came to politics after a 15-year career in creating new technology businesses, I hope to be able to put my experience to good use in that area. However, that revolution cannot happen without two essential things: new models of investment in infrastructure, including the A11, rural broadband and rail links, and some local leadership.
The stale post-war model of statist centralisation and dependence on the Whitehall handout has failed Norfolk and needs replacing if we are to have a sustainable recovery. The benefits of this empowerment and liberalism will not just be economic. Rural Britain is, I believe, the repository of some important virtues that our modern culture has neglected: a deep belief in self-help and responsibility; an insistence that everybody in a community has a role, and the rejection of a shallow media culture’s obsession with celebrity; and a love of the small, the different, and the local. These are qualities that are deeply rooted in the English character.
The people of Mid Norfolk sent me here to speak up for them, so I shall. My constituents, proud of those values, have found themselves increasingly powerless in the face of a tidal wave of legislation and “big government” from Europe, Whitehall, and unaccountable regional quangos. Many worry that our culture has been hijacked by an increasingly intolerant, politically correct “anything goes” multiculturalism which seems to have too little respect for the longer traditions of tolerance, personal freedom and responsibility embedded in our traditional heritage. By pumping the bellows of local empowerment, I believe that we can reignite the embers of a culture which can and should be allowed to coexist with metropolitan Britain, to mutual benefit.
At the heart of this manifesto is a big idea: that citizenship is forged not through dependence on the state as espoused by new Labour and its philosopher king, Anthony Giddens, but through the empowering act of the state granting responsibility to its citizens. That is the central idea which has brought me into politics as a Conservative, and which I am delighted is once again the idea at the heart of modern Conservatism and this coalition.
I hope that the House might allow me to close on a personal note. As no doubt for all hon. Members, taking my seat in this great House is the culmination of a long journey and a lifetime’s dream. I can recall very clearly when that seed was sown: coming here on a school trip aged 12, inspired by childhood stories of my great-uncle Gladstone. As the child of a broken and at that time unhappy home, I recall seeing the worn edges of the Dispatch Box and being struck by a deeply reassuring idea: that whoever and wherever you are in our country, there is a place where the nation takes responsibility for its affairs, a place where your problem matters, a place here, for you, whoever you are. I still believe there is no greater honour than to be sent here by a constituency to serve. I believe the public want to believe that too, and want this new Parliament to raise aloft the standard of a politics of which we can all be proud. I thank the people of Mid Norfolk for the chance to be part of that, and I thank the House for its patience this evening.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. Five Members are trying to get in; if they restrict themselves to five minutes, everybody will do so.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this debate.
In the few weeks that I have been here, it feels a little as though I have walked into an Alice in Wonderland world where everything has been turned on its head. A lot of myth-making has been going on. If one says something often enough, even if it is not true, people will come to believe it. I have to say, as somebody who studied history, that we need to ask what sort of regimes are particularly good at doing that. I trust, and I am sure, that my constituents will not fall for these myths.
So what are the myths? Myth No. 1, which concerns a terribly important issue, is that Labour causes unemployment. Let us take 1997, and let us take 2010, after a major recession, and then allege that during the course of the Labour Government we have had high unemployment. If my constituents were asked which were the recent periods of long unemployment, they would not say the period from 1997 to 2008 but the periods of the 1980s and the 1990s—they know that full well. By the mid-part of this decade, we had reached a position in Edinburgh whereby unemployment had been virtually reduced to a hard-core minimum. We had a very healthy economy for all that time, so it is simply not true to suggest that we have had a period of Labour Government with high unemployment.
Neither is it true that we have the highest unemployment figures in Europe—I do not know where that that comes from. A year ago, my cousin from Spain came to visit and told me that he was very worried because Spain’s unemployment stood at 19% or 20%. That myth about our unemployment figures is another one that we must destroy.
Public support and funding makes a lot of the economic development in the Edinburgh area possible, but the Tory view is that public spending is a drag on, rather than an encouragement to, the economy. For example, the public spending and support we put into a wave power project in Leith docks—£4 million of public spending in past year—will create lots of employment, but nothing would have happened without that degree of public support. The offshore wind projects in the River Forth would not have happened without public support.
During the election campaign, a construction engineer in my constituency told me that he was seriously worried about school building projects drying up, because his firm had been associated with those nationally and in Scotland for all the years of the previous Labour Government. However, in 2007, the Scottish Government came under the control of the Scottish National party. They chose—they were not forced—not to use public-private partnership, which was Labour’s funding mechanism. As a result, they have been unable to start a single new school in my area, because they have not come up with another form of funding, meaning that my constituents’ employment prospects are much diminished. That was before public funding was cut further. If that construction engineer—he has always worked in the private sector—were asked whether he could manage without the public sector, he would say no.
Another big myth that is being perpetrated is that increased funding for welfare spending—I do not particularly like that term—means that it is all being spent on people who sit at home doing nothing. That is not true. One of the big triumphs of the Labour Government was to create a situation in which single parents, for example, can work. Single parents have been enabled to work, but only a very low proportion of them used to work, even compared with other countries, because the benefits system made it very difficult for them to do so. Tax credits, which come under the big heading of welfare spending, are designed specifically to let people work. That is what they are about. They are not about people sitting at home doing nothing. That is another myth.
I was interested to hear another hon. Member praise an academy project. We have set up similar projects in Edinburgh. I hear people talking about having a single, unitary, simplified form of training; the point is that it must be relevant to particular areas. Our training was in health care, because we had brand-new hospitals, but one size will not fit all.
Let us give up on the myths and talk about the reality. I hope that our prediction that things will not go well in the next few years does not come true, but my constituents are very afraid.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
May I begin by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), whose maiden speech was erudite, sophisticated and entertaining? It has almost persuaded me to abandon my plan to go and live in the south of France in my retirement—when the date comes, a long time in the future—and instead to go and live in Norfolk.
I should like to talk about the words at the end of the Opposition motion and the decision
“to abolish regional development agencies”,
which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) and the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) mentioned in their speeches. We need to put RDAs into some sort of perspective. Between 1999 and 2008, RDAs cost £13 billion; salaries increased from £38 million to £120 million and running costs increased by 159%. PricewaterhouseCoopers said that the return was £4 for every £1 put in, but it is not clear whether that takes account of the increase in overhead costs. Either way, it is not a particularly interesting amount of return.
In addition, we should not forget the rather destructive way in which RDAs have gone about promoting areas overseas and reaching out for inward investment. The total cost of RDAs’ overseas activities in the seven years to 2008 was £24 million. Even Advantage West Midlands, which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington much praised, has 11 offices overseas. There is wasteful competition between RDAs. Five RDAs have offices in China, which, as I have mentioned in the House before, prompted a rather indignant group of business men returning from China to complain that the Chinese do not understand the difference between the east and west midlands.
The creation of employment through the RDAs essentially happens through the regional economic strategies. We have all heard about the regional spatial strategies, but the regional economic strategies are their precursors. The RSSs are there to deliver in planning terms what the RESs deliver. I suspect very few Members have read, or even heard of, the RES for their own region. That is unsurprising; like the RSSs, the RESs are reflective not of a bottom-up approach, but of a top-down approach.
In my own region of the south-east—where I am asked to believe that the town of Henley has an enormous amount in common with the town of Dover—the concentration of resources on infrastructure has been around the Government’s agenda in Kent, whereas places such as Oxfordshire, which is an economic area in itself, have been left out of receiving any investment for many years. Such areas have had to fight to get what is due to them.
I agree that the RDAs have done some good work, but we must accept that most regions are artificial. They are political constructs, and there is no identity with the region. There is quite a lot of academic work on that, including papers by, among others, Hadjimichalis and Hudson, which I recommend to Members. Few regions have longevity or a common identity. The potential exception is the north-east, where there has been some argument for a common focus since the 1930s. The reality, however, is that the boundaries are artificial. Local Government Association research into the trading, travelling and working patterns of the British economy demonstrates that the principal sub-national economic unit is sub-regional, not regional. That was a good piece of analysis. The Labour approach to RDAs has, therefore, been part of the tired centralist agenda. It has ignored natural areas and, arguably, suppressed growth by focusing on a centralist agenda that ignores local flexibilities and opportunities.
Opposition Members tried to suggest that abolishing the RDAs would leave regions and sub-regions in a vacuum, but nothing could be further from the truth. We have proposed local economic partnerships, some of which may, if local councils and businesses wish, have similar configurations to the current RDAs. What is important is to give control back to local councils and business, and to liberate growth and local ideas. That challenge has been welcomed by local councils. I was interested to see press reports of 22 councils in Yorkshire and The Humber agreeing to support local economic partnerships, and, again, the LGA has shown there is huge support for that.
Local government is up for this. My own county has a very good vision of a technology arc from Oxford across to Cambridge. It does not need an RDA—or in this case, two RDAs—to tell it how to do that. There is no better quote with which to end my comments than one from the chairman of South East England Councils, the leader of Kent county council, Paul Carter, who said:
“The future is local. We need to strip away the old bureaucratic, regional structures quickly. Councils”—
in this case in the south-east—
“are ready and willing to take on the role of working with businesses.”
I think that is an extremely powerful route to real growth in our local economies.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
It is an old but true saying that if we do not learn the mistakes of history, we end up repeating them. For some Members of the House, this discussion is not just theoretical, because we have lived it—our families and our areas have lived it. My grandfather was sacked in 1926 for having the temerity to go on strike. He was blacklisted for eight years and died in poverty. My father was forced to go down the mines in 1935 as a 14-year-old at a time when, he has told me, miners were treated like slaves. People did not march from Jarrow to London just for the fun of it: they did it because the private sector had let them down.
In the 1930s, a miner was killed in the mines every six hours because of the success of the private sector. That was not because there was too much red tape, but because people did not invest in the mines. That is why, at the end of world war two, the people of this country, despite having a GDP-to-debt ratio of 262%—not 62%—did the right thing and threw that Government out. They then built a million houses, created the national health service and nationalised the major utilities and the railways. They did all that right and what was the result? In 1959, the Prime Minister said that this country had never had it so good—that was because of the things that Labour Governments had done in the 1940s and 1950s.
Unfortunately, in the next period there was general consensus in the country on one-nation Toryism. Of course, that was done away with in 1979 when Mrs Thatcher came along. She had a view of one-nation Tories from the Wash southwards and we ended up with people on the dole, mines closed, shipyards closed and steelworks closed. That was said to be a price worth paying only because the people represented by the Conservatives were not paying it. The price was paid by the people of my constituency and those of Scotland, Wales and other industrial areas while the yuppies in London were swanning around in their Porsches, drinking champagne and smoking big cigars. Conservative Members can smile because they were not there, but some of us were, and we were suffering. People struggled and saw communities going down the drain. People were burgled by their neighbours’ children and saw drugs in villages where there had been nothing but hard work for two centuries. We saw houses falling down that people had kept going for a hundred years. This is not a joke; it is serious stuff.
Hon. Members talk about unemployment—in the constituency where I lived before I became an MP, the highest unemployment rate in the past 13 years has been 7.8%, which is far too high, but in 1986, in the week that the mine I worked in was closed and 721 miners were put on the dole, the unemployment rate was 18.6%. The Conservatives should not come here lecturing us about unemployment when it is just some sort of theoretical debate they have had in the students union.
At the end of the 1980s, the public services were attacked, compulsory competitive tendering was introduced and people were put on wages of £1 an hour. We had a situation where people who had given their lives to organisations such as the health service were told, “We don’t want you any more—go and work for Joe Bloggs’ cleaning company.” People were underestimated and undervalued. The next thing was that the private sector came back in. We gave the utilities back to the private sector and we ended up with a utilities sector that was not fit for purpose. The reality is that we will probably end up with power cuts or running out of gas. Alternatively, we will end up, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) suggested when he spoke so eloquently about green issues, being dependent on people like the Russians or the Ukrainians for gas and oil supplies. Why? It is because of lack of investment by private companies.
When Labour came back into power in 1997, we took action and used public money to put right some of those wrongs. We introduced the national minimum wage, we brought in rights for people at work and we introduced good-quality health and safety legislation that saves lives. We introduced regulations that stopped business people from exploiting people at work, and we should never move away from that or apologise for it. We also introduced the regional development agencies, which have not been successful in some regions—it is pointless to pretend otherwise—but the areas where they have been successful are probably those where they are needed more than anywhere else, such as in my region, where the RDA has been very successful. Taking RDAs away will cause a repeat of the past and will be the wrong way to go.
Some people say that we have no choice and that we are all in it together, but we do have a choice. We do not have to follow past accidents: we could introduce a financial transaction tax on the banks, we could take real action to attack tax avoidance and tax evasion, and we do not have to cut corporation tax. I know that it is highly unlikely that the Conservatives will want to do that, because they still want to be the party of business at the helm of the work force, but the Opposition will not stand for it. It is a shame that the hon. Members on the narrow Government side of the House—the Liberal Democrats—are supporting the other Government Members in doing that. They should be ashamed of what they are doing.
Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
I have noticed this afternoon that there has been a lot of talk about young people in unemployment. Both my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) and the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) were talking about that, and it is a common theme. It is one area that, I know, we all care about so much.
I was talking in Hastings, where we have very high levels of youth unemployment, to a young lady from Tressell training, which is a NEET—not in employment, education or training—college. I asked her what she was doing and she said that she was doing a training course, making a film about BMX bikes. I said, “That’s great. Do you do BMX biking yourself?” and she said, “No, I couldn’t possibly, because it’s dangerous and I’m pregnant.” My face fell, reflecting slightly what I thought about that, and she said, “No, don’t worry. I know what you’re thinking—you’re thinking I’m too young but I’m not, because I’m 16 next week.” She was reflecting something that we see a lot, and I do not think that it is a problem just in Hastings. A lot of young people are making a choice, because they look at the potential for jobs and do not see that it has anything to do with them.
In Hastings, 43% of the work force are in the public sector. To get into the public sector, people need qualifications. I welcome the comments made by the Secretary of State for Education today about the changes to education and the changes to our schools, which, I hope, will start to work with the lowest achievers and with the people who are struggling most. At the moment, I feel that we have a real problem with the young unemployed looking at the work force—they have no qualifications—and thinking, “That’s not for me.”
I have a radical proposal that I would like the Secretary of State and the Minister to consider. Instead of people going on to unemployment benefit—instead of their going on to the circuit of jobseeker’s allowance, then the flexible new deal and then, sometimes, back again—why not consider putting them on something new, which we could call “Vision for Jobs”, to give them purpose, work and training? In the example I am thinking of, people could start at 9 o’clock in the morning and be given two to three days of community service, one day of learning skills and one day of job search. They could be given pride in what they are trying to do by being given a weekly wage. In my vision, this weekly piece of paper would have on the right hand side “35 hours of meaningful work”, which would be set out, and—
Amber Rudd
Yes—actually, no, I will not give way.
On the left hand side, that slip would show what they had received—not just the jobseeker’s allowance but the council benefit and any credits that they might receive. Many young people do not know the full extent of the benefits they receive.
I know that such a scheme will be hard to deliver and that it is not straightforward, but I think that the current unemployment benefit system leaves young people to fend for themselves. It does not look after them. We need a new system. I ask those on the Front Bench and the Secretary of State to consider piloting such a scheme in Hastings. I know that he has had conversations with Tomorrow’s People and Debbie Scott, and she would be delighted to do that. We could make a change, and start it in Hastings.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
I shall be brief, given the time available. May I begin by wishing the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) all the best? He made an excellent maiden speech and I am sure that he will be a valuable addition to his Front Bench in the not-too-distant future if he continues at that pace of contribution.
In just over half an hour, the House has the opportunity to send a message to the country. On this side of the House, we know that Conservative Members are ideologically driven towards cuts. There is nothing new or fresh about their ideas. This is an opportunity in which they are revelling as they make cuts to programmes and policies that they have never liked and never supported.
Those Liberal Democrats who are sitting alongside their new best friends, however, need to hang their heads in shame. It is interesting to look at the roll of dishonour that lists the names of those Liberal Democrat Ministers who have signed this appalling amendment, which revels in a programme of cuts. Fife, Scotland and the whole of the United Kingdom is watching again and the Liberal Democrats must face up to reality—they cannot cosy up to their Conservative pals for the next five years without realising that the people of Britain will punish them for it at the next general election.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) on making a most amusing maiden speech. As far as I could tell, its gist was that Mid Norfolk was really big in the middle of the 18th century. I looked at “Dod’s” to find out a little more about him, and one of his recreations is hill walking, which is a shame: he will not get many opportunities to do that in Mid Norfolk.
I am proud to have belonged to a Government who decided to support young people through the recession, to have confidence in them, to invest in them and to back them. We knew that unemployment was not a price worth paying. We knew from our experience of the 1980s and 1990s what a scarring effect unemployment has and how the young are worst affected. However, it seems that this Government have learned nothing. Not only are they introducing huge cuts to public expenditure, with massive knock-on effects on private sector jobs, but they are freezing recruitment to the public sector, cutting the number of university places and now abolishing the future jobs fund.
The Tories and the Liberals said in the run-up to the general election that they were backing the future jobs fund and that they would continue with it, so I am sure that many voters will be extremely disappointed by the decision to abolish it. It is notable that not one Liberal Democrat has spoken in the debate. I assume that they are getting rather weary of their role as fig leaf to the Government. I am glad to see the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb) in his place at last, but it is significant that the Liberal Democrats have been unable to face defending the amendment that the Government have tabled.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) began without any acknowledgement of the fact that we faced the largest global recession since the second world war. He went on to talk about the proposals for the new Work programme, but there remain a huge number of practical questions, which he was completely unable to answer. What will happen in the gap between the time when no more people can be taken on by the future jobs fund and the time when the new scheme is introduced? What will happen to those people whose skills atrophy if they are unemployed? We are talking not just about people’s technical skills, but about their social skills, which are important if people are to maintain their morale and get another job.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) spoke about the importance of the private sector retaining its confidence and about the work that the future jobs fund has done in Wakefield, by creating 700 places for young people. She spoke about environmental projects, green businesses, young people learning to make honey and the skills that they were gaining. She pointed out the importance of apprenticeships. The Government keep telling us about the number of apprenticeships that they are creating, while conveniently forgetting that we trebled the number of apprenticeships in the past 13 years. My hon. Friend asked how the national contracts would work and how the providers would bear the risks. They are good questions, and more questions that the Minister was completely incapable of answering.
The hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Mr Heald) spoke about the problem of worklessness, the need for greater private sector employment and the importance of technological skills. He did not seem to be able to take into account the fact that the number of people on inactive benefits has fallen by 350,000 in the past 12 years. He did not seem to be aware of the fact that the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast shows that private sector employment will be lower in each of the next five years than was forecast before the Chancellor’s Budget.
The hon. Gentleman went on to talk about the importance of education and technology. I hope sincerely that he has a word with the Secretary of State for Education—he will have an opportunity to do so shortly—about the dire mistake that has been made in the cuts to the Building Schools for the Future programme that were announced earlier this week.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Gordon Banks) spoke about the importance of the construction industry. He has a great deal of experience of that, and he talked about how it was a driver for the economy.
Helen Goodman
I am sorry, but I have to respond to 22 Members and I do not have much time.
The hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) spoke about the importance of infrastructure and education spending, and about the great returns that there are from that. I hope that she will have a conversation with her right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and press on him the need to maintain spending on some of those.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) spoke about the issues in her constituency. She reminded the House that during the general election the Prime Minister said that he wanted to see cuts in the north. She was absolutely right. It was quite clear that if someone voted Cameron they would get cuts, and if someone voted Clegg they would get Cameron. She pointed out that a third of the workers in the north-east worked in the public sector, and that its efficiency can be improved by having more workers in low-cost areas.
The hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) spoke about the problem of NEETs and what needed to be done to increase apprenticeships. She spoke about a public-private partnership, which was picked up by my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), who pointed out that if spending in local authorities is maintained, it might be possible to continue with that.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) gave a passionate speech about the importance of human dignity in considering all these issues. He also asked a number of questions, to which it would be interesting to hear the answers when the Minister replies—in particular, how many placements has the Minister succeeded in getting for the apprenticeships that Government Members keep trumpeting? My right hon. Friend also spoke about the connection between young people being able to work and the importance of keeping down antisocial behaviour and crime. He pointed to the huge gap between the reality and the Government’s rhetoric. We heard it even today in Prime Minister’s questions, when the Prime Minister said, in answer to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), that he wanted a long-term strategy to engage young people. If he wants that, why is he abolishing the future jobs fund?
The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) spoke extremely interestingly about the importance of moving to a low-carbon green economy, and he talked about how that should be done, but he left out one key thing, which is that one of the major barriers is a skills shortage. The future jobs fund had a green strand. Will he please press Ministers to have a green strand in their work?
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) spoke with huge passion about his constituency and the role of the RDA in the west midlands. I can recall being in Birmingham and finding out about the partnerships that the DWP had with the RDA to build employment in that region. I hope that the Minister will be able to inform the House of what she said about the loss of that partner when her colleagues in the Department of Communities and Local Government came up with the proposal to abolish the RDA.
The hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) spoke about the importance of the private sector and the need to see SMEs grow, and I think that the House would agree with that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) spoke about the need for new jobs in former mining areas. He spoke about the 50th anniversary of the Six Bells tragedy and the huge impact that mining still has on many communities. Hon. Members can come to the miners’ gala in Durham on Saturday, where they can enjoy the culture that flowed from the mining communities.
The hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton)—she does not seem to be in her place now— spoke about the importance of work and the Marmot report. I hope that Ministers listened to her and will appreciate the severe consequences for people’s health and mental health of soaring unemployment.
My hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) made a passionate speech about how the Tories treated his constituency in the 1980s and pointed out the great significance of Train to Gain, which is the programme being cut to finance the much trumpeted apprenticeships. The hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) took us back to the 1960s and talked about what she perceived to be the waste in the contracting process. I hope that such waste will be reduced and less money will be spent on contractors in the new scheme that the Government will introduce. My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South made a wide-ranging speech displaying a great understanding of the constituency she represents. She also spoke about the good work being done by Jobcentre Plus and the threat to the jobs of its staff. She mentioned how foolish that is at a time when these workers are most needed.
The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) said that business needs to be freed up. My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) spoke about the imbalance between the number of jobs and the number of vacancies, and pointed to the scale of the problems we face. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) made a myth-busting speech pointing out, in particular, that tax credits go to those in work, and help people to finance child care and take jobs. The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) spoke about the regional development agencies and revealed, I am sorry to say, the complete ignorance of the Conservative party about some of the regions in the north and the significance of the RDAs, and its really foolish decision to take the same approach to the south of the country as to the north.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) made a passionate speech and pointed out that the question of unemployment is not a theoretical one, but about real people and real lives. The hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) began her speech with a story about a 16-year-old having a baby and her concerns about it. I wonder whether she has addressed with her hon. Friends the fact that the programmes to reduce teenage pregnancy are being cut. She then talked about her vision and spoke about what she wanted to see—it sounded rather as if she wanted a version of the youth guarantee, albeit a rather bureaucratic version. I point out to her that her hon. Friends have just abolished it. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) also spoke about the great importance of a sensible approach to tackling this problem.
What the Government have done is totally unjust. They are pulling away support precisely at the time of maximum need. Today, we have had a statement from the OECD stating that this is the moment in the recession when it is most important to have properly funded support. That is in addition to statements from local authorities, young people and the voluntary sector. We are seeing the wanton destruction of people’s lives. These are not numbers. The abolition of the youth guarantee and the future jobs fund demonstrates how little the Government care. They do not care about the young man and his partner who want to do their best for their new baby; they do not care about the mother anxious about what is going to happen to her children when they leave school; and they do not even care about the ex-soldier who wants some hope in his life. All those people currently benefit from the future jobs fund. This is why I urge all hon. Members to vote for the motion tonight and to reject the Government’s amendment.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)
I start by commending Labour Members on securing this debate, because it gives us an opportunity to talk about something we think is integral to putting Britain back on the right tracks. It has been an interesting debate, but sadly, that probably has less to do with the quality of the facts from the Front-Bench team, and more to do with some of the theatrics and selective memories that have accompanied them. In the interests of everyone here, I hope that hon. Members will permit me to set the record straight, because we need to be absolutely clear about the legacy left by Labour after 13 years of failed policies.
The spin from the shadow Secretary of State simply does not match the facts. In the real world, almost 2.5 million people are unemployed across our country, and 1.4 million under-25s are not in employment, education or training. Some 2.2 million are currently languishing on old-style incapacity benefits, written off by the system that was designed to help them. Even before the recession, more than 15% of children were growing up in a household where no one worked. Income inequality is now at its highest level since records began.
Maria Miller
I hope the right hon. Lady will forgive me for not letting her in, but I want to pay tribute to Members who have contributed to the debate today, as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) did.
We are now staring down the barrel of the largest peacetime deficit this country has even seen. That is Labour’s record loud and clear.
Yvette Cooper
Will the Minister confirm that the number of children in workless households fell between 1997 and 2010 from 2.3 million to 1.8 million?
Maria Miller
The fact that I would give back to the shadow Secretary of State is that we have the highest number of children living in workless households. If she is proud of that fact, she deserves to be on the Opposition Benches.
It was with some bemusement that I learned that the Opposition wanted to debate employment today, but it has been good to get some of the facts out. We have had a very wide-ranging debate with many thoughtful contributions, and I should like to take some time to pay tribute to those who have made them. First, of course, I have to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), who gave his maiden speech. It was, as I think all Members would agree, a fine, assured speech and in the very best traditions of the House. His constituents have in him a strong voice who clearly understands the issues, and he will certainly find a place here as an advocate of the Norfolk way, turnips or no turnips.
As I said, the debate has been wide-ranging, but my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) summed it up when he said that this Government have inherited a horrendous financial situation. This is a financial crisis that Labour knew was coming, which was why it had already identified the need for 20% cuts in Government budgets. Yet again, the shadow Secretary of State refused to identify where those cuts were going to come in her Department when she was challenged by the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). She really will have little credibility until she answers that question—or did she think it would be right to continue to leave this country with the economic instability that debt creates?
The hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) made a very thoughtful contribution and spoke at length about the importance of nurturing business, something in which we have a common interest. She was a lecturer at Cranfield School of Management and I worked in business for 17 years. Sometimes, theory and practice can be very different, but we both recognise that confidence is important when it comes to creating a stable business environment. That point was echoed by the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern). Such confidence will come if we can show businesses in this country that we have Government debt under control and financial stability, and that we do not have the threat of a hike in job taxes, such as the Labour Government so clearly put forward.
The hon. Member for Wakefield raised a number of questions that I cannot go into in detail on now, but if there is anything she wants me to cover in more detail, perhaps we can speak later. She particularly mentioned Jobcentre Plus staff, and I can assure her that the head count will be reduced by freezing external recruitment and not extending fixed-term contracts when they come to an end.
A number of hon. Members mentioned apprenticeships, which are an important element of our strategy for tackling poverty and worklessness. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Mr Heald) talked eloquently about the role of apprenticeships in his constituency, and particularly the business-facing educational institutions in Hertfordshire that are pivotal in delivering the lowest level of NEETs in the country.
The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) also talked about youth unemployment. I should perhaps remind him that we now have 1.4 million unemployed or inactive under-25-year-olds who are not in full-time education either, which is 250,000 more than in 1997. However, that is an issue we will address. He also talked about apprenticeships, which the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford discussed in her speech. She needs to have a bit more faith in British industry. Apprenticeships are at the heart of British industry. There are already 240,000 apprenticeships, and we are talking about raising that by 50,000 among small and medium-sized enterprises. That is an opportunity being delivered by this coalition Government, which I know people in my constituency are crying out for.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) also raised the issue of apprenticeships, talking about the importance of getting young people back into work and the debilitating effects of worklessness. I know she will understand the importance of the Work programme in delivering for the people in her constituency.
Maria Miller
I am sorry—I hope the hon. Lady will forgive me—but we are quite short of time.
My hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) talked about the role that debt-fuelled growth had played in the past 13 years, and the fact that regional development agencies had not been held to account rigorously enough on the returns they had delivered for the investments made. Those were points that my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) also picked out in his thoughtful contribution. He pointed out that the future is local; I absolutely agree.
The hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) also talked about regional development agencies. It was refreshing to hear that he understood that they have not always been successful. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) talked about them as well. Perhaps I might point out to her that over the past eight years since they were created, the imbalance between the regions has got worse. Replacing regional development agencies will give us an opportunity to address that inequality through local enterprise partnerships, regional growth funds and all the policies we have already announced to try to reduce the inequalities that we see between the regions.
We have again had a great deal of discussion today about the future jobs fund, which was raised by the hon. Members for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), for Islwyn (Chris Evans) and for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith). We therefore need to be clear again: we are not, contrary to what Opposition Front Benchers might assert, cancelling the future jobs fund, and they know that only too well. We are committed to delivering on the contracts that have already been awarded, but we will not award more contracts because the facts show that the future jobs fund does not work. It has not delivered the number of jobs it was intended to deliver. I fear that some of those who are crying foul on the issue are perhaps more concerned with putting a positive gloss on their legacy than with helping those who need help most.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) talked about myths, although I would challenge her on that and say that some of the things she talked about tend to fall into the category of myth themselves. After 13 years of Labour, the true fact is that the proportion of working-age people in a job is now lower than it was in 1997, while the figure for those unemployed is more than 400,000 higher. Those are facts, not myths, and I hope she will take account of that in her further contributions in this House.
We have had a number of excellent contributions to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) talked about the importance of closing the gap in health inequalities. My hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) talked about the importance of getting Britain working and the need to streamline benefits. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) talked about job creation from green policies in a low-carbon future and intrinsically sustainable employment options, which I know he will champion well.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) talked eloquently about the important role that manufacturing has to play in this country. As the granddaughter of a skilled tool-room worker from not too far from his constituency—the black country—I understand the passion with which he speaks. Our challenge is to ensure that UK manufacturing is competitive in the 21st century.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), in her usual eloquent and clear style, spoke graphically of the inflexibility of the employment programmes developed under Labour. I know she will join me in advocating the Work programme for its simplicity and for the support it will give to unemployed people. We have set out a clear plan to get Britain working. The Work programme will replace the hotch-potch of piecemeal welfare-to-work schemes that have so badly let down the hardest to help with an integrated package of personalised employment support.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) advocated a similar approach in her contribution today. Providers will be paid by results, not promises. If they do not deliver people into sustainable work, they will not get paid. This will cut waste, and it will cut failure. No longer will benefit claimants have to wait until an arbitrary period of time has elapsed before they can receive more intensive support. No longer will they be denied the dynamism and ingenuity of private and voluntary sector organisations helping them into work.
Maria Miller
If the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will not as I have only four minutes left and I need to conclude my speech.
No longer will people be forced to turn down work on the basis that they would gain little more from employment. We aim to roll out the Work programme by next summer, and until then the Government will ensure that support is in place for unemployed people.
There has been a great deal of discussion today about the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts. Again, we need to set the record straight. Growth in employment of 1.3 million is forecast over the next five years because of our plans. That figure is backed by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. The previous Government’s plans were unsustainable, but we will ensure that our plans go on to provide more jobs into the future.
These are real measures to tackle systemic unemployment. They tackle its causes, they are efficient, and they are better calibrated towards challenging the indignities of dependency and worklessness. The changes will not be top-down, piecemeal or half-measured, and they will not be characterised by a pilot here or a trial there. The Work programme will be robust and comprehensive—an integrated package tailored to meet the needs of each person and responsive to their requirements. That is what people who do not have a job and want to work need.
I should like to thank Opposition Members for this opportunity to outline the way in which we will take this country out of the quagmire created by Labour. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell said, we have the support of many businesses, charities and providers of support services, as well as of many of those trapped on benefits. We have a governing coalition of two parties, united by our commitment to the role of work in tackling the causes of poverty, and by our deep disappointment with the lack of progress under Labour. This is the Government’s plan for jobs and our plan to increase employment. We will get people into work. That is what is good for Britain and for the people of Britain, and I have to say that it is about time too.
Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.
Schools Funding
(14 years, 4 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 should like to apologise to you and to the whole House for the way information accompanying my oral statement on Monday was provided to all Members.
During my statement a list of schools affected by our plans to review capital funding was placed in the House of Commons Library. I wish to apologise to you and to the whole House for not placing that list on the Table of the House and in the Vote Office at the beginning of my statement, as you reminded me page 441 of “Erskine May” quite properly requires. I further wish to apologise for the inaccurate information on the list I was supplied with and which I gave to the House. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I apologise for interrupting the Secretary of State. The statement will be heard in silence. That is the way things are done in these circumstances.
Michael Gove
A number of schools were miscategorised, and for that I apologise. In particular, there were schools that were listed as proceeding when, in fact, their rebuild will not now go ahead. That confusion caused Members of this House and members of the public understandable distress and concern, and I wish to take full personal responsibility for that regrettable error.
I also wish to apologise to you, Mr Speaker, and to the House for any confusion over the manner of my apology today and any related media speculation. In responding to press queries earlier, my Department confirmed that I was writing to those affected by these mistakes, and it was my intention then to come to the House with as accurate a picture as possible of the exact errors and to apologise for them. I have placed a revised list of schools in the Vote Office and am writing to all Members affected. I would be grateful if any Members who are concerned that schools may have been wrongly categorised were to contact me personally, so that I can ensure, with them, that the information we have been supplied with is as accurate as possible. Once again, Mr Speaker, I am grateful to you and to the whole House for granting me the opportunity to make this statement and, once again, to apologise unreservedly.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
May I thank the Secretary of State for finally coming to this House to make an apology for the serious errors made in his statement on Monday about the cuts to the school building programme? It is right that he apologising to this House, but he should also apologise to all the pupils, parents and teachers expecting new buildings, who have now had them cruelly snatched away.
The chaos and confusion around this announcement is frankly astonishing. First, during the statement on Monday the Secretary of State had a list of the more than 700 school building projects that he was axing, but no list was available to any other hon. Members during the debate. Does the Secretary of State agree that this must not happen again and that, in any other statement he makes, timely and accurate information will be made available to all hon. Members?
We then find out that this list of school projects to be cut by the Government was inaccurate and that schools who thought they were safe have, in fact, lost out. A second list was published on Monday night, followed by a third list yesterday afternoon, and we now believe a fourth list may be coming. A total of 25 schools had wrong information: nine schools previously listed as going ahead have now been told they will be cancelled; seven schools previously listed as unaffected have now been told they are “under discussion”; and five schools which are under review or have been axed were not even on the list at all. These are schools in Sandwell, Northamptonshire, Bexley, Doncaster, Greenwich, Peterborough and Staffordshire. Can the Secretary of State explain how this possibly could have happened?
It is good that the Secretary of State has finally been dragged kicking and screaming to this House to apologise, but the real apology should be directly to the more than 700 communities up and down this country expecting new schools, who now will not get them. The real apology should be to the teachers, pupils, parents and governors from every area who have had the prospect of new buildings and new facilities cruelly snatched away. Will the Secretary of State now apologise to the country for shattering the dreams and hopes of so many pupils and schools across the country?
Michael Gove
I thank the shadow Minister for his questions, and I understand the passion with which he speaks; it is entirely understandable in the circumstances. May I also apologise—quite rightly—to those in the borough of Sandwell and all those other boroughs that were most affected by the inaccurate way in which I made my announcement? I entirely agree with him that it is parents and teachers in those schools, who believed that they were spared and found out 24 hours later that their schools were to be closed, who were the most badly affected. It is their feelings that I am most affected by. He is absolutely right to invite me to apologise, and I am more than happy to underline how sorry I feel towards the parents and teachers involved.
The hon. Gentleman asks me to ensure that this will not happen again. It will always be my aim to ensure that timely and accurate information is provided to the House, and I apologise once again for the inaccuracies in the information given. He mentions that two lists were supplied; they were, indeed. One listing was by local authority and one listing was by parliamentary constituency. We have sought to ensure that the list that is now supplied is as complete as possible and as accurate as possible, and I repeat again that I am apologising to all Members who may have been misled, inadvertently, by the information that was supplied on Monday. For those Members who wish to contact me personally, I hope to be able to talk to all of them and reassure them about the future of the building projects in each constituency affected
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend find the synthetic anger somewhat sickening? Banbury—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I know that passions are running very high on this matter—[Interruption.] Order. I certainly understand why, but the hon. Gentleman must be heard, and he will be.
Tony Baldry
Banbury school in my constituency is one of those where my right hon. Friend has had to cut the funding, and, actually, I think that all my constituents understand that, given how the Opposition left the cupboard absolutely bare, it really does not lie in their mouths to complain that we have had to take the action that we have. I have no hesitation or problem in going to the teachers and parents of pupils at Banbury school and explaining the realities of life as they are.
Michael Gove
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. On Monday I explained to the House why I had to take the regrettable decision that we took. Today is a day for me to apologise for the inaccuracy that accompanied my statement. I am grateful for the generosity of his support, but the important thing that I would like the whole House to appreciate is that I am apologising today, and the only person who should apologise today is me.
Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)
Mr Speaker, I can assure you that there is nothing synthetic about the anger felt in Sandwell. The pupils in Sandwell have seen what the new politics is: they have seen the attempt to sneak out a half-spun, half-apology on the BBC, and they have seen the Secretary of State come here humiliated for the second time this week to apologise to them. He can embarrass himself, he can disgrace his party, but what is intolerable is that he has cynically raised the hopes of hundreds and thousands of families. You’re a miserable pipsqueak of a man, Gove. You have—
Mr Speaker
Order. Before we go any further, I must ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the term that I think he used. I think I heard the term, “pipsqueak”. The hon. Gentleman must withdraw that term. It is not appropriate—[Interruption.] Order. I know what I am doing. Members should leave this matter to me.
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question; it gives me the opportunity once again to apologise to his constituents and to other parents and teachers in Sandwell for the confusion that was caused by the mistake that I made on Monday. I understand the passion that he brings to the issue, and I understand how hard he fights for his constituents. I shall be very happy to go to West Bromwich and apologise to those who have been misled by the mistake that has been made. I am more than happy to do so. As I said earlier, the mistake was mine and mine alone, and I am happy to acknowledge it.
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his statement here this evening, because one school that has been wrongly classified is the St Helena school in my constituency, which by some happy coincidence is the one that I used to go to. However, will the Secretary of State have words with Conservative-controlled Essex county council, which, notwithstanding his statement, still proposes to shut two secondary schools in my constituency? They were going to be shut if Building Schools for the Future money had been forthcoming. There is no money, but the council is still going to shut them—despite the fact that 96% of my constituents do not want them shut.
Michael Gove
I know exactly what my hon. Friend means; I am very well aware of the situation in Colchester; and I know that the situation to which he alludes is one that now, as a result of the decision that was taken on Monday, we can freely and, I hope, constructively discuss.
Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)
Is the Secretary of State aware that his statement today will have done nothing to assuage the anger in Coventry at his continued ignoring of the situation in Coventry? I understand that not a single one of its schools, even on the revised list, is to be given the go-ahead. That is a degree of neglect and irresponsibility on his part which, frankly, we did not expect of him.
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question. Once again, I expressed my regret on Monday, and I underline it again today, that we are not in a position to go ahead with 50% of the projects under the Building Schools for the Future programme. My reason for coming to the House today was to apologise for the 25 or so schools that were wrongly categorised in the 1,400 or so about which we made an announcement. However, I do understand the particular sense of regret that many—he and his parliamentary neighbours—will feel across Coventry and I am sorry that the decision that I announced to the House on Monday was forced on us because of the regrettable financial legacy that we inherited.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for the clarity that he has provided today on a very thorny issue. Rather than focusing on the synthetic anger of Labour Members, I welcome his offer to apologise to the schools affected, but ask him to ensure that he writes not only to the local education authority but to the individual headmasters. I have spent today on the phone having to deal with disappointed parents and headmasters who are uncertain of what the situation is. I welcome his apologies; can he please ensure that they are transmitted to the headmasters in my area and the other areas affected?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very good point; I shall certainly seek to do so.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
I understand that the Secretary of State has apologised for errors in the list, but why did the list not come to the House in the first place? Was it because he did not think that other Members of this House should see it, or was there some other reason?
Michael Gove
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. No, absolutely not. I wanted to make sure that Members had as much information as possible. In the course of my statement, I outlined the criteria by which I had been guided and the fact that we were going to terminate those projects which had not reached financial close, with the exception of some projects which were at the so-called close of dialogue stage. The fact that the list was placed in the Library, and not on the Table of the House and in the Vote Office, is something that I deeply regret and for which I should like to apologise once more. The hon. Lady’s question provides me with an opportunity to say, once again, that I am sorry, to her and to other colleagues.
Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
The whole House welcomes the Secretary of State’s gracious apology. However, is not the real deceit the more heinous because it was intentional—the one perpetrated by Labour Members who ran around the country during the election campaign promising school rebuilding programmes that they knew the money was not there to supply? That is a disgrace.
Mr Speaker
Order. Let me say very gently that, in so far as one can hear everything that was said, the hon. Gentleman has made his point, and made it very clearly, but the Secretary of State is not responsible for the policies or for the behaviour of other parties. He might, however, wish very briefly to reply.
Michael Gove
I am sure that the whole House will have heard what my hon. Friend says.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State understand not only the anger but the confusion of the young students from Copland school and Alperton school, who, at the very moment when he was at the Dispatch Box making his original statement, were receiving an award from the organisers of Building Schools for the Future for their contribution to the design of the new schools that they then heard him announce were not going ahead?
Does the Secretary of State also understand that the manner of his dealing with questions on the statement—
Mr Speaker
Order. I have cut the hon. Gentleman off at one and a half questions, but I think we have the gravamen of what he wanted to convey.
Michael Gove
As the hon. Gentleman might know, I have visited Copland school and know that its facilities are less than adequate, so I appreciate the frustration that the staff, pupils and parents of that school will feel. I underlined on Monday the regrettable fact that the economic circumstances that we inherited meant that we could not go ahead as we might have wished with the school rebuilding programme. I also stressed that the manner in which Building Schools for the Future had been organised did not seem to me to guarantee the best value for money. We are reviewing how capital is allocated in order to ensure that we get value for money so that those schools across the country that do need rebuilding and renovation will receive that money in a more timely and efficient manner in future.
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)
To my ears, the Secretary of State’s apology is sincere. One school affected is the Eastbourne technology college, which is under consideration. So that I can reassure the head and the staff, can my right hon. Friend give me some indication of exactly the time line for the decision on whether the building will go ahead?
Michael Gove
We hope to make the decision in respect of the school to which my hon. Friend refers before the House rises for the summer, but I will obviously seek to talk to him after this statement in order to clarify exactly the position that his school is in.
Mr Speaker
Order. Just before there is a growing enthusiasm for participation in the statement—people are standing up who were not standing up before—perhaps I can just emphasise to the House that the statement is about the manner in which matters were handled, and indeed to an extent about the inaccuracy of lists. We are not having a re-run of Monday’s statement, when the Secretary of State, if memory serves me, was available for one hour and 20 minutes. We are not going through all of that again.
Mr Speaker
Order. Questions should therefore relate to matters in the statement tonight.
Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his dignified statement, and I have a deal of sympathy for him, but may I ask for a little more than sympathy for the people of Cardinal Wiseman high school in my constituency, who have been told that their case for a rebuild under BSF is under further discussion as a sample school? Can he give the House some indication of when he will make a decision on that, because they desperately need to know the facts?
Michael Gove
Ealing is one of those local authorities in that stage prior to financial close called close of dialogue. As the hon. Gentleman quite rightly points out, several schools in each of those local authority areas are called sample schools. Those schools are thought to be in the most urgent need. For that reason, we wish to do everything possible to try to ensure that they will receive funding as quickly as possible. As I mentioned in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd), I hope to be able to provide clarity by the time the House rises for the summer recess.
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)
I should like to thank the Secretary of State for his apology. I am sure that not one person in the Chamber has not made a mistake at some stage. I also imagine that few in the Chamber would be able to apologise to the House with such dignity and humility, and I thank him for that. However, will he explain the reason for the list that was released, and the reasons for the cuts that we are seeing? The fact is that there simply was no money—it was promised and never delivered. Will he explain why the list was released in the first place?
Mr Speaker
Order. The right hon. Gentleman should sometimes beware the entreaties of his friends, and I know he will be conscious of that. I have just made the point that we cannot rehearse all the arguments behind the announcement. I will leave it to the judgment of the Secretary of State briefly to respond.
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend refers to the list. The list was furnished to me by those involved in the Building Schools for the Future project, but it was my responsibility to check it before it came to the House. I was anxious to do so in as rigorous a way as possible. The fact that the list contained inaccuracies when it came to the House is my responsibility alone. It was for that that I wished to apologise, and I underline that apology thanks to my hon. Friend’s question.
Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
Surely the Secretary of State owes the House an explanation as to why he brought wrong information to it. We do not seem to have had such an explanation. Just for the record, given that the list is now elsewhere and not available to hon. Members in the Chamber listening to the statement, could he reassure us about and explain the decision that has been made on the Staffordshire schools?
Michael Gove
I would like to make two points in response to the hon. Lady’s question. I sought as quickly as I could to bring to the House a statement explaining the future of Building Schools for the Future. That is why I made the statement on Monday. There had been a great deal of speculation about the future of the project, and to allow it to proceed would have meant that whichever schools were built, unnecessary additional administrative costs would have been incurred. That is why I sought the fullest possible information, and sought to bring it to the House in a statement at the earliest possible stage. I know that the hon. Lady is a Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent. One announcement that I was able to make on Monday was that Stoke-on-Trent, as a local authority that has reached financial close, will see all the schools under Building Schools for the Future rebuilt or refurbished.
Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the other piece of important factual information he presented on Monday, the expansion of the Teach First programme, is in fact accurate, and that the numbers were presented—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry; I respect the hon. Lady’s enthusiasm, but the short answer is that the Secretary of State cannot go into that, because it is way beyond the terms of the statement today. If I know the hon. Lady, she will save it up for another day, and we look forward to hearing it on a subsequent occasion.
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) has gone to the heart of the situation, and the Secretary of State has markedly failed to answer her searching question. When the Secretary of State delivered his statement to the House, he presented the image of a man who had spent 24/7 examining the Building Schools for the Future programme and had at his fingertips absolutely every issue relating to it, yet we learn today that he did not have that knowledge. He should apologise to the House for his failure as a Secretary of State, and for failing markedly to be on top of his brief.
Michael Gove
I hear what the hon. Lady says, and I remember also her passionate intervention on Monday. I take note exactly of what she said, and I can only underline again that I apologise for the fact that the information I presented to the House was inaccurate.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
It is extraordinary how this list was produced and put before the House. Let us recall what happened on Monday: the Secretary of State was cuddling the list as if it contained secret information, and he slipped bits out only as they were forced from him in response to questions from Opposition Members. Therefore some of us on the Opposition Benches suspect that the Secretary of State knew that the list was not complete and that there were errors in it when he was delivering it in the House—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I must ask the hon. Gentleman to resume his seat. I would not want to misunderstand the hon. Gentleman, but I am gaining an impression that he is suggesting that—[Interruption.] Order. I am gaining an impression that he is suggesting that the Secretary of State was engaged in a knowing deception. [Interruption.] I really do not believe that to be so, and to my knowledge there is certainly no evidence for that, and I cannot have a Member accusing any other Member of knowing deception—of deliberately misleading people—unless that can be substantiated.
Mr Speaker
I think it would be better if the hon. Gentleman left it there, but I will allow him a sentence to try to clarify his position.
Clive Efford
I did say that some of us suspect that that is the case, Mr Speaker, and if you ask me to withdraw that, I will obviously do so, but I think there is something that needs to be investigated further in the way that the Secretary of State treated the House. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that I have given a ruling and I think it is a fair one. I asked the hon. Gentleman to clarify his position, but it has not moved me, if I may say so. However, he is a very experienced parliamentarian—he and I came into the House together—and if he wants to table questions or write letters or both, and to engage in all sorts of other activities that satisfy him in relation to this subject, I do not think he will require any encouragement from me to do so.
Michael Gove
In the spirit of the hon. Gentleman’s question, I mentioned in response to a previous question that two lists were furnished on Monday afternoon. One list was supplied to Members, which listed schools by constituency, and another, which listed schools by local authority, went on my Department’s website. The aim was to be as candid as possible with all the people raising queries about the number and location of affected schools. I had sought to satisfy myself that the list I had was as accurate as possible, and I had ensured that the people who supplied me with it knew the importance of providing accurate information to the House. The fact that inaccurate information was supplied to the House is, however, my fault, and my fault alone. The fact that the information did not reach the hon. Member in the most accurate and timely way possible is my fault, and my fault alone, and I apologise unreservedly.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
We must take the apology for what it is, but the Secretary of State must now deal with the consequence of that, which is that he failed to give an opportunity to Back Benchers to question him on the implications of, in the case of my constituents, losing 20 school-building programmes. My constituents go to 20 of these schools. The Secretary of State will remember that he referred to Phoenix school as an excellent school. Its head teacher, Sir William Atkinson, told the Evening Standard, “It is devastating news”. He has lost £25 million. He has buildings with concrete crumbling, iron pipework that has been fractured, lots of leaks and flat roofs that are leaking. Will the Secretary of State therefore give parliamentary time, or meet me and Sir William and the other heads, to discuss what we do now?
Michael Gove
I am always very happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman and, indeed, to schools in Hammersmith and Fulham.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
I am sure that the Secretary of State will understand the massive anger in my constituency over what has happened, particularly as the permanent secretary to the Department for Education has now clarified the fact that the money for this programme was there. Is the Secretary of State aware of the following type of error, which happened in my constituency? A school that was proposed for closure was told in the literature given out by his Department that that had been stopped. If that is another error he was not aware of, how many more might still be out there, and what is he going to do about that?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. In my statement, I made it clear that I would be grateful if hon. Members would ensure that any information they had that pointed to inaccuracies was put to me, and I am very happy to discuss that. Following the questions and points of order that have been raised by Opposition Members, my Department has insisted on looking at all the information that has been placed in the public domain in order to check it for accuracy. That is why I have come to the House today to make this statement. I believe that about 25 schools were miscategorised. I think that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), indicated in the question that he asked that that was around the figure that he had identified as well. With other schools that were listed, there were clerical errors—for example, the date of opening was not accurately recorded—and for that I apologise.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I am not really sure about this, Mr Speaker, but is the Secretary of State saying that the list that was put in the Vote Office this afternoon is not accurate? I understand from my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) that a school that is listed as in her constituency actually is not in it.
Michael Gove
It is my belief that the list we have placed in the Vote Office is accurate. I know that there was particular confusion regarding schools in Durham in the first list that was issued on Monday, but we have sought to clarify that and I believe that it is now correct.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the Secretary of State and to all hon. and right hon. Members for their co-operation.
Business without Debate
Mr Speaker
Mr Mark Williams will now present a public petition. [Interruption.] Just before Mr Williams gives the detail of his petition, I appeal to hon. and right hon. Members who are leaving the Chamber to do so quickly and quietly, because we want to hear what he has to say.
petition
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
I have a petition on behalf of Mrs Elizabeth Morley and other constituents from Ceredigion on the subject of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
The petition states:
The Petition of the people of Ceredigion,
Declares that the Petitioners believe that the Government should take all actions within its power to end the blockade of Gaza.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to condemn the blockade on Gaza and Israel’s attack on peace activists in international waters; and urges the Government to demand of Israel the release of all activists detained and to urge all international institutions, including the UN, the EU and human rights agencies and organisations to work towards ending Israeli impunity.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
[P000842]
British Waterways
(14 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
Thank you for allowing this Adjournment debate, Mr Speaker, on the future of British Waterways. May I also thank the waterways Minister for his presence here tonight?
This topic might seem a rather limited one, of interest only to narrowboat enthusiasts, barge owners, dog walkers and lock-keepers, but it is of profound importance not only for canal-side communities in villages, market towns and cities across the country, but for the intellectual validity of this Government. For what we have before us tonight is a test case for the big society in action. That, in case you missed it, Mr Deputy Speaker, is the Conservatives’ big idea: a commitment to society, not the state, and to people power, not market dogma. My message to the Minister is very simple: we are here to help him. As he begins his grand battle with the Treasury on the future of British Waterways, I want him to know that he has my support against the plunderers and privatisers who work alongside him.
We are an inland nation as much as an island nation; a country shaped as much by our great rivers and historic canals as by our by encircling seas. Take, for instance, my own wonderful constituency of Stoke-on-Trent Central. In Simeon Shaw’s 1829 classic, “History of the Staffordshire Potteries”, he writes of how
“in the vale below Burslem, July 26, l766, the first clod was cut of the Trent and Mersey Canal, by the late Josiah Wedgwood, Esq., then recently appointed Potter to the Queen Consort of George III.”
Wedgwood’s interest in canals was driven by profit rather than pleasure. He had already petitioned this place in 1763 for a new system of turnpike roads to allow for the easy carriage of the raw materials needed for his Etruria pottery works as well as the safe delivery of his finished ceramics, but still the road network let him down. So in 1765 he personally subscribed £1,000 for a new canal to connect the Trent with the Mersey and to allow his firm to export both nationally and internationally. The great engineer James Brindley was commissioned for the task and soon his entire network of canals criss-crossed the country, with Staffordshire as their box junction.
To allow for the transport of limestone and coal into Stoke-on-Trent, a new canal was added—the Caldon canal—that stretched from Etruria up into the surrounding moorlands. All that underpinned the boom days of the Potteries. “Pro patria populoque fluit”—it flows for country and people—was the Trent and Mersey’s motto, and the money certainly flowed for Wedgwood.
No wonder the great Adam Smith felt moved to praise canals for
“diminishing the expence of carriage”,
and putting
“the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those in the neighbourhood of the town”.
As a vehicle for the investment of new provincial capital flows and for easing the transport of goods, canals were an essential feature of the first industrial revolution, but by the 1840s, the canal boom had given way to railway mania. Indeed, the consequence of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation meant that the canals and waterways of Britain were soon in danger of becoming open-air sewerage systems.
In 1847, the Scottish novelist Hugh Miller described the Irwell in Salford as
“a flood of liquid manure, in which all life dies, whether animal or vegetable, and which resembles nothing in nature, except perhaps the stream thrown out in eruption by some mud-volcano.”
My old friend Friedrich Engels was equally disparaging about the state of Manchester’s Irk,
“a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream...out of whose depth bubbles of miasmatic gases constantly rise and give forth a stench that is unbearable.”
Railways took over from the canals, canal companies went into liquidation or were run down by railway owners, and local authorities declined to pay for canal upkeep.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s general point about railways taking over from canals, but does he accept that because the Glanusk estate refused to have the dreaded railway across their land, the Mon and Brec canal persisted for a lot longer than most canals?
Tristram Hunt
I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. I bow to his superior knowledge on the specificities of that point and I agree with it. However, there was a broad concern about the control railways had over canals in the late 19th century, which led to their being run down and to a collapse in infrastructure. Tonnage levels fell, canal miles collapsed and locks crumbled.
Eventually, the tide turned. The first stirrings of preservation can perhaps best be traced back to L. T. C. Rolt’s masterpiece, “Narrow Boat”, which described a journey taken in 1939 and expressed a terrible fear that
“if the canals are left to the mercies of economists and scientific planners, before many years are past the last of them will become a weedy, stagnant ditch, and the bright boats will rot at the wharves, to live only in old men’s”—
and we should add women’s—
“memories”.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend speaks eloquently about the history of canals. Does he not agree that the Olympic legacy in east London involves a future for our waterways and that the future of British Waterways, among other bodies, is therefore very important in ensuring that the renaissance of canals continues into the next century?
Tristram Hunt
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I do so as I shunt towards the future and get away from the past. Having seen the Prescott sluice along the Lea valley, I know the wonders of the valley.
Unfortunately, in the mid-19th century, the Government failed to rise to the task of looking after the future of the waterways. A cash-strapped British Transport Commission could not provide the investment needed to open up the waterways and still focused on freight traffic, rather than on the leisure potential of the waterways. Only with Barbara Castle’s great Transport Act 1968 was British Waterways given a specific mandate to focus on exploiting the enjoyment potential of our rivers and canals. Since then, of course, the transformation has been dramatic. All hon. Members will have witnessed in our constituencies the transformation in water quality and amenities brought about by the new British Waterways strategy. In Stoke-on-Trent, the Caldon canal has been rescued from closure and now provides a stunning route from the urban gothic of the Potteries to the stark beauty of the Staffordshire moorlands. Indeed, we even have our very own Hanley regatta based on the canal.
By the early 2000s, some 200 miles of new and restored waterways were added to the 2,000 mile network—a faster expansion than at the height of the industrial revolution. Moreover, we now have an unprecedented 34,900 licensed boats on the network and some 11 million people visit its waters and banks every year. According to Her Majesty’s Treasury, out of the £330 million total value of inland waterways managed and owned by British Waterways, the amenity and recreational use amounts to £230 million and the use for freight £700,000—but that £700,000 is not to be sniffed at, and it was with great pleasure that we learned that Tesco has begun to move much of its wine stock by canal.
Yet a revived canal network has also proved a highly effective vehicle for some £10 billion-worth of urban regeneration. Whereas once we in this country sought to deny our industrial inland heritage, with buildings jutting up to the canal edge, offering no space for waterside walks or civic space, canals are championed today as placemakers and urban signifiers.
Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing such a fascinating topic to the Floor of the House. I am delighted to listen to the eloquent things that he says about the value that canals bring to our localities. In my case, the Kennet and Avon is the longest in-water canal in the country—if I may make that proud boast—but I submit that its restoration had much to do with the volunteer activity of the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust, plus a hefty dose of lottery money, delivered not coincidentally under the last Conservative Government. Of course, British Waterways had a part to play in that, but it is much more a reflection of the local love, enthusiasm and energy that the volunteers in my constituency feel for such an important asset.
Tristram Hunt
I am in full agreement with the hon. Lady. The wonder of canals is the civil society, the volunteering and the ethos around them. I was a trustee of the Heritage Lottery Fund in a previous life and followed with interest the Kennet and Avon’s progress. We have seen in all sorts of communities along the Kennet and Avon the regeneration aspects brought by canals.
Sir Peter Soulsby (Leicester South) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this important issue before the House. Does he agree that British Waterways has had most success in promoting regeneration when it has brought its own property, land and buildings to the table with partners and has led those partnerships, and that, if it were to lose control of that property and land and those buildings, it would be very much enfeebled in its ability to promote regeneration?
Tristram Hunt
I am in full agreement with my hon. Friend, who brings me to the dark spectre of Her Majesty’s Treasury, which is where we fear that forces are at work that want to access that property in not the most progressive manner. The capacity of British Waterways to use volunteering, to bring in all sorts of other funders and to have that property asset inspires regeneration.
Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the way in which he is introducing the debate. As a former waterways Minister, may I tell him that what is striking is the nature of the cross-party consensus in respect not only of canals as a vital part of our heritage, which he has illustrated so well, but of their importance to tourism, regeneration and the environment? Will he invite the Minister to embrace the proposal made in the last Parliament to create a national trust for canals, to secure their long-term future and viability, using the assets to which he refers for the benefit of the long-term future of the canal network and therefore balancing the strengths of the system with the resources to deal with the repair and maintenance requirements, without which the canals will not be much of a heritage for long?
Tristram Hunt
I am in full agreement. First, I would like to say what the Minister should not do, which is listen to the Adam Smith Institute, which is keen to privatise British Waterways, and in the process hopes to realise £400 million—a rather low price, I think, for the centuries of heritage as well as the property assets.
There is no doubt, however, that a change in governance is needed. Currently, the nation is underspending by around £30 million a year on its waterways, and, in the words of the British Waterways chairman,
“without the required spend on canal maintenance and repairs the overall physical state of Britain’s waterways will once again go into decline.”
As my right hon. Friend makes clear, the Labour party fought the last general election on precisely that message of reform.
In December 2009, the then Government published details of its asset portfolio and promised
“to consider alternative models for the British Waterways business as a whole, such as mutual or third sector structures.”
That is what my right hon. Friend has described as the National Trust model, whereby British Waterways’ property endowment will be placed in a charity-locked mechanism to fund future maintenance. But this means more than just establishing an effective financial footing. It also means mutualising the governance system by extending democratic control to waterway licence holders, employees, volunteers, partner organisations such as local charities and the lottery, as well as members of the general public. That third sector model will give energy, activism and public buy-in to the sector. We in the Labour movement call it the co-operative principle.
So it was with great delight that I read in the coalition agreement that the Government
“will support the creation and expansion of mutuals, co-operatives, charities and social enterprises, and enable these groups to have much greater involvement in the running of public services.”
I was equally impressed by the Minister’s statement on 21 June where he highlighted the role of civil society in creating what the Government call the big society, and his commitment to look at a third sector model for the future of the waterways.
Meg Hillier
Does my hon. Friend, like me, tremble at the thought of the alternative to the model that he proposes—that this asset will be sold off and thereby, once and for all, be out of public control and away from where it should be, which is in the hearts of the public?
Tristram Hunt
I am in full agreement. We do not know what would happen were British Waterways to be privatised, in terms of fees, uses and common access, and that sense of heritage, of a past coming down to us. The worry is that the Minister has decided to take no decisions until after the forthcoming comprehensive spending review. My worry is that by the time we reach the CSR, his colleagues in the Treasury might have decided that flogging off the property portfolio was too good an opportunity to miss. We might find ourselves in the awful position of watching the Chancellor stand at the Dispatch Box and sell our national heritage down the proverbial Kent and Avon, in the classic Treasury manner of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
In my constituency, I have a huge swathe of the Grand Union canal, with fantastic marinas such as Braunston and a huge interest of the populace, who spend much of their leisure time around the canals. Given the hon. Gentleman’s analogy that the dark spectre of the Treasury is lurking all around, will he remember that in the dark days of the last Labour Government, when European fines were levied on the Government, money was moved away from the British Waterways budget into other areas to cope with that funding black hole? I would like to think that there is definitely cross-party agreement on the idea of mutualisation in the future.
Tristram Hunt
The hon. Gentleman confirms the point that the traditional model of funding is really no longer credible, not least under this Government’s rather aggressive approach to the public finances.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we are in some form of agreement, and that is why we have come together this evening to support the Minister in his lonely pilgrim’s progress against the big beasts of Whitehall. He might call it the big society, we might call it the co-operative spirit, but what we must seek to establish is a modern national trust for British Waterways, and a financially secure, democratic and sustainable future for the inland waterways that made our wealth and now help to shape our national identity.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) on securing this debate. After such a tense afternoon in the Chamber, it is nice to be able to find a subject on which there is a large degree of agreement across the House. He is well known for having a keen interest in the heritage and history of this country, and I also know that he combines this passion with representing with pride the constituency that has more miles of canals than any other in England. I take similar pride in the canal—the Kennet and Avon canal in west Berkshire—that runs in part through the constituency I have the honour of representing. I am old enough to remember when it was in large parts just a ditch. It was restored with the hard work, love and what the Americans call emotional capital of local people, with the backing of British Waterways and lottery money, as my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) pointed out. That has created an asset of unique value.
The hon. Gentleman talked about the added value of the canals. We must not be concerned purely with quality of life and recreational value; they are of course a financial asset because of what they provide through tourism and the local economy, particularly in rural areas such as mine. The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) attends debates on these matters assiduously. She feels passionately about the Regent’s canal, just as so many of us feel passionately about our local canals. I have learned from the canal in her part of London the ability of canals to unlock regeneration, and to be a focal point for the local community in a way we cannot just ignore.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
I am sure that the Minister agrees that the 23 canal reservoirs up and down the country are also of enormous value to this country. Many of them provide excellent wildlife reserves and, hence, recreation, and are assets for our tourist industry.
Richard Benyon
My hon. Friend touches on a very important point. Sir John Lawton is about to report on work commissioned by the last Government that this Government firmly supports. It examines the coherence between different natural sites around the country, and looks into corridors of biodiversity that can flow and allow species to increase in population in different parts of the country. Canals are a vital link in our natural environment, and I am keen during my tenure in this post—however long it lasts—to bang that drum as hard as I can.
I do not care whether our modern canals structure is based on the writings and teachings of Friedrich Engels and is considered part of the co-operative movement, or whether it can be considered the inheritance of Edmund Burke and his little platoons. What matters is that canals are properly managed and have a sustainable long-term future.
I shall do my best to deal with many of the points raised by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central and others. However, I would caution him on his view of the Treasury. In my experience, it consists of cuddly souls, warm-hearted and full of understanding on these matters. I do not share his deep pessimism.
Richard Benyon
I am glad to give way to the chairman of the all-party group on waterways.
Alun Michael
The Minister has an almost unique experience of the Treasury. However, I encourage him to make the case that a model that engages the public and makes them feel a part of the ownership and running of the canals might make sense financially to the Treasury, too.
Richard Benyon
I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman is in the Chamber for the debate, as he is a notable chairman of the all-party group through which I hope we can continue these debates. I hope that what I am about to say will satisfy his concerns, if I have the time.
I am well aware of the concerns of Members from all parties about the future of British Waterways. I made a statement to the House on 21 June in which I explained our intention to move British Waterways to the civil society, subject to the outcome of the spending review. I again had the opportunity to set out the Government’s position to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central and others during oral questions two weeks ago, and I welcome this further opportunity.
I fully understand the important role that volunteering and the civil society have played over many years. Volunteering on the waterways has a long tradition, and many enthusiasts give freely and generously of their time to help re-create and restore our waterways. Without that, many historic canals would no longer be in operation and the network that we have today would be much poorer for it. I firmly believe that civil society has a valuable role to play in delivering public services, and as I recently announced, we will therefore continue to look in detail at such a model for British Waterways. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, that is a good example of the big society we are trying to create.
I assure hon. Members that that would not be a privatisation of British Waterways. I hope the hon. Gentleman and others will get the message across to some of their colleagues on the Opposition Benches that that is not what we are about. We want a mutualised product for the waterways, dependent on three clear objectives. First, it must have a clear purpose and robust governance arrangements that protect waterways assets and the public benefits that they bring, both now and in the future. Secondly, it must ensure that all users, local communities and other stakeholders can hold the new body to account. Thirdly, it must ensure that the waterways are placed on a more sustainable footing for the longer term while reducing the ongoing cost to the taxpayer.
Roger Williams
I am very encouraged by the positive way in which the Minister is responding to the debate. I can see how such a model can deliver sustainable maintenance of the waterways, but on the Monmouthshire and Brecon canal, for example, we had a breach that cost £1 million to repair. How would such a model deal with those emergency situations?
Richard Benyon
I was shown a photograph of that breach by the chairman of British Waterways at my meeting with him last week. It is expensive to maintain the waterways, and I hope that what I am about to say will show that we can provide the means to ensure that whatever organisation emerges has access to funding—probably never enough, but at least enough to deal with major problems such as that.
Sir Peter Soulsby
I very much welcome what the Minister is saying about the future of British Waterways, but does he accept that if it is to have the sustainable future that he talks about, it is vital that it takes with it its assets and its current property, and that they are not ripped out by his friends in the Treasury before the transfer takes place?
Richard Benyon
I am conscious that this will not work unless that happens. The scale of that asset transfer is probably above my pay grade, but I am absolutely conscious that it has to be done in a way that enables the organisation to operate just as any other organisation of the type I am about to describe could. That is absolutely vital and a given.
As part of that work, we are considering including the Environment Agency’s navigations. I have an open mind on that and want to understand the pros and cons, but my initial view is that it, too, might be suitable for a civil society rather than a Government body to run. That would help to ensure that we had a coherent vision for the main inland waterways of England and Wales.
I know from meetings I have already had with waterways stakeholders that they have concerns, which they have expressed passionately, about two questions: what will happen to British Waterways’ property assets—the point just made by the hon. Member for Leicester South (Sir Peter Soulsby)—and can they influence decisions on the governance model of any new body? It is clear that British Waterways would need to retain its property assets for a viable civil society model. On the second issue, much work has yet to be done on the appropriate governance structure. One model is for a national charitable trust. I recently received a letter that was co-signed by a number of representative waterways bodies, including the Inland Waterways Association and the Angling Trust. The letter welcomed such a model, subject to decisions on governance arrangements and the level of ongoing Government support.
I know that there is some nervousness about the prospect of change and what it might mean for those with particular interests in the waterways.
Meg Hillier
I do not wish to detain the Minister, but having been a Minister seeking advice on setting up social enterprise mutuals and the like, I would caution him to be alert to any advice that he might receive from within the civil service about setting up a mutual. I would also ask him where else he might be seeking advice from, because it is important that any model be properly drawn up.
Richard Benyon
I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who is absolutely right. It is vital that we are extremely careful to ensure that we receive the best advice and get the correct model. I can assure her that officials in my Department are working hard on the issue and are committed to it, although we shall have a difficult time ahead with the comprehensive spending review, which I shall talk about in a moment.
We would have to have a completely new board or council that would shape its own future. It would not be British Waterways by another name, but a new structure, in different hands altogether. We do not aim to impose a particular model for a new civil society body, so we will work up different options in partnership with stakeholders, through workshops, forums and other engagement mechanisms. It is vital to understand the views of all interested parties if we are to reach a successful conclusion to our work on an alternative model for the future management of our waterways. As part of that engagement, I am considering a suggestion recently made to me to include representatives from waterways user groups on the current British Waterways board. We need to be ready for the big change in culture involved in the possible move to civil society.
As the House will be aware, very tough decisions need to be made in the coming months that will affect public expenditure for the next four years. That will inevitably affect the resources available for inland waterways spend in British Waterways and the Environment Agency.
Finally, let me make it clear that I believe strongly that the inland waterways are a vibrant resource that can provide a wide range of benefits and opportunities for individuals and communities across the country. Although we may find ourselves in extremely challenging times for public investment, in the longer term, the potential of our waterways can and will be realised if we all embrace the possibilities at all levels. I believe that moving British Waterways out of Government control to civil society has the potential to make a significant and innovative contribution to the long-term sustainability and resilience of the waterways, by providing additional income and greater engagement of all users, volunteers and local communities in waterways management. We will therefore be exploring all possibilities—
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Intensive Care (West Sussex)
Westminster Hall
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Fuel Poverty (Rural Britain)
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
First, I thank Mr Speaker for granting what I hope will be an important exploratory debate. I welcome the number of contributions that we shall hear, and I am delighted that after such a late sitting last night, so many people are still interested in fuel poverty in rural Britain.
Fuel poverty is defined as when someone spends more than 10% of their net income on fuel. As we know, the main contributory factors are a low income, the high price of energy, high energy consumption or houses with low energy efficiency. There have been plenty of debates and petitions on the subject, but I felt that it was important to raise it again at the start of this Parliament and in advance of the spending review, so that Ministers understand the concerns of their constituents in rural areas.
Yesterday, the Commission for Rural Communities published a report entitled, “The state of the countryside 2010”, which made specific reference to fuel poverty, and noted that things are getting worse rather than better. Across the House, we must recognise that fuel poverty has continued to increase rather than decrease, and we need to look for radical solutions to change that. Instead of an ambitious strategy of eliminating fuel poverty for vulnerable households by 2010, the number of households starting to enter fuel poverty has risen from about 2.5 million to about 5 million.
I recognise that this is a devolved matter, and that the Welsh Assembly Government and the Scottish Government have their own schemes. It is important to learn from some of the shared issues, and look at how different challenges are approached.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
The hon. Lady is right to say that some of the issues that we will debate this morning are devolved. However, other issues such as competition policy are not devolved and are matters for Westminster.
Dr Coffey
I recognise that there are issues such as competition, and the impact made by Calor Gas was a successful change. The Office of Fair Trading is monitoring the situation to assess its effectiveness. At some point in the near future, we should like a review to see whether that change has worked, or whether people are still in what is effectively a false market. From speaking to some of my constituents, I understand that the change has allowed them an element of choice, whereas before they were handcuffed to one supplier.
My constituency of Suffolk Coastal has 17% fuel poverty, which is slightly lower than the national average where about one in four rural households face fuel poverty. I should perhaps declare—although I was told that it was not a declaration—that I am off the gas grid and reliant on oil for central heating in my rented cottage in Westleton. I want to focus on people who live with no access to the gas mains, even though 20% of them live within a mile and a half of national gas connections, and I welcome some of the efforts made by the National Grid Company to start connecting more households. All hon. Members share concerns about people who are reliant on oil, solid fuel and liquefied petroleum gas, as that is where the problems lie.
In 2009, in a parliamentary question, the Government were asked what they were doing to tackle fuel poverty, and the answer was Warm Front. However, I am afraid that Warm Front is not working in areas that are difficult to reach, and that is reflected in the evidence gathered by various organisations. Time and again, people in my constituency—or other hard-to-reach areas, such as the constituencies of some Members in the Chamber today—are losing out in such schemes. There has been limited success, and I recognise that some energy companies have been kicked and told that they must start doing something about the situation, but these are early days and we need to kick even harder.
Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing this subject before the House. She makes an important point about the difficulties and challenges in rural areas. Is not one of the added challenges the fact that so far, schemes have tended to come up with the simplest way of making a house more efficient? It is right to make efficiency a priority because relying on prices proved a mistake for the previous Government. However, in rural areas, much of the housing stock is not constructed in such a way that it is easy to make it more efficient. Any scheme must be far more robust and long-term to transform such houses into places where people can live without fuel poverty.
Dr Coffey
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The extent of solid-wall housing is a particular issue that cavity insulation fails to address. It is mainly prevalent in rural areas, but also in London where the challenge is damp Victorian houses. Instead of national schemes, I would like the Government to consider more local schemes and ensure that any grants available address local needs. My constituents, and many others, would then be able to access help that is relevant for them, rather than being told either that they do not qualify for a scheme, or that a scheme is useless for them. Such local schemes would be welcomed by people who feel that they are on the fringes of society when it comes to Government help on this issue.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
The hon. Lady is making good progress on this matter. She mentioned Warm Front, which was a national scheme, and the need for a better, more tailored local delivery. Does she agree that one of the biggest problems with Warm Front—although it was set up with the best of intentions—was the usual difficulty that Governments face due to the strange and highly centralised method of public procurement, which means that they have to narrow down and reduce the number of companies with which they can contract? Therefore, the prices for much of the work undertaken are astronomical and much higher than they would be if provided by a local small company.
Dr Coffey
My hon. Friend is right. The issue is particularly prevalent in rural areas, where prices have meant that less work can be done with the available grant. One of my constituents suggested that I promote a private Member’s Bill on making sustainable energy more local, and I hope that the Government will address that point by absorbing elements of that idea in their thinking on any future schemes.
Many hon. Members are present, so I will move on and speak a little about the market. I recognise that Calor Gas and similar LPG suppliers provide an opportunity for people to heat their houses without having everything provided electrically. A premium is paid for that because of the delivery method. However, I would like LPG suppliers to go further, to challenge their efficiencies and work with particular groups to ensure that the people they serve receive the best value possible. Micro combined heat and power boilers are being developed, and I would like more investment in technology so that we can address those kinds of problem.
There are no social tariffs for oil or LPG, and it is challenging to think about how they could be created for the relatively small group of people who access that type of fuel. I could argue that we should receive some money from the mains gas and electricity companies to redress the balance. I am pleased that people can now hold a post office bank account or, if they do not have access to that, can get a direct debit discount. Without straying too far from the subject, dare I say that the number of post offices in my part of the world has reduced dramatically over the past 10 years? That presents its own challenge.
I understand that at least one company, EDF Energy, offers dual fuel discounts to people who have access only to electricity rather than electricity and gas, although I do not know how much the company advertises the discount. I will do my best in forthcoming weeks to advertise it to my constituents—I might take up the offer myself. I was not aware of it until I spoke to somebody from EDF Energy yesterday.
There are things the market can do. I recognise, though, that as the price of social tariffs or similar measures add costs to industry, they end up being paid for through increasing fuel prices. However, it is an important part of social responsibility to ensure that people in rural areas are not freezing to death and being ignored.
In terms of the Government, I hope that we shall see a change in the balance of schemes. I have talked about more local solutions. I want any possible future investment to be rebalanced in favour of rural schemes and—dare I say it?—not just for people on benefits. A number of people just miss out here or there, but like everyone else, they still need to heat their homes. The cost of oil goes up; the cost of LPG is going up. That is hurting more and more people. We are trying to reach some of the communities that have never been on benefits and do not necessarily want to start now—it is an element of dignity for them. By the way, I want to correct a misconception. Although fuel poverty affects a number of pensioners, and two thirds of my constituents are, I believe, over 60, it affects people of all ages, including people with young families. We need to remember that.
What else am I looking for? We are expecting £6,500 grants, which will be repaid through efficiency savings in fuel bills. I would like rural people to be able to access higher up-front cash advances, because if people have an oil central heating system, they cannot switch suddenly to photovoltaics and everything is fine. They have to rip out the entire heating system and put in a brand-new one.
Such measures would help the people of Suffolk Coastal because our climate is similar to that of Jerusalem. It may not be sunny every day, but there is plenty of sun and little rain. We are missing out on marvellous resources all around us, because the amount of cash that we need to spend up front to change our systems is just prohibitive. Bold thinking, rebalancing in favour of rural communities and tailoring solutions to allow local people to make the decisions that best suit them, rather than having top-down schemes, are some of the issues that I want to raise today in addressing fuel poverty in rural Britain.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) on initiating this very important debate. It is also timely, given the election of a new Government. I have already been in correspondence with the Department of Energy and Climate Change and I shall come to that in a moment.
I want to start by pointing out that this issue is about rural Britain—the periphery areas of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The periphery area that I represent in north-west Wales suffers from a double whammy: most of the household customers pay extra for their fuel, but they also pay extra fuel costs for their transport. We have had a number of debates on the issue in this Chamber, and I appreciate what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in the Budget about looking at rural areas and pilot schemes whereby transport costs and the price of petrol at the pump can be considered. Pilot schemes should also consider rural areas on the periphery of the United Kingdom when it comes to energy prices and energy costs as well. That is what I believe the hon. Lady was developing in her argument.
Periphery areas are a special case. I do not accept that in the 21st century, areas on the periphery should have to pay much more in fuel costs. I know from having the port that is the gateway to Ireland and Wales in my constituency that Northern Ireland’s problem is compounded by fuel smuggling from the Irish Republic. Fuel is smuggled in and out of the United Kingdom via the south of Ireland. There are huge problems that we need to grapple with.
I have campaigned to reduce both the cost of petrol at the pumps and the cost of energy supplies to homes. People living in periphery areas and rural areas are being ripped off. The hon. Lady says that she wants to give the companies a kicking. I will join her and I think that all of us should, because mass profits have been made by many of the companies over a long time and the people who are paying for it predominantly live in the rural areas of Britain. The market is letting people down badly in those areas.
All that my constituents and those of the hon. Lady and every other hon. Member in the Chamber are asking for is a level playing field. Yes, they want reduced costs, but they want to pay the same as people in urban areas and other parts of the United Kingdom, and importantly they want choice. Quite often in isolated rural areas, people just have the choice of propane gas, coal or other things. Off-grid areas do not have access to mains gas and are losing out. The market says that it will provide choice to customers, but in rural areas they simply do not have that choice and they are penalised for it through the price that they pay. That limited choice and paying more for fuel is a huge problem.
I said that I had already raised the matter in correspondence with the Department, and I first did so at business questions, when I asked for a debate on the issue. A debate in Government time would be very much welcome in addition to this important Adjournment debate. I have had, over many years, helpful responses from Energy Ministers and progress has been made. Warm Front is a good national project that has helped an awful lot, and good energy efficiency measures are available. I am certainly familiar with what has been done by the Welsh Assembly and I know that other devolved Administrations are working on the issue, too. This Parliament, local government and the Welsh Assembly can work together with the distribution network to ensure that we get better services to people in these areas.
In the very helpful reply that I received from the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), he said that he recognised that more needed to be done. One option that he came up with was a further roll-out of energy efficiency measures. I disagree with the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith), who said that we have been concentrating just on price. Huge amounts of money have been invested in energy efficiency measures. In my constituency, most of the houses have been done, and to a very high standard, but the price is the issue.
Sir Robert Smith
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the price is the issue. The problem was that in the early days of the previous Government, because of the way in which the market was working, prices for domestic gas were falling so dramatically that people were coming out of fuel poverty and it seemed as if the job was being done. Then the price started to go up relentlessly and it became clear that much greater work should have been done in the good times to make the housing stock more efficient, rather than responding after the fact.
Albert Owen
I agree partly with what the hon. Gentleman says. It is easy to be wise after the event. He will remember that at the time we were in the “dash for gas”, gas was relatively cheap across the whole United Kingdom and our eye was off the ball, because people were getting cheap fuel. Yes, more could and should have been done then, and it should have been done over the past 13 years. I hope that more will be done over the next few years to ensure that we alleviate fuel poverty in rural areas.
The Minister told me he was involved in the option of promoting renewable heating, which is another important way forward. Although I shall argue for the gas network to be extended throughout the United Kingdom, we need, particularly with the low-carbon economy that we are moving towards, to consider renewables. Geothermal energy is important in many areas. It would be helpful if new estates and new housing, including affordable housing, such measures installed at the construction stage.
In my constituency—I am sure that other hon. Members have experience of this—many of the problems are not just with stone houses that are a century old or more, but with estates that were built in the 1960s and ’70s, where the developers simply did not put gas mains in and did not provide for up-to-date fuel, leaving people on the periphery of the gas mains area. I am sure that at that time people would happily have paid for access to the gas mains from those properties, and it would have been a selling point for the builders, who were very short-sighted.
When I talk about areas off the grid, I am talking about not individual isolated properties but more often about small villages, towns and hamlets that are a short distance from the mains. There are issues about getting the pressure to the level needed but, again, I am sure that in the 21st century that can be done relatively simply.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there are two problems with that? First, there are many rural areas where the gas main will simply never go, because of practical difficulties. Secondly, in an era of rising gas prices and a possible shortage of gas, does he believe that gas is really the way forward for dealing with rural fuel poverty?
Albert Owen
I welcome that intervention, but that is not the point that I am making. I am saying that we should have renewables as well. Areas close to the gas mains should be offered a choice. I have seen the price differential between the bills of people who are off the gas mains grid and people who are on it, and it is simply wrong and unfair that some people are paying so much more.
Andrew George
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. He will be aware that the level at which ground source heat pumps are sold does not ensure cost efficiency for homes. In fact, the payback period required is 25 to 40 years, and we will achieve something only by rolling things out in larger numbers. However, given the hon. Gentleman’s excellent record in arguing this case, does he share my disappointment that the previous Government failed to support—indeed talked out—the Fuel Poverty Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), whose private Member’s Bill included many of the measures for which the hon. Gentleman is arguing?
Albert Owen
The hon. Gentleman knows me well enough to know that I would not pander to the previous Labour Government when they were in office, and I will certainly not try to defend their record now when I think that it is wrong. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) has an excellent record on this issue, and now that he is in the Government I hope that he will able to use greater leverage on Ministers to ensure that measures are introduced. As Deputy Leader of the House, he is in the privileged cross-governmental position of being able to bring everyone together to get things done as soon as possible, and he will get my 100% support in doing so.
In his helpful letter to me, the Energy Minister said that some schemes are working and that Ofgem has made progress on connecting vulnerable households to the gas networks by encouraging large gas distribution networks to work with agencies to produce results. He said that about 20,000 households would be connected to the grid by 2013, but we simply do not have the agencies or the local authority initiative in my area, so there is no lead partner. I urge the Government to look at that, because we need a thrust from central Government, and from regional and national Government in Wales and Scotland, to push the issue forward. I acknowledge that there are many excellent energy efficiency measures, and I repeat that the Welsh Assembly Government have an excellent record in this field and are taking fuel poverty and their part in dealing with it very seriously, but we all need to work together.
The boiler scrappage scheme was useful in helping many people to replace equipment. That is a big issue, and the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal is right that there are a lot of associated costs with changing to another source of energy and not least to another supplier. People have to remove the gas storage equipment in their properties, which is costly, although some companies will take over that cost because they will get the business in the future. However, when people apply, they are hampered by additional costs, so the process is not easy. People feel trapped with their supplier, which is putting an extra cost on them.
Albert Owen
Things certainly have improved, but the change has not been advertised very openly. When people were approached in the past, it is clear that they felt trapped. The customer needs clarity to ensure that they can get a better deal from a different supplier.
The core of the problem remains the cost of domestic fuel, particularly in rural areas and areas on the periphery, and that is why the debate is so important. A constituent in her 80s who came to see me in late May was very grateful for the additional Government support that she received through the winter fuel allowance, which helped to alleviate some of the problems that she faced, but she was still paying huge amounts for her propane gas. From 2008 to April 2010, her company supplied her at a unit cost of between 45p and 51p per litre. That gave her an average quarterly bill of between £400 and £700, which is an enormous amount for an elderly person living on her own in an older property. The property and the dozen like it on the same small estate are not that old, but I was astonished to find that the properties that did not have access to mains gas were all paying different prices to the same supplier. The households had to go through something like an auction to get the basic unit cost down—they had to negotiate.
I raised the issue with the company. In addition to the unit cost, there was the cost of associated charges such as the standing charge and gas surcharges, which took the price up considerably. When the company replied to the correspondence I had sent on behalf of my constituent, it said that the variations were due to the geography, the seasons and the type of agreement, but I am talking about households in the same estate paying different prices.
Those issues need to be looked at, which is why I want to move on to the excellent campaign by Which?, the consumer group, which is looking for greater transparency in energy prices. The old chestnut from many of the suppliers and fuel companies is that the retail price is linked to the wholesale price. When wholesale prices go up, the companies say that they are forced to put their retail prices up, but when wholesale prices come down, companies say that the system is very complicated and sophisticated, and it does not necessarily follow that the retail price is linked to the wholesale price. We therefore need greater transparency.
I am asking for a breakdown from suppliers to show exactly the amount of bulk gas that they get at wholesale prices and what they pay for it. Some of the electricity companies, and the companies that supply gas and electricity, are now more open and transparent, and they are gaining from that—greater transparency is in the interests of the suppliers, as well as the consumer. The Committee of Selection is meeting today, and as a member of the new Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, I will push for greater transparency so that we can see exactly the link between wholesale and retail prices. That is an important move forward, which would benefit consumers, particularly in rural areas, and I would welcome it. The Government should be encouraged to work with the consumer watchdog to bring about greater transparency.
I know that a number of Members want to speak in the debate, and I do not want to detain them, but I have concentrated on off-mains gas areas because they are being hit particularly hard, and we need to look again at extending the network; indeed, hon. Members in previous Parliaments raised the issue. The irony is that although my constituency is on the periphery, I am promoting the concept of an energy island because we have energy generation in the area. We have a nuclear power station and wind farms, and we welcome both because they generate employment and contribute to the United Kingdom’s energy security. We also have projects that are looking at tidal energy, so we are well positioned to provide the new renewable energy that the Energy Minister told me was a way forward. However, although the Wylfa power station in my constituency supplies more than 30% of energy in Wales, some people living in close proximity to it pay some of the highest prices in Wales for their energy because they do not have the opportunity to use the gas network and they do not have the same choice as many people in non-rural and urban areas of the United Kingdom.
I welcome the response that I received from the Energy Minister. He is a sincere man and he will work with the Deputy Leader of the House and others to ensure that we get a good deal for people in my constituency, in peripheral areas and in rural Britain. Once again, I congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal, because this is a hot subject. It needs dealing with now, and I hope that we can move forward.
Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)
Order. Five hon. Members are indicating that they want to speak, which means that they have about eight minutes each if we are to get the winding-up speeches in. I cannot insist on that, but it would be helpful if hon. Members bore it in mind.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Betts. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) and congratulate her on securing the debate, which is incredibly important for a range of reasons, many of which were set out by the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen).
One important reason to discuss the issue is the incorrect assumption made, I dare say, throughout Whitehall and other places that rural areas are affluent. That is a staggeringly inaccurate assumption, but it is understandable, based on the headline figures. My constituency has the second lowest unemployment in England—I probably should not say that out loud; we will be off the list for every grant going—and average house prices are £250,000. So far, so good, but the largest number of jobs available in my patch, which I suspect also applies for many hon. Members present, is at the minimum wage.
The average wage is about £18,000 a year, which means that the gap between house prices and average incomes is the largest outside the south-east of England. We have only 3,500 council homes left, following the foolish and damaging sell-off of the 1980s, with a waiting list of 5,000. All that means that although benefit uptake is low in the south lakes, the incidence of poverty, housing need and, especially, fuel poverty is extremely high—above 20%. In addition, the average age is 10 years above the national average. Many people who live in the communities that I represent are retired and do not, therefore, appear in unemployment figures, but they live in real poverty.
It is vital that the Government should understand that fuel poverty is more likely in rural communities because of the age of the housing stock, which has been explained by both hon. Members who have already spoken. I shall not go into further detail, except to say that homes are harder to insulate the older they are, and if they have no cavity wall to fill.
In addition, as we have heard, many homes in rural, sparsely populated areas are off the mains for gas, and sometimes even for electricity, and are much harder and more expensive to heat. However, although villages such as Hawkshead, Coniston, Grasmere, the Langdales, Dent and other areas in my constituency are rural and have an elderly housing stock, it is important to remember that many of the larger towns—larger, that is, by our standards—such as Kendal, which is a huge metropolis of 14,000 to 15,000 houses, have benefited hugely from Warm Front. It is important not to knock it too much. It did the easy things quickly and tackled fuel poverty among some of the poorest families. The areas they were living in might have been built-up, but they were not necessarily in urban areas.
Those homes were built in a way that enabled Warm Front to get at them quickly to insulate cavity walls and so on. It is important to celebrate easy, quick wins. The Government need to get plenty of those, too, in their first few months in power. I want the Government to build on Warm Front, not sweep it away thinking it has done damage—it has not.
There are great opportunities in rural communities—to build on something that the hon. Member for Ynys Môn said—for the provision of renewable energy resources, which can be enormously beneficial to the wider country in tackling climate change and creating energy security, which has also been mentioned. However, there is also an economic benefit to the struggling communities that are served.
I want to get in a word for my county. Cumbria has the fastest-falling water in England but only six plugged-in hydro schemes. That is scandalous, and I would like the Government to redress the situation quickly. Last week, I met a team from Kentmere, the charitable trust running the Kentmere Hydro project. The 350 kW scheme has the full backing of planners in the national park, which is staggering. It also has the backing of the community, which is less staggering. The one thing that could hold the project up, of course, is finance.
The trust is not looking for handouts, particularly at this time, but I ask the Minister to make it clear that the green investment bank announced by the Chancellor will be able to provide loan finance for such charitable trusts, and that those trusts will be able to qualify in their bid for feed-in tariffs. That community project could be replicated across rural Britain, as long as there are clear signs of active, practical encouragement from the Government. The same applies to anaerobic digestion. I hope that the Government will back anaerobic digester start-ups in rural communities as a way to generate income and green energy from waste.
I spoke last week to an older couple living in the Lake district, whose income is just under £10,000. They spend £2,000 a year on council tax and just over £2,000 a year on fuel. They are very typical. Their plight is worsened by the price of petrol. I urge the Minister to consider the impact of fuel duty on rural communities where little or no public transport is available and there is no choice for many people, however poor they may be, but to use the car.
I am sure that other hon. Members know, as I do, many people who must make the appalling choice between petrol in the car or food on the table. I welcome the Government’s investigation of rural exemptions on fuel duty, and of course I call for Cumbria, the Lake district and the dales to be included in any such pilot.
They key factor behind all fuel poverty, as we all know, is the cost of fuel. That is why it is vital that there should be further social tariffs covering all fuel systems—not just mains fuel systems—and moves to ensure that the cheapest unit costs are the ones that people pay for first. As things stand, an elderly couple in fuel poverty heating their cottage in Grasmere could easily pay more per unit for the energy they use than a City banker heating his luxurious second home next door. If I had a fiver for every time a politician said we are living in difficult times, I could probably pay off the national debt, but however fair the Government try to be in reducing the deficit, these difficult times are bound to be most difficult for those in the most marginal financial situations. That is why the Government must demonstrate that they will go out of their way to eliminate fuel poverty, especially in rural Britain, and that they will take practical steps. Otherwise, a bad situation could get worse.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
I am very pleased to take part in the debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) on obtaining it. This is an important issue. I was interested in the concept of building a new Jerusalem in Suffolk Coastal.
I have raised the issue of fuel poverty many times in Parliament and the stock answer that I normally get from Ministers about off-grid gas is that they are taking action to ensure the extension of the gas grid. However, in reality, many of my constituents will never have access to the gas grid. It will never go to the glens of Angus, or to many other parts of rural Scotland, especially the islands, however much it is extended. There is no option for those constituents but to rely on liquefied petroleum gas, home fuel gas or some other alternative fuel. It has been estimated that some 4.3 million consumers—mostly, but importantly, not exclusively in rural areas—are not on the gas network. In some areas, although the gas network is technically available, the cost of connection to it is prohibitive and people cannot do it.
Consumers who are off the gas network face particular problems. A typical gas bill is now rising to around £1,000 a year, but it has been estimated that those who are off-grid face bills of about £1,700 a year. That is a significant difference. I refer hon. Members to the table in the report on fuel poverty produced just before the general election by the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change. It relates only to England, but it shows the extent of the problem of cost between different fuel sources.
Sir Robert Smith
Does the hon. Gentleman think that the differential could become a more serious problem? Given the changing nature of the world market for natural gas, with shale gas and liquefied natural gas potentially bringing the price down in Europe, and if we ensure that the market works and those on the gas main get the benefit of a lower gas price feeding through, it will be all the more important to tackle the situation for people who do not have mains gas, because fuels such as oil and coal are not necessarily following the market down.
Mr Weir
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, but there are other pressures, not least climate change, against the extension of the use of gas. The Government are only now considering the decarbonisation of the gas supply and generation from gas. Many issues arise in connection with that.
There are many excellent schemes to help with insulation and energy efficiency, and many homes in rural areas are hard to treat, which exacerbates the situation. The Select Committee report noted that Ministers in the previous Government said that they were very enthusiastic about innovative technologies to tackle the problem, but we expressed disappointment at the slow pace of implementation. I do not think that the Government have yet responded to that report, and it will be interesting to hear what the new Minister has to say.
As has been mentioned, people who are off the grid do not have the same access to the social tariffs as mains gas customers. I accept to some extent that they have access to electricity tariffs, but many off-grid consumers use home fuel oil or LPG as the main fuel for heating their homes and water, and that is likely to be the major part of their energy spending. They do not get the full benefit that others do for those things.
The Department’s annual report on fuel poverty statistics for 2009 states:
“The highest proportion of fuel poverty is amongst households without gas, where nearly 23 per cent of households are fuel poor, compared to around 17 per cent of both standard credit and pre-payment meter customers.”
In Scotland, the situation may be slightly worse because of geography and the lack of a grid in the highlands and islands. The latest Scottish house conditions survey states:
“Households that use electricity, oil or other fuel types (such as coal or peat) are around twice as likely as those who use gas to experience fuel poverty. Also, those who use... ‘other fuel types’ (not gas or electricity) are more than twice as likely to experience extreme fuel poverty than gas users”.
I understand that the number of off-grid customers in fuel poverty in Scotland is around 116,000—about 47% of all who are off-grid.
There are other problems than price. For example, in many areas customers have to make an up-front payment to get a supply—and many suppliers demand a minimum supply quantity. That can be a substantial sum, and those on low incomes cannot afford to pay up front. That causes another problem—people may be forced to go without as a result.
Those who use gas or electricity will have pipes and so on coming to them, but those who use some of the alternative fuels find in bad weather that it is difficult to get a supply. It is interesting to note that in the recent harsh weather the Department for Transport had to allow a derogation from the driving hours regulations to enable deliveries to be made in many parts of Scotland and northern England. However, this is a long-running issue.
At the conclusion of consideration in Committee of the Energy Act 2008, the Energy Minister, the former Member for Stafford, arranged a meeting of representatives of the various bodies concerned with the matter. There seemed to be a willingness to consider things, but frankly the problem lies in difficulties caused by the nature of the market, which has already been touched on. That market is very different from that for domestic gas and electricity, and we need to find ways around the problem because those consumers have fallen through the cracks.
The domestic electricity and gas market is dominated by the six big energy companies, and it is easy to get social tariffs from them. The market for other fuels is much more diffuse and difficult to regulate. However, in many areas I would question whether there is real competition, as there is effectively only one supplier. With recent amalgamations in Scotland, the situation is getting worse. We need radical solutions to tackle the problem.
The Minister may remember that, during consideration in Committee of the Energy Act 2010, I suggested how the matter might be dealt with. Section 10 of the Act allows the Secretary of State to introduce a reconciliation mechanism, such that if one company had more fuel-poor customers than the others, it would not be particularly badly hit. The burden would be spread among all companies and, as far as possible, each would meet an equitable amount of the cost of meeting their obligations under the social tariff.
That principle is a good one, and it could be extended to cover all fuel suppliers, allowing a general sharing of the cost of meeting the obligation to help the fuel poor. Because of the difficulties in that particular market, it would not be easy to introduce individual social tariffs, but a general reconciliation mechanism would bring suppliers within the ambit of the scheme. Allowing the overall cost to be shared between all the energy suppliers would enable us to make progress and extend the social tariff concept to that disadvantaged group.
That is a radical way to deal with the problem. Otherwise, it will always be filed under the “too difficult” heading and nothing will be done. Such a mechanism would ensure that the cost were shared more widely—as the benefits would be. It would ensure that all energy suppliers could operate equivalent social tariffs for all their customers, whether they used electricity, gas or other forms of fuel. In what the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said are troubled times, Ministers might be attracted by the fact that it would have a revenue-neutral approach for the Treasury. It would not impose a greater burden on the taxpayer, but I can already hear the howls of protest from the major energy companies. However, it would deal with what has become a most intractable problem.
As was suggested by the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith), the problem will get worse. Whether we like it or not, the price of fuel will continue to rise as we try to move to a low-carbon economy. We will effectively be subsidising various renewables and possibly—and unfortunately—nuclear power, which will have an impact on all electricity bills. I ask the Minister to consider the suggestion.
In another aside—I realise that this is strictly not within the Minister’s brief—the Select Committee report suggested that we should consider how the winter fuel payment is made. It is paid in the winter, the most expensive quarter. For many off-grid customers, winter is not the best time to be given that money. If they were to receive it earlier in the year, they could buy oil or other fuels in bulk when they were cheaper. That would allow them to stockpile for the winter. Staggering the payment for off-grid customers would allow them to take advantage of cheaper prices. Again, importantly, it would be revenue-neutral for the Treasury.
I am trying to be helpful to the Minister by not simply calling for more spending; I am calling for us to consider things in a new way and to look at more radical solutions. If we do not, we shall continue to file the problem under the heading “too difficult” and nothing will happen to help those people. That would be a wasted opportunity, and fuel poverty would continue to increase in rural areas throughout the United Kingdom.
Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)
Order. Before I call the next speaker, I should say that it would be really helpful if Members limited themselves to eight minutes.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) on securing the debate. Many hon. Members have suggested solutions to the problem, but I want to emphasise a particular reason why the Minister and the House should be concerned. It is the excess of winter deaths. The fact is that 36,700 more people died in the winter of 2008-09 than expected. Even more worrying is the fact that, of the most vulnerable—those aged 75 and over—29,400 more died.
We do not have figures for excess winter deaths last year, which is unfortunate as it was a very cold winter. The figures are calculated by taking the number of deaths over the winter and comparing them with figures for the previous autumn and the summer, to the end of July. We will have those figures at the end of the month, and I expect that we will be in for a further shock. However, the figures for 2008-09 were themselves shocking, being the highest for a decade.
It is an interesting phenomenon that the further south or west one is in Europe, the higher the excess—between 5% and 30%—but we have a particular problem in this country. A study in the British Medical Journal found that a prime reason was the inadequacy of housing; it considered whether improving housing and heating would protect vulnerable people. Of course there were many other reasons, but I hope that the Minister will consider why that problem is crucial.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
What the hon. Lady says about the inadequacy of housing stock is important. Does she agree that in many regions of the UK the problem is not with housing associations or housing authorities, but with the private sector? Landlords are not always assertive in establishing whatever Warm Front schemes are available to provide better heated homes for the private-sector tenants.
Dr Wollaston
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that comment. Unfortunately, the BMJ study did not comment on that aspect, but it is an interesting point.
In the south-west, 11.7% of households, or 259,000 people, live in fuel poverty. It is a serious problem, and many Members have spoken about why that is the case in rural areas. Hard-to-treat housing stock with solid walls is a particular problem. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) spoke strongly about rural households being disadvantaged because fuel costs for transport are so high. There is an inadequate bus service, which means that people have to travel quite long distances by car, thus putting them at a double disadvantage. Moreover, they are hit again by the fact that their housing costs are high. In my constituency, we have some of the lowest wages in Britain, so we are disadvantaged on all fronts. I hope that the Minister will address those points.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
It is pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. In the short time available to me, I will emphasise some of the points that have been made. First, let me pay tribute to the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) for introducing the debate. The hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) introduced a salutary note by speaking about why we are here. By stressing the need to avoid those winter deaths, she summed up the importance of this debate better than I can.
The 147 villages and hamlets across Ceredigion are subject to the monopolistic practices of the energy suppliers. In too many of our communities, there is simply no choice. Across Wales, 8% of all households are off the mains gas network. The Competition Commission has examined the issues surrounding liquefied petroleum gas, but we need a wholesale review of the energy market, as it is clear that there are some very real problems.
I am glad that we are debating rural areas so early in the Session. Rural constituencies face a package of issues, including an ageing population, the lack of transport, and an ageing housing stock, which are hard to remedy.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the package of issues that face us. Some 53% of people in my constituency of Na h-Eileanan an Iar are in fuel poverty, which is the highest proportion in Scotland and probably the UK. Heating and transport are very expensive, which is why during the debate on the Finance Bill yesterday, some hon. Members might have heard me arguing for a rural fuel derogation. The issue today is about the winter fuel payments. My hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Mr Weir) made a good point about that, and I noticed the Minister taking a note about the issue of earlier payments. When making such payments, wind-chill factors as well as fuel poverty should be taken into account. Including wind chill would make a difference to my constituents.
Mr Williams
I am happy to endorse that point. Although I represent a coastal constituency and live on a cliff top, my experience cannot be compared with that of the hon. Gentleman or of his constituents, so I commend his proposal to the Minister. I concur with what has been said about the differential between retail and wholesale unit prices, and the lack of social tariffs. We are all aware that the Government have fewer resources to offer, but in commending what the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) said about some of the schemes that have been pursued in Wales, I suggest that the Minister consult widely with the devolved Administrations to ensure that where there is good practice in England-only schemes, the Assembly Government can follow suit in a swift manner. After the announcement of the boiler scrappage scheme in England, a somewhat limited substandard scheme was launched in Wales very late in the day. In fact, the scheme was announced in April, when replacing boilers is perhaps the last thing on people’s minds.
Albert Owen
In defence of the Welsh Assembly Government, they tried to amend the scheme so that the elderly and the vulnerable could apply for it. I thought that that was why we were here today—to protect the most vulnerable against fuel poverty. I thought that it was an excellent idea to limit the scheme to senior citizens and vulnerable people.
Mr Williams
I welcome that aspect, but I question its timing. That was the point I was trying to make.
Last December, a consultation on fuel poverty in rural areas was initiated by the Commission for Rural Communities—I do not know what my English colleagues would say, but some of us regret the loss of that commission because it has been an independent voice offering strong messages for those of us elsewhere. Its interim report offered some key points to consider. Some 50% of the UK’s carbon emissions from housing come from hard-to-treat homes—off-gas, solid and non-traditional wall construction, high-rise or properties without a fillable loft or cavity. That is a huge proportion of the households that many of use represent. As we have heard, many of those hard-to-treat homes are in rural areas, and there is a clear need to take action to reduce emissions, tackle climate change, and reduce bills. In 2005, the figures got worse. Some 14.6% of households in villages and hamlets were living in fuel poverty compared with a national average of 7%. That is the background to the huge challenge facing the Minister.
Interim recommendations from the CRC report include updating data to improve its scope and definitions so that we have a clearer view of where the problems lie; improving data sharing; and, critically, learning from best-practice examples. As my friend, the hon. Member for Ynys Môn, said, the coalition Government need to prioritise certain pilot areas.
Although it seems hard to believe now, we had a particularly cold winter last year and cold weather payments were of great use to my constituents. However, I worry that the need for seven consecutive days of temperatures below zero may have distorted the payments. Despite experiencing very similar weather, towns and villages in the northern part of Ceredigion received three triggers while in the south just one trigger has been reached. Will the Minister look into that—again, that relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil)—and say whether he is confident that the level of cold weather payments received truly reflects the problems people are experiencing on the ground?
Moreover, there are many people who were eligible for cold weather payments but who missed out on them altogether because of a failure to claim pension credit—the most recent figures show that between 1.1 million and 1.7 million eligible pensioners are not claiming pension credit. I will stop now, but there is much more to be said. The Chamber is aware of the enormity of the problem. It is good to see not just the Celtic nations but all the rural parts of this country represented in the debate. The Minister has a huge job on his hands and we look forward to what he will say in a few moments’ time.
Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)
Order. Let me say to hon. Members that I intend to start the winding-up speeches no later than 10.40 am.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
It is a great privilege to take part in this important debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) on securing it and I warmly welcome her to the gang. I am sure that her contributions will always be valued. Without prejudging the Minister’s response, which will be very helpful, let me say that this is an issue to which we will return from time to time.
I shall concentrate on competition issues because they are clearly the responsibility of the Minister and his colleagues at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. When I was elected in 2001, I contacted the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission because there were some uncompetitive practices in the LPG market. I built on the work of my predecessor, Lord Livsey, who was very active in the matter. We were surprised when, in the end, the Competition Commission decided to take up the issue, because there was huge resistance from LPG suppliers.
Some of those uncompetitive practices were quite clear. There were issues over the different types of connection and appliance and whether ownership of the bulk tank could be transferred from one company to another. Some regulations have been introduced to ensure that there is more competition in the marketplace. In fact, Calor Gas is to hold a reception in this place tonight.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Could we not do more to promote local group buying schemes to balance the uncompetitive market and get better pricing?
Roger Williams
The hon. Gentleman anticipates a point that I was about to make. Let me repeat though that a reception will be hosted tonight by Calor Gas, which is one of the major LPG suppliers. The Minister may like to go along—he may even be speaking at it—and make some of the points that he has heard during this debate.
One of the key issues about fuel poverty, which has already been referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), is the opportunity to buy in bulk. I visited some old-age pensioners’ bungalows owned by Powys county council in a little village called Garth, where pensioners switched off their LPG heating in the middle of winter and consequently had no heating in their houses at all, because they just could not afford it. Nobody was responsible for ordering the LPG and the local authority—the pensioners’ landlord at the time—was taking no interest at all in the pricing mechanism for the tenants, and the tenants themselves were not sufficiently empowered to take hold of the situation. I contrast that with what happened in another village, Llanspyddid, where members of the community got together and negotiated to buy in bulk for a little estate, so they got a good reduction in price.
However, the point that I want to make to the Minister is that many LPG users do not know their rights and powers under the new regulations. One of the things that the Government could do, which would not cost a lot of money, is to publicise the new powers and opportunities that exist under the new regulations.
I bring it to the attention of the House that although there is a freer regulatory system in the LPG market, some suppliers still want customers to enter two-year contracts, or even longer contracts in some places. That may be within the letter of the regulations, but I am not sure that it is within their spirit.
A number of people on the lowest incomes, particularly retired people, live in park homes. The best one could say about the position regarding competition for the supply of LPG to park homes is that it is unclear. I raised the issue in the all-party group on park homes the other evening. Representatives both of the owners of park homes and of the estates where park homes are located confirmed that the position on competition is unclear. However, it is a difficult issue so given the short time available to me in this debate, I would be better off writing to the Minister about it.
Another issue is that the new free market applies only to bulk LPG; it does not apply to small cylinders of LPG. Some of the poorest people in our communities use small cylinders of LPG. Buying those cylinders is even more expensive than buying LPG in bulk, which itself is much more expensive than mains gas. Many of the poorest people use mobile heaters, bringing them into their bedrooms late at night when they go to bed; they put them on in the morning in the bedroom and then take them into the kitchen when they are making their breakfast. They take the heaters round the house. However, those LPG cylinders are not covered at all by the regulations, which is an issue the Minister might want to familiarise himself with.
On a related point, we are all concerned about the future of public houses in rural areas, yet it is not clear to me whether the regulations apply to small businesses, such as public houses, as well as to residential properties. Perhaps that is another issue that the Minister might inquire about.
I turn quickly to what I think is a solution to some of the fuel poverty issues: taking mains gas not to individual isolated properties but to communities that do not yet have that facility. I am thinking in particular of communities such as the former mining community in Abercrave in my constituency. One can understand why there was no huge impetus to connect communities such as Abercrave to mains gas, because so many people were in coal mining families and received free coal as part of the miners’ terms and conditions; indeed, miners’ widows, if they survived, received free coal too. Of course, very few people receive free coal now, and they are living in fuel poverty because they have to use either heating oil, which we have talked about, or LPG.
That solution—connecting such communities to mains gas—is very expensive and I am not in any way belittling the cost. But it is a long-term solution and not a short-term fix. Are there any facilities that could be brought into play to ensure that such communities enjoyed the facility of mains gas?
In another village in my constituency, Llangynidr, the problem is that the mains gas pipeline runs on the other side of the River Usk from the village. Making the pipeline cross the river would be the main cost involved in ensuring that Llangynidr received a mains gas supply.
Those are some of the issues that I want to put to the Minister, particularly the points about competition and how we can ensure that the regulations, which are already in place and doing a good thing for LPG users, can be fine-tuned, so that everybody enjoys the benefits that only a few people are enjoying at the moment.
Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)
I thank all hon. Members for their co-operation in getting the timing right, so we have time for the winding-up speeches. I think that the two Front Benchers have about 12 minutes each.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
May I begin, Mr Betts, by saying that it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time?
I congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) on securing this debate. I listened to her maiden speech in the Chamber with great interest and I concluded that, although it was highly unlikely that we would agree politically, she would undoubtedly serve her constituents well. Indeed, we now know those constituents as the people of the new Jerusalem. I also concluded that she was likely to be a formidable advocate for them, and frankly this place can never have enough formidable women.
This debate is one of great importance. More than one in four households in rural areas are in fuel poverty. In sparsely inhabited English communities, every second home has an energy efficiency rating of less than 30, which amounts to a significant health risk. Fuel poverty is a knotty and difficult problem with which the Labour Government struggled. Although we made progress, much more needs to be done. Our concern is that the emerging political philosophy of the coalition Government may prove to be a significant handicap—that might be putting it mildly.
The coalition agreement brags about the way the two governing parties were brought together by a shared ideology that is antithetical to Government intervention. It says that they
“share a conviction that the days of big government are over”.
However, there are times when Government leadership is necessary and when the market will not solve a problem. Climate change, for example, is, in itself, the ultimate failure of the market economy. There are times when we need to intervene. Furthermore, the effectiveness of Government intervention must be measured and quantified, so that we can account to the public for the spending of their money.
We have heard from the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change that he did not have any Government targets for the creation of green jobs and that he did not want to borrow our targets, for fear of seeming to copy the Soviet Union’s Gosplan. However, that judgment is wrong. I urge the ministerial team to reconsider their attitude to targets. In relation to fuel poverty, my first question to the Minister is this: will the coalition keep our 2016 fuel poverty target? If it will not do so, how many people do the Government intend to lift out of fuel poverty by any of their schemes, in either rural or urban areas?
Throughout my contribution, I will put a number of questions to the Minister. I asked some of them in a debate last week and during the somewhat rushed winding-up speeches, the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), overlooked many of them; I am sure that he did so unintentionally. Therefore, I thought that it might be helpful if I numbered my questions today, for ease of reference.
My second question relates to access to the grid and fuel poverty. The number of off-gas properties is much higher in rural area than in urban areas. Those properties are dependent on solid fuels, heating oil and liquefied natural gas, but the prices of those fuels are higher and they fluctuate more than gas prices. Households that are off the gas network face typical energy bills of £1,700 per annum as opposed to £1,000 per annum for households on mains gas. What steps will the Government take to increase the number of homes on the gas grid?
Another problem is that rural areas have lower average wage levels than urban areas, and the take-up of Government assistance has been more difficult in rural areas. It costs more for contractors to install energy efficiency measures in rural homes, and there is evidence that consumers in rural areas are less aware than consumers in urban areas of the availability of financial support, so my third question is, how does the Minister intend to tackle that problem, especially in the light of recent budget cuts to the Energy Saving Trust?
Another problem, as we heard from many contributors, is that there are fewer cavity walls in rural areas, and solid walls are harder to heat and more expensive to insulate. My fourth question is, what consideration have the Government given to the arguments in favour of making grants available to the rural poor who cannot be connected to the grid, so they can install microgeneration projects, such as ground source heat pumps? Will the Government consider the findings of the Warm Front pilots on air source heat pumps in areas off the gas network for occupants in fuel poverty?
I encourage the Government to be proactive and confident; if we take action, we can get results. Labour achievements on fuel poverty include Warm Front assisting more than 2 million households since 2000, which National Energy Action described as “an extremely successful programme”. Despite early problems with take-up of the scheme, improvements were made and the number of grants increased in 2005-08. I listened with interest to the criticisms of the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal of Warm Front, but saying that rural communities such as hers lose out on schemes over and over again is overstating the case. In the past five years, Warm Front has helped 2,000 households in her constituency. My fifth question is, can the Minister give his assurance that Warm Front will be retained?
Under the carbon emissions reduction target, major energy suppliers had an obligation to direct at least 40% of carbon savings to priority group households, so, my sixth question is whether the super-priority group of 15%, which was announced on 30 June, in addition to the 40% priority group, can be contained within it. Seventhly, what will the Minister do to ensure that the carbon emissions reduction target takes account of the greater difficulty and cost of insulation in rural areas? In the Energy Act 2010, Labour put a statutory obligation on energy suppliers to offer social tariffs to those in fuel poverty. Under Labour, Ofgem provided incentives for gas networks to connect deprived communities. Households assisted under the scheme qualified as being within the 20% identified in the index of multiple deprivation.
Albert Owen
My hon. Friend talks about incentives for gas networks to be extended and for the grid distributors to take the lead, but is it not the case that we need an agency, a local authority or even a community group to do so? Does she agree that we should look at it in that way? We need to ensure that we have local champions in rural areas because, with the greatest of respect, Ofgem in central London does not understand small rural communities. Agencies must work with local government at a local level.
Emily Thornberry
That is right, and, in fact, many of the characteristics to which my hon. Friend refers are part of the community energy saving programme, to which I will return in a moment.
In the Suffolk Coastal constituency, 29,960 people receive winter fuel payments. Eighthly, given the fact that payments have benefited millions of people, will the Minister guarantee that they will continue in the age of austerity? The Government recently announced the dissolution of the Commission for Rural Communities, which I agree is unfortunate, as many hon. Members have said, particularly given that it did a great deal of the analysis on rural fuel poverty that led to significant changes in energy efficiency policy to allow for better targeting of fuel-poor rural households. Everyone knows that Labour did not eliminate fuel poverty and that great challenges remain. Nevertheless, without Government measures, there would have been 400,000 to 800,000 more fuel poor households in England in 2008.
Ninthly, how are the pay-as-you-save pilots established under the previous Government going? Will they run their course and inform the Government’s plans or not? Is the green deal just our pay-as-you-save scheme with a different name, as commentators have said? Tenthly, will the Minister clear up the confusion over whether there will be any form of Government subsidy for the green deal? Will it impose any cost on the public purse? We have had contradictory statements from the Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), and the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Wealden, this year. Eleventhly, will the amount available per household be £6,500 or up to £6,500? Twelfthly, will it be more for harder-to-heat homes? In the debate last week, the Minister in the Chamber today told us, with characteristic enthusiasm, about the potential deal with companies such as Tesco, B&Q and Marks & Spencer on the green deal. What will companies get out of this? That was question 13. How confident is he that the private sector will see it as a good proposition?
Most important is my 14th question: how will the Minister ensure that all households that need to improve their energy efficiency take advantage of the scheme? How will the poorest take advantage of it, and how will it work for those on low incomes and those with poor credit ratings? If poorer households do not take up the scheme, does he agree that it will have failed? On 24 June, the Minister’s new boss, the Secretary of State, said at the UK energy summit organised by The Economist:
“Some people—such as the fuel-poor, and those in hard-to-heat homes…—will need extra help because energy savings alone will not be enough. We intend to provide that help by refocusing the obligations on energy companies. Local authorities could also join with energy companies to reach those who live in houses that need it most. Insulation measures are often cheaper if implemented a street at a time. And we are planning to strengthen the Government’s powers to target energy insulation measures on the highest priority cases.”
Does that mean that CESP is saved? Perhaps the Minister will give it another name; I always thought that it sounded more like something that needed a strong dose of antibiotics, but it is a good scheme and the Government should look at it carefully. Will it continue?
At the beginning of my speech, I referred to the profound health problems associated with fuel poverty, and those problems are urgent. If we hit another severe winter this year, there are likely to be tens of thousands of excess deaths. The Government are under an obligation to be proactive, and I hope that they will be.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
I, too, am glad to be serving under your chairmanship for the first time as a Minister in Westminster Hall, Mr Betts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) on her maiden Westminster Hall speech. She made a fine start in the main Chamber.
It has been a really terrific debate, and I have learnt a lot. It is the first time that I have listened to a fuel poverty debate as a Minister, and it is striking how much cumulative knowledge there is, not just in one party, but on both sides of the House. In the coming months and years of coalition, I hope that we can be inclusive, not only with our coalition partners, but with other parties, because it is clear that concerns about fuel poverty go beyond party boundaries. Although we come from different sides of the political argument, and may have different priorities or apply different principles to problems that lead to different solutions, there is much more common ground on this issue than is often the case. I hope to have an open-door policy and will be open to new ideas from all parties.
We have a radical programme on energy efficiency and we approach it with new vigour and ideas. I appreciate that the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) is new to her job as well and mustard keen to defend the record of the Labour Government, but we all have to wake up and smell the coffee. She asked whether the Government would keep the 2016 target. Keeping targets is not difficult at all, but meeting them is tough. Her Government, whom she defends, were reversing at speed on fuel poverty despite their best efforts. Over 4 million more people—more like 5 million more—are in fuel poverty than in 2004.
Despite good schemes—the hon. Lady rattled off a number of them—the best efforts of Ministers and a great deal of public spending, we are nowhere close to meeting the fuel poverty targets. We have to do some big thinking, ask ourselves some serious questions and redeploy our resources more effectively to deliver for the fuel-poor, particularly for the rural fuel-poor.
My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal addressed clearly what everyone in the Chamber feels: the rural fuel-poor get overlooked and are part of a forgotten population. Many of the schemes introduced under the previous Government have treated people’s homes in urban areas. However, the rural fuel-poor often get a worse deal, particularly those who are off the gas network, because there is a lack of social tariffs for those who are off the grid. That issue has been a reoccurring theme of the debate. My hon. Friend is right to be concerned that metropolitan-centric, top-down schemes that are not embedded in their local communities do not always deliver.
It is difficult to find many of the rural poor. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) spoke well and reminded us that it is often more difficult to find and treat fuel-poor homes that are in, or surrounded by, areas of relative prosperity than those that are concentrated in a metropolitan area. That is a challenge and it is why such homes have been harder to treat in the past. However, it does not mean they are any less deserving of support and concern.
I cannot commit the Chancellor to anything, because doing so is way above my pay grade. However, I heard what the hon. Gentleman said about the potential for a green investment bank—the Green Investment Bank Commission published its report last week—and I have taken on board his suggestions. I encourage him to have a dialogue with Ministers to discuss such a function for the GIB. I would welcome that opportunity.
The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) gave a very good speech. He focused on concerns about competition and ensuring that reforms of competition in the market drive right across and reach target groups that have, so far, not been helped sufficiently.
I was particularly interested in the ideas mentioned in an intervention about supporting and enhancing local group purchasing schemes. When I go back to the Department, I will ask my officials to consider what we can do in relation to that, because the measure does not necessarily involve a lot of spending. I will consider what we can do to try to support and encourage such schemes, because empowering communities is an aspiration that is shared right across the coalition. If one wants to refer to an ideology, it would not be any of those listed by the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury. We believe in localism, the need to empower our communities far more and the fact that the solutions to our nation’s problems are not locked in Departments in Whitehall.
I say to the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) that, of course, we are committed to consultation and best practice, not just with devolved Governments, but with local government and communities. Learning best practice is not a one-way street; there is a great deal more that we can learn from what is successful in communities. Although I am not familiar with the triggers for cold weather payments, I know how important they are. I will look into the problems he mentioned and write to him.
The hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) spoke at length and with great expertise about the extra costs suffered by particularly far-flung areas—not just in his constituency, but in the whole of the British Isles. He focused on partnership-working with devolved Governments, local authorities and communities. I assure him that we are committed to doing that. He also wanted to know what the coalition had to say about off-grid support and protection. The coalition agreement is not a manifesto; it is a relatively tight document. However, he will see that it specifically mentions the need to support and protect off-grid customers. We want to do a lot more.
Albert Owen
I hope the hon. Gentleman will not regret offering an open-door policy to Members such as me. He is talking about the coalition and localism, with which I agree. However, there must be more than warm words. Although I agree with the devolution of powers, which I have fought for in referendums for many years, we do not simply need it to happen; we need resources. That is the important thing. Dealing with the issue is not just about passing powers from Whitehall to Cardiff, and to rural areas in Wales; it is about making sure that the resources follow those powers.
Gregory Barker
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s comments, but he will also appreciate that we are in a resource-constrained environment for reasons that we do not need to rehearse here. As well as resources, another factor that empowers communities is knowledge. He made a good point about the need for greater transparency about wholesale and retail prices. I agree with him about that, but we also need greater transparency about billing, tariffs and the costs of switching to a different tariff or the best tariff, or paying by direct debit. Those are all important points.
My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) brought her medical expertise to bear when she talked about the excessive number of winter deaths. She reminded us of the shocking figures that were published last year and of the impact that poor housing has on not just health outcomes, but life expectancy. That helped to bring the debate into sharp focus.
The hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir) was right to point out that a minority of the population will always be off-grid and that price is important. He made a crucial point about up-front payments and minimum deliveries. I will consider his ideas on section 10 of the Energy Act 2010. I cannot promise that we will act on them, but we will look at the matter with fresh eyes, because we are interested in radical steps forward and new thinking. As I said, we cannot go on as we are.
We have a big plan of our own: the green deal. It does not involve grants, loans or mortgages and it certainly does not involve the very modest proposals—pilot schemes—that the previous Government introduced. The green deal is a bold, unprecedented scheme that will not involve personal debt, as the pay-as-you-save model of the previous Government did.
Gregory Barker
I shall not take interventions, because I am very short on time. The green deal will bring in new capital, new finance providers, new installers and local providers. A constant complaint about Warm Front and its provisions is that it has not empowered local suppliers. The green deal will mean that as long as a local provider can deliver the standards, they can do the work. That will even apply to a village supplier if they get the accreditation, which should be simple and easy to do. I hope that we will see many community enterprises and community partnerships working on the green deal.
The green deal is fundamentally a pay-as-you-save model. We accept that many of those who live in rural homes and some of the most fuel-poor cannot make the savings to justify the significant investment in building infrastructure that is needed; for example, those who have solid wall houses often fall into that category. That is why we intend radically to reform the supplier obligation. We have started doing that with our carbon emissions reduction target extension, where we have increased the amount that we can direct is spent on insulation; if we take into account DIY, it is now 80%. We have stopped the lunacy of mailing or subsidising light bulbs. The green deal is focused on real insulation efforts. We have increased the super-priority group—made up of pensioners, people with children and those from low-income households—from 10% to 15%, so that it is larger than under the Labour consultation. That is really important, but we want to go further.
Gregory Barker
I am afraid that I do not have time.
We want to go further to ensure that support is available. The carbon emissions reduction target will raise more than £1 billion, which is much greater than under the Warm Front programme. Potentially there is a significant amount of revenue, but it needs to be much more focused.
I welcome the thoughts of all hon. Members in the Chamber today about how we should focus on the fuel-poor. We will be considering reforming the supplier obligation, so that there is no hiatus beyond the CERT extension in 2012. There is a new deal—a green deal—and there will be a new supplier obligation. Real, substantial resources will be made available for the long term, and we are absolutely certain that we need to continue to deliver for the fuel-poor.
However, fundamentally, we cannot keep chasing the fuel price and subsidising fossil fuels. We need to spend the money we have on investment in building infrastructure to make homes not only warmer, but cheaper to heat in the long term. We must reduce people’s dependency—whether they are on-grid or off—on gas, coal and oil.
I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal on initiating the debate. I am sorry that I have not been able to answer everyone’s questions, but I am sure that this is the first of many Westminster Hall debates on this vital issue.
Road Networks (Harlow)
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
On “The Andrew Marr Show” on Sunday 4 July, the Secretary of State for Transport was straight and honest about the state of British finances. He quite rightly said:
“We will have to prioritise aggressively, and do the things that most promote economic growth.”
We know that there will be fewer major road projects and that our money must be targeted more effectively, which is why I strongly support his drive to obtain value for money. He said in the same interview that improvements to the strategic road network must focus “very specifically on bottlenecks”.
First and foremost, the case for an extra junction on the M11 is about eliminating the bottleneck leading in and out of Harlow. Yes, it would bring much-needed regeneration to one of the most deprived towns in the east of England, and yes, it would transform the lives of tens of thousands of miserable commuters and businesses, but fundamentally it is about economic growth, higher tax receipts and more jobs.
There are five key arguments in favour of an additional junction on the M11. Harlow is uniquely disadvantaged compared with other towns. As I mentioned in Transport questions on 17 June:
“Harlow has just one entrance to a motorway, whereas similar towns, such as Welwyn Garden City, have two or three and Basildon has four”.—[Official Report, 17 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 1008.]
That has been a regional problem for 30 years. I noted in my maiden speech:
“Inexplicably, Harlow was built with just one entrance, with most of the industrial quarter being at the opposite end. As a result, traffic in Harlow has reached gridlock, with large lorries trundling along from one end of the town to another. If Harlow is to have a viable future, a bypass is not a luxury but a necessity.”—[Official Report, 2 June 2010; Vol. 510, c. 488.]
Recent improvements have not solved the fundamental problem. Harlow is set to benefit from several small transport improvements, including a repaired train station, the dualling of the A414 and the introduction of bus lanes and cycle paths. However, a town of 80,000 people is like the human body; it needs circulation to live, and when its arteries become blocked, something must relieve the pressure.
The fundamental problem has been, and will always be, access to the motorways for businesses and commuters. Everyone agrees with that analysis, which is why every public sector body and major private business from the region have come together to make the case for an extra junction on the M11. The recently formed Harlow-Stansted Gateway Transportation Board includes Essex county council, Hertfordshire county council, Harlow district council, East Hertfordshire district council, Epping Forest district council, the Highways Agency, the Department for Transport, the East of England Development Agency, Harlow Renaissance, and private sector interests such as BAA and National Express. All those public sector bodies and private businesses agreed jointly in the board’s annual report that over the next few years Harlow will become
“a major economic hub, close to London and at a key strategic location in the M11 growth corridor.”
The recent improvements to Harlow’s roads are welcome, but they are just that: improvements. They are a sticking plaster and, sadly, will not transform Harlow’s road network.
Congestion has a huge economic cost. Pollution and noise aside, economic growth in the M11 corridor is clogged by congestion. The Harlow-Stansted Gateway Transportation Board’s report states:
“EEDA’s recent Transport Economic Evidence Study identified that the area of the London Arc containing Harlow was the most congested in the region, but also the area which could see the highest level of economic return from transport investment.”
The proposed extra junction would be situated in a key growth area in Harlow, with the potential for about 5,000 additional homes. If the proper infrastructure is not built and access to the motorway is not provided, congestion will become significantly worse. The latest survey on traffic from the Essex Federation of Small Businesses showed that its members lose on average seven hours per week per driver to congestion. A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that, with an average hourly cost of £15, that equates to £105 per driver per week, or £5,460 per driver per year. When one considers that there are 40,000 jobs in Harlow, one starts to realise that that means a loss in economic output of about £218 million a year. Hours spent in traffic jams and congestion are wasted; they are a drag on the economy.
For people who work overtime there is also a direct financial cost, as well as the indirect cost of potential output that is not achieved. The Essex Federation of Small Businesses has stated that its members
“strongly support the need for a new junction linking Harlow to the M11 as the current junction cannot cope with the traffic. A new junction which enabled traffic to flow easily into Harlow would soon cover its cost just in time saved by business people currently caught in traffic queues.”
An extra junction would massively boost jobs and private sector investment. I am glad to join my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott) and several other hon. Friends in reminding the House that the M11 corridor is a dynamic growth economy. All the evidence suggests that when the Government invest in the M11 corridor, the benefits hugely outweigh the costs. Harlow district council’s 2009 business survey showed that three quarters of companies regard Harlow’s location as the strongest reason to invest, which is a solid foundation on which to build. One in two respondents cited Harlow’s traffic congestion as a major barrier to business growth—in fact, it was the second highest barrier to growth overall, after the recession. Finally, the survey showed that four out of five Harlow companies felt that a new motorway junction would be
“the single most effective mechanism to improve congestion.”
Therefore, the private sector is highly confident that with the right road investment in Harlow, substantial economic and social benefits will accrue to both the town and the wider M11 region. The Harlow area provides a strong case for investment and has many clear advantages. It has an unrivalled location, which is why the Health Protection Agency is seeking to move to the town. It is close to London, Stansted Airport, Cambridge and the ports at Harwich and Felixstowe, all regarded by businesses as strong attributes.
There is spare employment land in Harlow, so there is both the capacity and opportunity to deliver economic growth. The town already provides significant sub-regional employment—40,000 jobs—and can increase that significantly. The town has a brave and ambitious vision for its future, with an upgraded town centre now being developed. A better road network will help to retain existing businesses and attract new ones. In a region with considerable growth pressures, Harlow can not only accommodate economic growth, but welcome it. The town is a true centre of excellence for the haulage and distribution industry, which needs quick access to the M11 to thrive.
The cost of an extra junction would be very modest, given the investment available from local housing developers. Essex county council has already committed more than £500,000 for a detailed study of an extra junction. That will be spent in two stages: £130,000 in phase 1, to build an outline business case; and £435,000 in phase 2, to look at more specific issues, such as where pressures would accrue on the road network. It is right that local people should shoulder some of the up-front costs to reduce the burden on the British taxpayer. Councillor Norman Hume, cabinet member for highways at Essex county council, is clear on just how important the scheme is locally:
“A new junction on the M11 North of Harlow is now the number one transport priority for the business community of Harlow, and Essex County Council. A new junction will relieve existing congestion and promote the growth and much needed regeneration of Harlow. In order to promote and justify the case for investment, we are developing a business case through Growth Area Funding.”
Phase 1 of the study will report in autumn 2010 and phase 2 in early 2011. Councillor Hume and the highways officers at Essex county council are absolutely pioneering in their approach to the road network in Harlow, as are the officers at Harlow district council. Their plans are in harmony with the new Government, with value for money and economic growth at the heart of what they hope to achieve. Harlow district council is equally supportive. Its leader, Councillor Andrew Johnson, said in a statement that a new junction is
“vital to achieving the town’s regeneration and creating a prime location for business. It is fundamental to unlocking the economic potential of the town.”
Essex county council estimates that the total cost of the new junction on the M11 could be as little as £25 million. It would be located in a key Harlow growth area of up to 5,000 homes. Much of the £25 million cost could be funded through section 106 agreements, making this an opportunity for the taxpayer to get the full economic benefits but pay only part of the already modest costs. The Essex Federation of Small Businesses has studied the cost of congestion and believes that congestion in Harlow is reducing economic output in the region of £218 million a year. When that is set against a cost of less than £25 million, the figures speak for themselves.
I am a realist, and I accept that Ministers’ first priority must be to reduce the public debt, which early this year ballooned to £900 billion. I also accept that a project of this scale would normally take 10 years to deliver. The people of Harlow do not expect miracles overnight—they have been waiting 20 years already—but I believe that the case is very strong. Harlow has only one motorway entrance, unlike other major towns of its size. Recent road improvements have not solved the fundamental problems. Congestion results in a huge economic cost to Harlow and to the M11 corridor. An extra junction on the M11 would boost jobs and private sector investment massively, and the cost would be very modest, given the available investment from local housing developers and sector 106 agreements.
I close with the point made on Sunday by the Secretary of State:
“We will have to prioritise aggressively, and do the things that most promote economic growth.”
An extra junction on the M11 would most promote economic growth. Yes, of course, this is about transforming the lives of tens of thousands of commuters and businesses in Harlow. Yes, it would bring much-needed regeneration to my constituency, which is one of the most deprived towns in the east of England. Fundamentally, however, my argument for an extra junction on the M11 is about economic growth, higher tax receipts and more jobs.
Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)
Order. Has the hon. Gentleman cleared it with the Member introducing the debate and the Minister that he wants to speak?
Brandon Lewis
I must admit that I have not cleared it with the Minister, but I spoke earlier to my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). I am at your mercy, Mr Betts.
Brandon Lewis
Thank you, Mr Betts, I appreciate that. I will ensure that in future I speak to the Minister as well.
Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)
I appreciate that the hon. Member is new to the House, so that is fine.
Brandon Lewis
I simply want to support my hon. Friend’s statement. I represent Great Yarmouth, and although the M11 is not there, or in Norfolk, it is the closest motorway to my constituency. It is a vital part of the artery joining the A11 and the A47 that runs through to our outer harbour and to Norwich airport, so it is hugely important to the economic development and growth of Great Yarmouth, which has pockets of high deprivation. Anything that we can do to alleviate the traffic problems along that artery, which this junction could—and clearly will—do, is of benefit to Great Yarmouth. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is important for Harlow, but also for the wider business community throughout East Anglia and the eastern region?
Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)
In terms of procedure, normally the hon. Member initiating the debate would speak, then the Minister would respond. The hon. Member would not come back. It would have helped if the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) had intervened beforehand, but I will allow a brief response.
Robert Halfon
Thank you, Mr Betts, for allowing me to respond. Having a close association with the area—a constituency in the east of England—and travelling on the M11, my hon. Friend knows better than most the traffic problems that we have in Harlow. I am very grateful for his support, which will be noted by the people of Harlow and all the businesses and commuters who use the M11 on a daily basis.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on securing this debate on traffic and the road network in Harlow, and on the strong presentation of his case this morning. Although only recently elected to the House, he has already asked questions about traffic and road issues in Harlow, and I am pleased to respond to his first Adjournment debate on a subject that is clearly of great importance to him and his constituents.
It might be helpful if I explain that within the Department for Transport the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), has responsibilities for the motorway network and I have responsibilities for other roads and for general traffic issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow has concentrated solely on the M11, which is a matter that would normally fall to my colleague, but I will do my best to respond to the issues he has raised. However, given the title of the debate, I will also refer to other issues that relate to traffic and transport in the Harlow area.
Before I turn specifically to Harlow issues, I need to make some general points. My hon. Friend will not be surprised if I make them on behalf of the Department—the point he made himself. In particular, I must make it clear at the outset that the overriding need the coalition Government have identified is to tackle the national deficit. That means that the decisions we take and the speed with which we are able to implement transport improvements will need to be determined in the context of the comprehensive spending review. The Department for Transport is playing a full part in that spending review, which will report in the autumn.
We have already announced a range of measures aimed at delivering reductions in spending. On 24 May the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury gave details of £6.2 billion of savings in Government spending in 2010-11, and the Department for Transport is contributing by finding savings of £683 million this year. That has meant taking difficult decisions on funding, and deferring decisions on some transport schemes until after the outcome of the spending review. On 10 June, the Department for Communities and Local Government published further details of local government savings, including £309 million in local transport funding.
The Department and I understand that those reductions and deferrals are difficult for many places. Through reductions in ring-fencing, we have maximised the flexibility for local authorities to reshape their budgets according to local priorities, and to identify where efficiencies can be found. There is also an opportunity to rethink transport plans and priorities, to ensure that proposals are environmentally as well as financially sustainable. However, given the current financial constraints, it is essential to ensure that any new infrastructure is affordable and offers value for money.
Turning to Harlow-specific matters, it is first worth reflecting on the history of Harlow’s development, as therein lies some of the answers as to why Harlow, a new town, suffers the level of congestion experienced by my hon. Friend’s constituents. When Sir Frederick Gibberd drew up the original master plan for Harlow, he did so with the expectation that a new motorway would be built to the west and north of the urban area. He therefore positioned the town’s industrial areas and town centre where they would have easy access to the new motorway, probably with multiple access points. However, the M11 was subsequently built to the east, giving rise to some of the problems that are now being experienced. Access to the town was via junction 7 and the A414 from the south. As a result, as my hon. Friend knows only too well, traffic in and out of Harlow has to traverse a series of mainly single-lane carriageways to reach key destinations such as the town centre and areas of employment. Frequent congestion is the result, and the Department acknowledges that. I fully understand that congestion is seen as a barrier to achieving the town’s regeneration and economic growth ambitions.
My hon. Friend will be aware that, for some time, many people have seen the solution as the provision of a new junction—7A—on the M11 to the north of Harlow, along with realigning and extending the A414 to provide a northern bypass to Harlow. I am advised by officials that the cost of the full scheme is estimated as in excess of £250 million. However, the feasibility of such a proposal has yet to be established.
I am aware that, on behalf of the Harlow-Stansted Gateway Transportation Board, Essex county council is undertaking a feasibility study—to which my hon. Friend referred—of the options for a reduced scheme to include a new motorway junction and connection to the existing local road network to the north-east of the town. The study will give an indication of whether that is a potential solution. There may of course be effective, lower-cost solutions that emerge from that or other work that the county council or others undertake locally, and I will follow developments closely, as will my colleague the Under-Secretary.
Robert Halfon
I thank the Minister for what he has said so far. I want to make it clear that, as he acknowledged, I am just asking for the extra junction on the M11, because I recognise the huge cost of something that would happen in the distant future. I am asking just for that, because it is much better value for money for the taxpayer.
Norman Baker
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As we will undoubtedly have less money in the future, we have to be much more careful about how we spend it, and to ensure that rigorous cost-benefit is applied to any scheme. I suggest that the cheaper a scheme comes in, the more likely it is to proceed.
It is also worth pointing out that the context has changed, given that some of the justification for the northern bypass came from the significant northern expansion of Harlow that would have been needed to meet the regional spatial strategy—RSS—housing targets. With the revocation of the RSS—I am sure my hon. Friend will welcome the increased move towards devolution—there will no longer be a regional policy basis for that level of development. Obviously, we have devolution coming forward in the decentralisation and localism Bill that the Department for Communities and Local Government will introduce and in the enterprise boards it proposes. We will see what comes from those local economic partnerships.
The M11 junction feasibility study will consider the transport needs of future development within Harlow’s boundaries but, ultimately, it will be for Harlow, together with partner authorities, to agree on how best to develop beyond that. Such discussions will be based on what local communities want, and my Department will try to respond as positively as it can.
I acknowledge that congestion in Harlow is of particular importance locally. I am pleased that rapid progress is being made by Essex county council to dual the A414 carriageway between junction 7 of the M11 and the Southern Way junction. When that work is completed in early 2011, the scheme will significantly alleviate the bottleneck.
However, I make it clear on behalf of the Department that extra road capacity is not the only answer to tackling congestion. Nor, indeed, depending on the circumstances, is it necessarily the best answer. In March, Essex county council successfully completed the First Avenue multi-modal corridor, which provides fast bus access from the New Hall development to the town centre. It includes a shared cycleway and provision of real-time information, and is an example of the kind of sustainable transport solution that the Government are keen to bring forward. Obviously, if people can be persuaded to transfer from cars to other modes of transport, that will free up existing road capacity for motorists who are still on the network.
I understand that the feasibility of other ideas for congestion-relieving projects has been investigated locally, including the potential reopening of the Central line from Epping to Ongar and an extension to Harlow. I shall be interested to see whether that washes its face economically.
We made clear in the coalition agreement our commitment to a modern, low-carbon transport infrastructure as an essential element of a dynamic and entrepreneurial economy. An effective and efficient low-carbon transport infrastructure can help to support economic development and, at the same time, help to tackle climate change and, indeed, congestion on the road network. Securing that objective in our current economic climate is, of course, a challenge, but I am confident that we can rise to it and foster a transport system that works for the economy, the environment and local communities.
The Government are committed to making the best use of the rail network as part of their commitment to creating a low-carbon economy and improving the travelling experience for passengers. I am pleased to note that National Express East Anglia’s refurbishment of Harlow Town station is near completion. That work was funded by £200,000 from my Department, matched by £200,000 from Essex county council. In addition, the delivery of new rolling stock will allow longer and more frequent trains to run on services for Harlow Town and Harlow Mill.
My hon. Friend will be aware that £8 million was earmarked for the Harlow public transport scheme in the regional funding allocation submission made to the Government in February 2009. Essex county council began developing proposals, but the matter is now on hold while the comprehensive spending review takes place. I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that the review provides communities and the Government with an opportunity for wider reflection on possible alternative options for tackling congestion and addressing other transport issues, and on how we assess the feasibility of transport schemes big and small.
The coalition agreement includes a commitment to make the transport sector greener and more sustainable, including reforming how decisions are made on prioritising transport projects so that the benefits of low-carbon proposals are fully recognised. That work is ongoing in parallel with the spending review, and it is clear that the decisions taken after the spending review is completed will be influenced by work on the appraisal of transport schemes.
The coalition agreement refers to making the transport sector greener. Building on that policy framework and on the success of the first round of the green bus fund, on Monday I announced a second round of the fund worth £15 million, which will support the procurement of another 150 low-carbon buses in England. All transport authorities, including Essex county council, are encouraged to submit a bid. Perhaps my hon. Friend will take that point back to the council, which may be able to get some money for green buses for the area.
The first round of the fund will support the 24 successful winners in purchasing about 350 new low-carbon buses, the first of which will be in operation from this summer. Low-carbon buses use at least 30% less fuel than standard diesel buses with the same passenger capacity and emit around one third less greenhouse gas emissions, yet they account for only 0.2% of the buses on the road in England.
In identifying their needs and priorities, Harlow council and Essex county council should consider the full range of options available and the potential for attracting funding from other than public sector sources. My hon. Friend was right to refer to section 106 agreements, which could indeed provide sources of funding for transport infrastructure improvements. Frankly, at this stage, it is clear that more money secured from the private sector will not only improve the appraisal outcome for individual schemes, but make it less likely that they are lost in the mix. In the current financial climate, I cannot offer assurance about the future time scale for schemes that have been identified, but reviewing the feasibility of options should mean that Harlow is well placed to benefit from available investment when the financial position eases.
In conclusion, it is clear that we face a challenging situation. Tough decisions have already been necessary to tackle the UK’s budget deficit, which the Government have identified as their most urgent priority, and transport must play a full part in the process, as my hon. Friend recognises. Only when the Government’s spending review has been concluded will the Department be in a position to identify what investment can be made. In a period when we face tight financial restraints, it is essential that we take a step back to consider what options are available, and which schemes should be prioritised. By doing that, we will place ourselves in a strong position to make best use of the funds available, and to establish a sound base for the future development of a transport system that can contribute to a low-carbon economy.
As I said, additional road capacity may not be the only answer to congestion. There are real opportunities for communities to reassess whether they can deal with congestion in their locality in ways that contribute to other ambitions such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving the environment and encouraging healthier lifestyles. My hon. Friend has put on the record his strong support for junction improvements to the M11. His Adjournment debate is timely, in that this is a period of reflection and reconsideration for the Department for Transport as to how it wants to proceed. I will ensure that his remarks are drawn to the attention of the Secretary of State and my colleague the Under-Secretary, who has responsibility for motorway issues.
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
I appreciate having been able to secure the debate. I thank the Minister and shadow Minister for their attendance, and am grateful to the other MPs present. A lot of people watching the debate on the Parliament website might not be aware that we all had a late night last night, debating the finer points of the Finance Bill, so I am grateful to hon. Members for turning up. I also thank the National Autistic Society for providing me with statistical information. I remind the Chamber that I have declared an interest in the subject of the debate, as the parent of a child with autism.
I want to discuss the experience of many families with autism; their feedback on the support provided by child and adolescent mental health services, or CAMHS; and problems of communication, misdiagnosis and the training of CAMHS professionals. I will then make the case for more specialist autism support and ask the Minister a number of questions.
Autism is a serious, lifelong, disabling condition that affects how a person communicates with and relates to other people. It is a spectrum disorder that affects each individual differently. Some people with autism can lead independent and fulfilling lives with little support, while others need specialist support throughout their lives.
People with autism have said that, to them, the world is a mass of people, places and events of which they struggle to make sense, and which can cause them considerable anxiety. In particular, understanding and relating to other people and taking part in everyday family and social life may be harder for them, while other people appear to know intuitively how to communicate and interact with each other. Approximately one child in 100 has autism.
Autism is not a mental health problem, but a recent study by Professors Simonoff and Charman found that 71% of children with autism have a co-occurring mental health problem, and 40% have two or more. Such problems include serious conditions such as depression, anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder, which can be debilitating without the right support. Seven out of 10 children with autism develop such conditions, which is far too high a figure. However, with the right support from people who understand autism, such children can have mental health as good as any other child’s. Unfortunately, that support is often unavailable in our society.
Children with autism find it difficult to understand the world around them. They may not understand social cues and expectations or be able to identify patterns and routines in their lives. Help with understanding what to do in different situations or what happens next in a sequence of events, or with coping with changes in routine, can make a big difference, but without such support, children with autism can become anxious or frustrated.
Children with autism are also less likely than other children to have strong social relationships. One Office for National Statistics study found that 42% of children with autism had no friends, compared to 1% of other children. Children with autism may act in unusual ways, or may try to fit in with their peers in socially inappropriate ways. Other children may ridicule or bully them as a result.
Difficulties at school and elsewhere may affect the self-esteem of children with autism. An inability to express their feelings can lead to escalating emotions or leave them unable to deal with experiences such as loss or grief. A supportive educational setting that works for the child, in partnership with mental health services, can be crucial to maintaining emotional well-being and preventing mental health problems from developing, yet the NAS found that 34% of parents said that a delay in accessing the right support at school had had a negative impact on their child’s mental health, and that half of children with autism are not in the kind of school that their parents believe would best suit them. Awareness and consideration among the general public also play a part. Whether in shops and restaurants, on public transport or in the park, children with autism and their parents can face intolerance and lack of understanding that can cause considerable stress and anxiety.
It does not have to be like that. Most of those difficulties can be overcome with the right support for children with autism and their families. Children with autism can live happy, healthy, fulfilled lives, do well at school and reach their full potential. Everyone in society must take some responsibility for making that happen.
I intend to concentrate on the support that children with autism and their families receive when mental health problems develop. According to Government-commissioned research conducted by the university of Durham, one child in every 10 who accesses child and adolescent mental health services has an autism spectrum disorder. That amounts to more than 10,000 children a year. Such children are often extremely vulnerable and in dire need of support that works for them. Another ONS study for the Government found that 25% of children with autism either self-harm or have suicidal thoughts. Their families are desperate for skilled help that can improve their children’s mental health and quality of life.
The NAS has been carrying out in-depth research on the subject since last summer, as problems with CAMHS were being mentioned consistently through its helpline and regional offices. When NAS members were surveyed on the organisation’s campaigning priorities, 99% rated improving CAMHS as either important or very important. The NAS held focus groups with parents and one-to-one interviews with children who had experienced CAMHS, followed by a mass survey of parents. It also visited several CAMHS sites and spoke to professionals and clinical directors.
Through its research, the NAS has found that, sadly, most children with autism and mental health problems are not getting the service that they need from CAMHS. According to the NAS survey, CAMHS fails to improve the mental health of two thirds of children with autism. We must improve on that.
One young woman said of her experiences as a nine-year-old accessing CAMHS that
“when I went in to the meeting I was miserable and depressed. When I came out I was suicidal. I was trying to throw myself out of my windows and hang myself… It took me several years to recover and I didn’t ever want anything to do with them.”
The NAS consistently heard from professionals, parents and children that, despite the huge proportion of children with autism in the system, understanding of autism among professionals is generally poor. Only half of parents feel that CAMHS staff have a good understanding of autism, and fewer than half think that CAMHS staff know how to communicate properly with their child.
To work successfully with a child with autism, a CAMHS professional must have a good understanding of autism. Autism is a communication difficulty, so the professional must generally adapt how they communicate, which requires a good understanding of autism. With respect to some children, that involves speaking more clearly and directly, while others have limited or no verbal communication and may need visual cues to help them to make sense of and communicate their feelings. A child with autism is likely to take longer than other children to trust the professional and communicate openly.
Professionals may also have to adapt their explanations to be less abstract or hypothetical and relate more directly to the specifics of the child’s situation. For example, if a professional works with a child with autism to deal with a certain situation in a classroom setting, the child will usually struggle to generalise, applying the same techniques at home or on the school bus. The professional will have to work through each situation in turn, which is not necessary for other children.
Children with autism can also struggle to explain difficulties that they are not currently experiencing. One child said:
“They need to be there when things happen, because when I went to see the doctor at our local CAMHS I never felt bad and couldn’t talk about what had been hard because it wasn’t happening then”.
When professionals are given the time and training to get to know the child and their family, understand the child’s autism and how they communicate best, and adapt their approach accordingly, outcomes are greatly improved. However, a professional who does not understand autism is unlikely to make such adjustments, leading to a breakdown in communication and making effective intervention extremely difficult.
When a child with autism also has a mental health problem, it is crucial that the right support is provided for the right diagnosis. If a child is wrongly assessed, the wrong support will inevitably follow. Practitioners who do not have a good understanding of autism can misdiagnose children as a result, leading to inappropriate or unsuitable interventions. Without a sound working knowledge of autism, some behaviours that are common in children with autism can easily be interpreted as mental health problems. For example, autism-related personal obsessions, rituals and routines can lead to a false diagnosis of OCD. Peculiarities and fads about what a child eats can come across as an eating disorder. Sleeping difficulties or an aversion to human touch can wrongly lead to suspicions of abuse-related trauma.
The NAS found that some children who had been diagnosed with autism were wrongly undiagnosed by a professional who was convinced that their behaviour was symptomatic of a different condition. Other children’s mental health conditions were overshadowed by their autism, when professionals were unable to distinguish the symptoms of mental health problems from autism-related behaviours: if the CAMHS team focused on autism, mental health issues were ignored. Some parents said that the professionals they met considered conditions such as anxiety disorders inevitable and unavoidable side-effects of autism, rather than as the separate, treatable conditions that they are.
Many of the professionals told the NAS that they wanted more opportunities for professional training and development, so that they and their colleagues would be better able to work with children with autism and mental health problems. Many children with autism receive either inappropriate support or no support at all because the right support simply does not exist in their area. Some CAMHS professionals told the NAS that their waiting lists for children with autism were much longer than those for children without autism, and that, because so few staff had autism training, the vast majority lacked the skills to treat children with autism, so those children were left waiting for the handful of staff with sufficient autism expertise.
Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)
As chair of the all-party group on autism, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate on an immensely important subject. The NAS has done fantastic work raising these issues with colleagues. What training did CAMHS staff receive under the previous Government and does he think it was adequate? If not, what improvements might be made?
Jonathan Reynolds
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention, and I acknowledge her work and expertise in this field. I approach this subject primarily as a parent, so I am happy to say that more needs to be done. I am not making this a party political issue between this Government and the previous one. I am trying to highlight the issue and, I hope, move forward together, across the House.
I wish to identify some good practice relating to the hon. Lady’s question. Dudley primary care trust operates an autism clinic that focuses on diagnosis and assessment, and has the specialist expertise to assess complex autism cases. The clinic takes a “broad apprenticeship” approach to training new staff, which gives them the opportunity to observe specialists and more experienced clinicians assessing children from behind a one-way mirror.
After new staff have watched several assessments, they progress to shadowing colleagues and then to taking the lead with children with autism, with support from a specialist. Finally, they are able to work alone and train new starters themselves. They learn through practical experience, rather than theory. The clinic also shares its expertise more widely and trains external agencies. For instance, it trained a group of specialist autism teachers and key workers to provide social skills training to children, meaning that social skills training could continue once a child had left CAMHS, making it far more effective than if it had been delivered once and then discontinued.
There is clear evidence that a good understanding of autism is vital to delivering an effective service to the high number of children with autism in the CAMHS system. All professionals working in CAMHS must have their training needs relating to autism recognised and addressed. In “Fulfilling and rewarding lives”, the Government’s recently published strategy for adults with autism, there is a commitment for
“all NHS practitioners”
to
“be able to identify potential signs of autism, so they can refer for clinical diagnosis if necessary… but more importantly so they can understand how to adapt their behaviour, and particularly their communication, when a patient either has been diagnosed with autism or displays these signs.”
The same strategy commits the Government to working with the General Medical Council and various professional bodies
“to improve the quality of autism awareness training in their curricula.”
What action do the Government intend to take to ensure that the NHS training objectives made in the autism strategy, “Fulfilling and rewarding lives”, are met, so that all CAMHS practitioners receive some basic training in autism?
Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman has made two distinct points so far: that mental health problems can be masked by autism so that a person who really has mental health problems may be seen only as having autism, and that autistic behaviour can be misdiagnosed as a mental health issue. Surely that is a very tricky situation for any diagnostician to be in.
Jonathan Reynolds
Yes, it is difficult. To be clear, my point is that the prevalence and frequency of co-occurring mental health problems with autism require CAMHS professionals to have specialist training. Without that support, there can be misdiagnosis, which can lead to the situation that the hon. Gentleman referred to.
Does the Minister agree that, given the high proportion of children with autism who access CAMHS, all CAMHS professionals should receive some autism training?
I have explained how a basic knowledge of autism among all CAMHS staff is essential to ensuring that appropriate interventions are delivered to children with autism, but that alone is not enough. Providing mental health support to a child with autism is a specialist skill. Research has found that when an autism specialist has been involved in the support of a child, the outcomes and service satisfaction both improve dramatically.
The NAS found that parents who reported that their child had received support from a professional specialising in autism were twice as likely as those whose children had not to agree that CAMHS had improved their child’s mental health. They were also four times as likely to say that a good understanding of autism by mental health professionals had positively influenced their child’s mental health. However, only two in five parents say that their child has had such support.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. As a parent of an autistic child, does he support the idea that children on the autistic spectrum should be educated in special schools, or are such children better off in mainstream schools?
Jonathan Reynolds
Speaking as a parent, we must recognise that this is a spectrum disorder. Therefore, children with autism are in different situations and have different symptoms, and each requires a response particular to them. Generalisations of the kind that the hon. Gentleman asks about cannot be made. Each parent and professional would, in respect of the support that they had, have to make the decision based on what was best for that particular child.
The professionals who spoke to the NAS stressed the importance of specialist autism expertise when dealing with a child with autism and mental health problems. They explained how in many cases a specific skill-set is required to treat these children and that without that specialist knowledge it can be very difficult to effect any real improvement. They felt that specialist expertise was often required to get a real understanding of how the child’s mental health problems related to their autism, and how they would need to adapt the interventions they provided to take account of the child’s autism.
Although basic autism knowledge will help a professional to communicate better with the child and understand better why the child displays certain behaviours or symptoms, greater expertise is often needed to make a positive difference to the child’s mental health. That is because many therapies and interventions rely on thought processes and communication techniques that do not make sense to children with autism, and only skilful adaptation from a specialist can make them relevant and useful. Children with autism often will not gain any benefit from treatment that is applied in the standard way. Indeed, such treatment can make things worse.
Again, we should recognise good practice where it exists. West Berkshire has a social communication team that provides home and community-based assessment and intervention for young people with complex diagnostic issues or needs that cannot be met by local services. That team works with children with autism and a co-occurring mental health disorder. It takes a multidisciplinary approach, incorporating speech and language therapists, two clinical psychologists and a psychiatrist. The team is also part of a wider multidisciplinary group that provides services for children with autism in west Berkshire. The team recognises the need to adapt therapies to account for autism. Psychologists divide their time between diagnosis and follow-up appointments, and provide behavioural and mental health interventions.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
I have worked in this area for many years, with many children and CAMHS services. I have found across the country that there is massive inconsistency in the quality of CAMHS services, but there is absolute consistency in the lack of those services for children. Quality is variable throughout the country. Although the services that my hon. Friend is talking about are at the upper end of the scale, for many children they simply do not exist.
Jonathan Reynolds
I am tremendously grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. She has great expertise in this and other matters, and in another capacity was responsible for the education system that I went through. I hope that I am not letting her down.
Following on from that, as so many children who access CAMHS have autism, what action will the Government take to ensure that specialist autism support is available to all children with autism and mental health problems? To take up what my hon. Friend has said, I think we would all agree that one matter that always arises when we talk to parents and campaigners is the inconsistency in service delivery across the country. For every example of innovative or positive practice, there are often many examples of children with autism and mental health problems facing inadequate or non-existent provision.
Local commissioners are supposed to plan services based on the needs of the local population, but it seems that in many instances commissioners are unaware of either the number of children with autism and mental health problems in their area, or that those children need specific support from people who understand autism, or both. When commissioners fail to recognise and address the needs of children with autism and mental health problems, those extremely vulnerable children and their families do not receive the support that they need. Commissioning is a local exercise, but there is no doubt that direction from the Government at national level can make a huge difference to what is commissioned.
Previous Government directives—for example, the national indicators, Care Quality Commission inspections and the national service framework for children—have instructed commissioners to prioritise specific areas of CAMHS, such as age-appropriate in-patient wards for teenagers, early intervention services, and services for children with a learning disability. Those directives drive commissioning in those areas, and lead to greater availability of services and greater consistency across the country.
The National Autistic Society has provided strong evidence that CAMHS are failing children with autism, and that results for such children can be greatly improved by improving autism understanding and specialisms within CAMHS. We know that only 10% of CAMHS provide targeted support to children with autism. Surely, there is a strong argument for the Government to prioritise the commissioning of services for children with autism.
Ten thousand children with autism access CAMHS each year. Given that the mental health of two thirds of children with autism is not improved by the support that they receive, that is a huge waste of NHS resources when we can ill afford such a waste. Furthermore, when children with autism receive services that do not work for them, or receive no support because none is available, their problems escalate and become more complex. Not only does that mean that it is much harder for families to cope; it means that, ultimately, those children are much more expensive for the NHS to treat. A relatively short period of appropriate therapy from an autism specialist at an early stage could prevent a child from needing a long stretch in an expensive in-patient unit.
If commissioners were given more guidance and direction to help them to commission the right services for children with autism in the first instance, we could stop wasting money and stop wasting lives. What action will the Government take at national level to ensure that the right services for children with autism are commissioned locally across the country?
Mr Joe Benton (in the Chair)
Order. The debate lasts only one and a half hours. Several hon. Members have indicated that they would like to speak—I will do my best to call them all—so perhaps they will bear that time limit in mind, and that I propose to start the winding-up speeches at 3.40 pm.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) on securing this debate, and providing comprehensive coverage of the vital issues. I also congratulate the National Autistic Society on its “You Need to Know” campaign, because we must make services work better for people with autism. An important aspect of that is to make CAMHS services throughout the country work effectively for children with autism.
I have been contacted by constituents asking me to support the campaign, and I want to begin my brief contribution by describing some of their experiences, because they illustrate all the general points that the National Autistic Society makes. One constituent wrote:
“I first realised there was something wrong with Jon’s development at the age of 2 but was told by my Health Visitor that I was comparing him to his older exceptionally bright brother and that he was fine. I continued over the next 2 years to say that ‘something wasn’t right’ until she eventually agreed to get his hearing checked—he wasn’t interacting with me, seemed in his own little world and wouldn’t even respond to his name. His hearing was fine so she referred him to a speech therapist as he didn’t talk much but after a few weeks of attending, he was discharged saying he was ok. It was only once he’d started school that he was referred”—
to the local hospital—
“But the consultant…decided that Jon must have a form of epilepsy as he would ‘switch off’ in the playground and was oblivious to his surroundings. He did months of tests but they revealed nothing”.
Eventually, Asperger’s syndrome was diagnosed, and my constituent went through years of seeking help. She continued:
“I have no idea what or how to access services which may or may not be available to Jon especially CAMHS. He is 17, 14 stone and 6ft 3, and can have tantrums like a 2 year old—just as sudden and just as violent. I asked my GP if there was some kind of Anger Management course available to him or if he could see a psychologist that could help him. He said I would have to see Jon’s consultant”.
And so it went on. My constituent believes that training is needed across the board for GPs, nurses and psychologists, as well as with direct CAMHS services.
Another constituent who works with children and young people with autism said:
“I feel that many health professionals are unaware of the battles faced by those living with autism. I have often found those from outside agencies quite hostile towards our clients…not realising that they need to be treated differently from neurotypical people. Most of these students have diagnosis in other things such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, ADHD and Pathological Demand Avoidance and attachment disorders.”
They say that it is
“hard to find people with the right expertise to deal with these disorders as they usually have not dealt with people with autism before, leaving these other diagnoses untreated. Add this to the fact that the provision for all of these services usually drop away once a person with autism reaches 19 and are transferred into adult services and it seems we are failing those with a diagnosis”
of autism.
Another constituent said:
“My experience with CAMHS for Sam has been quite negative. We saw an ASD Nurse Specialist from CAMHS for about 6 months. He knew very little about autism, in fact he used to borrow books on autism from parents”.
Another constituent wrote:
“We are consistently told by professionals that they are severely overstretched which from personal experience and talking to other parents leads to very few families receiving adequate support…Maybe if money was invested on these children as they deserve…then they would be more likely to develop into functioning adults who are able to contribute to society in a positive way rather than developing into adults with mental health issues who are totally reliant on the state.”
Those four experiences sum up many of the issues that we are debating.
Autism is not a mental health problem, which makes it difficult for people to access appropriate services. As we have heard from the hon. Gentleman, a large proportion of children with autism have mental health problems, which may develop because of the symptoms that they express and subsequent interaction with other people. They may become more socially isolated at school because of their characteristics. The problem snowballs if the symptoms of autism are not identified early, and the child’s journey does not include trained people who understand its complexities and varieties.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
The debate is rightly concentrating on the inadequacies of CAMHS, but my hon. Friend knows of my interest in teacher training and teachers’ awareness of identifying the characteristics of autism. There is understandable frustration among teachers at the lack of training facilities and opportunities available to them.
Annette Brooke
My hon. Friend and I, along with many others, have worked hard on education, and we are slowly making progress. Today’s debate takes us further afield because we have to get the whole package right for children with autism.
Being mindful of the time, Mr Benton, I would like to touch on two issues. First, I would like to emphasise the need for training for CAMHS professionals, which is vital for all the communication issues mentioned by the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde. The issue is not straightforward, which means that there must be training; there must be flexibility, patience, skill and understanding. The local CAMHS commissioning process is designed to identify and address skills gaps in the local work force. What steps will the Government take to ensure that such gaps are identified and addressed with regard to autism?
I have been involved with the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign, and one area of concern that we have identified is the falling apart of services for disabled children during the transition period. There is a lack of forward planning for the transition, starting about age 14. That is particularly true for children and young people with autism, because they are likely to require ongoing mental health support and to need a smooth changeover between children’s services and those for adults. One issue that I have with children’s trusts is that in some local authorities, there is a great dichotomy between children’s and adult’s services. The best local authorities manage the transition well, but there is the potential for people to fall through the gap. How do the Government intend to ensure that CAMHS and relevant adult services work together to plan appropriate ongoing support for children with a mental health problem and an additional disability, such as autism, and for all young people who require ongoing mental health support?
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) on securing this important debate. Hon. Members who know that I come from north of the border may wonder why I choose to speak on a matter that essentially relates to devolved issues in Scotland. However, in a number of areas, we have to look across the UK, and the National Autistic Society has a facility—Daldorch House—in my constituency, which has become a centre of excellence in the local area and is looked to by a number of local authorities, not just in Scotland but across the UK, for advice on how to approach work with young people with disorders on the autistic spectrum.
I have taken an interest in this subject over many years, and I first came across young people with disorders on the autistic spectrum 30 years ago as a young art therapist. It is fair to say that there have been a number of positive moves both in recognising the range of issues that people face, and in looking at different ways of working with people and the different services required. Despite all those improvements, all of us as elected Members of Parliament will come across people in our constituencies who still have to battle, fight and almost scream from the rooftops to get the services that they need for their children.
One difficulty that people often face—I certainly experienced this as the Minister responsible for education in Scotland when I tried to introduce legislation that should have provided additional support for learning—arises because parents are suspicious of any change, as they feel that it might lessen the rights of young people, rather than give them increased rights to education and other support.
This morning, I received in my e-mail inbox a piece of correspondence from a constituent, which I think sums up how much further we still have to go. The parents were writing about the needs of their teenage son, and the difficulties that they have encountered in finding appropriate educational placements. Their son is already in a school but, according to the parents, that school does not have the necessary skills and experience to cope with him and does not want him there for reasons of health and safety. Another school has been identified in the local authority area, and although it has the skills and expertise, it does not have enough support staff to take the teenager on. The parents are extremely worried about the impact of budget cuts that are already being made in the local authority, with learning support assistants—and others—being made redundant.
As a result, those parents told me that they do not know whether any schooling will be available for their son after the summer break. They have been advised by both schools that they are unlikely to hear anything from the education authority until two days before the start of the new school term. All hon. Members who are aware of the issues surrounding education for young people with disorders on the autistic spectrum will know that that is an unacceptable way to deal with young people who require support and preparation, and for their parents, who need to know what is going to happen.
I am conscious of the time, but I want to say that we must work to identify who these young people are. Every local authority and health board has a responsibility to identify young people with disorders on the autistic spectrum and put in place appropriate support packages. I am concerned that we are not doing enough to recognise that those young people will grow into adults, and at some stage will require not only support to enter further education or employment and all that goes with that, but support with the ageing process. At some stage, there will be a significant number of people approaching their elderly years who are diagnosed as having a disorder on the autistic spectrum. We have not done anything to look at that issue.
It is important that parents receive support. Everyone who has been the parent of a teenager knows that it is a difficult time. I used to joke that my son disappeared into his bedroom aged 14, and came out a better person aged 17. [Hon. Members: “Too early!”] Perhaps I was lucky. For people who have teenagers with disorders on the autistic spectrum, it is a difficult enough period. The added pressures and the support that parents require have not been adequately recognised.
We must pay attention to the number of people who end up in young offenders institutions and prison systems but who probably, had their condition been picked up at an earlier stage, would have been diagnosed as being somewhere on the autistic spectrum. I have also raised that issue in a Scottish context. When people are in a place such as a young offenders institution or prison, we should be able to identify the problem, get them the appropriate help and support, and look specifically at how we can help them in the future.
I am grateful for the opportunity to make a brief contribution to the debate. When the Minister responds, perhaps she will say something about what the Government are planning to do about the transition from education into employment, and about the specific issue of how we can provide support for people as they go through the ageing process and inevitably require a degree of support from the state.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Benton, for giving me my father’s name. Robert Buckland is my true name. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) on an excellent and comprehensive analysis of the report from the National Autistic Society, which many of us have read and found extremely useful.
I declare an interest because, like the hon. Gentleman, I am the parent of a child on the autistic spectrum. My experience, although initially negative, is something that I have decided to try to be positive about, again like the hon. Gentleman. Having had the honour of being elected to this place, I regard it as my duty to raise those experiences, talk about them and do whatever I can to advance the cause of children, young people and adults with autism, the autistic spectrum disorder and Asperger’s syndrome.
The “You Need to Know” campaign touches on an issue that all of us, whether Members of Parliament, parents, professionals or members of the public, may have experienced in recent years, as the extent of the diagnosis of autism has dramatically increased. A group of individuals and their families feel utterly isolated because their experiences have, in the words of the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), resulted in their having to scream and shout from the rooftops, bang on doors and adopt behaviour that they might never have contemplated at the beginning of their journey. I simply ask the eternal question: why does it have to be like this? Why on earth are we still in this position in the second decade of the 21st century? The National Autistic Society was founded nearly 50 years ago. Medical research on, and analysis of, the condition that we now know as autism began as long as 70 years ago. I appreciate that the calls on the public purse are immense, but progress on this issue is too slow, and that is betraying an entire generation of children and young people.
Provision for the transition from youth to adulthood is—I hesitate to say this, but I will press on none the less—nothing short of scandalous. The excellent provision in the education and children’s services sector suddenly vanishes when the young person reaches the magic, or should I say tragic, age of adulthood. Time and again, I have met constituents who are crying out for the help and support that they thoroughly deserve, but who are not getting it. They understand and are conscious of the fact that they are increasingly a burden on our society, but it should not be like that. They should not be a burden on the rest of us; they should be making a valuable and meaningful contribution to our society. We should not forget the talents, idiosyncrasies and amazing abilities of children and young people with such lifelong conditions. I talked about the initially negative experience of learning and understanding that one’s child has autism. As I said at the beginning, however, the positive aspect of such conditions must not be forgotten. These children and young people are not a burden; they add to the mosaic of human experience, and we need to understand and embrace that as we address the questions.
I know that we have touched on this point in the debate, but we should not forget the position of parents and carers of young people with autism. All of us with experience and knowledge of the position of parents and carers will understand that the pressure on them is often intolerable. They often need support and access to mental health services themselves if we are to avoid some appalling scenarios. In one appalling case in south Wales recently—I will not go into it, because it is sub judice—a parent was detained under the Mental Health Act 1983, and a young child lost his life. In the second decade of the 21st century, that is unacceptable in any book.
Hon. Members have eloquently outlined the need for training, and I need not repeat what they have said. Professionals who are outside this place, or who may be present, will say that they are doing all they can with limited resources to deal with the huge variety of problems they are presented with as paediatricians in the national health service or as mental health practitioners. I understand that resources are tight, but as has been said—I make no apology for repeating it—there is huge potential for saving money by intervening early and recognising problems. In these times, when finance is understandably the Government’s paramount consideration, is that not a strong and persuasive argument for supporting provision?
Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)
My hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) mentioned west Berkshire. As a result of the pressure that I and others in my locality have put on our local health board, we now have an integrated ASD network, with speech and language therapists and a whole host of professionals. The hon. Gentleman has hit on the central point: early intervention, with good, sound, solid professionals working together as a team, will make the difference. That can save money in the long term, but, more important, it can alter the quality of life for young people and their families.
Mr Buckland
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that important intervention, which leads to the point that I was about to make. We could spend hours in a chicken-and-egg argument about whether mental health conditions precede autism. Let us not forget that autism is often accompanied by physical disabilities and a range of other conditions, so it is a complex area. Similarly, mental health problems will accompany autism in some families for hereditary or genetic reasons, so it is probably not worth getting into the chicken-and-egg argument.
There is, however, no doubt that a number of young people who present themselves to CAMHS will have had an imperfect or late diagnosis of their condition, and I am afraid that my personal experience in that respect has been rather negative. Experienced paediatricians, whom I will not name, because they are distinguished in their field—one in particular is very distinguished in the medical-legal field—told me that diagnosis at two or three was not possible for autism and ASD. I was a mere layman in those days, and I had not made the journey that I have now, so I accepted what I was told at the time, but I learned later that it was not the case. If that attitude is still prevalent, we have a problem. I do not want to criticise health care professionals, who do a wonderful job, but the point being made by the National Autistic Society is that we need more training, awareness and understanding. That is all we ask for in this debate.
The hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole asked the proper question about transition provisions. We now have the Autism Act 2009, and we await the statutory guidance, which is all-important in fleshing out the bones of the Act. The guidance is key, and we need the Government to give a clear steer in it as to how we manage the transition from childhood to adulthood. That is a key time, but there is, as I have said, a scandalous dislocation in provision, which needs to be dealt with properly.
As the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) so eloquently said, we need to look at key intervention at the earliest stage. A lot of the mental health conditions that accompany autism can be avoided through early intervention, which would mean that there was less pressure on CAMHS and less of a crisis in the key early and mid-teen years.
I know that other hon. Members want to contribute, so I will finish on this point. We have seen some excellent examples of provision, and west Berkshire has been cited. In authorities such as mine in Swindon, the PCT and children’s services are integrated and work very well. They are starting to do the outreach work in CAMHS in the primary sector that will help to identify problems and improve early intervention. However, although that integration is all very well, the question, which the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole posed, is whether there is proper integration with adult services. Therein lies the problem, and more work needs to be done.
I am grateful for being allowed to contribute to the debate. I hope that this will be the first of many contributions that I make on the subject in the years ahead. I thank you for allowing me to speak, Mr Benton.
Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) on securing this important debate and on his well informed and persuasive speech. It is encouraging that the debate is so well attended and that it is informed by the personal experience of parents of children with autism.
Like other hon. Members I have received a number of representations from constituents in support of the National Autistic Society “You Need to Know” campaign. I applaud the work of the society and its supporters in raising the profile of the needs of children and young people with autism and of the importance of ensuring that there is proper diagnosis and support from CAMHS, GPs and other health professionals for the 70% of children with autism who also have mental health issues.
My hon. Friend set out both the range of difficulties that young people face as they go through life and the opportunities that are opened up by the right skilled help. I want to raise a couple of points that I think are important. The first is the interaction between autism and mental health and the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training. An interesting Audit Commission report on re-engaging young people—published today, coincidentally—includes an analysis of the characteristics of young people in the NEET category, and shows for example that whereas young people with either learning difficulties and disabilities or one or more special educational needs statements comprise 10% of all young people, they comprise 23% of young people who are not in education, employment or training for six months or more. It does not give figures specifically on those with autism, but the proportion will be significant—not counting, of course, those who have not been properly diagnosed. That is an important issue.
One of the key recommendations of the Audit Commission report is that local councils, especially with the transfer of 16-19 funding, and all the existing and coming pressures on local budgets, need to understand the nature of their local NEET population and to target their support appropriately. I urge that understanding the extent of autism and mental health difficulties among those young people should be a key part of the analysis and of the supportive action that needs to be provided by health, education and training professionals.
Another point that I would like to stress follows from the comments of the hon. Members for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) and for South Swindon (Mr Buckland): it is the importance of improving and joining up support for young people with autism as they move into adulthood, which is understandably a particularly stressful time for the individuals concerned and their parents. Certainly in my area in Oxford, although there is still some way to go, there have been welcome improvements in support for children and young people in education. Parents have praised to me the work done by Oxford and Cherwell Valley further education college. However, as youngsters become adults it can be an especially uncertain time, when the prospects for work, other meaningful activity, further training, social relationships and housing become problematic, and their parents are getting older. There needs to be a better joined-up approach between health, social services and housing providers so that there is a coherent system of support. As the Audit Commission report recommends, there is a need for better co-ordination between Connexions and Jobcentre Plus, and better handover arrangements as people move forward and look to the possibilities of work.
At a time when local council budgets face huge cuts, it is all the more important that we should speak up for the needs of those young people, which have so often been misunderstood and neglected in the past. They must not be marginalised in the battles for funding ahead. One crucial point from the Audit Commission report is that early intervention and the right early support not only make a huge difference to people’s quality of life, but, as the hon. Member for South Swindon said, can save big sums of public money in the long run. The report illustrates that fact by contrasting the example of a young man with Asperger’s who gets the right support and ends up with a life in work, and one who does not, and ends up with a life on benefits.
I would be grateful if the Minister let us know what guidance and support will be given to local councils, health authorities and others on relevant matters so that young people with autism and their families can face the future with more confidence, and in particular what action the Government will take to ensure that CAMHS and adult mental health teams work together so that there is the right continuing support.
Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
I want to add a few footnotes to the excellent introduction to the debate by the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), who set out the major issues carefully and meticulously. Mental health and autism cropped up emphatically in debates on the Mental Health Act 2007. We were then largely concerned with the treatment of young people, including making treatment specific to them, rather than putting young people into adult accommodation or the like, or giving them adult services when juvenile services would be appropriate. While recognising that that was not always possible, I pay tribute to the campaign by YoungMinds for adolescents to receive adequate, full treatment no matter what their condition or mental health.
I pay tribute to the work done on the 2007 Act by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has gone on to greater things, and to Baroness Browning, the former Member for Tiverton and Honiton, who was a champion of autistic people in this place and who pioneered the work that was taken on by other hands as the basis for the private Member’s Bill that subsequently became the Autism Act 2009. Off the back of the 2007 Act, I carried out my own research on provision for children and adolescents and wrote to every PCT for which I could obtain a name. I wanted to focus particularly on adolescent mental health provision, rather than childhood provision, and on waiting times. I accept the point that all the hon. Members who have spoken have made about the critical nature for families and, obviously, patients, of waiting times—the time between a suspicion that something is wrong and getting a diagnosis and treatment. Those are of course different things—one can get an early diagnosis but be slow in getting treatment.
It is not surprising that that issue is crucial during adolescence, when huge hormonal, physiological, social and personality changes are happening. That is a stage in life when, often, psychotic and other disturbances first become evident. One of the more depressing passages included in the Library debate pack deals with that fact. It states:
“Mental illnesses are the chronic diseases of young people.”
It continues:
“It is a curious paradox that better physical health in young people has been accompanied by steadily worsening mental health.”
That is indeed what the national statistics show, and it is why early intervention matters, because if it is successful and efficacious it means someone does not have a life of ongoing suffering and disturbances.
My inquiries of the various PCTs unsurprisingly produced patchy results, in accordance with the well-documented contributions made by other hon. Members. There was a general variation in standards, which I think people might expect, and which has been vouched for today, but what disturbed me more was the lack of clarity about who was responsible for the standards. My inquiries were passed from PCT to CAMHS and back. People did not seem clear about who would carry the can if provision were less than adequate. The implication is that for people using the services no one is ultimately responsible; that is the nagging feeling.
Another feature that cropped up in my research was an apparent lack of dedicated facilities and expertise in many places, and a recognition that although in some places there were adequate facilities for children, facilities for adolescents were wholly inadequate. There is no excuse for that state of affairs in relation to Asperger’s syndrome and the autistic spectrum, because what is required for progress is very clear. Certainly, early diagnosis is required, but the National Audit Office report that I have seen—which I think Baroness Browning did something to trigger—clearly stated that specialist autism teams were the way forward, coupled with good integration, and so on. That is all known, but hon. Members have reported that across the country none of it has been perfectly accomplished.
May I make a personal constituency point? I increasingly receive complaints from parents of children who are mildly autistic but are now being excluded from services because needs must—there are pressures on local authority resources, as the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) illustrated. That is profoundly depressing, because the result is that people who could progress to independence and, in later life, manage far better for themselves and not become problems as adults are not making progress at the key point at which they could be making the progress necessary to become independent of parents and institutions.
My conclusion and, I think, the conclusion of the whole debate is that we are confronted with a situation in which there is a known complaint, a known solution, enormous support from the voluntary sector and clarity about what is required, but on the statutory side there is a somewhat ham-fisted response. Getting that ham-fisted response removed and replaced with something better is the thrust of the debate.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
It is a great pleasure and privilege to contribute briefly to the debate. I congratulate the hon. Members for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) and for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) on making contributions based on their personal and family experience of this matter. Many of us have not had that experience and our comments come from a different level of understanding. However, the message that I get from the debate is that given the level of understanding and competence that there is for this condition, there should be much better training for the professionals involved and much better working together and co-ordination between those professionals—between people in the medical profession, between people in education and between people in social services.
Some of the things that I shall say may seem a little cold and uncaring, but although the diagnosis of autism and the triad of impairments—the three conditions that lead to a classical diagnosis of autism—have been established, we have since realised that this is a spectrum condition. Every child, every young person—and every adult, for that matter—is an individual and their needs are different.
I first became aware of this issue a long time ago, when I became a governor of a special school at about the time that Baroness Warnock produced her report that changed our attitude to the education of children with special needs. The idea was that every child should have the support appropriate to them. We have moved on a long way: at that time, autism was hardly ever talked about, and I did not really have an understanding of it. Our knowledge has moved on a lot and improved, and professionals have a much better opportunity to use it. My point this afternoon is that we still need to do more fundamental research on the condition. What causes it? Is there a genetic element to it? Is there an environmental element? Is there a social element? At the moment, we just do not have the necessary understanding of those issues, and unless we can understand them, the way we intervene will not be as effective as it should be.
The other day, I was at the Hay festival, which is in my constituency—if anyone wants to attend, they will be very welcome—at an event with Simon Baron-Cohen, who is a researcher at Cambridge university. He was looking at personality disorders and then autism. Obviously, autism is not a personality disorder, but the issue of empathy is relevant. People with personality disorders are unable to relate to other people, and there is an element within autism of finding it difficult to understand the nature of a person’s response. The good news was that that gentleman, doing his research, felt that there were ways in which the research could be used to ensure that interventions and the way autism is treated are more successfully dealt with and lead to great improvements in the quality of people’s lives.
My message to the Minister is therefore: please, in all this, do not forget the fundamental research that is essential if we are to make progress. Yes, make use of the knowledge that we have, but do not think that that knowledge is comprehensive, because it can be improved and then the lives of people with this condition will be improved as well.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) for securing the debate, which has been excellent. I do not disagree with anything that I have heard, nor do I intend to repeat any of it. I shall concentrate on the areas that I have the most concerns about.
We have come a long way in recent years and there have been improvements, particularly in education, but we must not be complacent and there is still a long way to go. The two areas that I have the greatest concern about are transition, which I shall come on to, and diagnosis. This refers back to the issues of child and adolescent mental health services. In my experience, far too many children still receive a diagnosis that is less related to their symptoms and difficulties than to who they are and where they live. I still see too many cases in which clinicians go down the route of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or EBD—emotional and behavioural difficulties—first, because of the family and where they live. That means that those children and their families do not gain access to the diagnosis, services and provision that they need. That is one concern, and it relates to what I said in an intervention about the quality and consistency of CAMHS across the country. If people look at the issue geographically—on a map, as I have done—they will see hot spots of certain diagnoses, and sometimes around certain clinicians. Those issues need to be addressed.
Everything that I have heard today about transition, particularly transition in the early years, is absolutely correct. If we get that right and provide access to the right services—good, well co-ordinated provision—the mental health of those children and their families will be much improved, outcomes will be much improved and we will save money in the long run. Transition in the early years is crucial and will save us money in a time of austerity.
The transition at the other end is also an issue. A lot of emphasis has been placed on that in recent years, but in my experience that has been about the process—the right forms filled in by the right people, and the right people being at the right meetings at the right time. For the families, the process can be fabulous, but if there is nothing to transition on to, it is a disaster for them.
When I was in my former role in education, we recognised that there was almost a time bomb here. Children are going through the education services and coming up to the adult services, but those services are not there for them. Will the Minister consider the issues of diagnosis and quality of provision across the country to ensure that a child’s diagnosis is right and not based on the family’s circumstances or socio-economic grouping? Will she also consider transition in relation to the quality of provision, not just the processes, forms and meetings?
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) for the speed with which they spoke. I intended to make a bigger contribution about some of the good precedents and good practice that we have experienced in Wales, in the hope that the Minister might have a look at that, but I shall just highlight the launch on 28 June by the Welsh Assembly Government of their new child and adolescent mental health strategy and the work commissioned by the Assembly Government from Professor Sue Leekam of the Wales Autism Research Centre. It is undertaking evaluation of the assessment and diagnosis of children with disorders on the autistic spectrum, which will analyse and strategically examine CAMHS provision and many of the inadequacies of that, particularly in professional training, which we have heard about from hon. Members.
I wish to highlight also the work being undertaken by the Betsi Cadwaladr university health board, which operates in north Wales, to develop a register for children and young people with autism. I applaud what the hon. Member for North West Durham said about the lottery of service provision, but the strong message is that we must identify the extent of the challenges that face the nation. The problem was not addressed by previous Governments; I hope that it will be addressed by this one.
I end with a brief anecdote. We have heard some powerful stories this afternoon. My earlier intervention about teacher training was deliberate. I spent 12 years in the classroom and I always realised that, even as a professional, I was sometimes failing the children in my care. The problem of the little girl who used to wander around the playground with no friends should have been addressed, but teachers are not often equipped to do so. The fact was that when we told her, “Don’t touch the hot boiler in the corner of the room,” we knew that she would probably end up touching it and burn herself. I should have been equipped to deal with the many problems that that girl presented.
However, there are huge opportunities, which is a point that was made strongly by the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) and others. If we create the right environment—a nurturing, caring and enriching environment—in our classrooms and in our health service provision, people on the autistic spectrum will be able to make a huge and valuable contribution to society.
I am sorry for speaking so quickly, Mr Benton, but thank you for allowing me to contribute.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Benton, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) on securing an important debate to which many hon. Members have contributed.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and to those parents—we heard about them again today, and our debate has been enriched—who have campaigned for vital improvements to services. As of yesterday, 136 Members from all parties, including my hon. Friend and, I expect, others here today, had signed early-day motion 160, which highlights the fact that 10,000 children with autism use child and adolescent mental health services every year. It also highlights a survey showing that using such services will not improve the mental health of two thirds of those children. As my hon. Friend said, the children are not getting the support that they need.
Children with autism are particularly susceptible to developing mental health problems, and many Members mentioned the fact that there is a range of reasons for that. Such children may experience social isolation, and 70% of children with autism struggle to make and keep friends, compared to 10% of other children. Children and young people with autism also find it challenging or impossible to express how they are feeling. The struggle to communicate causes frustration and anger, which can lead to mental health problems.
With the right support given at the right time, many of those problems can be prevented. Given that one child in 10 who accesses child and adolescent mental health services has autism, that should be a priority for the professionals in that service. However, only just over half the parents surveyed by the National Autistic Society thought that staff working in CAMHS had a good understanding of autism. Many of the professionals to whom the society spoke felt strongly that there were not enough training opportunities—many hon. Members touched on that point. Professionals need to develop their clinical expertise in order to work with children with autism and mental health problems. There is good experience of that happening up and down the country.
The high number of children with autism, coupled with the lack of skilled professionals, leads to many children being seen by professionals who are unable to meet their needs or simply being turned away. I have some questions for the Minister; I may be repeating some of them, but it will not hurt to do so. Will the Government ensure that all child and adolescent mental health professionals are provided at least with basic autism training, so that they can meet their duties to make “reasonable adjustments” under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and provide services that meet children’s needs? How will the Government ensure that specialist autism support is available within CAMHS?
As we have heard, autism is a complex disability. When mental health problems arise in children with autism, they are harder to recognise, evaluate and treat. Professionals need a good working knowledge of autism to do those things. Providing mental health support to children with autism is a specialist skill, and research conducted by the National Autistic Society found that if an autism specialist is involved in the support of such children, outcomes and service satisfaction improve dramatically. Indeed, those parents whose children had received support from a specialist in autism were twice as likely as those whose children had not to agree that the child and adolescent mental health service had improved their child’s mental health. Sadly, coverage is not good, and only two in five parents say that their child has had such support.
Specialist autism support is vital. We need to adapt therapies and interventions so that they are effective. Skilful adaptations will obviously make them relevant and useful to children with autism. Many Members spoke of the importance of early intervention. Autism specialists can also help other professionals to develop their skills, and they should share their experience with schools and social services.
The subject of commissioning was mentioned by a number of Members. It is particularly important, given the radical changes that the Government have indicated that they wish to make to local commissioning. The way services are commissioned locally for children with autism and mental health problems is clearly important.
Commissioners obviously need to know how many children with autism live in their area, how many of those children also have mental health problems and how local services are working. They need expert advice on what is needed to deliver the right mental health services. They then need to use those data to plan the right services for the children. If the commissioning changes that have been signalled are to be made, it is important to take those factors on board.
Commissioning must also take account of CAMHS waiting times, rates of return and family outcomes for children with autism. Specific local pathways should be developed for the mental health support of children with autism. Parents and children affected should be involved in the commissioning process, together with front-line professionals.
The Labour Government introduced a vital new duty, which came into force in April 2010. Children’s trusts now have to plan to meet the needs of children with special needs and disabilities. That represents a significant step forward. What action will the Government take to build on Labour’s work, to ensure that services are planned and commissioned at the local level so that every child with autism and mental health problems starts to get the support they need? How will the Government ensure that parents and young people are involved in the development of services to ensure that they meet local needs?
We know that the number of children with learning disabilities and of children with autism who use such services are similar. It is clear from improvements to services for children with learning disabilities achieved under Labour that having the right measures in place does make a difference, which was mentioned during the debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde said, the Labour Government achieved improvements to services for children with learning disabilities through the 2004 national service framework. That highlighted the importance of providing adequate child and adolescent mental health services for children and young people with learning disabilities.
Specialist training, the adequate resourcing of learning disability specialist support and access to specialist in-patient support were also recommended. As we heard, a specific indicator was recommended for local authorities to rate themselves on their provision. As a result, specialist support for children with learning disabilities more than doubled between 2005 and 2007. In 2010, two thirds of primary care trusts rated themselves four out of four for their provision of CAMHS for children with learning disabilities. Based on the improvements for children with learning disabilities made under Labour, I urge the Government to commit themselves to achieving the same benefits in the coming months and years for children and young people with autism.
I shall speak briefly about early intervention. As was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith), putting support in place early makes a big difference in the long run. It can help to prevent difficulties from escalating into mental health problems. Over recent years, there has been a strong focus on improving support for children with autism and improving the emotional well-being of children with autism in schools. I hope that that continues.
The autism inclusion development programme has helped to improve teacher training. The social and emotional aspects of learning programme has helped pupils at school to gain emotional and social skills, and has helped them with self-awareness and managing their emotions. The early support programme has helped families of disabled children under the age of five to get co-ordinated support and information early, so that problems do not escalate.
Hon. Members touched on the fact that Labour initiatives, such as the Every Child Matters agenda, also helped to ensure that agencies work together, which is important in providing support to our most vulnerable children. Parents at the Every Disabled Child Matters reception in the House yesterday wanted assurances from the Minister that schools would continue with the initiative. They felt that they had created the initiative, and that it was not just a Government thing.
Government leadership over recent years has made a significant difference to aspects of the mental health system for children. In today’s debate, we are asking for similar action for this other group of children. We must continue to prioritise children and young people with autism because they are among some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
The Minister with responsibility for care services, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr Burstow), spoke about the campaign to make good mental health for children with autism a reality:
“There is no doubt that these changes can happen, where there is a will on the ground to make them happen.”
I hope the Minister confirms that the Government have that will, as many hon. Members from all parts of the House have shown that they have in the debate today.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anne Milton)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) on securing both this debate and his seat. The subject is of huge importance to him, and he brought with him his invaluable personal experience, as indeed did the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland). Those personal experiences are crucial to the debate, as are the contributions from those who are experienced in the provision of services. This debate is vital, and I will ensure that all the representations that have been made today are fed back into the policy process. Time is short, but I will just say to the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), who speaks for the Opposition, that some of us were fortunate enough to have listened to and participated in debates on the Autism Act 2009, promoted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), as it made its passage through the previous Parliament. At the time, there was an increasing dislike of and disillusionment with politicians, so I mention that measure because it showed this place in its very best light. It was about cross-party working and building a consensus. It was a genuine attempt by Members from all parts of the House to work together to improve the lives of others—in this instance it was the lives of those with autism. I pay tribute to Angela Browning, the former Member for Tiverton and Honiton, who was sometimes a lone voice calling for services for people with autism. She, too, brought her own personal experiences to the debate thereby helping to raise us to the next level.
I echo the comments made by the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr Burstow), at the recent National Autistic Society reception. He said that the standards of care highlighted by the society in its “You Need to Know” report are unacceptable. He was grateful to the society—as indeed we all are—for its tireless campaigning, and was struck by the particular contribution of the young campaigners group. I am sure that he would pay tribute to them were he able to be here today.
The coalition’s programme for government makes it clear that we are committed to supporting the most vulnerable and to tackling health inequalities. There is strong consensus on what needs to be done to improve the emotional well-being and mental health of children and young people. More work is needed on prevention, early diagnosis and early intervention. Those are the key things that are needed by people with autism and mental health problems. We need better integrated working and more evidence-based approaches. The work force must be developed, and, crucially, we must do more to tackle stigma for people not only with autism but with mental ill health.
The National Advisory Council for Children’s Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing report earlier this year reinforced the scale of that challenge. It called for action to strengthen leadership, build a confident and skilled work force, improve commissioning and ensure real participation by children and young people in service development. For me, commissioning is a vital part of that. It has never been done that well, but there is a general acceptance of the fact that if we improve commissioning, the services will then follow. As has been mentioned during this debate, there are examples of best practice, which we need to be able to transport to other areas. We need to consider all those issues to get the services that we want.
The Government have also promised to deliver measures in “Fulfilling and rewarding lives: the strategy for adults with autism in England”. There are many areas in which improvement in adult autism services will yield benefits for children’s services, such as developing local autism teams, improving access to diagnosis, better planning and better commissioning of services. As several hon. Members have said, raising awareness of the issue and improving skills in the work force should go much wider than just those working in the autism field, and should include teachers and sports clubs and all those who are involved with young people.
Our focus must be on improving the quality of services that we provide to all children. We must ensure that no one suffers the indignities and difficulties that are sadly all too common. I am referring to the frightened young person who is restrained by police because crisis services were not available; the child who feels isolated and frustrated, only to find that health care staff are not trained to help or able to understand them; the parents who desperately want to see an improvement but feel let down by services that do not treat their children as people with individual needs; and parents who are desperate, isolated and at the end of their tether. That is why it is so important to improve the standard of care across the board.
We must plan and build on the work that has been done on integrating services so that local partnerships can work together to deliver what we want. It will require incredible commitment from local NHS providers to engage with the work force to resolve difficult issues such as training and service design. Improving the reach and quality of child and adolescent mental health care means looking carefully at the different services that make up the whole picture. I am referring to universal services that play a pivotal role in promotion for all children and young people; targeted services that provide early interventions for vulnerable children and young people; and specialist services, which the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde mentioned, for young people with complex, severe or persistent needs.
Anne Milton
I am sorry, there is no time. I already have far too many questions to answer. If hon. Members feel that their questions have not be answered or addressed, I urge them to write to me and I will make sure that we respond.
Barbara Keeley
When there have been a great number of questions, it is more usual for the Minister to agree to write to us rather than expect us to write to her.
Anne Milton
I am sorry for that error. I thought that I said that I would write. I thank the hon. Lady for raising that.
I have only two minutes left. The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde said that staff working in child and adolescent mental health services should have the necessary values, competences and skills. That is vital. The coalition document made it clear that we are committed to supporting the most vulnerable and to tackling health inequalities, and we will make more announcements about public health. Appropriate tier 4 child and adolescent mental health services should be available to all children who require them, including children with autism. There are a number of other vital issues, including diagnosis and transition. I am proud of my own field, which was highlighted by the previous Government, for some of the things that they achieved on transition. I should also like to pay tribute to Sara Truman, who has done a huge amount of work with the National Autistic Society.
We have not touched on the health outcomes for people with autism and mental health problems, but if we look at them we will find that they are truly shocking. Parents and carers carry a huge burden. There are many issues that we have not covered, including respite and research. We still do not understand why people get autism. We also need to look at those children who are not yet diagnosed. There are significant challenges that will require real commitment and buy-in from the staff who work hard in CAMHS across the country, but I am greatly encouraged by the number of contributions here today and by the amount of expertise that is sitting here. There is a role for Government to play. I hope that hon. Members appreciate that we cannot provide all the answers—
Court Closures (Yorkshire)
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Benton, for allowing me my first Westminster Hall debate on an issue that is of particular importance to my constituents in Goole.
Before I go any further, I just want to say that I understand many of the pressures on Her Majesty’s Courts Service, particularly given the fact that in the last three years of the previous Government, magistrates services received a 7.5% funding cut in the—[Interruption.]
Mr Joe Benton (in the Chair)
Order. Would Members leave Westminster Hall quietly, please?
Andrew Percy
As I was saying, Mr Benton, there was a 7.5% cut in magistrates budgets, which occurred for each of the three years before the general election. There is also a massive backlog in refurbishment and capital projects, which built up in HMCS in the previous few years. In Goole, that backlog stands at £80,000. I could make some comments about the fact that it was a shame that in the run-up to the general election, when Labour Ministers were heading to my constituency with all sorts of blank cheques, they did not offer a blank cheque on court services.
I want to confine most of my comments this afternoon to the proposal to deal with the court at Goole. As I have made clear to the Speaker’s Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) will, with your permission, Mr Benton, take some of my allotted time to speak about the closures in Selby. There is a proposal to close the county court in Goole and to merge the local justice areas, but that proposal is less controversial, and indeed it is something that the magistrates in the Goole area do not oppose.
There are a number of reasons why the magistrates service in Goole should continue. Those reasons relate to the efficiency of the court, which was shown by a review just 10 years ago, and to the cost implications for my constituents in the Goole area if the court should close. Goole magistrates court is administered within the Humber and South Yorkshire region, which consists of the courts in the East Riding of Yorkshire, northern Lincolnshire and south Yorkshire. There is evidence that the throughput of work at Goole is the second most efficient in the Humber and South Yorkshire grouping of magistrates courts. There is a very low ineffective trial rate at Goole, and trials at Goole are listed much more quickly than in larger courts. The proposal is to move the work from Goole to a much larger court at Beverley. Breaches of court orders can be dealt with very quickly at Goole. My own personal view—and what I hoped was the view of the new Government—is that bigger is not always better when it comes to the delivery of services.
The courts building at Goole is fully compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which is made clear in the consultation document about the proposed closure. There is a peppercorn rent for the facilities in Goole, and there is a 125-year lease for the building that will not expire until 2130, so there will be no problems in relation to those running costs in the next few years. There is also a modern prison and vulnerable witness link in place, and the court building itself is situated right next to the police station, with adjoining access to modern and recently refurbished cells.
The utilisation rate in the two courts at Goole would be at 80% but for the fact that a number of meetings and other hearings are held in court two. That utilisation rate compares with what we are told in the consultation document is a relatively low utilisation rate of the courts at Beverley. I would like an assurance from the Minister that the court at Goole is not being closed simply to solve that under-utilisation problem.
Of course, there is also a huge issue relating to localism. As a coalition, we are committed to a localism agenda and I am increasingly concerned that, if we should lose the court in Goole along with the magistrates court in Selby, we will effectively be left with a justice “black hole” in our part of the country. Our court in Goole deals with a number of family matters, which are best dealt with locally. As I said a few moments ago, the courthouse in Goole is situated next to the local police station, which itself was recently renovated at a cost of £2 million. The cells at the police station were also recently refurbished, at a substantial cost to the local police authority.
A review was undertaken of the court services in the East Riding of Yorkshire about 10 years ago. At that time, our county lost the magistrates courts at Howden, Pocklington, Brough, Driffield and Withernsea. We were left with the court in Beverley—anyone who knows the geography of the East Riding of Yorkshire, as I hope hon. Members do, will know that Beverley is roughly in the centre of the East Riding—and courts at the two extremes of the East Riding. One is in the east at Bridlington and the other is in Goole, in the western part of the East Riding. Of course, we also have the magistrates court in the large city of Hull.
Little has changed in Goole or indeed in much of the East Riding since that review was undertaken, except that we have had an influx of immigration from eastern Europe, which—I must be careful with my wording—has presented the courts with certain issues. I would suggest that that actually strengthens the case in favour of retaining our court in Goole. After the review 10 years ago, the rural parts of the East Riding were left with courts at Beverley, Bridlington and Goole. The arguments that are being used to close the court at Goole now are exactly the same arguments that could be used in relation to the court at Bridlington, although there are no proposals to change what is happening there—and I am not suggesting that we should save the court at Goole and sacrifice the court at Bridlington. There is a strong case to keep both courts.
The consultation document makes it very clear that the court in Goole is administered from Beverley and that legal advisers travel from Beverley to attend the court in Goole. The same administrative unit also covers the magistrates courts in Beverley and Bridlington. We in the Goole area are therefore a little confused as to why the area is being treated differently from Bridlington, which is 22.5 miles away from Beverley, compared to Goole, which is 28 miles away from Beverley.
If the closure of the court at Goole goes ahead, there will be massive cost issues. Goole is one of the most deprived areas in the East Riding, and on certain measures it is among the 10 most deprived areas in England. A high proportion of our residents are on low incomes or in receipt of benefits, so I have a huge concern about the transport costs involved in getting to Goole from Beverley if the closure goes ahead. There are not just the costs of witnesses to consider, but the costs of family members who may wish to go and support people in court.
There are no direct buses to Beverley from Goole. To get to Beverley from Goole, someone would have to take a public bus to Hull, in the process almost going past the magistrates court in Hull, before changing bus to continue the journey up to Beverley. That journey would be close to 40 miles in total, so the distance of 28 miles that was quoted in the consultation document only applies to those who have access to a vehicle. There is a train service from Goole to Beverley but, equally bizarrely, the train service, too, passes through Hull before going on to Beverley. The cost of a return train journey is £11.90 and travelling by bus from Goole to Beverley would take a minimum of 1 hour and 25 minutes, involving the change in Hull that I have just mentioned, so there would be huge costs for anybody who wants to travel to Beverley from Goole via public transport. Furthermore, Beverley has some of the highest parking charges in the East Riding for anybody who wished to drive there.
We must also consider the historical value of the court building at Goole. We are trying to build up awareness of the history and heritage of the town. The court building is a late Victorian building, and one of the oldest buildings in Goole. Although its historical value may not be much of an argument in the rationalisation of HMCS, its closure would have a huge impact on the regeneration of Goole. The building is particularly beautiful, and we are concerned about what would happen to it should we lose the court.
I would like the Minister to tell us whether we can have a full breakdown of the running costs in 2009-10 of the court at Goole. Some broad figures are given in the consultation document, none of which tell us a great deal. I want to know how those running costs were quantified and how they compare with the running costs of the court at Bridlington. Can the Minister also give us an assessment of the likely costs for justices of the peace and witnesses to travel to Beverley, and say what consideration has been given to diversifying work at Goole? I am not in favour of someone being against something unless they have other solutions. Has any work been undertaken on bringing other services into the court at Goole, such as the tribunal service?
The new coalition Government have made a commitment to localism. I hope that in the 10 minutes in which I have spoken, I have made a strong case for why we in the Goole area, on the edge of the East Riding, deserve to be treated a little differently in the closure programme. The East Riding is the biggest unitary authority in the country and the decisions made 10 years ago were made for very sensible reasons: to maintain one service in the centre and two on the extremes either side of the East Riding. With your permission, Mr Benton, I shall hand over to my hon. Friend and colleague the Member for Selby and Ainsty, who will no doubt wish to speak about the issues affecting Selby.
Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) for securing this Westminster Hall debate. Although I understand that the consultation is ongoing, I would like to use this opportunity to put forward a case for retaining Selby magistrates court.
Both Selby and Goole magistrates courts are in vital positions, and the closure of either or both presents a real risk of what my hon. Friend referred to as a justice black hole in our local area. If Selby magistrates court is closed, the nearest courthouse for my constituents is York, which will involve defendants and witnesses leaving the constituency to travel there. For my constituents in the southern district of Selby and Ainsty, that is a particularly long journey. It is incredibly inconvenient to get to York using public transport, and it would be almost impossible to arrive on time for an early morning hearing. From the south of my constituency—below the M62—there is no direct access to buses or trains to York and constituents would instead have to go via Selby or Leeds to travel to York magistrates court.
The Magistrates Association has specified that everyone should be able to reach their local magistrates court within an hour. For people in the south of my constituency, that will not be possible if the court in Selby is closed. I have been informed by the area director of Her Majesty’s Courts Service in north and west Yorkshire that no HMCS staff are currently based at Selby magistrates court, and that it is now seen as a satellite court. However, it would be preferable for court staff to travel from York to work, rather than to expect, hope and assume that witnesses and defendants, particularly those from the south of my constituency, will make the extra journey to York magistrates court.
The rolling monthly average percentage of courtroom utilisation in Selby magistrates court was 60.6% in the financial year 2009-10, which is just below the national average of 64%. Courtroom utilisation is defined as the time a courtroom is used, against the hours that it is available for use. Given that the usage of Selby magistrates court is aligned with the national average, it does not make much sense that it is closed instead of other magistrates courts, such as those in Blandford, Bournemouth, Poole, Weymouth and Wimborne in Dorset. The overall reduction in work load in those courts led to a utilisation rate in Dorset in 2009-10 of just 38.8%, which is almost half that of Selby. The situation is similar in Lincolnshire; there are courts in Boston, Grantham, Lincoln, Skegness, and Spalding, and courtroom utilisation is just 37.2%.
Over the past 18 months, Selby magistrates court has actually transferred certain motoring and trading standards cases to, among other places, Northallerton magistrates court. Those courts were under threat of closure because of lack of work. Selby came under the threat of closure in 2003, but—as is the case now—the proposal came up against strong opposition from the Selby bench, and a casting vote at the North Yorkshire magistrates court committee decided the matter.
Is the Minister aware that after securing the future of Selby magistrates court in 2003, substantial improvement and remedial work was carried out on the courthouse, which cost the taxpayer around £821,000? It was reopened in 2008 following that refurbishment. The overhaul included facilities for the disabled, which are not provided in York. Selby is therefore the designated court for York’s disabled population. We also have vulnerable witness capabilities at Selby, such as a specialist court for hearing domestic violence cases, and the technology to view CCTV evidence and to use video links for vulnerable witnesses. None of those facilities is provided at York magistrates court.
By bringing York’s services up to the same standard as those in Selby the Minister would be creating more expense for the taxpayer. It is estimated that an investment of £170,000 would be needed to provide the facilities required under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, and which are currently available at Selby. The dock in court two at York would also need refurbishment if the decision to close Selby went ahead.
There is a case for retaining Selby magistrates court in light of the £821,000 recently spent and the special facilities it offers. I fully appreciate the dire financial legacy that the previous Government have left behind and the need to make cost savings, but I would find it difficult to justify closure of a service that has recently cost the taxpayer almost £1 million. Selling off the whole building would not realise anywhere near that sum. I urge the Minister to take those points into account during his consultation.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)
I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) and for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) for contributing to the debate. I compliment them on the quality and sincerity of their defence of their local courts.
I shall set out the Government’s position on the court reform proposals, and provide some details about the courts that currently sit in Goole and Selby. I shall also explain the reasoning behind the inclusion of those courts on the list of possible closures.
In my new role, I have taken the opportunity to visit courts and meet the staff, professional judiciary and magistrates who work hard to deliver justice in communities throughout England and Wales. I have been very impressed by all that I have seen so far. It is evident that courts are run by a dedicated partnership of Her Majesty’s Courts Service staff and judiciary, and I am personally committed to continuing to support their contribution to justice.
What has also been clear in my first few weeks in office is the country’s economic position, and the immediate need to take action to address the structural deficit. Following the emergency Budget, my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor outlined our plans to consult on the closure of a number of courts, as well as to seek wider views on how court services could be modernised. That is one strand of the Ministry of Justice’s plans to look critically and holistically at how we deliver justice, and to think about how we continue to deliver those critical services in the future. We have also announced plans to consider sentencing and legal aid.
The decision to consult on the closure of courts was not taken lightly or in isolation. We know we cannot deliver the quality of facilities the public rightly expect and deserve, because we are working out of too many courts. Our low utilisation rate—only 65% across England and Wales—shows that we do not need the number of courts we currently have. Recent improvements in transport and communication links mean that people can travel further in less time if they need to. More can be done to access justice online and via the telephone, which reduces the circumstances in which a visit to court would be necessary.
We need some fresh thinking about the wider issue of access to local justice. We need to consider whether past ideas about needing a court in every town are relevant today or whether—as with almost every other aspect of modern life—things can be done differently, and innovation and technology can be embraced to meet the needs of modern society and ensure better access to justice.
We are already doing a lot to improve the service experienced by witnesses, defendants and other court users. We have increased access to online and telephone services. Currently 70% of money claims, and the vast majority of possession actions are issued centrally via electronic channels. People can pay fines online for driving infringements, or for not paying their TV licence on time. They can also pay off debts or court fees online using a wide variety of methods. We are improving the availability of information provided on the web and over the telephone from dedicated information centres. That will allow front-line staff to focus on people who need to see a judge. We are increasing the use of video link technology between prisons and courts, and piloting video links between police stations and courts.
Whenever possible, we need to support people to explore a variety of dispute resolution routes for family and civil cases. Such routes are better for those involved in cases that can be mediated, as they can avoid unpleasant prolonged and expensive litigation. Such a situation is also better for the courts because it should reduce court time and overall costs.
We are exploring how local communities can support those charged with a minor offence before their criminality escalates. We are working closely with local support agencies and networks to ensure that appropriate help is available for people with multiple underlying problems that drive their offending behaviour.
The court reform consultation seeks views on the proposed closure of 103 magistrates courts and 54 county courts that are underused and have inadequate facilities. It began on 23 June and will run until 15 September. All responses will be fully considered before decisions are made. The consultation will set out a sustainable arrangement of court services across England and Wales to meet the needs of local communities and will allow us to deliver services in the most efficient way. The proposals would achieve savings of £15.3 million a year in running costs and enable us to avoid a maintenance backlog costing £21.5 million. A further assessment will be necessary of the savings that could be achieved and the value that could be released from disposal of the properties. However, I appreciate that those are generalities.
My hon. Friends asked about the two magistrates courts in their constituencies. I have listened to what they have said and will continue to listen to what they and others say during the consultation. The Lord Chancellor’s decision on whether to close Goole and Selby magistrates courts will not be easy; nor will his decisions on the other courts listed in the consultation. Each decision is balanced against several factors, including utilisation, maintenance costs and proximity to other courts. My hon. Friends’ points are valid, but we have to look at each court’s work load in the context of local justice across each area.
Goole magistrates court has a low utilisation rate, as it sits for less than a third of the available time. It sits in a local criminal justice board area whose overall utilisation rate is low, which we consider does not deliver value for money to taxpayers. Given that we know that there is so little demand for a magistrates court in Goole, I find the argument for investing considerable public spending there on backlog maintenance work of around £80,000 difficult to make, especially as Beverley, where the work would move, is only 28 miles away and has ample capacity to take on the additional work.
With regard to the point my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole made about distance, we consider a one-hour journey by public transport acceptable for travel to court. Not many people are frequent users of magistrates courts. I assure him that we do not propose closing the court in Goole only because of the performance of the court in Beverley, but we must look at utilisation over the whole area.
My hon. Friend asked why we do not close Bridlington magistrates court. The decision was taken by local management and took into account a range of aspects to ensure sufficient capacity in the area, based on the total number of courtrooms in each court.
Andrew Percy
On the point about people being within an hour’s journey of the court, the figures I mentioned indicate that it would take at least an hour and 25 minutes to travel by bus from Goole to Beverley, including a change in Hull because there is no direct bus. Incidentally, there is a direct bus service between Bridlington and Beverley, although I do not suggest the closure of Bridlington. The figure of one hour and 25 minutes is a minimum, and the journey time is more likely to be one hour and 39 minutes.
Mr Djanogly
My hon. Friend makes a fair and relevant point, which he should submit for consideration in the consultation. The original reason for the location of many courts is that they were intended to be half an hour’s horse ride away from population centres. We thought that a one-hour journey by public transport was probably more in tune with modern thinking. I assure him that we will do our best to provide him with information on running costs and the other statistics he requested. Again, he should advise us in his response to the consultation of any statistics he has.
As Goole is the only magistrates court in the local justice area of Goole and Howdenshire, we propose that the three LJAs should merge to create a single entity for east Yorkshire, covering the whole of the East Riding. Relatively few magistrates sit at the three benches we propose to combine—only 95 in total. Combining the three will provide a pool large enough to facilitate a more efficient listing of work and reduce the amount of administrative work involved. There will also be advantages for magistrates, allowing them more flexibility in sittings and a wider variety of work.
Although Selby magistrates court has good facilities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty said, it too is underused, sitting only around 60% of the time available. Like Goole, it sits in a local criminal justice board area that has a low overall utilisation rate. Selby benefits from being located only 15 miles from York, which is capable of absorbing the work from Selby and has good transport links to all parts of west and north Yorkshire, although I believe my hon. Friend questioned that in his earlier remarks. His point was that people in the south of his constituency did not have such good access. I encourage him to make that point in the consultation. I was aware of the refurbishment of the Selby magistrates court, but I believe that there is currently a backlog of maintenance work to the value of about £100,000.
Selby and York local justice areas already have joint panels, so merging the two would simply formalise that arrangement and reap the administrative benefits. I understand that the closure of courts in several communities will concern hon. Members and some of their constituents. I welcome views on the proposal, and they will be taken into account before decisions are made. However, I want to make it clear that I believe that operating out of around 530 court houses is unsustainable and does not offer the taxpayer value for money. I reiterate the point that we need to think more widely than bricks and mortar when considering access to justice; we need to embrace in the justice sector many of the technological advances that we take for granted in our work and social lives.
Another point I will address in the time remaining is the impact the proposals will have on local justice. That important point was picked up in different ways by both my hon. Friends. My answer is that there absolutely will not be an impact on local justice. The Government remain committed to a system in which justice is done and seen to be done in the communities affected by crime. The quality of justice matters equally. It is not assured simply by having a court building in each small town, as populations are more mobile and use more sophisticated communications than ever before. The speed with which cases are decided, the facilities we provide to meet the needs of all court users and the respect for the quality of our justice system must be as important, if not more important, than locality. The involvement of communities in the justice system is absolutely key to that, both as magistrates and assistants. With more than 95% of criminal cases heard by magistrates, there is no doubt about the scale of community involvement in justice. I will continue to support magistrates as the bedrock of our justice system. I have held meetings with magistrates’ associations and individual magistrates, and will continue to do so to prove the Government’s support for the magistracy.
HMCS provided £21,000 of funding in 2009-10 for magistrates in the community scheme run by the Magistrates Association. On community engagement, HMCS works with magistrates and other justice agencies to host regular open days that provide local communities with insight on how justice agencies work together to serve the community, staging mock trials to encourage understanding of the justice system.
We want people to resolve civil disputes more quickly and effectively. County courts, of course, are involved in the proposals as well. Justice does not take place only in court; uncontested money and property disputes can be resolved through our online services, Money Claims Online and Property Claims Online. We are exploring ways of increasing the use of alternative dispute resolution when it can provide more effective and satisfactory solutions than a day in court.
The time is right to take a fresh look at the provision of court services to meet the challenging and changing needs of the justice agencies and society. Work loads are falling in the magistrates courts and court time has been saved by magistrates and court staff working together with increased efficiency. An example is the success of “Criminal justice: simple, speedy, summary”, which speeds up the time from charge to disposal and drastically reduces the need for adjournment. We are developing better ways of delivering justice and will continue to improve them.
Paediatric Cardiac Surgery
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Benton, and to have secured this debate on the Government’s review of children’s heart surgery.
I am sure that Members in all parts of the House agree that children who need heart surgery should have the best-quality care. Outstanding treatment is provided in many parts of the country, including at the congenital heart centre at Glenfield hospital in my constituency. My first visit as the new Member of Parliament for Leicester West was to the centre. I met staff in the paediatric intensive care unit, which is the seventh busiest such unit in the country, and staff on the children’s ward and from the cardiac nurse liaison team, seeing for myself the excellent professional and high-quality care that they provide.
I also talked to parents about their experiences, and they spoke about their shock at discovering that their child had a congenital heart problem, their fears about the operation and other procedures, and whether their child would survive. They talked about how they were coping with having a very sick child at the same time as holding down a job and looking after other children, particularly if they lived a long way from the hospital, as many of the parents do. Above all, however, they talked about the excellent care that they receive at Glenfield and about how the help and support from the doctors, nurses and other staff is second to none. I am proud to have Glenfield’s congenital heart centre in my constituency, and I express my gratitude to all the staff for their excellent work.
Although excellent care is already available in many parts of the country, experts in children’s heart surgery have for some while argued that change is necessary, to ensure that all children get the highest-quality care. Those experts include the Royal College of Surgeons, the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery, the national clinical director for children, young people and maternity services, and the NHS medical director.
Children’s heart surgery is complex, and is becoming ever more sophisticated. Technological advances mean that care is becoming increasingly specialised, capable of saving more lives and improving outcomes for very sick children. Many clinicians, however, argue that services have grown up in an ad hoc manner and now need to be better planned to ensure that all care is safe and sustainable, and that surgeons need to treat sufficient children and have sufficient variety in their case load to be skilled and experienced enough to deliver care of the highest quality. They further argue that that is likely to require fewer and larger specialist centres. I have always believed that when changes in hospital services are necessary to improve patient care, we should have the courage to make them happen. I therefore welcome the review, which was initiated by the previous Government.
However, we need to ensure that the right principles and criteria drive the review, the right balance is struck, the right weight is given to the different criteria and principles, and the views of parents and families are properly heard. The Government document “Children’s Heart Surgery: The Need for Change” sets out four key principles to guide the review:
“High standards. All children in England who need heart surgery must receive the very highest standards of NHS care, regardless of where they live… Personal service. The care that every centre provides must be based around the needs of each child and family… Local where possible. Other than surgery and interventional procedures all relevant treatment should be provided as close as possible to where each family lives… Quality. Standards are being developed and must be met to ensure that services deliver the best care.”
I want to say more about those principles. My first point is about the number of surgeons and of patients required in each centre to ensure that all children receive the best possible care. “The Need for Change” stresses that each unit needs enough surgeons to provide care 24/7 and to avoid surgeon burn-out in this complex and demanding field. It questions whether units with two or fewer surgeons can achieve that goal, and states that four surgeons is “the magic number.”
The document also emphasises that surgeons need to treat enough patients and have a sufficient variety of cases to get the skills and experience they need, and to ensure that junior doctors have the best training. I fully accept the review’s concerns about units with two or fewer surgeons, but from talking to clinicians I understand that the clinical evidence on the optimum number of surgeons and the precise number of patients a centre should treat a year is the subject of some discussion, both in this country and internationally.
The centre at Glenfield hospital provides care 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It has three surgeons, treating about 300 cases a year. The staff in the centre are determined to continue to improve the quality of care that they provide, and are planning to appoint a fourth surgeon in the next few months and increase the number of operations to more than 400 a year. Nevertheless, Glenfield hospital and my local primary care trust are very clear about the fact that the centre already delivers high-quality, safe and sustainable care.
Wider clinical issues also need to be considered by the review. Many children who need heart surgery often have other complex conditions, so the review needs to consider the range of surgical and other specialties available in hospitals with children’s heart surgery units, and look at how they all link together. Glenfield deals with congenital heart defects in babies, and follows them through childhood and into adult life. Staff and patients say that that continuity of care is a crucial factor in delivering high-quality, personalised services, and it will become increasingly important as survival rates improve.
Glenfield is also the busiest of four ECMO centres in the UK. ECMO—extra corporeal membrane oxygenation—allows blood that has been drained out of a patient’s body to have the carbon dioxide removed and oxygen added before being returned to the body, thereby allowing the heart and lungs to rest and recover. Because of its ECMO facility, Glenfield can provide complex thoracic, or chest, surgery in children, especially for those who also have cardiac problems, as well as cardiac surgery for children who have reduced heart or lung function and who otherwise might not be able to have heart surgery, or recover.
Glenfield is the only centre in the country that provides ECMO for patients of all ages, from newborns to adults. It treated 180 patients last year, including 50 swine flu patients. ECMO is provided by the same staff who work in the congenital heart centre, so if the centre closed, Glenfield would lose its ECMO service too—a service used by patients across the country.
Another issue that the review must fully consider is access to care. “The Need for Change” says that most parents would travel long distances to ensure that their children got the best possible care. That is true. Parents would travel to the ends of the earth if they had to. Many parents whose children need heart surgery are, however, already travelling very long distances. Glenfield’s centre serves the entire east midlands, with outreach clinics in Nottingham, Derby, Mansfield, Peterborough, Boston, Grantham, Lincoln and Kettering.
Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I know that the time available is limited, but I wish to underline the importance of the point that she has just made in relation to our own heart centre in Oxford. It is critically important that there is close liaison and consultation with the parents whose babies are affected and who are campaigning to save the centres.
Liz Kendall
I agree absolutely with my right hon. Friend. Many parents and staff are rightly concerned about the implications of travelling longer distances, particularly in emergencies.
I am a former director of the Ambulance Service Network, and I know that paramedics are highly trained professionals—increasingly to degree level—who can provide lifesaving treatment for patients while taking them to specialist centres further away, but that is not always possible, and the review must thoroughly consider the implications of further travel for the lives that could and will be saved.
High-quality care is not just about standards of surgery, the links with other specialisms or the ability to access planned and emergency care. A recent event organised to discuss children’s heart surgery in Leicester was attended by more than 800 parents and former patients, and those present felt that many more people would have attended if the event had not been held mid-week and during working hours.
The families said that the help and support that they get from the nurses, doctors and other staff at Glenfield are outstanding, and the key point that came up time and again was the excellent communication and support provided by the centre. Parents spoke about how staff go the extra mile to explain diagnoses and procedures simply and clearly, often at a frightening and worrying time. Every child gets a diary that explains in a way the whole family can understand what care they have received. It provides something for the children to look back at when they are older.
Parents said that the staff were like members of their own family; they could ring them day or night if they had any concerns. That familiarity with individual patients and families is crucial. All the studies by groups such as the Picker Institute of patients’ experience of care prove that individual, personalised care and communication are vital. One young man said that the staff knew him as a person, not as just another case, and that he was worried that that would be lost in a larger unit or if his care were split between outreach clinics and other centres.
Families also spoke about the fantastic help they get from the Heartlink charity at Glenfield, which has raised money to provide accommodation so that parents can stay overnight with their children, a play area so that brothers and sisters can play while families are visiting the child, and day trips for the patients as they get older. Those wider aspects of care are vital to parents and patients, but are barely mentioned in “The Need for Change”. I urge the Minister to ensure that the review has fully considered those issues when it makes its recommendations.
The final factor that the review of children’s heart surgery needs to take into account is affordability. It must be driven by the need to improve quality, not to cut costs, and, in these financially constrained times, it must acknowledge that there will be costs associated with changing children’s heart surgery in England.
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
Like the hon. Lady, I have visited the Glenfield centre, which is close to my constituency. As the parent of a healthy child, I felt humbled by the care that I saw there. The point that she is making about cost is important, because we appear to be achieving neither safer care—there has always been safe care—nor more efficient care. I understand that the reconfiguration would be very expensive, and she speaks rightly about straitened economic circumstances at this time.
Liz Kendall
I agree absolutely with the hon. Lady. The costs associated with changing children’s heart surgery centres include not just physically expanding a centre’s buildings, beds and equipment, but retraining staff. When I went to Glenfield, I was told that many of the staff would not move if the centre were changed. It takes time and money to train new staff, particularly in such a specialised area, and the review must take that into account when it makes its recommendations.
Sir Peter Soulsby (Leicester South) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on obtaining this timely debate and on how she is expressing her concerns. She obviously has considerable understanding and experience of and expertise in these matters. Will she join me in asking the Minister to give an assurance that cost will not be the overwhelming issue that drives the decisions, and that the concerns, fears and wishes of parents and practitioners will be foremost in his consideration?
Liz Kendall
I very much agree with my hon. Friend. The review must not be driven by a desire to cut costs, and it must acknowledge that increased costs are likely with any change to services.
I welcome the Government’s review of children’s heart surgery and their objective of ensuring that all children get the best quality care, but I urge the Minister to ensure that the full range of clinical factors—not just the ratio of surgeons to patients—is taken into account as part of the review, in particular implications for accessing care, including in emergencies, and the knock-on effects for other specialisms. I urge him to ensure that other aspects of care that are critical to parents and families, such as the quality of communication, and the wider facilities and support, are properly considered.
I urge the Minister not to conduct the review on the basis of cutting costs—there will be costs associated with any changes—and to ensure that the views of parents, other family members and former patients are fully taken into account before recommendations are made in the autumn. I look forward to his response.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) on securing this important debate on the national review of paediatric cardiac surgery. I pay tribute to the dedicated national health service staff who work in paediatric cardiac care. It goes without saying—hon. Friends will agree—that during the course of their working day they do tremendous and fantastic work looking after critically ill and vulnerable children.
As the hon. Lady said, this is a complex and understandably emotional area. In 2008, the NHS management board asked the national specialised commissioning group to explore whether a reconfiguration of paediatric cardiac surgery services in England could improve levels of safety and sustainability. There had not been a problem at a particular centre, but surgeons, other clinicians, parent groups and the media had raised concerns over the risks posed by the unsustainable nature of smaller surgical centres.
The national review aims to ensure that paediatric cardiac services deliver the highest standard of care, regardless of where patients live or which hospital provides their care. All 11 centres in England that currently provide paediatric cardiac surgery, including Glenfield hospital in Leicester, are being assessed as part of the review. The objective of the review is not to close paediatric cardiac centres—I assure the hon. Lady that this is not a cost-cutting exercise.
Surgery may cease at some centres, but they would continue to provide specialist, non-surgical paediatric cardiology services for their local population. The review seeks to ensure that as much non-surgical care as possible is delivered as close as possible to the child’s home through the development of local paediatric cardiology networks. I emphasise that no recommendations have yet been made about which centres should continue to undertake surgery.
Recommendations on future services will be published for the three-month consultation in the autumn this year. The trend in paediatric cardiac care is towards increasingly complex surgery, which requires large surgical teams that provide sufficient capacity to train and mentor the next generation of surgeons. The focus of the review is to develop services that are clinically appropriate, sustainable and safe.
As I said earlier, paediatric cardiac services are complex, and it has taken time to set up a transparent review structure that takes into account the views of patient and parent groups, and relevant professional societies. As part of the review, the commissioning group has held 10 stakeholder events. The invaluable contributions from parents and NHS staff will inform future stages of the review process.
The commissioning group has set a series of service standards, developed by experts, that take into account the contributions of parents and professionals. The standards cover the whole of paediatric cardiac services and emphasise the need for networks of providers to ensure a coherent service for children and their families. The current centres have been asked to assess themselves against those standards, and an expert panel chaired by Professor Sir Ian Kennedy has visited and independently assessed each centre. The standards will be subject to public consultation this autumn together with the recommendations for change.
I shall now deal with the standard for the numbers of procedures and of surgeons to which the hon. Lady referred. Questions have been raised about the evidence that underpins the standards for the minimum number of paediatric cardiac surgical procedures per year, and for minimum staffing levels. The recommended level of activity—between 400 and 500 procedures a year—is based on the level needed to provide good quality care around the clock while enabling ongoing training and mentoring of new surgeons. The professional consensus is that having four surgeons in each centre should enable services to avoid the risk of surgeons performing only a small number of some of the more complex procedures, which may not be enough to maintain their skills. Transforming a service from adequate to optimal requires sufficient volume, expertise and experience to develop what Sir Bruce Keogh calls “accomplished teams”.
Liz Kendall
Will the Minister provide the source for the recommendation of four surgeons and 400 to 500 patients a year? Which peer-reviewed journal provides the clinical evidence for that?
Mr Burns
As I said a minute ago, that recommendation is the consensus within the professional bodies. However, I am more than happy to give the hon. Lady a commitment that I will write to her after this debate to elaborate, providing as much extra detail as I can, if she believes that will be helpful.
Turning to the other criteria, the review will also take account of surgical centres’ physical location relative to others and the impact of reconfiguration on other important services, including the highly regarded ECMO or total life support service at Glenfield hospital in the hon. Lady’s constituency, which she described with such eloquence in her remarks. The final part of the review will involve centres’ ability to attract key clinical staff and their families. I hope I can reassure the hon. Lady that transportation options and travel distances will be evaluated, including travel times specifically. The Paediatric Intensive Care Society has advised on the issue, and we continue to investigate and seek advice. I appreciate fully the importance of the issue and the concern that it causes many families.
Nicky Morgan
Will the review also consider the impact on other services? For example, at Glenfield, there are two intensive care units for children in the city, and I understand that one team covers both. If the centre were to be closed—this might also apply to other centres—it might destabilise other services within the hospital.
Mr Burns
The short answer is that I cannot make that commitment myself. As my hon. Friend will appreciate, the review is independent and will be carried out at arm’s length from the Department of Health and Ministers. I do not have a role, and it would not be correct for me to seek to interfere in the process. However, having said that, I am confident that my hon. Friend’s point will be considered as part of the review, because it will be comprehensive and across the board, considering all aspects of this highly specialised and important health care provision. I hope that reassures her.
The available research evidence suggests that larger surgical centres deliver better clinical outcomes. As cardiac expertise is available round the clock, they can perform a wider range of complex procedures, meaning fewer transfers between centres. Larger centres can still provide a personalised service. The service standards make it clear that tailoring services to the needs of each child is critical. That is an extremely important factor that I know the hon. Member for Leicester West understands and accepts fully.
I also assure the hon. Lady that any changes to local health services will not be driven from the top down. The review has strong support from external organisations. It has been instigated at the request of parent and patient groups, clinicians working in the service and professional associations, including the Children’s Heart Federation, the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the Royal College of Nursing, the British Congenital Cardiac Association and the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland. It is important to understand that any recommendations on the future number and location of surgical centres will be made not by any central body but by the 10 specialised commissioning groups working with local NHS commissioners. The review will consider access to services for the whole country.
The national specialised commissioning group was asked to lead the review because of its co-ordinating role across the 10 specialised commissioning groups. I am sure that the hon. Lady will agree that that was the most sensible approach to take when the review was devised and set up just over two years ago in 2008. The group was ideally positioned to engage with commissioners and clinicians from across the country.
I reiterate that the review is being undertaken in response to the concerns of parents and professionals about the future capacity and capability of paediatric cardiac services. It will be an open process; I assure the hon. Lady that the outcomes are not predetermined. It is a genuine review seeking genuine answers in order to maintain the highest standards of quality in a specialised and difficult area of patient care. The national specialised commissioning group will set up a consultation process on its recommendations and standards this autumn. We must wait and see what the review says and then go through the consultation process, during which anyone will be able to input their thoughts, recommendations, comments, criticisms or praises of the review’s findings, before any final decisions are taken.
I thank our external partners and their patients for their input to the review so far. I find it encouraging that the review has broad support across the board. As the hon. Lady will accept, children deserve the best possible care. The Government are determined to provide the best paediatric cardiac care possible after the review and consultation processes have been concluded and the final decisions reached.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Ministerial Statements
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Ordnance Survey (Performance Targets)
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)
My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Baroness Hanham CBE, has made the following written ministerial statement:
Ordnance Survey will report externally against a set of agency performance monitors as required of all Executive agencies in Government:
To achieve an operating profit before exceptional items, interest and dividends of £11.8 million for the financial year 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2011.
Some 99.6% of significant real-world features greater than six months old are represented in the database.
To achieve a free cash flow before exceptional items of £19.6 million for the financial year 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2011.
To continue to reduce the underlying cost base of the business by on average 5% per annum measured against a baseline of 2008-09 costs.
To achieve a customer index score of at least 80%.
These targets reflect Ordnance Survey’s continuing commitment to customers, to implementing the business strategy announced in April 2009, to maintaining and delivering intelligent geographic information to all users, and to offering improved value for money for all, as well as a commitment to Government policies.
Behaviour and Discipline (Schools)
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
I would like to announce to the House new measures to be introduced to tackle behaviour and discipline in schools. All pupils should show respect and courtesy towards teachers, towards other staff and towards each other. Head teachers help to create that culture of respect by supporting their staff’s authority to discipline pupils. The role of the Government is to give schools the freedom they need to provide a safe and structured environment in which teachers can teach and children can learn.
The coalition agreement sets out this Government’s intention to give heads and teachers the powers they need to ensure discipline in the classroom and promote good behaviour. It also sets out the Government’s intention to give anonymity to teachers accused by pupils and to take other measures to protect against false accusations. Teachers should feel confident in exercising their authority, and pupils should not have to suffer disruption to their education caused by the poor behaviour of others.
Further to my reply in Education questions on 7 June, I can confirm that we will take steps to strengthen teachers’ powers to search pupils. We intend to introduce regulations to add personal electronic devices (mobile phones, iPods and personal music players); pornography; fireworks; cigarettes and other tobacco; and “legal highs” to the list of items for which teachers can search. Our intention is for these regulations to come into effect from this autumn. In the next education Bill, we intend to give teachers a more general search power covering any item which may cause disorder or pose a threat to safety.
We will also take steps to reduce the bureaucratic burden on schools when giving pupils detentions. We intend to repeal the legislation that requires schools to give parents 24 hours written notice of detentions outside school hours. Schools will be free to determine and publicise their own rules on notice for detentions. As a result, teachers should be able to deal with misbehaviour on the day it occurs.
We will issue much shorter and clearer guidance which explicitly states that teachers can physically remove disruptive children from class and prevent them from leaving a room in situations where this is necessary to maintain order. We will seek to ensure that prosecutors, those exercising disciplinary powers and those determining complaints against teachers are aware of the new guidance. We are determined that teachers should have the protection they need and we will take all necessary steps, legislating further if necessary, to ensure this happens.
Finally, we will give teachers the strongest possible protection from false accusations. We will give anonymity to teachers facing accusations from pupils. This Government want to put an end to rumours and malicious gossip about innocent teachers which can ruin careers and even lives.
We will be announcing further measures in due course, including measures to tackle bullying, head teachers’ powers to exclude children and the reform of alternative provision.
The changes announced today are the first step in a programme of reform. We will be consulting with teachers about taking forward these measures and the case for further reform. We will take the necessary action to ensure that schools can bring order and discipline to every classroom so that all children are able to achieve to the best of their ability.
House of Lords
Introduction: Lord Willis of Knaresborough
General Election: Voting Deadline
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Trefgarne
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their estimate of the number of citizens denied the opportunity to vote at the general election on 6 May because of the 10 pm deadline or other administrative difficulties; and what steps they propose to take to prevent those problems in future.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I have to declare an interest: I preside over certain premises in Surrey which hosted one of the voting stations at the last general election.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, the Electoral Commission’s report of 20 May suggested that just over 1,200 people were affected by problems with queues at the close of poll on 6 May. We are considering the report carefully and will take any appropriate steps necessary to prevent this situation happening again.
Lord Trefgarne
I am grateful to the Deputy Leader for that reply. Were the problems to which he has referred about the same in Scotland and Wales as they were in England?
Lord McNally
I am not aware of problems in Scotland or Wales—perhaps I shall be informed of some within a very short time—but the Electoral Commission did not mince its words about the problems where they did occur. It said that they were down to inadequate planning processes and contingency arrangements. However, I point out that 27 polling stations out of 40,000 and 1,200 voters out of more than 29 million were affected.
Lord Rogan
My Lords, following the electoral abuses experienced in Fermanagh and South Tyrone in 2001, changes to electoral rules and methodology—such as reducing the number of voters per ballot box from 900 to 500—were introduced in Northern Ireland. All those changes were much stricter than in the rest of the kingdom. Will the Government take cognizance of the vast experience of electoral practices that we have in Northern Ireland and consider introducing in the rest of the kingdom these higher standards that we have for Northern Ireland constituencies?
Lord McNally
Yes, we should study very carefully the lessons that have been learnt in Northern Ireland in this area.
Lord McAvoy
My Lords, is the Minister not aware that thousands of votes were disqualified in the Scottish elections of 2007, due in large part to the confusion caused by holding two ballots on the same day? Will the Minister commit this Government to consult widely before going ahead with their plans to hold a referendum on the same day as the elections for the Scottish Parliament?
Lord McNally
I think that my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister has already given the assurance that he will consult widely.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, wishes to speak.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
My Lords, do the Government realise that there has been no progress on disability access to polling stations since 2005, according to the Scope research that has just been published? What steps will the Government take to make sure that disabled people can vote in the next election and vote for reform in 2011?
Lord McNally
My Lords, I have not seen the Scope research, but I will certainly study it. It is very important that all sections of our community, with any measure of disability, should be able to vote. One thing that I know is being considered is electronic voting, which might be an alternative for people with disabilities. But I take the noble Baroness’s point: disabled people, just like anyone else, want to exercise their vote personally at a polling station. We will look into that.
Lord Naseby
Is my noble friend aware that I asked a similar Question on 14 June? Since that date, it has transpired that bonuses have been paid to the returning officers for a number of those polling districts. Is that not an extraordinary situation and one that should be reversed?
Lord McNally
The matter of payment for returning officers in the last election is for the local authorities concerned. The Electoral Commission, in its report, called for it to be given greater control to make sure that returning officers do their jobs properly.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, is there not evidence that some local authorities are skimping on the funding that they are making available for the conduct of elections? In particular, polling officers in the individual stations are not being given sufficient training. That is causing real problems in the way that they then deal with issues that arise on election day.
Lord McNally
We will learn lessons from this and there are some hard lessons to learn. For example, some local authorities looked at the three previous elections for which they had responsibility, which all had much lower turnouts. As the Electoral Commission said, that was not proper contingency planning. There is no doubt that the photographs and television pictures that went round the world were very bad public relations for British democracy. We will do all in our power to make sure that it never happens again.
Lord Rennard
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the timing of polling days should be based on the convenience of the voters rather than that of returning officers, many of whom are paid large bonuses for their work in general elections? Is he aware of the most recent survey of public opinion on this issue, conducted by ICM earlier this year, which showed by a margin of almost 3:1 that voters would prefer to be able to cast their votes at the weekend rather than on a weekday? Will he therefore begin a proper consultation on shifting polling day from the traditional Thursday to the weekend, when many more people could vote more conveniently?
Lord McNally
It is very interesting. When I was first briefed on this, I was told that the consultation showed a very balanced response on the question of weekend voting. Then I probed a little further and found, as my noble friend surmises, that most of the people against polling at weekends were returning officers and most of those wanting voting at weekends were voters. As part of the review that I am talking about, I want us to look again at weekend voting.
Lord Strabolgi
Is the Minister aware that a number of authorities cut down on the officials working in the polling stations for reasons of economy, thus preventing many electors from voting because the queues got longer and longer and moved more and more slowly? Will the Government ensure that this sort of petty economy is not used to deprive people of their vote?
Lord McNally
My Lords, the expenditure on the general election in 2010 was £73.2 million compared with £47 million in 2005. Any local authority that claims that it was not funded enough to do its job is simply misleading the public. There was ample funding to do this job but in a very few places there was some very poor planning.
Rural Payments Agency
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Greaves
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking regarding the efficiency and effectiveness of the Rural Payments Agency.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a recipient of payments from the Rural Payments Agency. An independent review of the Rural Payments Agency, commissioned by Defra, concluded recently. The Government will publish the recommendations of the review and our response to it shortly.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, is it not the case that in the five years since the single farm payment scheme was set up, the record of the Rural Payments Agency is one of a combination of bureaucratic incompetence and excessive cost? Would the Minister agree that farmers in this country are well disposed to this Government and are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt at the moment? However, unless this problem is sorted out, that attitude will change very quickly. Would he agree that the Government and the Rural Payments Agency have around six months, till the end off this year, to prove that the situation is being sorted out?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I accept that, as my noble friend says, there have been problems with the Rural Payments Agency. It has been the subject of an NAO report and summoned three times before the Public Accounts Committee as well as twice before the Efra Select Committee and once before the Public Administration Select Committee. We will try to address these problems and offer political leadership for that. I can give an assurance to my noble friend that the Minister of State of my department will, in future, chair the RPA board.
Lord Renton of Mount Harry
My Lords, I, too, declare an interest as a recipient of payments from the Rural Payments Agency. Does my noble friend agree that Defra literally passed the buck to the Rural Payments Agency when it was formed? Given that the variety of payments has now increased tremendously, does he think that the RPA will be able to cope, particularly when more EU money becomes available?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I would not want to go back into the history of the problems that have faced the agency. All I can say is that a report has been commissioned and we will look at the outcome of the report and see what changes can be made to improve the way in which it operates. I would not want to speculate on what those changes might be at this stage.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
Will the Minister please confirm that nearly £1.9 million had been paid out by 30 June to 105,000 organisations or individuals? Will he say whether we will continue to increase the payments at the same pace as we have seen in the past two years or whether, as this is public money, there will be a review to see whether it should be frozen next year or the year beyond, as we are all in this together?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I can confirm approximately the figures that the noble Lord has given. Most payments were made by the end of June. I understand that by the end of that month fewer than 300 individuals remained without any sort of payment, and often those were for legal reasons such as probate or whatever.
The Lord Bishop of Wakefield
My Lords, is the Minister aware that pastoral care provided by local churches and indeed the Farming Help charities continues to be a necessary part of farmers’ relationships with the RPA? This is not typical of most other business relationships. At what point might the RPA system be simplified sufficiently to ensure more normal working relationships?
Lord Henley
Again, my Lords, I cannot say what changes will be made, but I can say to the right reverend Prelate that we are very grateful for all the work that the church has done to assist those who have suffered from late payments and who, as he made clear, have had considerable problems as a result. We hope to have the RPA working properly in the near future.
Viscount Brookeborough
My Lords, I also declare an interest as a farmer. What is to stop there being a simple first question on the IACS form saying, “Have there been any changes in the area of your farm this year, or are there any relevant changes? If the answer is no”—which it would be in 90 per cent of the cases—“please move to box 61 and sign”? Would that not be a great simplification which would dramatically cut the outrageous costs of this scheme?
Lord Henley
My Lords, the noble Viscount makes a very interesting suggestion. My understanding is that most of the form is already pre-printed with the information from the previous year on it, and it is then open to the individual merely to sign at the end. I understand that there were consultations in the past with various people in the industry about whether the noble Viscount’s suggestion would be possible, but there was no great interest in it at that stage. Again, though, we will look at that as part of the review.
Lord Livsey of Talgarth
My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister acknowledge that £90 million of taxpayers’ money has been paid in fines to the EU for incompetently processed payments? Does he agree that his department should look at one option at the end of the six-month inquiry: the abolition of the RPA?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I can confirm that we will look at all possible options.
Baroness Quin
My Lords, while I wish the Government well in taking forward the review’s recommendations in due course, given that rural payments are so important to both the economy and the environment of our rural areas, will the Government think again about their decision to abolish the Commission for Rural Communities in order to safeguard an independent rural voice in these and other important rural issues?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I think the noble Baroness will accept that that question is somewhat wide of that on the Order Paper, but no doubt I will address it in due course. Policy on this matter will still be retained by Defra, which will continue to look after rural interests and rural affairs.
UNESCO: Equatorial Guinea
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Falkner of Margravine
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will make representations to the regional electoral group representing the United Kingdom’s interests on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) executive board regarding the withdrawal of the UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences in the light of the human rights record of the Government of Equatorial Guinea.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, we have made representations at ambassadorial and ministerial level to the EU, Regional Electoral Group 1, the Commonwealth group and the director-general of UNESCO, calling for this prize to be withdrawn. We shall continue to press this point until a final decision is reached. We welcome the executive board’s decision on 15 June to work on a new set of rules for prizes and, in particular, to examine this prize more carefully.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
I thank my noble friend for that reply. She will know that in the scientific and human rights communities, a UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo prize for scientific achievement is roughly the equivalent of a Robert Mugabe-UN prize for democracy and freedom. How can we, the United Kingdom, UNESCO’s fourth largest donor, convince its executive board by its next meeting in October that it should try to salvage UNESCO’s credibility by not voting for this award?
Will the Minister assure the House that media reports suggesting that the US, France and other western countries are not taking this issue up with other UNESCO members for fear of upsetting the Africans are incorrect, and that we in the UK will do all that we have to to prevent this from happening?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, our ambassador to UNESCO has urged each group of which the Government are a member to adopt strong positions condemning this prize and seeking a solution. The Minister of State for International Development raised the subject of the prize with the UNESCO director-general in his meeting on 4 June and wrote to the director-general and the chairman of the executive board before the meeting on 15 June urging the executive board to withdraw the prize. Our delegation continues to push for strong statements against the prize and for firm and transparent rules for prizes that would prevent this problem from recurring in the future.
Baroness Morris of Bolton
My Lords, in assisting Equatorial Guinea and wider Africa to reach the minimum standards of human rights that the world rightly expects, what is DfID doing to help to build the essentials of a civil society there, especially access to clean drinking water and programmes to end violence towards women?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, my noble friend raises some important issues. A large proportion of DfID’s funding goes on programmes and initiatives to fight violence against women and on challenging it through civil society and women’s organisations. As my noble friend will realise, we support the MDGs; indeed, we are one of the countries that will meet the commitment on 0.7 per cent of GNI by 2013. Clean water is one of our major priorities in this respect.
Lord Brett
On the MDGs, there is an important conference in South Africa next week on Education for All. Who will represent the United Kingdom Government? Will that representative continue to support strong and free public education systems in poor countries, as opposed to the ill advised voucher schemes and private subsidies proposed in the Conservative Party’s recent Green Paper? I ask because Oxfam has condemned that approach as one that is unlikely to build success, while the director of UNESCO has called it “an absurdity” that would set back progress. He said:
“The idea that you can trot around slums and dish out vouchers is so far-fetched that it shouldn’t be taken seriously”.
Will the Minister comment on that?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble Lord raises a number of issues. We are keen to ensure that the MDGs for education are reached. We are not ideological about the way in which education is delivered and we want to ensure that what works for individual countries is fully supported. British aid pays for 5 million children in developing countries to go to primary school every day. That is roughly the same as the number of children going to primary school in Great Britain, yet at only 2.5 per cent of the cost.
We have offered President Zuma of South Africa assistance if he requires it for the South African summit on 11 July, but so far we have had no representations. However, DfID has given the Education for All 1GOAL campaign £804,800 and will give another £195,000 this financial year.
Lord Tomlinson
My Lords, on the specific subject of the Question—Equatorial Guinea—where in the pecking order of issues for which we give assistance from our development funds do democracy, human rights and good governance figure? Are they near the top, near the bottom or somewhere in the middle of the list?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, on the specific point about Equatorial Guinea, I should say that we have no presence there, although the high commissioner to Nigeria, Bob Dewar, visits twice a year. However, we completely agree that there needs to be transparency in what Equatorial Guinea is doing on human rights. That is what we will urge through all the multilateral agencies through which we supply our funds.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
What consultation process has the UNESCO director-general set up to find a solution to this prize?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, my noble friend asks a serious question. We have asked UNESCO to ensure that all the principles and criteria in setting these prizes are open and transparent and that the board undertakes, with other agencies that are involved in setting these prizes, to look seriously at ensuring that prizes set in one sector comply with prizes set in others.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Does the Minister recall that when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, she followed the lead of Ronald Reagan and withdrew the United Kingdom from UNESCO, causing us great diplomatic difficulties around the world and upsetting the scientific and educational communities here in the United Kingdom? Can the Minister give us an absolute assurance on behalf of the coalition that any problems with this prize or any cuts in public expenditure will not be used as an excuse for again taking us out of membership of UNESCO?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the decision at that time was right. The Government will look at our membership of and investment in all agencies to ensure that the greatest possible impact is being achieved with our aid. This is part of our multilateral aid review announced by the Secretary of State for International Development. The aid review will look at all agencies funded by the aid budget and will report back in the autumn.
Samantha Stobbart
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Scotland of Asthal
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps were taken by Northumbria Police when the recent warning from HM Prison Durham was received; and whether a multi-agency risk assessment conference was called to assess the risk faced by Samantha Stobbart.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Neville-Jones)
My Lords, Northumbria Police received information on Friday 2 July from Durham prison that Mr Moat had threatened to cause Ms Stobbart serious harm. The chief constable referred the handling of the information to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which will conduct an independent investigation to determine whether Northumbria Police responded adequately. I also understand that Northumbria Police did not conduct a multi-agency risk assessment conference to assess the risk faced by Ms Stobbart.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer, but can I ask her why they did not? Bearing in mind that these events demonstrate clearly the need for a risk assessment in such circumstances, what steps will be put in place to make sure that multi-agency risk assessments are made? Can she give us an assurance that the Government will maintain the commitment made by the previous Government to hold the 80 remaining multi-agency risk assessment conferences, which are necessary to cover the whole of the country? They are the best way of saving lives and money.
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, we certainly agree that the multi-agency risk assessment process is valuable. I have not heard anything from my colleagues that would suggest that we have any intention of doing away with them. There are clearly a number of actions that the police could have taken. One of the reasons why the chief constable referred the actions of her force to the IPCC was to discover what appropriate action could have been taken.
Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington
My Lords, I declare an interest as a former chief constable of Northumbria. Would the Minister not agree that this is a time for supporting Northumbria Police in a most dangerous and difficult situation? This is not a time for apportioning blame in any way, shape or form. Would she also not agree that this will be fully investigated by an independent authority? Let us support the police in their difficult task.
Baroness Neville-Jones
I am sure the whole House, including me, share the sentiments that have just been expressed.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
Was the threat that was made of such a nature that it could have been interpreted as a threat to kill? Does the noble Baroness appreciate that, under the Criminal Law Act 1977, the threat to kill is a very serious offence that is punishable by 10 years’ imprisonment? Was any thought given to arresting this man before he left prison and with a view to prosecution, thus avoiding the possibility of further offences?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, it is absolutely right to say that such a threat would be very serious. My understanding is that the police force was not informed that there was such a threat to life.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, will the Minister address the very specific Question put by my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland—why was a multi-agency risk assessment not held?
Baroness Neville-Jones
Let me give the House the timelines. The prisoner was released on 1 July, the information about this man’s statements was given to the force on 2 July and the chief constable learnt of that information only on 4 July. She referred the matter to the IPCC the following morning; clearly she felt there was a need to do so. I cannot go beyond that at the moment because this matter is under investigation, so I cannot help the House further.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate
My Lords, does the noble Baroness think that there is now a powerful case for looking at the size and number of police forces?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, the Northumbria Police are receiving mutual aid. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has been in touch with the force. If it needs any further assistance, it will certainly be given it. As for the noble Lord’s basic question of whether it is a good idea for forces to help each other, we as a party are in favour of forces joining together, or indeed merging if they wish, provided there is local support for such a move.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, while I am mindful of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, given that there has been newspaper criticism of the efficiency of the Prison Service in issuing a warning and whatever response there may have been by Northumbria Police, what safety guarantees can the noble Baroness give on behalf of the coalition Government that in a few years’ time, with 25 per cent fewer prison officers and a 25 per cent reduction in police grant, which will no doubt impact disproportionately on specialist resources, this sort of event will not recur, or is the answer that Raoul Moat would not have been in prison at all because his sentence was only 18 weeks and, as far as the coalition is concerned, people like him should roam the country freely?
Baroness Neville-Jones
This individual was in for a short custodial sentence. Under the regime that prevails at the moment, half that sentence was served. As things stand, under legislation that was not passed by this Government, the governor has no discretion to do anything other than release the individual. He performed a duty in warning the police.
Lord Elton
My Lords, does the Minister understand the concern in this House about the release of potentially dangerous prisoners? Will she use this opportunity to revise, review, and preferably improve the method of screening prisoners before they are released in order to protect the public?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, my noble friend raises a very important issue. I understand that the IPCC will follow the investigation trail, so I think that we will get help in the form of its view about what happened immediately before the release. However, the issue that is raised is important and no doubt we will have to follow it.
Live Music Bill [HL]
Afghanistan
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Astor of Hever)
My Lords, I am repeating a Statement on Afghanistan: Update on Current Operations.
“Mr Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to update the House on our operations in Afghanistan. As the Prime Minister has said, we intend to make regular updates to the House.
As this is a complex subject, I have made maps available to assist honourable Members and will be happy to arrange further briefings at the Ministry of Defence, should Members find them useful.
The Prime Minister reminded us today of the ongoing sacrifices made by our Armed Forces in Afghanistan.
In the face of such losses, we should be in no doubt about the importance of the mission—particularly today, the fifth anniversary of the London bombings in 2005. It is vital to our national security that we have a stable Afghanistan which is able to maintain its own security and prevent al-Qaeda from returning.
As I made clear in Washington last week, we are a committed member of the international coalition of 46 countries in Afghanistan. We have a clear political strategy, and a clear military counterinsurgency plan to support it. The focus now is on delivering. And we can be confident that General Petraeus will build upon the considerable success of General McChrystal.
We face many challenges. Progress has been slower in some areas than others, particularly on the political side. We can expect success in counterinsurgency to be gradual, cumulative and hard-won. But there has, nevertheless, been considerable progress.
Through a UK lens, it would be easy to assume that all of Afghanistan is like Helmand. In fact, many parts of the country are largely secure, with low levels of violence. In Kabul, the Afghans themselves have assumed responsibility for security, and have proved themselves capable of dealing with the localised threats that have emerged. And we are making good progress on building up the Afghan security forces, so that this pattern can be repeated elsewhere. The Afghan army has been growing steadily over the years—by 20 per cent in recent months—to around 130,000 now.
We are playing our part, and the Government have recently approved the expenditure of up to £189 million on new surveillance, communications and logistics equipment for our bases, as part of our ongoing commitment to support the effective partnering of the Afghan security forces.
In southern Afghanistan, the story of this year has been one of the Afghans themselves increasingly coming to the fore in the fight against the insurgency.
In Kandahar, and under the direct oversight of President Karzai, Afghan security forces are leading operations as part of a rising tide of security in order to set the conditions for improved Afghan governance.
In Helmand, Afghan and ISAF forces have together succeeded in expanding the authority of the Afghan Government to 11 out of the 14 districts, by driving insurgent fighters out of the population centres of Babaji and Nad-e-Ali, while consolidating previous gains in Lashkar Gah, Now Zad, Nawa and Gereshk.
The situation in Marjah remains challenging, but counterinsurgencies are about progressively winning the confidence of the local people. The US Marines are well placed to succeed.
Elsewhere in central Helmand, where our presence is more established, we have seen considerable success. In Nad-e-Ali, British troops have been operating alongside the Afghans to secure the district centre and allow unfettered use of local roads. Improved security is allowing effective governance to flourish and trade to grow. In May, for example, around 3,000 Nad-e-Ali residents elected a more representative district community council.
ISAF now intends to reinforce this success. For that reason, I have accepted an ISAF request for a temporary deployment of elements of our Theatre Reserve Battalion, the 2nd Battalion the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment. The TRB is a standing force based in Cyprus which I have instructed should only be used for time-limited deployments to fulfil specific tasks. This deployment will meet those criteria. The additional forces will be used to give commanders additional flexibility to reinforce progress in central Helmand this summer. In a counterinsurgency campaign, the people are the prize. It is hugely important that we strike the right balance between the numbers of the civilian population and the size of the security forces available to protect them. The Prime Minister and I regularly argued in opposition that British troops in Helmand were too thinly spread and that we had insufficient force densities for effective counterinsurgency. That is why we welcome the arrival of over 18,000 US Marines, whose presence is allowing us to deliver a better and more realistic distribution of tasks within the international coalition.
As the House is aware, ISAF has already transferred security responsibility for Musa Qaleh and Kajaki to US forces, who are building on our achievements there. Lieutenant-General Rodriguez, ISAF’s operational commander, will today announce the next phase of this process.
ISAF intends to restructure its forces in Farah and Nimroz provinces so that it can consolidate a US Marine brigade in northern Helmand, which will assume responsibility for security in Sangin later this year. This will simplify current command arrangements and enable UK troops to be redeployed to reinforce progress in the key districts of central Helmand. The Theatre Reserve Battalion will then withdraw. The result will be a coherent and equitable division of the main populated areas of Helmand between three brigade-sized forces, with the US in the north and south, and the UK-led Task Force Helmand, alongside our outstanding Danish and Estonian allies, in the central population belt.
We have been closely consulted by ISAF and fully support this plan. In Sangin, UK forces have made huge progress in the face of great adversity. The district centre has been transformed. Helmand as a whole is a safer place as a result of our endeavours and sacrifices there. I pay tribute to those who have lost their lives in Sangin and to those who continue to serve there.
The operations in Afghanistan, although geographically distant, are of vital importance to our national security. On the ground, we continue to make progress. There will be hard days ahead, but the further changes I have announced today mean more manpower and greater focus for the key terrain of central Helmand. We have the right strategy and we are determined to succeed. I commend this Statement to the House.”
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made earlier today by the Defence Secretary, and the Government for giving us early sight of it. I set out from the beginning that we largely agree with the moves announced today: my response will be a number of questions. It is important to recognise that the moves today are part of an ongoing process of deploying British troops as part of the coalition in the most effective way.
Our troops in Afghanistan do a fantastic job every day with resilience and courage in the face of hugely difficult circumstances. They put their lives on the line to protect our national security and we must never forget that. I welcome the commitment that the Defence Secretary has made to making regular updates in the other place, and I look forward to the Minister giving similar updates to your Lordships' House.
I hope that the Minister will take this opportunity to clarify whether there is a timetable for the drawdown of our troops in Afghanistan. It is crucial to the success of our efforts that the Government are clear on this issue. Will the decision on the withdrawal of our troops be conditions-based or will our Armed Forces be out of Afghanistan by the end of this Parliament, as the Prime Minister suggested? Specifically, if in five years’ time the situation on the ground is substantially similar to that of today, will British troops be withdrawn from combat?
The Defence Secretary has said that in opposition both he and the Prime Minister argued that our troops were too thinly spread. Will the Minister confirm that what he announced today is in fact a continuation of a process that we began in government? Does he accept that the uplift of American forces gave us the opportunity to improve force density and that, before that, we were limited in the adjustments that we could make? Will he also outline whether this change will bring us to the same density as our American allies? Can he also set out whether he envisages further changes to areas of operation in the near future? The Statement mentioned the deployment of elements of our Theatre Reserve Battalion to Afghanistan. Can the Minister reassure the House that this will not have an adverse effect on our capability to respond to any new contingencies that arise?
All of us on both sides of the House recognise that Sangin is one of the most challenging and difficult places in which our forces are operating. The number of losses that, sadly, we have suffered there reflect that. There will be mixed emotions from our forces and from those who have lost loved ones in Sangin on hearing the Government’s announcement today. Of course we recognise that. However, crucially we must also recognise that this is a decision made by ISAF commanders, whose responsibility is to ensure that coalition forces are organised so that they can deliver the campaign strategy that we all agree is necessary. We on these Benches will support them and the Government in the decisions that they take which enable our Armed Forces effectively to deliver that strategy.
We all recognise that for Afghanistan this is a vital year, in which we must see real progress. The Kabul conference and the September elections will be crucial for the future of the country. Will the Minister update us on progress in that regard and on discussions that the Secretary of State for Defence has had with the Afghan authorities on their prospects? Stability in Afghanistan cannot be delivered by our military alone. The problems are political and the solutions will be political. Will the Minister recognise that and update us on discussions that the Defence Secretary and other members of the Government have had with both the Afghan authorities and others in the region on the political progress that has been made so far?
As we have always said, the Government have our full support as they proceed to take difficult decisions in the best interests of our mission in Afghanistan and of our troops. Our work in Afghanistan is essential to keep us safe and we must never forget that.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord and am very grateful for the Official Opposition’s broad support for our specific and general proposals. I absolutely agree with what he said about our excellent Armed Forces.
As the noble Lord will know from his time in government, there are questions that I am unable to answer from the Dispatch Box. I know he agrees that we must do everything possible not to put the lives of our service men and women at risk. However, I am happy to offer private briefings both in this House and in the Ministry of Defence, where we will be able to share with noble Lords more information than I feel comfortable revealing at this Dispatch Box. I have already written to some noble Lords from all parts of the House who I know are interested in defence, and I will be writing to others. We have two dates in the diary for briefing—one before the Summer Recess and the other immediately after we return.
If I do not answer all the questions posed by the noble Lord, I undertake to write to him. He pressed me on deadlines. We want to see the Afghans take control of their own security. They cannot do that yet, but as they are better able to do so, we will see our troop numbers come right down and our role will completely change. The process of handing provinces and districts over to Afghan control will take place on the basis of an assessment of facts on the ground, but we are clear that we need to make progress rapidly, and the coming 12 months are crucial.
The Prime Minister is very clear that there will not be British troops in a combat role or in significant numbers in Afghanistan in five years’ time. Of course, some troops could be there in a training role as part of wider diplomatic relationships, such as we have in other countries, but it will be nothing like what we are doing now. The bottom line is clear: we do not want to be in Afghanistan a day longer than necessary.
That is an internationally agreed objective. The G8 in Canada in June sent a collective signal that we want Afghan security forces to assume increasing responsibility for security within five years. I accept that in the short time we have been in office we have followed through on some of the previous Government’s work in Afghanistan. The money announced by the Prime Minister for counter-IED work is new money, as is the £189 million announced in the Statement.
The noble Lord pressed me about end of force rebalancing. As the Statement says, the force rebalancing announced today follows the additional 18,000 US troops deploying to Helmand. As the Defence Secretary has said, we were not in a position before now to make the changes without those additional ISAF troops. Further changes to what our troops are doing in Afghanistan will undoubtedly be required over time. The transition will need to take place gradually and we have already seen this with the moves started at the end of last year which saw ISAF troops work more closely with their Afghan counterparts under the embedded partnering approach. That approach is seeing ISAF and Afghan troops working together at every level, from soldier and policeman on the ground to Ministers in Kabul.
The noble Lord also asked whether we have a clear counterinsurgency plan. Yes, the plan is clear; it involves protecting the civilian population from insurgents, supporting more effective government at every level and building up the Afghan national security forces to take over that task for themselves.
Baroness D'Souza
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement, and I take this opportunity to pay tribute to our forces fighting in the south of Afghanistan. We are told that this is a crunch year and that significant progress has to be made in Helmand and Kandahar. It is, however, difficult to know what significant progress looks like and, therefore, whether it can be achieved.
I spent last weekend in Kabul talking with a wide range of people, including MPs, academics, teachers, university students, parents, schoolchildren, craftsmen and NGO representatives. Consistently and vociferously two views were expressed: first, the fear of the relentless advance of the Taliban from the south and now in central provinces, and seemingly moving rapidly towards Kabul and the north; and, secondly, the development in the 12 months since I was last there of an astonishingly strong anti-foreign feeling. The rationale, briefly put, is that billions of dollars worth of aid has not helped infrastructure which is deteriorating by the day. I am talking about roads, schools, health and public services of any kind, while unemployment, violence and the Taliban threat are increasing day by day.
What plans do the Government have to make a serious effort to insist that all multilateral, bilateral and NGO aid is co-ordinated, accounted for and directed towards genuine capacity-building involving Afghans? Does the Minister agree that if that were achieved there would be an alternative support structure for people, particularly in rural areas, who would in turn be more likely to reject the Taliban, which ultimately would be a more productive route?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her question, and I of course share her admiration for the excellent work that our Armed Forces are doing. Why are we there? In two words: national security. Our forces are in Afghanistan to prevent Afghan territory from again being used by AQ as a base from which to plan attacks on the UK and our allies. Because Afghanistan is not yet capable of securing its territory without the presence of UK and international forces, al-Qaeda would return to Afghanistan, and the threat to this country would rise.
What are we trying to achieve? Afghanistan is not yet strong enough to look after its own security. The presence of NATO forces is preventing al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime from returning while we train Afghanistan's own security forces to take over that task themselves. The noble Baroness made the point that we need to do much more about redevelopment and leaving a legacy in the country. I absolutely agree. I can confirm that DfID, the FCO and the MoD are stepping up their efforts to discuss those issues together, along with our ISAF partners and the Afghans themselves.
Lord King of Bridgwater
My Lords, does my noble friend recognise that there is a great welcome for his offer of briefings on these matters? We face a critical situation, and if there is one duty that we owe to our Armed Forces and those engaged in Afghanistan, in the extremely challenging task that they are conducting so courageously, it is to ensure that Parliament and the people back them to the hilt. People must understand what is happening. No one in this House was under any illusion, even before the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza: we are at a critical moment. There is definitely a balance here. We must ensure that we move speedily on the counterinsurgency strategy, to make that as effective as we can, with the additional United States reinforcements and what my noble friend has announced today, and couple that with political progress. Time is not on our side, and we need to move fast.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, on the latter issue, of course I agree with my noble friend. It is important that Members of this House, as well as of the other place, are properly briefed on difficult issues in Afghanistan, especially when our strategic defence and security review is taking place. I mentioned that, after the Statement, I will have a series of briefings in the Ministry of Defence. I have asked the Chief of the Defence Staff and the three other chiefs to come to give noble Lords the benefit of their wisdom. We will do that on a rolling basis. My door is always open to any noble Lord who wants to talk to me about Afghanistan or any other issue.
Lord Craig of Radley
My Lords, I welcome the Statement, and particularly the implication that there will be an increased counterinsurgency effort. The redeployments make sense in achieving that. I am, however, concerned about the additional redeployment from Cyprus. The Minister mentioned that that would be temporary. Bearing in mind the extreme stresses that there have been on the Armed Forces, can he indicate what “temporary” means and whether those ground forces are being supported by additional air and other assets, which will be essential to their role?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I thank the noble and gallant Lord for his question. I asked officials the same question, but I was told that I could not say more than “temporary”. I assure the noble and gallant Lord that it will be temporary. I add that there is still a company of our Armed Forces in Cyprus, so there will still be soldiers in reserve out there. They will be supported by a number of additional support troops, but I do not think they will be supported by aircraft.
Lord Soley
I am also in favour of briefings, and I welcome that offer. What plans do the Government have to combat the assumption that is already creeping into some aspects of the British media that British troops have had to leave the area because of casualties and so on? The barely hidden implication is that these casualties have been in vain because we have had to leave. This has happened before. We need a powerful media strategy to convey to the British media that when these military changes take place, there are good, rational reasons for them and they are not about being driven out, having to move out, giving in to the Americans or whatever. We need to get that message over. It may be one of the things the Minister ought to consider in his offer of briefings.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, the noble Lord makes an important point. As the Secretary of State said in his speech in the other place, he is inviting the editors of all the national newspapers and other media to his office to give them a briefing in the hope that they will take a more positive line on the responsibilities we have out there. I look forward to seeing the noble Lord at some of the briefings that I am looking forward to having. I remember the happy times we had together in Afghanistan last year.
Lord Lee of Trafford
My Lords, in relation to building up Afghan capability, in a Written Answer, my noble friend indicated to me that something like 129 UK personnel were involved in training an embryonic Afghan air force. Is any of that training being done in the UK? Secondly, we know of the tragic loss of life among our service personnel in Sangin. Can he indicate how many have been severely wounded in that province?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord those figures, but I will get hold of them and write to him. The international community, including this country, is helping to develop the Afghan National Army, which includes the ANNAC, so that they are able to provide security for their own country. It includes the UK-led international combined airpower transition force, which is working to build a 3,300 member, 48-aircraft ANAAF as part of a long-term effort to give the country a self-sufficient air force. The UK’s contribution to NTNA is currently approximately 129 personnel, with one attached to the ANNAC as a rotary wing mentor. There is a small number of Afghans in this country on staff training courses, supported by English language training.
Lord Myners
Can the Minister give the House some comfort by pointing to a precedent where it has been sensible for a Government, when their soldiers are at war, to indicate their intention to withdraw at a pre-stated date and to examples of where that has been in the best interests of our fighting forces?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I point out to the noble Lord that we are part of an international ISAF organisation and we have done this with the agreement of our partners. I feel comfortable with that decision.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
Was the Minister responding to the last point made by the noble Lord, Lord King, when he spoke of the need to pursue a political track? He spoke of the need to win the counterinsurgency and to pursue political progress. In the light of what the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, told us, it seems very important to envisage serious contacts and negotiations with all parties inside Afghanistan and a framework that involves all the regional powers and Afghan’s neighbours, including the Chinese, the Russians, the Kyrgys, the Kazakhs, the Iranians and the Pakistanis.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, the noble Lord makes an important point. We will not bring about a more secure Afghanistan by military means alone. Insurgencies usually end with political settlements, not military victories. As the Prime Minister said, as for talking to the Taliban, a process of reconciliation and reintegration is taking place where Taliban who are prepared to stop fighting and accept the basic tenet for the Afghan constitution can be reintegrated back into society. That should happen. That political track which runs alongside the training of the Afghan Army and the military surge is vital, as is talking to the neighbours surrounding Afghanistan.
Lord Sterling of Plaistow
My Lords, from a British perspective progress in Afghanistan is often measured through the lens of Helmand. Will the Minister give us a view as to whether he considers that this is a fair reflection of the security situation across the whole of the country?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, it is easy to look at Afghanistan as just Helmand province, but large parts are at peace without any problems. We have to look at the country as a whole.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
Let me bring the noble Lord back to the point made by my noble friend Lord Myners. I do not think that my noble friend was referring to the current arrangements, which we all understand are ISAF arrangements on which there has been a broad area of agreement in your Lordships’ House. My noble friend was asking what precedent there is for announcing a withdrawal by May 2015. It is that that is causing so much worry because it is thought to give people on the ground who are harming our troops—al-Qaeda, the Taliban and others—a target date by which they know we will be gone. It is that precedent that we would like the noble Lord to address.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, there are always events. What the Prime Minister has said was an aspiration, to which we very much hope that as a country we can keep, although we could be overtaken by events.
Lord Burnett
My Lords, since 2001, and certainly over the past four years, despite shortages of manpower and helicopters, the courage, stamina and commitment of our troops and our allies are beginning to bring peace and stability to the people of Afghanistan. As Sir Richard Dannatt said this morning on the “Today” programme, for at least some years to come, we require a critical mass of fighting troops to sustain our contribution to the alliance. I hope that the Minister can assure the House that the strategic defence review will not lead to cuts in numbers of our essential fighting troops; namely, the 3rd Commando Brigade Royal Marines from the naval service and seven infantry brigades from the Army. The policy of restraint is undoubtedly correct. It is, however, easier to preach than to practise. It demands heroism, self-discipline and patience of the highest order. It also demands considerably more manpower.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, the Secretary of State has made it clear that Afghanistan remains our top priority and that our people in theatre will get the best possible support. A counterinsurgency needs strategic patience and we are committed to seeing the mission through to resolution, thus creating a stable enough Afghanistan to allow the Afghan people to manage their own internal and external security.
My noble friend mentioned equipment. We are providing an additional £189 million from the Treasury reserve for equipment, together with up to £67 million for the counter-IED campaign announced by the Prime Minister. With regard to helicopters, as mentioned by my noble friend, we now have the upgraded Lynx helicopters, which have been fitted with increased fire power and more powerful engines to cope with the hot and high Afghan flying conditions. They join the Chinook, Merlin, Apache and Sea King helicopters out there.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, the Statement contains the sentence:
“In a counter-insurgency campaign, the people are the prize”.
Quite rightly, my noble friend Lady D’Souza has drawn attention to the impact of what is happening now on the Afghan people. There was a well publicised operation to replace and repair equipment on the Kajaki dam. The electricity supply in Kandahar is said to be worse now than it was under the Taliban. What is being done to put these right because that sort of progress—making things better—must convince the people that what we are doing is helpful and right?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that question. As I understand it, work on the dam, although it is of a high priority, is now considered a lower priority than other work. It will be taken on, but maybe not for another year or 18 months. However, it is very much in the sights.
Lord Wright of Richmond
My Lords, I apologise for speaking when I was not able to be here for the Statement, but is the noble Lord aware that there are two precedents which I think the noble Lord, Lord Myners, and the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, were seeking? One is Aden, which is a very unhappy precedent, and the other is the withdrawal of our forces from the Persian Gulf at the end of 1971. A precise date was given and it actually ended very happily.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that history lesson and for being able to think on his feet more quickly than I was able.
Lord Marlesford
My Lords, we all want to see the Afghan Government take more control over their own decision-making and, crucially, to earn the respect and confidence of the Afghan security forces so that the Afghan Government can exercise effective leadership and command over their own forces. Will the forthcoming conference in Kabul be able to make a contribution to this?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, the Afghan Government will set out the further steps they will take to build upon this momentum at the Kabul conference. They will present their priorities, which are to bring about improved security, economic development, better governance and development for Afghanistan. This will enable the international community to ensure co-ordinated assistance in common support of the Afghan Government and will be a further step in the ongoing process of robust and public monitoring of the progress made.
The Earl of Shrewsbury
My Lords, what efforts are being made to encourage the Pakistani armed forces to take greater responsibility for Taliban activity south of the border with Helmand?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, Pakistan is fully engaged in a military campaign, although its efforts have been focused in the main on quelling the Pakistan Taliban. We are using key leader engagement at the most senior military level—the Chief of the Defence Staff, the Chief of the General Staff and CINCLAND—to develop relations with the military leaders of Pakistan with a view to increasing our influence and to establish a mutual understanding of the wider impact of security challenges in south Asia. At the request of the Government of Pakistan, this country is assisting in developing the capacity of the frontier corps in the north-west of the country via some targeted training under a US-led programme.
Academies Bill [HL]
(14 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
18:15 - Division on Amendment 9 - Ayes: 156 / Noes: 245 - Amendment 9 disagreed.
Baroness Walmsley
“( ) to comply with the law on pupil exclusions and behaviour partnerships as set out in EA 2002, EIA 2006 and ASCLA 2009”
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 48 and 50 in my name. Amendment 6 asks for academies to comply with the law as laid down in the Education Act 2002, the Education and Inspections Act 2006 and the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009. I know that it sounds a bit silly to ask schools to comply with the law, but there is a reason for tabling this amendment. The current law on exclusions and behaviour partnerships is found in these three Acts. Some related legislation is to be found elsewhere: attendance and short-stay schools in the Education Act 1996, parenting orders in the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, et cetera.
Of late, academies have been included in legislation as it applies to maintained schools. My intention in tabling the amendments is to ask the Minister to make a clear statement about what does and does not apply to academies, and what will be included in the model funding agreement. I regret that I have not had time to scrutinise all of the 41 pages of the document sent to me yesterday just before our sitting.
Amendments 48 and 50 seek to include the new academies in the two areas of the law relating to exclusions and behaviour which do not currently include academies. Amendment 48 seeks to amend Section 52 of the Education Act 2002 and would include academies in the law on pupil exclusions. Section 52 enables a head teacher to exclude a pupil on disciplinary grounds for a fixed term or permanently. However, the majority of the section is taken up with providing for arrangements to appeal against exclusions.
The model funding agreement sent to us yesterday contains in annexe D a clear statement that parental appeals against exclusion from an academy are not to be treated in the same way as appeals against maintained school exclusions. This runs counter to my Amendment 48, which was tabled before I had seen the model funding agreement. For an academy, annexe D states:
“Any appeal panel will be impartial, constituted in accordance with the Secretary of State’s guidance and any decision of such a panel will be binding on the academy trust”.
The Secretary of State’s guidance has not yet been published so we do not know whether or not it is acceptable. The published guidance, School Discipline and Pupil-behaviour Policies: Guidance for Schools, dated April 2010, is clear: it states that it does not apply to academies.
There are issues of equality and human rights compliance here. Removing a place at a school is clearly a human rights issue as a person,
“shall not be denied education”.
If academy appeal rights are just about following guidance—or not, as the case may be—how does the state know whether an academy’s appeal arrangements are Human Rights Act-compliant? Who will check up on it?
The footnote states that parents can seek a judicial review of both the procedure and the outcome of any appeal arrangement. However, judicial review is not a parent-friendly form of redress. Most parents would run a mile from it, even if they understood what it meant; I probably would myself. At least a maintained school has access to the local government ombudsman on grounds of maladministration, although not necessarily on all aspects of the appeal, but the parents of a child at an academy will not have that. We need the issue clarified.
Amendment 50 seeks to add academies to the Education and Inspections Act 2006, and requires the governing bodies of academies to have a disciplinary policy and the head teacher to have a behaviour policy. All these matters arise from Sir Alan Steer’s review of behaviour and discipline and have been generally welcomed by schools.
On 28 June this year, in Hansard at col. 1573, the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, referred to the provision in the ASCL Act 2009 when she was trying to make excuses for the high number of exclusions from the original academies under Labour. I do not agree with her that we need to accept that academies, by definition, will have a greater number of exclusions than other schools. I know many schools in difficult circumstances that have difficult pupils, but they see it as their duty to deal with these problems within the school. It is a matter of good leadership and marshalling all the resources to hand, including the voluntary sector on occasions.
However, the noble Baroness reminded us that all schools, including academies, will have to work in partnership on behaviour and attendance from 1 September this year unless the law is changed. There is a statutory requirement to this effect in Section 248 of the ASCL Act 2009 which is due to commence on that date. The section requires co-operation by all secondary schools, including academies, to promote good behaviour and discipline on the part of pupils, reduce persistent absence and report to the local children’s trust board once every 12-month period. We welcomed that move by the Labour Government when the legislation came through the House.
My amendments ask the Minister whether there is any intention to change the law to exclude academies from these measures and which of the current laws—in particular, the appeal arrangements in Section 52 of the Education Act 2002—will apply. I ask also about the rumour that legislation or guidance will be introduced to allow schools to exclude a child without the usual minimum of 24 hours’ notice to the parents. I am not sure where this came from, but it would be impossible for a working single parent to respond to this. In the interests of the safety of the child and the sanity of the single parent, for whom life is hard enough, I hope that my noble friend will be able to dispel this rumour. I beg to move.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I have Amendments 10B and 44B in this group. They are intended to probe the Minister further on how he will monitor the impact of the academies legislation on the distribution of outstanding teachers. However, the Minister said yesterday that he would produce an annual report on the impact of academies. I hope that it may therefore be helpful to him and the House if I do not speak to my amendments and relieve the Minister of the task of replying, unless your Lordships would prefer me to speak.
I support Amendment 6. I spoke yesterday morning with the head teacher of a secondary school in north London who had increased the proportion of his pupils achieving five or more A* to C grades at GCSE from about 30 per cent to about 80 per cent. He said how much he would value a social worker and a child psychotherapist to support his staff. I was grateful to the Minister for having written to me during Committee about the value that he places on the role of Place2Be in supporting the mental health of children and teachers. It is important to encourage schools to reach out for these resources as far as possible. They are under pressure to achieve in league tables. The amendment is necessary to ensure that they get the support that they need.
Lord Whitty
I should point out by way of clarification, and to save the Minister a little time and effort, that Amendment 49 in my name is in this group. In reality, it should not have been in this group; it should have been grouped with Amendment 51. I shall not therefore take any time in speaking to it now and the Minister need take no time in replying. I do not promise to be so helpful in my later interventions.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I associate myself with the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, on Amendment 6. Academies are subject to the same statutory framework in respect of temporary and permanent exclusions as all other state-funded schools, which is welcome. We know that academies have had higher rates of exclusion than other state-funded schools and it is clear that there would be an impact on neighbouring schools if academies in general excluded more pupils but then did not take excluded pupils from elsewhere in the education area.
There are reasons for this in the current academy scheme, where often highly challenging schools were converted into academies and discipline was frequently a top priority. Where there is a large number of academies, it is important that they take their fair share of excluded pupils.
In government, we established a requirement on all schools, including academies, to participate in behaviour and attendance partnerships that involve other schools and have access to support from other children’s services. This was based on a clear understanding of the potential benefits of collaboration between schools and local authorities in the promotion of good pupil behaviour. I can see nothing in the Bill that links the new academies with a requirement to participate in behaviour partnerships. I hope that the Minister can assure us that academies will continue to do so.
I was very much involved in the establishment of NHS foundation trusts and there are clear parallels with academies. Foundation trusts were set up in the context of a statutory duty of partnership. There was a clear recognition of that in the National Health Service, whatever role different organisations played. NHS foundation trusts had a membership and a governing body, so those institutions were standing on their own two feet more than other parts of the National Health Service. Nevertheless, they were still part of the NHS. A duty was laid on them to work with others. It is a pity in some ways that we do not have a similar understanding that there should be a duty of partnership here. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, raises those issues in her group of amendments and we look forward to a constructive reply from the Minister.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, in essence, this group of amendments would put on the face of the legislation requirements that are covered by academy funding agreements. As we know, since their inception, academies have been regulated by funding agreements. That was thought to be appropriate for many years, including by the previous Government and we agree with them. We intend to retain the funding agreement route as the principal regulatory mechanism for academies. I know that I deviated from this principle in relation to SEN, because we recognise that there are specific concerns around that about which I wanted to send a signal. But as a matter of principle, we are keen to stick to the well established idea that these safeguards should be delivered through the funding agreement.
On Amendment 6, I hope that I can provide my noble friend Lady Walmsley with some reassurance. Funding agreements require that academies act in accordance with the law on exclusions as if the academy were a maintained school. They have to have regard to the Secretary of State’s guidance on exclusions as set out in paragraph 1 of annexe D to the funding agreement. I have shared with noble Lords the new version of the exclusions annexe to the funding agreements, which continues to impose these legal requirements on academies. I am happy to put on the record that this annexe will be included in all future academy arrangements, both contractual funding agreements and grant arrangements.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, the noble Lord said that he had shared that information with noble Lords. It would be helpful to clarify how it has been shared. Certainly yesterday we received a number of letters in the pigeonholes outside the Chamber, which meant that it was available in essence after the first day of Report had started. I hope that we can get those well in advance in future.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I believe that I apologised yesterday to the noble Lord for the lack of notice and do so again. I think I am right in saying that those letters were circulated at an earlier date, but if I am wrong I will put that right.
Regarding the placement of challenging pupils, including those who have been excluded, which I know is a matter of concern across the House, academies are required through their funding agreements to participate in in-year fair access protocols, which ensure that all schools in a local area take their fair share of hard-to-place pupils, including those who have previously been excluded. Academies are equal partners in those arrangements. The requirements envisaged by Amendment 48 in relation to the decision-making process surrounding an exclusion are already part of academy funding agreements and the departmental guidance is very clear about who can exclude a pupil, and in what circumstances the decision to exclude needs to be reviewed by the governing body.
Amendment 50 would require academies to follow the law and guidance on developing and implementing their behaviour policies. Academies are independent schools and are therefore covered by the Education (Independent School Standards) (England) Regulations 2003. These state that an academy must have in place, and must implement effectively, a policy on promoting good behaviour that outlines what sanctions will be taken in the event of any misbehaviour.
As for the specific questions raised by my noble friend Lady Walmsley, we accept that academies are obliged to follow the Human Rights Act and, if they were not following it, we would expect the YPLA as the academies’ monitoring body to identify that. As for exclusions, academies are treated in the same way; the main difference from maintained schools is that the academy trust, rather than the local authority, is the body responsible for setting up an appeal.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, did not speak to the amendments on teacher quality, and there was an amendment that was to have been spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. I confirm for the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, the point that I made earlier, on which, fortunately, I was right. The annexes on exclusions were circulated on the second day of Committee, on 23 June; I should be happy to dig them out and circulate them again.
I hope that that provides some assurance on exclusions on the overall points. My noble friend Lady Walmsley made some specific points; if I have not responded to them, I shall follow them up with her separately outside the House or in writing. On a general point, which links to some of the discussion that we had yesterday, I hope that the suggestion that there should be an annual report to Parliament on the whole of academies policy will provide some further reassurance to noble Lords that these important issues relating to the development of policy will be kept firmly under review. I hope that that picks up on some of the points made by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. I ask her in light of that to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for his reply and to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for his support. I am very much reassured by his very clear statement that academies will have to comply with the law and with guidance as it is already laid down and that the annexe to which he referred will be included in the funding agreement. I got a copy of the annexe somewhat earlier than I got a copy of the whole funding agreement model, which I received only yesterday; that was why I was able to quote from it. I have not yet carefully scrutinised the rest of the funding agreement.
I am grateful to the Minister for stating again that academies will have to comply with the Human Rights Act. I am sure that not only the YPLA will be watching to make quite sure that they do so. If they follow the legal requirements introduced by the previous Government and the guidance that still stands, there should not be problems about exclusions. I am also comforted by the fact that we will have the opportunity every year to see whether the figures for exclusions in academies of both kinds—both the ones from failing schools and those from outstanding schools—have risen at all. If there are any discrepancies that we feel are inappropriate, we will have the opportunity in Parliament to have a look at that. I know that my noble friend was not prepared for my comment on the 24 hours’ notice, so I look forward to his letter about that issue. I am very much reassured by many aspects of his reply and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) the school complies with the provisions of the Code for School Admissions issued from time to time by the Secretary of State under section 84 of the SSFA 1998 (code for school admissions));”
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, in moving Amendment 8, I shall speak also to Amendments 17B, 32A and 33A. I am grateful for the discussions that we have had with the noble Lord and the Bill team on these issues.
Amendment 8 relates to the admissions code. We believe firmly that the duty to comply with the code should be in the Bill. The Minister gave us his assurance in Committee that all new academies will have to comply with the admissions code, and I am grateful for that, but there is a question of confidence, clarity and the empowerment of parents. We have all had representations expressing concern about the admissions code for academies and there can be no better way to inspire confidence than by a clear statement in the Bill.
As we know, the code of practice seeks to establish terms within which fair admissions criteria operate, including those applied in cases in which schools are oversubscribed. This latter consideration is particularly important in relation to academies, where evidence suggests that they are more likely than other schools to be oversubscribed.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I have Amendments 32 and 32B in this very mixed group of amendments about selection, religion and admissions. The Minister has been very clear about the duty of academies to comply with the admissions code so, as with the previous group of amendments, I accept that it does not need to be in the Bill. I presume that it will be in the funding agreement.
Amendment 32 was laid after our discussion in Committee about selection. While I accept in general my noble friend’s assurance that,
“The Bill does not allow for any increase in selection by ability in the state-funded sector”—[Official Report, 28/6/10; col. 1563],
it occurred to me that if a selective school became an academy and then expanded the number on its roll, that would mean more actual children in the area being selected by ability. So I laid this amendment to say that such expansion should not increase the number of children in the relevant area who are selected by ability. However, I accept that this duty would be difficult for an individual school to achieve, especially when I went back and read what the Minister reminded us about the ability of selective maintained schools that are not academies to expand by 25 per cent within the normal admissions consultation. In the light of that, I think that what I am asking for in my amendment would be pretty well impossible. Therefore, I am using the amendment to ask my noble friend who would have the responsibility of watching out for a large expansion of selection by ability among schools both inside and outside the control of a local authority when a lot of new academies are created, given that some of them will be former selective schools that are opting out.
Amendment 32B was originally laid in Committee as Amendment 135. I do not believe that the Minister addressed the matter in his reply, but I forgive him because, as he does today, he had several topics to deal with in the grouping. I believe that these ridiculous groupings have arisen because of the minimal time that we have had between Committee and Report; noble Lords have not had enough time to scrutinise the draft groupings and to make some sense out of them. Amendment 32B would require the governing body of a school with a religious character, if it converts to an academy, to use the fresh start as an opportunity to look at its religious character and to decide whether it wishes to change it. Since the school was first set up, there may have been a big change in the demographics and cultural mix of the catchment area. That may lead a governing body to consider whether it wishes to join together with another faith, or more than one, or to make a larger percentage of its intake inclusive of people of other faiths or none. It would not prevent those governors from making no change at all, but it would give them an opportunity specifically to consider their duty to promote community cohesion and to make a change. It would not interfere with their discretion to make their own decision in any way; it is not prescriptive at all. I commend it to the Minister.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, in this group I have Amendment 10A, which follows on from the discussion in Committee about the effects of Clause 1(6)(d). My noble friend Lord Hill said that paragraph (d) would not prevent an academy from reaching out to areas that were not in its immediate vicinity in order to broaden its intake. It would not prevent a grammar school that became an academy from maintaining its current and typically wide catchment area. Also, to take it even further, it would not prevent an academy from being or becoming a boarding school. I asked my noble friend what, under those circumstances, the paragraph would prevent that the Government wish to prevent. He has not replied, so I presume that there is nothing and that therefore the paragraph has no function. That is my reason for returning to the matter on Report.
On the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, the crucial bit of the model academy funding agreement appears to me to be clause 12(c). Reading that, I do not see what in the agreement—although, like my noble friend Lady Walmsley, I have not parsed it as carefully as I might—updates the requirement as the general admissions requirements change. It seems to me that an academy that was created tomorrow would be for ever stuck with today’s admissions arrangements, even if we improved them in a year’s time. I do not see what in the model funding agreement rolls the requirements forward. That would also apply to SEN requirements and other matters that are dealt with in clause 12. I would be grateful if my noble friend could give me some comfort about what keeps academies current.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, I imagine that your Lordships would expect me to intervene to speak in particular about the clause on religious character, but I have a couple of other comments to make on this group of amendments. By virtue of the scars that I bear from the age of 11, I am not particularly a fan of selective education. My primary school appealed against my having passed the 11-plus, which these days would probably be actionable under human rights legislation. I am Bishop of a diocese where the county still operates a selective system, but I am still not a great fan of it. My instinct is to support any amendment that is likely to result in the Academies Bill not giving selective education a fairer wind than it already has in some parts of the country.
I do not particularly want to go there. However, I will speak to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I take his point and I tabled an amendment to that subsection in Committee. You might think that we would be all in favour of any proposals that freed up the potential for church schools to recruit their faith members from as wide a field as possible. However, I can only reiterate what I have said at various stages of the Bill: we are in the business of providing schools not to accommodate those who are paid-up members of the Church of England but, rather, to be instrumental in providing first-class education in some of the most deprived areas of the country. We can say only that if there are no limits on the ability of a school to admit pupils geographically, our ability to deliver on our title deeds in education—which are now nearly 200 years old—would be seriously attenuated. So I am very anxious that there should remain in the Bill a clear understanding that there should not be any attempt to liberate the admissions policy to accommodate just any pupils from anywhere.
More important is Amendment 32B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. My comments on this are threefold. First, some of us have been urging on the Government, in respect of several clauses in the Bill, that the avoidance of doubt might be a good idea, and so to include something even if it is implicit elsewhere. Let us make it explicit in the Bill. I have a great deal of sympathy for any amendment which seems to be about the avoidance of doubt. Let us give the governing body the chance to make a clear statement as to whether it wishes to continue as a school of religious character. Secondly, however, this could become very difficult. In Clause 3(2), (3) and (4) on foundation schools, there is a requirement to consult the foundation before an application for academy status is made. I am getting rather confused about this. If we pass this amendment, at which stage does the governing body say that it does not want to be a school of religious character any more? If it then consults the foundation, which is by definition committed to the religious character of the school, I can see only confusion here.
My most important point is the third one. I have tried, as have other noble Lords, to avoid using the Bill as a vehicle either to expand or dilute the particular existing character of a school. There may well be a case for doing either or both of those things, but this is not the way to do it. The Bill is about something quite different in terms of the overall structural arrangements made for our schools in the future. I therefore urge the Minister to resist Amendment 32B, if for no other reason than that he would thereby be resisting a Trojan horse approach to the Bill. Although a Trojan horse proved successful on one occasion, as those who know their ancient history will realise, nobody came out of it with much credit.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, Amendment 10C follows an amendment to the Bill that I tabled in Committee. It would put admissions to academies on the same basis as those to maintained schools. I am bringing this back at this stage because I was grateful to the Minister for his helpful letter on this point, and I wanted to give him the opportunity to put on record what he said in that letter. I am very grateful for the pains he has taken to clarify this point. I am also grateful for the special measures that he has taken with regard to SEN. However, listening to the opening statement of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, on this group of amendments, I remain concerned. I declare my interest as a trustee of the fostering and adoption voluntary agency, TACT, which works in England, Scotland and Wales.
It was a great step forward when the previous Administration some years ago made the admission of children in care to schools an absolute priority. I was troubled to hear the noble Baroness talk about admissions interviews. I am reminded of a concern that many foster parents will not feel particularly pushy for their children; they have other concerns. If it were possible for the Minister to say that he will at least consider including in the annual report an assessment of any impact on the admissions of looked-after children to academy schools, that would be comforting. I look forward to his response.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Royall. I state my very clear position that I am not in favour of any expansion of selection by the front or the back door—the back door route enables the expansion of admissions by existing selective schools that may become academies. I was therefore fairly disappointed in myself when I saw the Minister’s letter to my noble friend Lady Morgan of Drefelin, in which he says that the previous Government allowed selective maintained schools to expand by up to 25 per cent without publishing statutory proposals. Given that my fingerprints are all over the admissions code and the primary legislation that brought that into place—the Education and Inspections Act 2006—I was surprised that I might have let that one through. However, I pay tribute to the Minister’s officials for finding him that get-out. They continue to do a fabulous job for their Minister.
However, I have one or two questions to ask him. I have looked at the latest version of the 2010 admissions code. Paragraph 1.15 makes it clear that:
“Admissions arrangements for Academies are … part of an Academy’s Funding Agreement”.
The model agreement, to which we have referred, makes very little mention of admissions. Paragraph 12 makes some mention but the main section is paragraph 17, which says that the academy will be an all-ability, inclusive school. Clearly, we need a variant of this model agreement to show how it would apply to selective schools that then become academies. I would be most grateful if the Minister could assure us that that is being drafted and that we can have sight of it as legislation goes through Parliament. If we cannot see it in this House, perhaps the other place can see it before it debates it.
My second question concerns the admission number for schools. Paragraph 1.16 of the code refers to the importance of the admission number. Paragraph 1.17 says:
“Admission authorities of maintained schools must set admission numbers with regard to the capacity assessment for the school”.
That is set according to the physical constraints of the school. Will academies be bound by the same capacity assessment? That is particularly relevant when we get to the section of the admissions code to which the Minister referred in his letter that I mentioned earlier. In paragraph 1.20, the,
“statutory proposals are still required for schools proposing an enlargement to their premises which would increase the physical capacity of the school by more than 30 pupils and either by 25 per cent or by 200 pupils”.
My next question concerns the presumption of approval. Paragraph 1.22 of the code states:
“Local authorities and the Schools Adjudicator, when making decisions over setting admission numbers or admitting above them, should have regard to the presumption that proposals to expand successful and popular schools, except grammar schools, should be approved”.
Does that clause “except grammar schools” read the way that I intended when I approved it: that for grammar schools, the presumption would be that you would not approve the expansion? This area needs clarity. These amendments add clarity by saying that we should not have any new selection by any means. I know that is what the Minister’s right honourable friend Michael Gove said before he became Secretary of State. I have not paid sufficient attention to know whether he has repeated it since he took up that office.
Finally, I should be grateful if the Minister could say whether he has thought about using the schools adjudicator, as a truly independent person, to resolve these things after proper consultation, because the volume of new academies may swamp the Secretary of State when making the judgments that are required of him, as the law currently stands.
Lord Blackwell
My Lords, briefly, I ask the Minister to consider Amendment 10A in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas. The whole purpose of academies is to enable good schools to become even better schools. The benefit of good schools in an area is that they ought to be able to provide such opportunities for as many children as possible.
One of the problems of the current admission system is that it ends up, in practice, turning into selection by house price. In other words, the good schools that become better schools tend to be in areas where parents move in and house prices rise. In that situation, poor schools and their pupils who live in neighbouring areas do not have the choice of getting the benefit of being able to apply to the better school next door. Indeed, schools in poorer and often disadvantaged areas have no incentive to improve. They do not have any competition, because they have in effect a monopoly of access in the local catchment area. There is a wholly beneficial argument for saying that if we allow good schools to develop by becoming academies, it would be socially desirable to allow all children from within a feasible area around that school who chose to apply to gain the benefit of being able to go to that school, rather than only the children of parents who happened to be able to afford to live nearby. It is wholly in favour of social mobility to widen admission as far as possible.
I would go further, as I argued at Second Reading. Contrary to the noble Lord, Lord Knight, I believe that there should be a place for selective education in the state system. That, too, would help social mobility. I accept that that is not the spirit of the Bill or the policy of the Government, and unfortunately there is nothing in the Bill that would allow that to happen. Therefore, I certainly would not support the amendments that try to go further in restricting admissions freedom, although Amendment 10A merits consideration.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, these selection issues are important, and I know how important it is that I provide as much reassurance as I can. I know that when I met the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and Members on the opposition Front Bench, he was very clear, and I obviously understood, that selection is a touchstone issue that is extremely important to the party opposite. I hope that he will also accept by the same token that that is extremely important to Peers in the coalition Government. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has made it very clear that he is not interested in fighting old battles and reopening the question of selection, which I know will disappoint my noble friend Lord Blackwell. I hope, therefore, that I can provide some of the reassurance that noble Lords opposite and on these Benches have been asking for.
In part, one of the issues underlying all this, and which we touched on in the first group of amendments, relates to the reassurances provided through the funding agreement. That remains the case. Amendments 8 and 10C would require academy arrangements to include terms that provided that academies be treated as maintained schools for the purposes of their admissions policy under the schools admissions code. As I previously confirmed and my noble friend Lady Walmsley made clear, academies must comply—as is the case with maintained schools—with admissions law and the codes, and that is achieved through the funding agreement. I confirm that all future academy arrangements will contain this requirement. This is not, as some may fear, a voluntary requirement but a contract that is enforceable by the Secretary of State. The approach is consistent with that taken by the previous Government, who never sought to require in legislation academies' compliance with the admissions code. We do not see any reason to change that.
I will respond to one question from the noble Lord, Lord Knight. There may be other points on which I will have to speak to those excellent officials to whom he referred, and write to him. The detailed admission arrangements are in the annexe to the funding agreement that was shared with noble Lords earlier, perhaps before the noble Lord joined the House—I am not referring to the one that we shared yesterday. The model funding agreement published yesterday makes it clear that academies will continue to be bound by the same arrangements.
Amendment 10A, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas, seeks to remove the requirement that an academy should provide the majority of places for pupils who are wholly or mainly drawn from the area in which it is situated. We discussed this in response to amendments moved by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who was particularly concerned about boarding schools and those with a particular specialism. The words “wholly or mainly” require that more than 50 per cent of the pupils of an academy are drawn from the area in which the school is situated. My noble friend Lord Lucas asked why one should not simply do away with this. We believe that the requirement that an academy is a local school is important, as we want to ensure that local children have access to good quality schools. I think that point is welcomed by Peers on all sides of the House.
The phrase,
“the area in which the school is situated”,
like many such phrases, must be set in context. In practice, it depends on the nature of the school. If the academy is a boarding academy, or an academy with a particular specialism, the area could be very much wider than that which would be applicable in the case of an academy without special features. That is how it has worked in practice. We discussed this in Committee in the context of boarding schools and schools with a particular specialism. Following that debate, I pursued the point with officials, because I wanted to make sure that that was the understanding. The definition has not proved to be a problem in practice. I am very happy to write further to my noble friend Lord Lucas to follow up on his specific points.
Amendment 17B seeks to include provisions in academy arrangements to ensure compliance with academy characteristics, while Amendment 33A seeks to achieve similar aims by allowing selective schools to continue to select by ability. As I said in Committee, the Bill requires that the academy arrangements will oblige the academy proprietor to comply with the Clause 1(6) characteristics when establishing and running an academy. The Secretary of State ensures at the outset of an academy project that the academy meets those characteristics. Thereafter, compliance with them, and with all aspects of the funding agreement, is monitored by the Young People's Learning Agency. If anyone has concerns that an academy is not complying with the required statutory characteristics or the term of its arrangements, this can be brought to the attention of the YPLA or the Secretary of State, who will look into it and take appropriate action.
Amendment 32A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, seeks to prescribe in legislation a requirement that would prevent a selective school from increasing admission numbers once it becomes an academy. The Bill contains provisions that allow selective maintained schools to retain academic selection if they become academies; but, as we have discussed and as I am happy again to put on the record, it does not allow for new selection.
One point that perhaps has not been made before is that any independent school seeking to become an academy, which people may worry is a possible back-door route, would have to cease to be selective. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, pointed out, under current legislation, the Education and Inspections Act 2006, any maintained school, including a selective school, may increase its admission number as part of any changes to its admission arrangements, subject to consultation. We propose no change to this in the Bill; in fact, we seek to maintain the status quo. The amendment would reduce the right to expand for one set of schools. It seems wrong to bar one set of successful schools from responding to demand for more places when that opportunity is currently open to them in the maintained sector.
Finally, I turn to the issue of faith schools raised by Amendment 32B, and I shall speak in support of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln. We had a keen debate about faith schools in Committee. As is rather the case with selection generally, the aims of the Bill in relation to faith schools are very modest, and the right reverend Prelate made the point well and fairly. We are simply asking to maintain the status quo, which I think is the point that he made. Nothing in the Bill will make an increase in faith schools easier, nor is there anything that seeks to change their character, but we believe that a faith school should have the same chance to become an academy as any other maintained school. We are not convinced that it would be right for faith schools seeking to convert to academy status to have to go through an additional application process simply to stay as they are. We think that designated faith schools are a key element of a diverse school system, and that they provide parents with an important choice.
We know from experience that academy arrangements involve a sufficiently robust safeguard. Earlier, we heard about a Trojan horse. In reply to the right reverend Prelate, it did not work out very well for the Trojans, or indeed for most of the Greeks. There is no back door to selection in the Bill. Having gone into this matter carefully and listened to the points made from the Benches opposite as well as from this side of the House, I believe that that back door is locked, bolted and padlocked. I hope that that reassures the noble Lords who have spoken and, in the light of that, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Lucas
Before my noble friend sits down, can he give me some comfort on clause 12(c) of the model funding agreement? What is it about clause 12(c) or other aspects of the funding agreement which mean that, when the admissions requirements for maintained schools are updated, they are updated also for academies? The default position in contract law would be that they were not updated.
Lord Hill of Oareford
If I may, I shall need to write to my noble friend to make that specific point clear, and I shall circulate it to the House.
The Earl of Listowel
Before the Minister sits down, I should say that I am very grateful to him for the pains that he is taking in this area. Will he consider whether the annual report should actively look at this area and keep it under review?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I hope that the noble Earl will forgive me. He made that point very clearly earlier and I am sorry not to have responded to it. This report is rapidly assuming biblical proportions. There seem to be a whole range of issues arising from this debate that noble Lords from around the House will want to make sure are looked into very carefully and debated properly. I am sure that the point that the noble Earl has made is just one such example.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his very full response. I certainly accept that there is nothing in current legislation stipulating that academies must abide by the admissions code. I accept that the safeguards are adequate for 200-plus academies but when it comes to 2,000-plus, which there may well be if free schools become academies, then perhaps greater safeguards are needed.
I tend to agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln that sometimes it is necessary for things which are implicit to be made explicit, as that inspires confidence. I certainly urge the Minister to take the opportunity to make explicit the fact that academies have to abide by the admissions code by putting that into the Bill. However, I accept the arguments that he made and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, the amendment, which is in my name and that of the noble Baronesses, Lady Gould and Lady Flather, would make personal, social and health education a curriculum requirement. I thank the Minister for his courtesy in meeting a group of us to discuss our concerns, and for his consideration of the amendment.
We debated this issue at length in Committee and it was said then that this is not a party-political issue. It is about the welfare of children. It is not about sex education—perhaps it is partly, but it is mostly about personal, social and health education. I have three points to make. The first relates to why I think every child should be entitled to PSHE in school. The second refers to the readiness of schools to take on PSHE and the third relates to the impact of PSHE on the lives of young people.
PSHE tackles issues which are important to young people and to parents. I refer to issues such as drugs, alcohol, staying safe, diet, sex and relationships, and so on. The methods used to teach PSHE also encourage young people to explore their feelings and attitudes and to reach informed decisions. Such methods may include role play, small discussion groups, and learning from visitors such as the police or nurses. Another aspect of teaching PSHE is that young people can also learn where to get help for themselves, a friend or relative—for example, in relation to drugs, alcohol or sexual health. One of the results of teaching in this way is that young people learn how to respect others and develop self-esteem by having their opinions valued in a group. If we can develop in young people communication skills and respect for self and others, it can be life-enhancing in the midst of negative and damaging influences from the media and other sources. It can counteract pressure from the peer group so that young people become strong enough to resist dangerous experimentation. Strong and confident young people make better parents and better members of society.
I am a parent and a grandparent, and I was a teacher. I know, as do noble Lords, that young people take risks of all kinds. We have all done that, but I suggest that risks these days are more sinister than when we were young. We also know that early intervention can prevent distress attached to health and social problems. PSHE also makes economic sense. If young people can be helped to make healthy choices we may see less alcoholism, less unsafe sex and less obesity.
Parents and young people themselves want PSHE delivered in schools. Even good, competent parents often find personal issues difficult to handle with their children, and children—particularly adolescents—may wish to have some distance from their parents in discussing, for example, their relationships. Parents want their children to receive accurate information rather than that gleaned from friends, the media or pornography. One young person said, “PSHE is important because it provides us with opportunities to discuss complex issues in a safe environment. We develop skills to deal with difficult situations and are better equipped to make the right choices”. That says it all.
My second point on the question of how ready schools are to teach PSHE came up in our earlier discussions. Of course, many schools are teaching it already as they see the value. Teachers are being trained. More than 6,000 are known by the PSHE Association for teachers. When it was announced at a teaching conference last year that the then Government had agreed to have PSHE as a statutory subject in the curriculum, a long and loud cheer went up. Jim Knight—now the noble Lord, Lord Knight—said that it was the only time he had been given a standing ovation. One student teacher said: “Being given opportunities to teach PSHE has significantly widened my understanding of teaching and learning”.
According to the PSHE Association, there is someone already in most schools with experience and enthusiasm. Many head teachers have supported its effectiveness. One head teacher said: “It is the heart of what the school is about”. I am told that the real development of better practice in citizenship education took place only after that subject became compulsory. Heads and teachers became geared up to develop or improve their programmes of PSHE once it was announced that it was to become statutory. Now is the time to follow up that enthusiasm.
How do we know that PSHE is effective? It is difficult to assess in the long term, but we know from surveys that young people find information about health useful, and that they recall the messages—for example, about the risks of smoking, drinking and taking drugs. In one survey, 80 per cent of young people said that learning about risks helped them to avoid drugs. Sex education has been shown to delay early sexual activity. Interestingly, some schools have reported a positive influence on academic performance through a personal development programme using coursework to develop transferable skills. One school reported that students across the ability range exceeded their potential, with a 41 per cent rise in students gaining grades A to C.
None of that surprises me. If students are engaged, better able to relate to their peer group and adults, and more confident about their health and relationships, I would think that they would be more effective learners with greater aspirations. That is why so many of us across this House have supported the inclusion of PSHE as a statutory subject in the broad and balanced curriculum. As I said earlier, it is not about party politics. We must send a message to the Government that delaying the inclusion of PSHE puts young people at risk. I urge the Government to act, and I beg to move.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton
My Lords, I again support an amendment to make PSHE statutory within the curriculum. I intend to be reasonably brief, because we have had the discussion so many times now. We have explained the advantages of including it as a statutory subject.
I thank the Minister for giving time to discuss the issue with those of us who have been so involved in the debate. However, it became clear from those discussions that we are again bogged down by a curriculum review. PSHE will be judged against the teaching of chemistry or French. PSHE does not equate to subjects which may or may not be used as part of one's future life. PSHE is a lifestyle in all its aspects. By giving PSHE designated space in the timetable, and by providing more specific teacher training, resources and higher profile for the subject generally, young people will be better equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to negotiate the complexities of modern life. Rather, PSHE equates to religious education and music, in the sense that it should be a statutory subject. Those are lifestyle issues. Will religious education and music be included in the review, or will they be exempt?
It is also clear that the independent school regulations, which govern academies, refer to sex and relationship education based around the concept of marriage. Can the Minister cite that clause to the House, so that it is on the record and available for us in future? One way to satisfy that regulation is to ensure that we have PSHE which includes adequate SRE teaching. As I and others have said, teaching good SRE is a means of discouraging early sex. There is evidence to prove that. I give one example. Talking to a 15 year-old girl, I was told that she and her friends had believed that there were no great shakes in taking risks by having early sex. Then they had their PSHE lessons, and they realised that they were wrong. They were then discouraged from adopting that attitude. They also learnt in their PSHE lessons the confidence to be able to say no when the issue arose of whether they should take drugs, drink alcohol or have risky sex. Young people should not glean this information behind the bicycle sheds—I have to admit that, many moons ago, that is where I learnt it all—from playground rumour or from the mixed messages from the media about sex. We need structured classroom teaching giving a clear understanding of the consequences and emphasising the importance of family and friend relationships. This way, we reassure parents that PSHE and SRE do not promote risk taking and early sex, as is sometimes suggested.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I heartily agree with the vast majority of what has just been said by the noble Baronesses. The House knows my view that good quality teaching in PSHE should be the right of all children under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The knowledge and skills covered by the phrase, "Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education", cover all the important things that prepare children for life beyond and within the school, whether they are future rocket scientists or future waste disposal operatives. They are all human beings and deserve our help and support to lead a happy and fulfilled life. That is what PSHE does. It goes far wider than just sex and relationship education, important though that is.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, has mentioned, evidence has shown that schools which do PSHE well also benefit from improved behaviour and learning in other subjects. They are happier schools containing happier, safer and more confident children, which is what I want to see. My ambition within this coalition is to use my passion about this matter and the new influence that I hope I have among both my noble friends and my honourable friends to bring about a step change in the quality and quantity of this sort of learning for all children in all schools.
I am already working with the PSHE Association and others to produce a brief which I will submit to Ministers for the forthcoming curriculum review. It will go far beyond this amendment in two ways. First, it will cover all schools and not just academies. Secondly, it will contain many of the best elements, which, by the way, found support from all around the House, of the original version of Clauses 11 to 13 in the Children, Schools and Families Bill, which were so altered immediately prior to the general election.
That measure, which was deleted from the Bill, listed the areas of learning to be covered but, very importantly, also listed a set of principles that should underpin the teaching. These were, first, that the information taught should be accurate and balanced; secondly, that it should be taught in a way that is appropriate to the age of the pupils concerned and their religious and cultural background and reflect a reasonable range of religious, cultural and other perspectives; and thirdly, PSHE should be taught in a way that promotes equality, encourages acceptance of diversity and emphasises the importance of rights and responsibilities.
In complying with these principles, the school would by definition have to work closely with parents and communities, which is right and proper. These principles are fundamental to delivering the rights that I believe all children have and I know that the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Gould, agree with me about that. I congratulate the former Labour Government on putting together something that is so right. I give credit also to those who have worked so hard outside this House, some since the 1960s, to obtain these rights for all children. I am a mere newcomer to this campaign.
However, if we have come so far, we need to get this matter right and I very much regret that I find the simple amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, wanting in all respects about the principles that I have just listed. I realise why she has made it so simple, but this is not a simple matter. I believe that the earlier approach of the former Labour Government, following extensive consultation, was better. That is what I will seek from within the coalition to achieve for all children and that is why I cannot support this amendment, although I support the aim of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey.
I would ask her not to press this amendment, but to work with me to influence the coalition Government in their curriculum review. We would not be starting from scratch. We already have a very good model, but, in a matter as sensitive as this, we must take all parts of the community with us. This would give us an opportunity to do that.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, I follow my noble friend Lady Walmsley with great warmth. What she has said is very dear to my heart and I agree with everything. There are very strong feelings about the content of any part of the curriculum. After all, the curriculum is the heritage of knowledge and skills that we pass on to each generation. Everyone has their own strong feelings about what that should be. PSHE arouses particularly strong feelings because it deals with so many of the very sensitive areas of our personal and social lives.
As has been abundantly clear in what my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, have said, PSHE is already widely established in our education system. It is taught in virtually every school and there is already a large cadre of several thousand teachers who have registered themselves as qualified to teach the subject. I commend the enormously good work being done by so many of those teachers in dealing with what are difficult issues, often with difficult pupils at often difficult stages of their lives. They make a huge success of this teaching.
I have two real objections to trying to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, in making this a single curriculum requirement for academies. First, in recent years I have met many teachers dealing with PSHE in, as I have said, difficult classes. They fit what they teach across the areas and how they teach it—whether it be drugs, health, obesity, sex or personal relationships, ethical or civic issues and so on—to the particular class in their particular school with its own particular mix of young people. Schools vary enormously. Some have sophisticated children and others have children who are unsophisticated. Some have children who, by the age of 11, 12 or 13, have alas already engaged in the kind of personal relationships we would rather they were not engaged in, including sexual relationships. The teacher’s skill lies in fitting what they say and how they deal with these issues to their particular class. In my view, that is where PSHE should remain—with the school and the individual teacher deciding what and how it should be taught.
The second reason why I am astonished the noble Baroness has put her amendment in this way is because this would be the only required part of the curriculum and it would only apply to the academies. If this amendment were agreed, PSHE would be a curriculum requirement for academies but not for other schools, and it would be the only part of the academies curriculum that would be a requirement. To me, that is bizarre. People in this House and certainly, I am sure, in the wider world outside would argue just as strongly for other bits of the curriculum to be made mandatory. Surely an important aspect of academies is that they will be free of a national curriculum and able to tailor what they teach and how they teach it within a broad and balanced framework for their particular pupils.
I would ask the noble Baroness not to press her amendment, and if she does, I would ask the House not to support her.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, I want to comment on this only briefly because much of what I wanted to say about the importance of personal, social, health and economic education has already been made clear by my noble friends Lady Massey and Lady Gould, as well as by the other contributors. But I would say gently to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that if we pass this amendment, all the proposals of the previous Government, with whom I was associated, can be implemented, certainly in academies. I would say to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, that the consistency that she thinks there is in the quality of PSHE education is something I would question. The reason why I began the review of sexual and relationship education in our schools was as a result of the Youth Parliament carrying out a survey to which it received an unprecedented 20,000 responses. The vast majority said that the quality of sex and relationship education they received in school was inadequate.
I am not referring to the Clause 28 part of the funding agreement which says that there should be,
“sex and relationship education to ensure that children [of the academy] are protected from inappropriate teaching materials and they learn the nature of marriage and its importance for family life and for bringing up children”.
That may be a part of it, but it is an incredibly partial interpretation of the importance of sex and relationship education. If we are going to tackle early teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, good and consistent PSHE in all our schools is crucial so that we can support parents and those children who are not getting that sort of education at home.
At the instigation of my right honourable friend Ed Balls, I co-chaired a review with the Youth Parliament and the principal of Newcastle College, which included representatives of all the faith groups in this country and health organisations, including sexual health organisations. Remarkably, we achieved a consensus about how we should go forward—which is a great tribute to the various representatives—in the most sensitive area of PSHE: sexual relationship education. I received a standing ovation in the middle of a speech—the only time it has happened to me—and people were crying when I announced that we would make it compulsory to have sexual relationship education in all schools. The people who teach the subject of association understand its vital importance and it was sad that it was lost in the wash-up prior to the election. I hope that we can make progress by passing the amendment today.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Knight, because, as he will recall, our board of education was anxious to work with the then Government on that Bill. We were very supportive of what was emerging in the Bill and we were as saddened as others by its eventual fate. I therefore thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for bringing forward the amendment—and I do not always say that about her amendments. However, I do on this one because everyone in the House, as we have heard, has good reason to be sympathetic to the principle of PSHE and wishes to see it delivered, at the highest possible standards, across our education system.
That may prompt noble Lords to ask why the church so often seems to be in the forefront of those resisting this kind of development. It is a good question. I do not always appreciate the answers I get from within my own constituency but, at the heart of it all, something needs to be said in this debate before we get carried away with all the positives and affirmatives: there are implications for some of our understandings of childhood and we must not go down the Pollyanna school of pedagogy. None the less, we all appreciate that something gets lost when some elements of children’s education come in earlier than is perhaps appropriate to the well-being of the child at quite an early age.
The motives of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, are honourable and I support the underlying principle, but I do so in the spirit of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for two reasons. First, there is not much detail in the amendment and I need to know a great deal more about what is described here as PHSE. At what age will it be introduced? As the Academies Bill will affect primary as well as secondary schools, the question of age kicks in. I want to know more about its content and whether it will be consistently provided across the country and by whom. All this seems to be within the purview of the curriculum review, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has referred. Out of that may come more detail which will enable some of us to give a fair wind to the spirit of the amendment.
I wonder whether this is the place to pursue this important agenda, partly because, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, and others, have said, it applies only to academies. If it is as good as many believe it is, it ought to be good for all, not only for some. I would support a process that would enable this to become part of the agenda for all our children and not only for some who happen to be in schools which have converted to academy status. While I support wholeheartedly the spirit of the amendment, I would not be able to go into the Lobby with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for those reasons.
I look forward to the debate continuing and to engaging with this Government, as we did with the last, to achieve something that will be for the common good of all our children. We want them to experience and enjoy relationships, as given by God, so that they can have fulfilled lives—sexually, in terms of their health, in terms of their economic management and, most of all, in terms of their personal well-being and delivery of their potential.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, this has been a stimulating and diverse debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for her amendment. Academies have the advantage of being able to teach in a way that they think appropriate to their pupils. That would be a plus in making PSHE a curriculum requirement and we could get it started in the academy set-up.
I agree that it is sad that PSHE has not been included in the curriculum as a result of bits being struck out of rushed legislation in the final days of the previous Government. However, that is as it may be; I can see no reason why we should not start with this Bill and see at a later stage whether it needs extending. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said that PSHE is taught in practically every school, yet we hear from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, that it is taught neither well nor in a way that young people approve of and can gain from. So it is clear that there is a need for rather greater teacher training, too.
I am only sad that my noble friend Lord Northbourne is not here, because he would have stressed, as have I on previous occasions, that here is an ideal framework within which to teach parenting. I am talking not just about relationships with one’s own parents but also, and much more importantly, about the relationship that a parent will have with their children and their responsibilities to the rising generation. That will be of enormous value to young people when they think about whether to use contraceptives at the age of 10 or, better still, to refrain from sex altogether. When I was chair of the Broadcasting Standards Commission some way back, a lot of issues of this kind were brought to us by worried and concerned parents. What children see on television today, and sometimes even hear on the radio, is enough to make it important that we educate children as early as possible to deal with these situations.
My thanks still go to the mover of the amendment. If we are pushed to a vote on it, my instinct will be to go into the Lobby with her. In the mean time, we all need to think about even more ways in which we can get over the important message behind all this.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, I had not intended to speak today as I have not had the opportunity, for various reasons, to become engaged in the Academies Bill. I should like to ask the Minister a couple of quite simple questions. If this proposal were to be delayed today, what timetable would there be for bringing it back in the way that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, suggested? We are told that the Government have an education Bill coming along in the autumn. What guarantees can he give that this subject will be in that Bill?
I have heard at least four of the noble Baronesses whom I admire most in this House speak on opposite sides in this debate. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, that this subject is different from all the others. I have said previously in this House that, unless we attend to the welfare of our young people, they will never learn the other subjects that they are in school to learn. This topic attends to their welfare. It ensures that they have the life skills and confidence to move forward in all the other subjects that they are trying to achieve with all the other hopes that they have in order to attain a good life position and life skills. I talk to a lot of children and remember my life in ChildLine, and I feel that unless this is grasped soon we will lose more children who do not understand the issues.
My noble friend Lady Howe has just talked about the influences around young people. I also talk to a lot of parents. They may often feel anxious about some of these topics being taught, but they are even more anxious about the influences on their children without having facts and information. In ChildLine, I talked to one child after another one and one young person after another who had curious and false information. I am told by my colleagues still working there that that continues. I have been out of ChildLine for 10 years and it is a great indictment that we have not yet got these topics in schools so that young people have, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, would say, their rights, because it is a right to have this information.
The Government should grasp this nettle now so that we do not lose time and more children. If they do not and if the noble Baroness does not divide the House, I should like the Minister to give us a timetable so that we know when this can be taken forward.
Lord Waddington
My Lords, it is with considerable diffidence that I rise, because I have not spoken before on this Bill. The amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, does not go as far as the one she moved in Committee. It does not remove the right of parents to withdraw children from sex education as that amendment did. But it does, for the first time, make sex education statutory in some primary schools. It is with sex education that I am concerned.
Obviously, it would be strange if sex education were made compulsory in academy primary schools, but not in maintained primary schools, particularly when academies are supposed to have greater freedom and other schools rather than less. Surely academies should be free to choose not to provide sex education for children of primary school age when the school and parents think that it would not be appropriate.
It cannot be denied that this is a very important and sensitive matter involving people's views on morality and religion, and on the right way to bring up children, with many people feeling strongly that young people should not be taught about sex unless it is put very much in a moral context. I do not believe that this crucial subject should be dealt with at the Report stage of a Bill such as this and weighed off in a short debate: it is far too important for that. This Bill is about whether there should be academies at all, not about how, if at all, sex education should be taught in primary schools.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, when it comes to this amendment, I stand four-square beside my noble friend Lady Walmsley. I congratulate the noble Baronesses opposite on all the effort that they have put into this subject. One of the most important things about schools is that we should try to produce young people who are well informed and resilient and go out into life able to deal with it, which was certainly not the case in my education. Indeed, a recent survey from the University of Oxford showed that 85 per cent of its graduates were frightened of getting a job. There is a good deal to do in schools in one way or another.
However, I entirely agree with my noble friend that this is the wrong amendment in the wrong place. It is too restrictive and too simple and applies only to academies. We need this to be part of the curriculum review that my noble friend has promised. That is the pressure point to which we ought to be applying ourselves.
I am also concerned because the phrase PSHE associates itself in my mind—and perhaps my noble friend will educate me—with a rather clunky, didactic, old-fashioned way in which to approach these things. That is at a time when, if one goes around schools, which I do a good deal for the Good Schools Guide, one sees a lot of new, interesting and innovative approaches to this aspect of schooling, which I would not want to close out by including it in a process-based curriculum rather than requirements for what the children should be like when they leave school. It is one of the faults of the curriculum that we have at the moment that things such as citizenship have to be added as extra subjects when really they should be there as outcomes and it is up to the school to decide how they are delivered. I cite in particular the work on positive psychology and well-being that started with Wellington College and has spread widely from there. Also, I attended a presentation for schools, part of which was a presentation by a primary school in the East End on its use of psychology lessons. It taught psychology as a separate subject and with immense good effects. As the noble Baroness said, once you get it right, it spreads though the school, from attitude to education generally and to behaviour. I do not want to see this subject fossilised in a set of requirements, as the curriculum is set out at the moment, certainly not without the sort of discussion and understanding of the subtleties that would occur through a proper participation in the curriculum review.
Viscount Eccles
My Lords, I start by saying that I was nothing like so fortunate behind the bicycle sheds as the noble Baroness, Lady Gould.
I have been waiting to hear what the House thinks the reaction of the teachers would be to making this a statutory requirement at this particular moment. There was a report done by the Merits Committee and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, gave the committee his evidence on two occasions, written and spoken. The memorandum submitted by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said:
“In the recent past, too many professional judgements about curriculum, assessment and pedagogy have been removed from teachers and placed in the hands of ministers, government departments and agencies”.
It went on to say that this,
“shows a lack of trust in the profession and a denial of complexity”.
The whole House is agreed with the objectives of the noble Baronesses opposite and the objectives of my noble friend Lady Walmsley. The teaching profession is in agreement with those objectives as well. The question is how you best get those objectives achieved; in my submission, that will not happen by including a statutory requirement in this Bill.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I rise to support my noble friends Lady Massey and Lady Gould. I was also particularly moved by the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. It is extremely important that, if my noble friend chooses not to divide—and I do not know what her choice will be—we hear from the Minister what practical steps the Government will take on this key agenda. I was interested to hear again from the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, her exultation about the work of the previous Government around the proposals contained in the Children, Schools and Families Bill, which were removed on the specific request of the Conservative Opposition, as the noble Lord is aware. Before the election we had a set of principles and proposals that commanded the support of a significant part of the coalition Government and of a great number of noble Lords across the House.
My noble friend Lady Massey came forward with a very thoughtful proposal; she did not just reproduce what was in the Children, Schools and Families Bill, which the Government can do at any time just by going back to the filing system or doing a cut and paste. Here we have a practical step forward for going forward in this Bill. That is why I should like to have the opportunity to support the amendment. I see no reason why we should delay. Noble Lords have raised concerns about the numbers of teachers qualified to teach PSHE, but we have been reassured on that. There have been concerns about whether we are talking about teaching sex education to children inappropriately in primary schools. In all the debates we have had there have been umpteen reassurances about age-appropriateness. I do not think that this should be a party-political issue. It is very much a House of Lords issue, as it is very much something that the House of Lords has debated many times. We came up with a very constructive way forward only a few months ago. There is no good reason for us to delay any further.
If the Government want to bring forward any tidying-up amendments at Third Reading, that is very much in their gift. It can be done. We are all behind the principles that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, described, which were in the previous Bill. They are great—yes, we could see those come forward at Third Reading. I see no reason to delay, as this is about common sense and supporting the professionals. I am delighted that they gave my noble friend Lord Knight a standing ovation when he addressed the professionals in this field. We can get on with this. It is a regret of mine that it took us, in a Labour Government, as long as it did to consult and come to consensus and to the settlement that we did. It took us a while, so let us not take any longer.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, we had a very good debate on this subject in Committee, a slightly longer debate than the one that we have had today. We have had another very good debate this afternoon. I had the chance last week to meet Peers with a particular interest in PSHE and was grateful for their advice. I join others in paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for the way that she has pursued this issue, as have my noble friend Lady Walmsley and many other noble Lords from all parts of the House. I have learnt a lot from noble Lords in the process, not least about knitting from the noble Baroness, Lady Massey—a reference lost on those who were not here for the Committee stage.
What is clear to me, who comes relatively new to this debate, is that there is broad agreement in this House on the importance of PSHE. Nothing has been said today by anyone from any part of the House that would disagree with that. There are differences of opinion about the best way forward. This evening the question is relatively simple and straightforward, so I think I can be brief. This is an important and broad subject. Should we, as this amendment argues, make PSHE a compulsory requirement for academies alone as one distinct set of schools and should we act now? Those are the two main questions that have been debated this evening. I would argue not. First, as others have said, I am not convinced that singling out PSHE in primary legislation is the right way to go. Secondly, I would argue, as a number of noble Lords have argued—it was argued very persuasively by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln—that the best place to consider these issues is in the round, when we get the chance to look at the whole question of the national curriculum later in the year. Noble Lords have already mentioned that we are carrying out a complete review.
In response to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy—
Lord Hill of Oareford
Forgive me. I cannot be more specific than to say that we expect that the review will take place in the autumn, and it will have a proper look at the entire national curriculum. I know that when that process starts, and as part of that review, noble Lords will not hesitate to make their views known. There will be plenty of opportunities to debate it in the round at that point in the context of the whole curriculum rather than, as many noble Lords have said today, in more of a one-off way now.
I am swayed by the comments that have been made about having the debate later. This is not to dismiss the case made by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. It is, however, to ask her and other noble Lords whether in the light of these points they will withdraw their amendment at this juncture, having made clear their intention to return to the charge at a later date.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, this has been a fascinating and enlightening debate. I think that we are all actually on the same side; we just have different ways of approaching the issue.
I am aware of the curriculum review, but I have been aware of curriculum reviews on this subject for the past 10 years. We have gone over this ground, and in doing so I am also aware of the needs of children who may well be suffering because they do not have this education in their curriculum. Young people tell us what they need, and they certainly tell us that they need personal, social and health education.
I shall respond briefly to points that have been made. I put this amendment in here because the Bill is here, and because I shall continue to put it in any Bill that I can to try to get personal, social and health education in the curriculum.
It is a simple amendment because it is a complex subject. We have explored all possible areas connected with PSHE, today and previously. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, mentioned the five principles put in place by the Labour Government, and they are still there for reference. I was surprised; I just reread the noble Baroness’s speech at wash-up stage, and at that point she wanted no delay, she wanted to get on with it and she was anxious that PSHE should be part of the national curriculum. I support her.
Much work has been done already—
Baroness Walmsley
If the noble Baroness will permit me, I say to her that I still think that, but I have to convince my Government of the case, not just the former Government.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I, too, intend to convince this Government of the case.
I know that much work has been done on this already. I believe that schools are ready to take this on, and it would improve their chances if PSHE were a compulsory subject. I have in my hand 10 reasons why there is no need to delay, written by the Personal, Social and Health Education Association. Noble Lords will be relieved to hear that I am not going to read out the whole document, but one section says that we have had just a year and half since Jim Knight, now the noble Lord, Lord Knight, announced the last government’s intention to make it statutory, “it” being PSHE, and that most schools will have been gearing up for statutory status during that time. It says that PSHE is not a new subject; it has been taught in schools and been allocated curriculum and staffing resources for many years. I think that might respond wisely to something that the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said.
If we pass the amendment today—I intend to divide the House—it will send a clear message to the Government and to all parties that the welfare of children is at stake here. If a large number of people support this amendment, it will be a key message to the Government that this is an important subject that we do not take lightly. Let us go on from here and incorporate PSHE into all schools, through different Bills. Let us go through a curriculum review, but let us influence that review as best we can by showing today that we think this is an important subject that deserves our attention and our commitment. I wish to divide the House.
Baroness Walmsley
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, Amendment 10 arises from our debate in Committee about the impact of the new legislation on the early years. The Bill remains ambiguous about the care and education of young children and needs specifically to reference the Childcare Act 2006, which establishes the EYFS framework in law. The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that young children in academies are guaranteed the same balanced, age-appropriate and play-based standard of care and education under the early years foundation stage as children in maintained and independent schools.
In Committee the Minister said:
“I would suggest that the amendment is unnecessary because academies are already required, under the Childcare Act 2006, to provide the early years foundation stage. That is spelled out explicitly in their funding agreement. This stage is more than just a curriculum, as it covers much broader outcomes for very young children, including issues such as social skills”.—[Official Report, 28/6/10; col. 1570.]
The Early Childhood Forum, which has been briefing me on this matter, very much welcomes the Minister’s positive statements about the EYFS. I also welcome Minister of State Sarah Teather’s announcement a few days ago that the early years foundation stage is to be reviewed. I called for this in my speech in Committee, though I do not think her announcement was simply in response to my speech. I am delighted that the Minister stated that it is the Government’s intention that academies should implement the EYFS. However, I am still concerned that the Bill makes no reference at all to the EYFS, and that furthermore the Childcare Act 2006, to which the Minister referred, contains no reference to academies. This seems to leave an ambiguity in the law that could be easily rectified via this amendment.
Academies do not have to follow the national curriculum for primary and secondary schools. The only reference in the Bill to the curriculum is to Section 78 of the Education Act 2002, which has no application to the education of those aged under five, since the Childcare Act 2006 amended the Education Act before it and removed any reference to nursery education. The Childcare Act 2006 establishes the EYFS as the framework for the care and education of children from birth until the 31 August after their fifth birthday, and which all those registered on the early years register and maintained, approved, non-maintained, independent and special schools must deliver. Under the law, all these providers must meet the legal welfare, learning and development requirements as set out in Section 40 of the Childcare Act 2006 and its associated regulations.
Existing academies are not referenced at all in the Childcare Act 2006. This is an understandable omission as, although there are a number of all-through academies providing education for three to 18 year-olds, until now academy status was available only to secondary schools. The Bill extends academies to many more young children and therefore needs to be unambiguous about the approach to be taken to their education and care. It is clearly not the Government’s intention to exempt academies from implementation of the EYFS. The Early Childhood Forum is concerned that academies do not fall into any of the categories of school referenced in the Childcare Act 2006. It has tried to clarify this matter with officials but they have not replied to its phone calls. Perhaps they were in purdah, pending the Minister’s statement the other day about the review of the early years foundation stage. However, it would be helpful to know the Government’s understanding of where academies fit in the framework of that Act. Perhaps this might have been sorted out if officials had responded to the Early Childhood Forum. I may not have needed, in that case, to table this amendment. It would also be helpful to know how many of the current all-through academies provide education for under-fives and whether they all currently implement the early years foundation stage as they should.
There is some confusion about whether the Government consider academies to be independent schools in law. Clause 1 refers to academies as “independent”, but it also sets out that they are to be funded directly by public money through the Secretary of State. The Independent Schools Council membership criteria determine independence through the individual school’s inspection regime, with members having to be inspected by the Independent Schools Inspectorate. However, academies—as far as they are to be inspected at all—will be under Ofsted. Noble Lords can perhaps see the confusion.
The early years foundation stage is based on the best evidence that we have from research and experience of what is most effective in helping children to develop physically, intellectually, emotionally and socially. The amendment would create parity and balance in this new legislation that matches the reference to Section 78 of the Education Act 2002 on the curriculum for those aged over five in Clause 1. I urge the Minister to accept it or to explain very clearly why it is unnecessary. If he accepts that there is a problem in the Bill and its relationship with the Childcare Act, I hope he will not ask us to wait for the pending early years foundation stage review. This would mean that primary academies and the young children in their care would be left in limbo and outside the current main framework until then. If the outcome of the review is a fundamental change, the Childcare Act would need to be amended in any case, and the legislation on academies would be resolved alongside that for all the other types of school. I beg to move.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I added my name to this amendment. From listening to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, I think I have had exactly the same briefing as her. I simply wish to say “ditto”.
I am slightly concerned that in some things we need to rush ahead with, and in others to hang back from, reviews. It is very important for the Early Childhood Forum and the incredibly important organisations that make up the forum to have the kind of reassurances that the noble Baroness is looking for. The early years foundation stage was a very important step forward. The previous Government initiated it, and it has been well received. It is important that we build on the work of the early years specialists. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
The Earl of Listowel
Briefly, I support this amendment. The Government recently expressed some horror at the number of prisoners we now have in our prisons. It made me reflect on how many inquiries have pointed to problems within our families. When one does not provide good boundaries within families and a secure upbringing for children, and when schools are quite chaotic, it does not surprise me that there is so much offending among young people or that we have overcrowded jails. It seems to me fairly apparent that if one does not set boundaries early in life, society is left setting boundaries later in life, at great expense to itself. Therefore, it is imperative to get all the right support for children early on. This is an important area. I look forward to the Minister’s reassurance that the early years foundation stage will be delivered in these schools.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, when I first joined the House of Lords, we did not receive any briefings on anything. That situation has been transformed in the 15 years I have been here so that now, on a Bill such as this, we are deluged with briefings, which are often extremely useful.
On behalf of the Minister and the department, I apologise for unreturned phone calls. I offer, if it is helpful, a meeting with the Minister and officials to discuss this question further. On the specific issue, I reassure the noble Baroness that all schools providing for under-threes’ education are required under the Childcare Act to register with Ofsted and to deliver the early years foundation stage. This includes independent schools and therefore also includes academies. Section 40 sets out the duty to deliver the early years foundation stage. That is the key element. This already applies to academies in the same way as it does to other schools.
Reference has already been made to the review to be carried out by Dame Clare Tickell, chief executive of Action for Children, which will report to my honourable friend Sarah Teather in spring 2011. The review will be open and will look at the foundations that should be in place to protect young children’s welfare and support their development and learning. It will also consider throughout how to reduce burdens on providers as the experience of the past three years is that the requirements of the early years foundation stage have increased the workload on many of those who work with young children, and so taken time away from children. We do not intend a fundamental change but we do intend to review the way in which the Act works in practice. I hope that that is sufficient assurance. I again apologise if phone calls have not been returned. With those assurances, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Walmsley
I thank the Minister for his reply and the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, for her support. The noble Lord says that academies will have to deliver the early years foundation stage. However, it does not say that in the Bill. The difficulty has arisen because of uncertainty about the independent status—or not—of academies. According to independent schools, the definition of “independent” is a school that is inspected by the Independent Schools Inspectorate. However, that does not apply to the schools that we are discussing. Nevertheless, the Minister could not have been clearer on that matter. I suspect that the Early Childhood Forum will very much welcome a meeting with officials to set its mind totally at rest. It will probably be satisfied with the clarity of the Minister’s reply, but I think that it will take advantage of the invitation anyway. I wait to hear what it says to me when that meeting has taken place. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hill of Oareford
“( ) Academy arrangements in relation to a school within subsection (5)(a)(i) must include provision imposing obligations on the proprietor of the school that are equivalent to the SEN obligations.
( ) “The SEN obligations” are the obligations imposed on governing bodies of maintained schools by—
(a) Chapter 1 of Part 4 of EA 1996 (children with special educational needs), and(b) regulations made under any provision of that Chapter.”
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I shall seek to be brief with this amendment as I have already written to noble Lords about it and we discussed these issues at length in Committee.
The purpose of this government amendment is simple; it is to ensure that the obligations placed on academies in respect of SEN mirror those placed on maintained schools. I said early on in Committee that I could not see in principle why one set of state-funded schools should treat children with SEN any differently from another set of state-funded schools. Having listened to the points that were raised in debate and having had a number of subsequent meetings on SEN with noble Lords who are far more experienced than I, my initial instinct has been confirmed and I am very glad to have this opportunity to move this amendment, which should put the principle of parity beyond doubt.
As noble Lords are aware, academies are already required, through their funding agreements, to provide for pupils with SEN in a similar way to maintained schools. Noble Lords will also know that the funding agreement has been the main regulatory mechanism for academies since their inception, as we discussed this afternoon. We agree with the previous Government that this should continue. We could therefore have ensured parity through the funding agreement alone. However, we decided to go further. This amendment acknowledges the particular concerns that have been raised in relation to SEN and will therefore put into the Bill a requirement that academy arrangements—either funding agreements or grants—must contain provisions that impose obligations that are equivalent to those that are imposed on maintained schools in Part 4, and in regulations made under Part 4, of the Education Act 1996. This means that no funding agreement could omit these provisions unless further primary legislation were made to remove these requirements.
In practical terms, the amendment imposes additional obligations on academies to: inform parents that their child has SEN and of the special educational provision being made; accept the naming of the academy on a child’s statement; and appoint as a SENCO a person who is a qualified teacher. Moreover, new SENCOs will have to undertake prescribed training. It will apply to any new academy and to any existing academy that enters into new funding arrangements.
At this point I would also like to put on record the reassurance I gave the noble Lord, Lord Rix, at our meeting on 1 July that it is the Government’s policy that academy special schools should offer a broad and balanced curriculum that meets the needs of an individual child as specified in their statement of special educational need. I am very pleased to have the chance to move this amendment. I hope that it will provide assurance that the SEN obligations on academies will mirror those that are placed on maintained schools. I beg to move.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendments 12 to 14 and to Amendment 39, all of which are in my name. I very much welcome government Amendment 11, to which the Minister has just spoken. In Committee, there was a widespread concern throughout the Chamber to ensure that academies were put on the same footing as maintained schools as regards admitting and meeting the needs of pupils with special educational needs. The Minister said then that he would reflect and come back with proposals on how parity could be achieved. As we have heard, he has been as good as his word. I am very grateful to him for this and for the time and trouble that he has taken to meet Peers to discuss their concerns. I am also most grateful to officials for the time that they have taken to make sure that we get this absolutely right.
For my part, I think that we have very nearly got it right, but not quite. That is why I have put down the amendments to which I am speaking this evening. I spoke on this at some length in Committee, so I shall not weary the House by going over the same ground all over again. The Minister has met very many of the concerns that I raised in Committee, but one or two issues still remain. The first is whether the new provisions will relate to existing as well as new academies. In moving his amendment, the Minister has clarified that because he has said that they will do so. However, I think he said that they would apply to existing academies when they entered into a new agreement. That could be some years away. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that steps will be taken to apply the new provisions to existing academies at the earliest possible date and not necessarily waiting several years before doing so.
Secondly, there is the question of whether obligations that are equivalent to the SEN obligations in the Minister’s amendment are the same in their effect as the SEN obligations. If not, it will be argued in court that Parliament’s decision not to make these obligations direct statutory obligations must indicate an intention to permit variation from the statutory framework. I should therefore be grateful if the Minister could confirm that the intention is for academies to be subject to exactly the same obligations as maintained schools as regards admitting and meeting the needs of pupils with special educational needs, which the notion of parity would imply.
My main concern is with the enforceability of the rights implied by these obligations. The Minister has chosen to confer the obligations by importing the statutory SEN framework into the contractual framework of academy arrangements. These are contractual agreements between the Secretary of State and an academy to which parents and pupils are not a party. There is a complex legal argument as to whether the duties imported into academy arrangements by this means are enforceable by parents or pupils. I shall spare the House all the legal technicalities, but there are essentially three ways that one might seek to ensure that the duties are enforceable.
The first is by laying on academies the same statutory obligations as those laid on maintained schools directly by statute, not by statutorily importing them into a contract. That is what my Amendment 14 would do and I still think that it is the simplest and surest way to achieve my aim, which is why I have tabled that amendment again and why it would save a lot of bother by putting everything beyond doubt, if the Minister agreed to it.
Assuming that the Minister’s preference is to proceed by the contractual route and to maintain the contractual relationship with academies, there are two further ways that one might seek to enforce the contractual obligations. One is through a complaints procedure and the other is by making it clear that pupils and parents can enforce their rights by judicial review.
As for complaints procedures, complaints would presumably be made to the Secretary of State, but there is nothing that establishes such a procedure and nothing is proposed. Even if there were, it would need to be clear that if the Secretary of State found that an academy had not complied with the relevant provisions of the academy arrangements, he would require the academy to comply, and the arrangements would need to make clear that he could compel compliance. This would place a considerable additional burden on the Secretary of State, whose process for dealing with complaints is already widely perceived to be slow and ineffective—as is illustrated by the fact that it is never suggested by defendants in proceedings for judicial review that the court should decline jurisdiction because a complaint to the Secretary of State would provide an effective alternative remedy.
As for judicial review, the availability of this remedy could be put beyond doubt simply by making clear that the rights accorded to pupils and parents under academy arrangements could be enforced through judicial review. This could be done on a narrow basis relating to SEN only, as is provided for in Amendment 12, or on a wider basis covering all rights given to parents and pupils, as provided for in Amendment 13. Amendment 12 would sort out the problem relating to special educational needs, but would, if anything, weaken the position in relation to other rights—say, those relating to admissions—because it would imply that those rights could not be enforced through judicial review.
The Minister has shown himself to be very accommodating of our concerns in the quest to achieve full parity between academies and maintained schools. I hope that further discussion may be possible before Third Reading, with a view to finding a formula which would ensure that enforceability is not only a reality, but is seen to be a reality, either through a robust complaints procedure or by putting it beyond doubt that judicial review is available as a remedy.
Something along the lines of Amendments 12 or 13 would do the job for judicial review, and I have suggestions for a robust complaints procedure that I would be happy to put to the Minister. Amendment 39 begins the job, but even that requires fleshing out in some respects to reflect the ingredients of a robust complaints procedure. If the Minister would be happy to proceed along these lines, I am sure that we could reach an arrangement that would put enforceability beyond doubt and would be satisfactory to everyone. If full parity is the Minister’s aim, I cannot see a reason not to do this.
Baroness Wilkins
My Lords, I echo the thanks of the noble Lord, Lord Low, to the Minister for all his time and the concern that he has given to this issue. I support the noble Lord, Lord Low, in his amendments and hope that the Minister will meet his concerns and satisfy him fully.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I, too, warmly thank the Minister for bringing his amendment. It certainly shows that he has listened to the House and we are grateful. I also support the noble Lord, Lord Low. He raises important issues in relation to JR and I am sure that the Minister will be able to respond positively.
I should like to raise a further issue on this group of amendments which relates to SEN funding. It arises from the potential decline in the ability of local authorities to fund support services for SEN pupils which would result from an increase in the overall number of academies.
At the moment, local authorities retain a proportion of funding related to the number of schools that they maintain for the provision of central services, including those for special educational needs. While the overall level of funding within a local authority area may well not fall as a result of this process, the reallocation of resources away from local authorities to individual schools can have potentially significant effects for children and young people with SEN.
We widely accept that the provision of special educational needs support is at the most expensive end, or at least the more expensive end, of the educational spectrum. A key feature of local authority provision is that it allows a local authority to ensure that finite resources are spent effectively through the ability of the local authority to generate economies of scale.
This matter will come up later in Amendment 21, to be moved by my noble friend Lady Wilkins, on low-incidence SEN. However, it actually raises a more general issue of principle. In the letter that the Minister circulated to us and to my noble friend, he states that academies are able to buy in SEN support services from their local authority, from neighbouring local authorities or from other providers. I understand that principle, but I ask him to reflect on the circumstances. Because there will clearly be no requirement for an academy to purchase services from its local authority, current services might be at risk. In particular, the expertise that individual local authorities have established might not be available to academies, because resources are no longer there to support it. There is also a risk that the provision of SEN support on an individual school basis might be more expensive than that which could be accessed by the local authority.
The noble Lord may say that the problem will not arise, that essentially he is proposing a market-based solution and that because of that the combination of academies making their own decisions will ensure a satisfactory outcome. I should mention again my NHS experience, because what is happening here is very much in parallel to the decentralisation that has been undertaken in the National Health Service. My experience has been that in that process specialist services can actually lose out and that if they do, the Government have to find some mechanism for intervention to make sure that those specialist services, as a whole, continue to be provided. I give advanced warning that I will raise this again in the debate on my noble friend’s amendment. It would be useful to have some indication from the Government that they understand the issue and that there is a mechanism by which they can deal with it. If the noble Lord had accepted my suggestion that a statutory duty of partnership might be laid on all parties, that might have been one way through.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Low, echoed the point that I made on Amendment 8 about how we keep academy agreements up to date. If I remember rightly, he said that for existing academies the only way to do this is to terminate the agreement and renegotiate it. Will my noble friend undertake to give notice of termination to all existing academies so that the arrangement that he has arrived at for special educational needs can be incorporated into their agreements? I imagine that most of them will choose to renegotiate ahead of time and not go through the catharsis of termination. That would seem to be the procedure that we ought to go through in order to bring all academies into line with what the Government now believe should be the line.
I also ask for his assurance that with this Bill it is the Government's intention that the model agreement should allow for the obligations on academies to update in line with those placed on maintained schools generally, and that we will not have to go through this procedure of issuing a notice of termination every time we change the SEN rules, the admissions rules or anything else that academies are supposed to follow.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I support Amendment 11 in the name of the Minister and also flag up that we have complementary amendments coming up in the same group as Amendment 22. We have had a query from TreeHouse, which deals with autistic children, asking for assurances on the funding for non-maintained special schools. Under these arrangements, the funding will go directly to academies and not via local councils. Currently, local councils top-slice 7 to 10 per cent from the dedicated schools budget, which includes placements for children at non-maintained schools. Will the Minister reassure us about these arrangements?
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, will the Minister clarify the position of parents in relation to first-tier tribunals, SEN and disabilities? The annexe about SEN that goes with the agreement and that was circulated to us makes it clear that parents and pupils at academies have the same rights of access to first-tier tribunals, SEN and disabilities, formerly SENDIST. Most academies must comply with an order from the tribunal. Is there a notion of judicial review if there is still not compliance with the order from the tribunal?
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said about health service reforms and the difficulty with regard to specialist health services. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children runs such a specialist service in Kentish Town, north London. It works with children who sexually harm other children. It is a very intensive service. If these children are not given the service that they need, they sometimes go on to become adults who continue to abuse children. It is a very important service, but it has proved difficult for the NSPCC to get the funding that it needs through applying to local PCTs. This is one example of where regional planning and funding can be very helpful. I hope that the Minister will keep in mind what the noble Lord said.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I start by thanking various noble Lords for their support for the government amendment. In particular, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Low, for his thanks to my officials, who I know have worked extremely closely with him and his advisers. They have spent so much time working on this that they have almost moved in together.
I will respond to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, rather than to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins. He asked whether the Government were aware of the issue and whether we were thinking about what to do if the issues that he alluded to came to pass. The answer is yes. It is a fair point and we will no doubt return to it later.
The question of funding is a fiendishly complicated area, because some aspects of SEN funding, and the responsibility to discharge it, will remain with the local authority and some will not. Rather than trying to answer in detail, it is probably better if I respond subsequently and pick up on the points. I will respond to one specific question concerning the funding of non-maintained special schools. There are no plans to change the funding arrangements for those schools. I will respond in a more considered way in writing if I can.
I may be able to offer the noble Lord, Lord Low, some—but probably not total—comfort. I am happy to confirm that parents have always had the power to seek judicial review against either the academy for failing to follow its contractual obligations or the Secretary of State for failing to ensure that the academy complies with its obligations under the funding agreement. It would be unique in law to provide for judicial review to apply in particular circumstances. I am advised that the issue of whether any person can apply for judicial review will be determined by the courts in accordance with Civil Procedure Rules. The Government's view is that the issue should properly be determined by the courts, and the House may not wish to set a precedent in this area. However, I can perhaps help the noble Lord a little by saying on the record that in recognition of his concerns, we will place a new provision in academy funding agreements that will enable the Secretary of State to direct an academy to fulfil any of the obligations imposed by the SEN annexe of the funding agreement. The agreement already enables the Secretary of State to direct an academy to admit a child.
As far as concerns a new timetable for the complaints process, I am sure that, as on many issues, we will discuss these matters further in due course. The YPLA currently administers a complaints process on behalf of the Secretary of State. I entirely accept that that process is necessary and confirm that we intend to continue to provide for it. A question was asked about the first-tier tribunal. Yes, parents and pupils will continue to have access to that.
I will answer the point raised by my noble friend Lord Lucas. The nature of the contractual agreement—what is at the heart of it—is that neither side can vary it unilaterally. Our expectation is that many academies will want to move to the new, simplified model funding agreement, which will introduce these provisions on SEN. In the light of those points and the answers that I hope go some way towards responding to the noble Lord, Lord Low, I hope that he will not press his amendments. We will no doubt continue to discuss these matters later.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
“( ) At least 25% of the people on the governing body of an Academy will be elected from among the parents of pupils at the school.”
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I return to an issue that I raised in Committee: ensuring that parents have proper representation on academies’ governing bodies. I should perhaps again declare my interest as president of the National Governors’ Association, whose views, not unnaturally, I represent.
Governing bodies have considerable responsibilities, as I think we probably all agree, and—this is not always acknowledged—they play a critical part in ensuring that our schools perform well for the children in our community. They are the schools’ accountable bodies, and therefore strong governing bodies are vital to the Secretary of State’s aim to improve school standards and accountability. The NGA is very committed to ensuring that a full range of skills and experience is represented on governing bodies and it actively works to improve the training, knowledge and skills of governors. For example, the NGA’s well respected induction publication, Welcome to Governance, is accompanied by a test and certification process.
NGA members also strongly support the need for governing bodies to represent not just parents but the full range of local stakeholders who also have a great interest in the success of the school. At this point, I should say that I fully support Amendment 17A in this group in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley, Lady Sharp and Lady Garden.
In Committee, I listened to the reluctance of the noble Lord, Lord Hill, to prescribe further the composition of governing bodies for academies. Perhaps understandably, the noble Lord does not want to curtail the freedom of academies, and I support the desire to leave more autonomy to those who know how to run schools without too much interference from central government.
However, in outstanding schools—those which, if they apply, are likely to be fast-tracked to academy status—governance is likely to have been working well and to have provided an engine for a school to reach the point where it is rated as outstanding. Therefore, if the governing bodies of those schools, or fast-tracked academies, choose to contain a reasonable number of parents—I think that in Committee the noble Lord hinted that that was likely to be the case—could they not be commended by the Secretary of State as examples of best practice for all academies to follow?
I am of course pleased that this Government have been championing the role of parents in setting the ethos and direction of schools, but surely the way in which parents can do this most effectively is as members of governing bodies. I hope that the Minister can give a more satisfying answer to this point than he did in Committee. Sadly—I have never quite understood this but the previous Government certainly bear responsibility for it—academies are currently required to have only one elected parent member, although I am pleased to note that many have chosen to have more.
My amendment is modest and not too limiting. It requires only one-quarter of governors to be parents of pupils at a school. That is a long way short of a majority and therefore parents alone could not prevent an academy trust taking an initiative that parent governors did not support. However, it goes a small way to ensuring that parents have some influence in determining the strategy of a school. It therefore cannot be argued that the amendment limits the activity of a school or its trust. Without the amendment or something like it, the Bill will allow a reduction in the level of parental involvement, rather than the increase that the Government have promised.
As it stands, the Bill offers rather more central accountability in place of local accountability at the same time as reducing the number of parents required to be involved in holding the school leadership team to account. Also, election to a governing body is a democratic process, which is an important safeguard. More central accountability might be seen as a move towards more central control by the Secretary of State both in schools converting to academies and in any new academies being set up as free schools.
As I said, I hope that the Government will be able to give a rather more encouraging answer on the re-emergence of this amendment and also that they will be rather more appreciative of the considerable role that governing bodies play in this whole process.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I remind the House that we are on Report and we need to be careful not to repeat in too much detail arguments which have already been made in Committee. We are intended to deal with new points and those that require further elucidation, not to go over points that we discussed in Committee.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
I rise to speak to Amendment 17A in my name and those of my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Garden. I entirely share the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, in relation to not being too prescriptive. We also very much share her view that school governors should represent the community that the school serves. In that respect, it is very important that parents, in particular, are represented. She said that only one parent was elected. However, in academies, the parent governor is currently appointed, not elected, and that is an important point.
I declare an interest. I am both a governor of a small primary school in Guildford and a member of the corporation—effectively a governor—of Guildford College, so I am actively a governor of schools at the moment.
Amendment 17A is different from the amendment put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, in three respects. First, rather than prescribe a percentage, we are suggesting specific numbers—a minimum of three and a maximum of seven parents, although obviously the figure will vary according to the size of the governing body, which itself will vary according to the size of the school. There has to be considerable flexibility here. Secondly, we are anxious to see representation from staff, including support staff, as well as from parents. Lastly, we also want to see representation from the local community, and what better way to do that than to have a representative from the local authority? In all three senses, we feel it is important that there should be representation of the community that is served by the school. Therefore, we thoroughly endorse the sentiments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, although we have put a slightly different slant on it.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I rise with some trepidation in case the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, intervenes to say that we are replicating what we discussed in Committee. However, I think it is fair to make the point that, first, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said in moving the amendment, we did not feel that the Minister responded strongly enough. Secondly, we had a good debate yesterday on Report on the subject of primary schools and academies, and I refer to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, on the role of governing bodies. Thinking back over the past 20 or 30 years to what governors used to do in schools compared with what they do now, there is no doubt that their workload and responsibilities have grown considerably, and I suggest that with academy status more corporate responsibilities will fall on the governing body. This is an important matter. It is also very important to have strong parental involvement, including on the governing body. However, the Bill does not provide for the right signals to be given.
I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, blames the previous Government for the existence of that responsibility, and it is well stated that this legislation on governing bodies follows the previous Government’s legislation on academies. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, pointed out in Committee, there are reasons for that. We were talking then about developing academies essentially to deal with some of the most challenging situations and communities, and there was genuine concern that some schools would not be able to attract enough parent governors. We are talking now about the extension of academies to schools in general. I should think that it is right to give some kind of signal that we expect strong parental involvement. I therefore ask the Minister whether he will give further attention to this matter between now and Third Reading.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, this question was asked in Committee but was not answered. Is there an obligation on academies to have elected parent governors, or can they appoint them?
Lord Puttnam
My Lords, not for the first time I speak in support of my noble friend Lady Howe. I did not speak on this subject in Committee, but on Second Reading I did make the point that the Government’s handling of governors and governance issues had been “clumsy”. I had hoped that in the intervening weeks I would be able to withdraw that, but, unfortunately, according to the DfE website,
“no decisions have yet been taken on the composition of future academy governing bodies”.
That is a foolish way of putting it for all sorts of reasons.
I have spent the past 12 years visiting almost 400 schools. What have I learnt from that? I have learnt that successful schools are typified by engaged staff with good leadership from heads, engaged parents, and engaged governing bodies. In almost 400 schools I have never come across a school in which the relationship between a successful head and the chair of the governing body has been anything other than excellent. I am sure that it is possible to find one, but I never have. It is a pivotal relationship and I cannot imagine that a successful academy will manage matters differently.
I have a real concern. I think that in years to come, largely as a result of the work of the national college, and possibly the recession, we will have a generation of first-class head teachers. They will tend to be quite young and very professional. They will probably have led three, four or possibly five schools at different times in their careers. As they move on, the only continuity left to the community will be the governing body. If you begin to minimise the role of the governing body in some way and solely optimise the role of the heads—or, as we shall increasingly come to think of them, the CEOs—we could reap a whirlwind. The Government will make a massive mistake if they do not addressing the legitimate expectations of governing bodies.
I would go further. I think that there should be mandatory training for the chairs of governing bodies. I agree absolutely with the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. My own Government, in a dozen years, did nothing like enough in this area. To repeat that mistake in an educational environment in which this relationship will become ever more important as schools need to connect and remain connected to their local communities, will be a grievous error. I fear that academies which believe themselves able to get up and running while ignoring the role of the governing body will fail. There is a danger that they may simply minimise it, or go through something perfunctory such as having one or two people just because they feel they must. Governors are crucial to successful schools, and anyone who thinks otherwise has not visited enough of them.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, with one other thought. School governing bodies are related not only to the community responsibility for schools but to the whole fundamental concept of democracy. In many ways the idea of a governing body of a school is a simple, low-level neighbourhood concept of what democracy is about. It is about fulfilling one’s obligations to society and recognising that society has responsibilities that it carries out for all its citizens.
I am worried about reducing the importance and significance of governing bodies. I hope the Government will feel that they can support the idea of strengthening them, albeit with the legacy of the one parent governor in the case of a limited number of academies. In doing so, they would bear out one of the central issues that the coalition has repeatedly said it believes in, which is the decentralisation of power to ordinary people. Many people find their first step towards responsible democracy when they first become a governor of a school, particularly a primary school. There are powerful constitutional as well as educational arguments for recognising that the role of governing bodies is a crucial element of what one might call a mature democracy. I hope the Minister will bear that thought in mind.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
I, too, would like to pay very warm tribute to the importance of governing bodies. Exactly as the noble Baroness said, they have had more and more responsibilities thrust on them by legislation in the past 20 years or so. I am, however, nervous of any restriction as to the exact composition of a governing body—as to who should be on it, how many, what proportion, and so on. My experience is based not on the governing body of a school, but I was reflecting as I was listening to the argument that I had for many years the privilege of chairing the council of Roehampton University, previously the Roehampton Institute. We made a positive decision, and I think a democratic decision, that we would advertise the vacancies for governors. We were astonished by the wealth of interest from highly expert people from the community. Of course people will not offer to be on a governing body if they live 50 miles away, so it was very much a local thing. It was really inspiring to find people who popped up from the community of whom we would never have heard saying that they wanted to be interviewed for membership of the governing body.
Much as I agree with the noble Baroness on the importance of parents and governing bodies—I cannot speak too highly of every governing body with which I have been involved—I beg her not to press an amendment that would restrict the composition of governing bodies by dictating it in this way.
Baroness Morgan of Huyton
I agree strongly with the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, because my experience is exactly the same. Governing bodies are incredibly important and we all recognise the need for good training and for a wide range of people to be involved. However, as soon as we get into imposing restrictions and saying that we need this or that category of person, as we have done before, we often end up with people who do not want to do it at all. We need to get a range of people who are genuinely and totally committed to the school. In my experience the best governors have often been not the current parents but parents whose children have been through the school and who have decided to maintain their commitment to the school. They have a real feel of what the school has delivered for their children.
Speaking as a current governor I can say that the person who best embodies the community in the school in which I am involved is the local vicar. He does not have a label as anything but he is the most valuable community governor. As it happens it is not a Church of England school, but he absolutely represents the local community, particularly when there have been problems. The local community looks to him, although he would not necessarily fit into one of the categories. Restrictions are not a good route to go down and we should have learnt that from the past.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I do not think that the amendments call for restrictions. They are the opposite; they say that parents are a special group of people who should therefore be given places as of right. That does not restrict anyone else in any way. It is absolutely true that some of the best governors are people who have become interested in and involved in the school over a period. Indeed, some of the best governors are people who may now be grandparents of children in the school who first got involved as parents and, when their children had gone through the school and they were not qualified to be parent governors any more, it was natural for the school to find a way to get them back on the governing body as an appointee, a co-optee, or whatever. That is absolutely correct, and no one is arguing against it.
Schools really need people who are prepared to give up considerable time, energy and commitment to the school, whatever their present position in the community. The purpose behind the amendments is that parents of children in the school at the time are a special group, for obvious reasons, and that their presence on the governing body in a reasonable proportion ought to be set out and entrenched. That in no way contravenes anything that the noble Baronesses, Lady Perry and Lady Morgan, said about the importance of getting other people involved, or of parents continuing after they have been parents of children at the school.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I start by saying to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, that I agree with her that—as everyone, including the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, said—governors are key. I agree with her strongly on the vital role that governors play in schools and, in particular, the important contribution that parent governors have to make. We have spoken before outside the House, and I am keen to meet her and the NGA. I apologise that I have not been able to do so so far, because I have spent most of my waking hours in the House. I should like to talk to her and the organisation about how one can attract more parent governors and whether there are current obstacles to that—restrictions placed on them, and so on. I hope that she will accept my apology if she feels that I have not sufficiently stressed the importance of governors, and of parent governors in particular, because I feel that very strongly.
There is no difference anywhere in this House about the importance of governors and parent governors. Where there is a difference of opinion, I find myself agreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton. The best way to go is to be less prescriptive and to trust people to get the right mix of people for a particular school. Should one set out from the beginning that there should be a certain proportion of different kinds of person whom one has to have, whether or not they are the best people for the job? As noble Lords might expect, I incline to the view of expressing the strongest possible endorsement of the importance of the role of governors and the wish to see parent governors involved, but leaving it to individual governing bodies and trusts to decide in their particular circumstances what is the best mix of people. Like many noble Lords, I have been a governor of a couple of schools for many years, and I have seen that having a broad mix of people tends to make for good governance decisions.
Where I take issue and am keen to resist, and where I know that I will not satisfy the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam—I apologise if he thinks that I am clumsy—is the degree of prescription in the amendment. As has often been the case since I have been in my job, I have been happy to praise the former Government for things that they did right. One thing that they did right was to come up with an approach to governance for academies which was sensible and has stood the test of time. It still applies in the new circumstances in which we find ourselves.
The new free schools are a good example of parental involvement, and one would imagine that parent governors will be a high proportion of governors—so high that some in this House have argued that there will be too many parents involved in setting up a new school. In some ways, that illustrates the point: what is the right number?
I certainly stick to the point that there are many examples where academies have chosen many parent governors to sit on the governing body. We hope that that will continue. However, on a point of principle—in all areas, and where it makes sense; we think that this is an example—the Government do not want to go down the prescriptive route. We want to stick with the approach to the governing bodies of academies of the previous Government.
We touched on the specific question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, before. The answer to his question is that the arrangements for the election of a parent governor or parent governors of an academy will be set out in the articles of association. The election of parent governors must be by the parents of pupils attending the academy.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
Do the Government intend to move from parent governors being appointed to there being elections for parent governors? That would be a great step forward.
Lord Hill of Oareford
There will certainly be election. I must apologise, but I am not currently 100 per cent sure whether there is provision for election or not, and I will need to follow that up, but there will be election.
I was headed toward saying to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, that I am sorry not to be able to be more helpful. I understand her point. I hope that she will spare the time to meet me with the NGA to talk about the matter more generally but, at this juncture, I ask her most respectfully to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I very much thank the Minister for the consideration that he has given. Of course, I am hardly completely satisfied, as he will understand. The conversation that followed the initial moving of the amendment expressed the view that we all share about the importance of governing bodies. I suspect that many other people in this room have been governors at some stage of their life. My experience goes back many years, to when there was not a great deal to be done other than consider meals and milk. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, for his contribution, because he put it in the wider community sense, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, for her point about the democratic process: how, so often, becoming a governor of a local school sparks off the base of the big society—as the Conservative side of the coalition was keen to put across to us all.
I will leave it at that. I thank all noble Lords, because quite a number spoke. I will withdraw my amendment and I certainly hope to have a meeting with the Minister and members of the NGA.
NHS: Pain Management Services
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Luce
My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for replying to this debate and to all noble Lords who are taking part in it. Why do I raise the subject? For over 40 years, I have suffered from chronic back pain due to musculoskeletal problems, but I am fortunate in that I have managed to live a full life with various public responsibilities due almost entirely to prompt, effective and dedicated support from specialists in the private sector. Very few people have access to it. Some 7.8 million people in this country suffer from chronic, as opposed to acute, pain, and my plea today is that the Government ensure that every single one of them has access through the National Health Service to multidisciplinary rehabilitation to help them to stay in their jobs and to live a life of at least tolerable quality. Given this support, I believe we can learn to manage our own pain.
The facts are horrific. One in seven individuals suffers from chronic pain, of which musculoskeletal pain or osteoarthritis is the commonest cause, although it includes cancer pain. It can be deeply damaging to the quality of life, causing sleeplessness and depression while interfering with normal physical and social life. Milton wrote,
“… pain is perfet miserie, the worst
Of evils, and excessive, overturns
All patience”.
Moreover, it has an adverse effect on the economy of the country as well as on the individual. Chronic pain takes up the equivalent of 4.6 million GP appointments, costing approximately £70 million per annum. In 2000, it was calculated that the total cost of back pain was just over £12 billion, and today 119 million working days are lost per annum because of back pain. A recent pain survey in Europe showed that 25 per cent of people in chronic pain had lost their jobs and that a considerable proportion of them never return to work. In the present economic climate, it is worth stressing that an effective preventive service could save overall costs in the long term.
A turning point came with the report on pain by the previous Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, in 2008. He stressed that pain affects all age groups, not just the elderly. Worryingly, a quarter of school-age children have reported pain and 8 per cent suffer from chronic pain. Sixty-eight per cent of pain clinics in the UK do not see children, according to the British Pain Society. The most affected are those at work in their 40s and 50s. Sir Liam highlights the fact that only 14 per cent of those suffering from chronic pain have seen a pain specialist, normally an anaesthetist, and that the infrastructure is inadequate, unco-ordinated and unevenly resourced, which results in a variable quality of service provision—in other words, a postcode lottery. Generally, interest from primary care trusts and strategic health authorities in establishing better pain services seems to be low.
The report’s conclusion is clear; pain needs to be recognised as a disease in its own right, and a pain score should become one of five vital signs to be monitored routinely in hospitals and elsewhere. Above all, it advocates that a multidisciplinary approach should be vital in the prevention, assessment and management of pain and that there should be a national network of rapid-access pain clinics providing early assessment and treatment, as early intervention is critical for improving the long-term outcome. The report adds that all health professionals dealing with patients should be trained in chronic pain and that the assessment of pain should be included in the quality and outcomes framework in primary care. Other recommendations include the creation of a model pain service of pathways of care and the maintenance of a proper database.
I am delighted to say that, to help us in all this, is the Chronic Pain Policy Coalition, under the chairmanship of Dr Beverly Collett, who runs a successful pain management unit in Leicester. It also supports an all-party parliamentary group—Anne Begg MP was re-elected today as its chairman—that has a growing membership, in this new Parliament, of more than 20 parliamentarians. We are now most anxious to see the recommendations of the former Chief Medical Officer implemented.
For my part, I have witnessed some successful multidisciplinary operations in the NHS. In my own county, I have visited the West Sussex Primary Care Trust and seen its chronic pain management services in Bognor, where it aims to achieve integrated musculoskeletal, rheumatology and pain management services. Key to this is its provision of tools for patient self-management with the help of hydrotherapy, muscle-pain clinics, physiotherapy, fit-for-work schemes and clinical psychology. I was particularly impressed by my visit to the Pain Management Centre, which is led by Dr Baranowski at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. It has had success in treating patients on a multidisciplinary basis.
Another centre of excellence is the Pain Management and Neuromodulation Centre at Guy’s and St Thomas's in London under the leadership of Dr al-Kaisy, whose excellent residential unit gives prospects of a better life for many patients who had been in despair from their suffering. I have also seen the support given to cancer patients suffering longer-term pain at the Palliative Medicine and Pain Unit of the Royal Marsden Hospital, which is led by Dr Williams. The unit has a multidisciplinary strategy that gives options ranging from medication, physiotherapy and psychology to interventional support. It is good that pioneering work, principally on the spinal cord and the brain, is being carried out, mainly in some university research departments. I hope that it may eventually lead to improved methods of treatment.
There is therefore clear evidence to show that, with the right expert support, people can be encouraged to manage their own pain, improve the quality of their lives, and in many cases stay in employment or, indeed, return to work. The provision of access to multidisciplinary pain clinics would in itself be a good investment for the country. This is best highlighted by Dame Carol Black's 2007 review of the health of Britain's working-age population. She stressed the business case for employers' investment in employees’ health. Much can be done through preventive and remedial measures with more flexible working patterns and wider provision of support and therapeutic sessions. A key recommendation was to change the nature of the GP’s sick note so that the GP focuses on what can be done to encourage the patient to go back to work rather than stay at home.
I should highlight the fact that Scotland has set something of a lead in managing chronic pain. In 2007, the Scottish Health Minister recognised pain as a long-term condition in its own right, and he has appointed a pain tsar to co-ordinate all pain service development. Last summer, I was briefed by the pain management service in the Shetlands, which caters for a population of 20,000. The Welsh Assembly Government have recognised pain management as one of five areas for improvement by providing services nearer to people's homes.
I am glad to note that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has issued guidelines on the early management of persistent low-back pain. I understand that the new National Quality Board is considering where chronic pain fits into the level of clinical priorities for quality improvement in healthcare.
I hope that the Minister will be prepared to meet me and some interested parliamentary colleagues before long to discuss the way ahead. The previous Government can take credit for laying the foundations, and I look to this new coalition Government to make a determined effort to establish multidisciplinary rehabilitation pain management services that are accessible to all those suffering from chronic pain in England. My experience tells me that if they do that, they will give hope to many people of all ages in this country.
Baroness Masham of Ilton
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Luce for this important short debate on chronic pain and congratulate him on his ongoing campaign to make conditions better for people with continuing chronic pain. Some years ago, when I was sitting next to my noble friend at lunch, he had such excruciating pain in his back that he had to go out and lie on a bench, and an ambulance was called. I have always had the greatest admiration for his tenacity in holding down an important position while enduring such chronic pain. It is good to see him still bringing this matter up. Who knows better what pain means? He is an expert and I hope that the Government will listen.
I know excruciating pain. I broke my back and fractured many ribs in an accident many years ago. When I arrived at the spinal unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital I was not given any painkillers for fear of addiction. In those days, that was the policy because we were turned only three-hourly to prevent pressure sores. Cramp used to set in and I understand the expression “blood, sweat and tears”.
When a doctor told me that the pain should ease off in three weeks, that was the light at the end of a very dark tunnel. It is important that the psychological implications of chronic pain are understood—for example, how it can cause depression, break up partnerships or loss of jobs. Pain can eat into people’s lives. In 2008, there was hope in the Chief Medical Officer’s annual report, which wanted,
“to widen access to high-quality pain services”.
What action has been taken in the past two years by the National Quality Board on clinical priorities for the NHS? What are the Government’s views on this subject?
The public need education in what to expect from analgesics and in how they can help themselves to cope with chronic pain. Postgraduate training is needed for the safe and appropriate prescribing of analgesics and the use of other therapies. Often, GPs prescribe pain-killing drugs to patients who are not reviewed and end up becoming dependent and addicted. About 8 million people of all ages suffer from chronic pain. Only about 14 per cent of them have access to any pain specialists. Long-term pain can have a devastating effect on the lives of sufferers and families. Forty nine per cent suffer from depression; 25 per cent lose their jobs; and 16 per cent feel suicidal.
Pain can be very complex. I am president of the Spinal Injuries Association. Some of our members have root pain or phantom pain, which is not well understood. Some people turn to alcohol, which may help but can damage their kidneys. Something has to be done to improve the situation. There is much need for research into pain and for multidisciplinary pain management services across the NHS which encompass doctors, physios, nurses, occupational therapists, psychologists and expert patients who are all trained in pain care. There needs to be co-operation and co-ordination, and not fragmentation. I wait in anticipation for the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, pain management is very important and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Luce, for introducing this debate. I should declare an interest in that I have a daughter who has had multiple sclerosis for almost 30 years. To a degree, she has been fortunate in that she has not suffered pain. But many sufferers of multiple sclerosis suffer severe pain. Some of them have pain in their mouths—trigeminal neuralgia. In oral dental training, the trigeminal nerve is a very important nerve in the face. It is the one that we have all heard about and we all hope that people will never get trigeminal neuralgia as it is considered to be the most horrendous pain that exists and is very difficult to deal with. Although various things can be done, sometimes that involves surgery, and for someone with multiple sclerosis that is very difficult. So pain is a major issue.
Many years ago I went to the Eastman Dental Hospital to see Professor Harris. When I got there, they said, “Have you come for the pain control clinic?”. I said “No”. I had never heard of the clinic. But it was interesting that Professor Harris was doing tremendous research at the Eastman Dental Institute into pain control. He must have retired some time ago, but this work is being continued.
Someone sent me a valuable tome on trigeminal neuralgia, which I kept for years. I occasionally glanced at it, but I never really read it. I offered it to the Lords Library but was told that it was far too specialised. I eventually sent it to one of the dental training schools because it was too important to be thrown out.
Pain affects many people. The noble Lord, Lord Luce, talked about acute pain, as well as chronic pain, which is what we are dealing with now. Chronic pain can be severe pain, which is the most worrying aspect. People can manage to put up with a little unpleasantness from time to time, but severe, constant pain is terrible to endure. Apart from anything else, it is demoralising and exhausting. Pain can be a valuable warning that something is wrong, but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Luce, that pain should be classified as a disease in its own right.
In 2006, I fell off one of those old buses, which I foolishly tried to hop on. It was at the lights and, unfortunately, I did not make it. I was tossed in the air and I broke one of my vertebrae, but I did not discover that for some time, although it was a little painful. By the time I was diagnosed it was too late to do anything about it surgically, but I was put on hydrotherapy, which was fantastic and dealt with the problem.
Another important point is that, often, the specialist nurses and therapists who work with these individuals pick up the pain issue and are able to refer people to the right place for pain management control.
Unfortunately, my time is up and I cannot say any more. This is a most important debate and I thank the noble Lord again.
Baroness Greengross
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Luce, for introducing this important debate. Pain can last for many years and some people have life-long symptoms. Sometimes it starts after a specific injury, but it is not always clear why people suffer in this way. As we have heard, some people suffer with continuing low back pain, pain related to joint inflammation or pain related to a nerve injury. Pain can follow an operation or an amputation, or even after what seems to be a not- very-serious infection, such as shingles.
We know that the effects of chronic pain can be disastrous and many people will need support in managing their symptoms. While specialist services are available in the community and in hospitals, I am aware that many people spend far too long without appropriate treatment. We are talking about large numbers of people and the accompanying huge costs spent in welfare benefits when people have to leave work and stop being productive in the community. We also know that death by suicide in chronic pain patients is double that of the general population and that severe chronic pain is associated with an increased 10-year mortality.
Much remains to be done with chronic pain management generally. I am particularly concerned about the status of older people in this regard. The recent National Audit Office health inequalities audit stated that much progress remained to be made on the issue, which would not be surprising as older people usually experience discrimination in the form of health inequalities, but also in poorer chronic pain management targets. Given the current austerity programme that the public sector is facing and the even greater importance of value for money, I hope that the Minister can assure the House that this aspect will be considered in terms of where any cuts will fall—bearing in mind that while we have been reassured that the NHS budget is ring-fenced, in fact that promise includes an existing £20 billion cut in expenditure.
In a survey, the BMA found that 43 per cent of those trusts which responded to it stated that there was a freeze on recruiting doctors and nurses and that many treatments, including varicose vein operations and blood tests, were being rationed. Set against this background, it is hard to see how the parlous state of chronic pain management services will be speedily remedied.
Finally, evidence strongly suggests that a human rights approach could have a practical role to play in this new era of austerity, breathing life into the Government’s promise to protect the most vulnerable and enabling us to interpret large sums into consequences for human beings. Public bodies have a duty to protect people who are suffering from inhuman and degrading treatment, and prolonged pain is in fact a category that would come under that heading. In their review of the Human Rights Act, the Government have said that they will keep these obligations intact, so an approach involving human rights could help public sector staff to remain aware of the huge human costs involved in chronic pain management. For example, the Mersey Care Trust has pioneered the use of human rights to give people with mental health problems and learning disabilities a meaningful role in the organisation, and there have been positive results. Service users and carers are involved in staff appointments, and this has led to a greater emphasis on finding staff with empathy and understanding as well as good technical skills. Perhaps such an approach to joined-up chronic pain management could reap enormous dividends.
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, like other noble Lords, I want to confine my remarks to my own experience of pain and pain relief and to speak solely as a patient. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Luce—I thank him for securing this debate—my experience is more of acute rather than chronic pain, and I am happy to say that I am now pain free. However, the principles I want to set out apply equally to both. While I endorse absolutely the view that co-ordination is all-important and a multi-disciplinary approach entirely the right one, when it comes to pain relief, I believe that these must be supplemented by the very best of communication.
This communication must have two aspects, the first of which is communication between professionals—the doctors and nurses, of course, but also the professionals ancillary to medicine such as the physiotherapists, radiographers and dieticians. If the medication for pain relief means that my feet are too numb to enable me to do the walking practice that the physiotherapist has recommended, what help is that to my recovery? If I can take absolutely nothing by mouth, and everything has to go by a Hickman line, the staff administering pain relief have to be very aware of it. I must put in a plea here for the extra services so often provided by volunteers in hospitals which all contribute to patient recovery but are not necessarily prescribed. I remember how, at a time of the most awful physical pain, the most relief I experienced did not come from drugs but from a nice young man who gave me a foot massage with scented oils.
Communication between departments is also vital. When you come out of intensive care, especially when coming back on to a ward, as I did four times in one hospital, there is nothing more frustrating than to lie there in pain with no one able to give you relief because your notes are caught up somewhere in the system. This applies particularly at night. Many patients still experience being in severe distress, but because far fewer doctors are available during those hours, they have to wait for someone—and at that point you feel that anyone would do—to administer some pain relief. So communication between professionals and between departments is vital, but in my view, no communication is more vital than that between the person administering the pain relief and the patient.
It is fine for an anaesthetist to say that an epidural is best for severe abdominal surgery, but if the epidural means that incontinence is a result, many a patient would prefer to endure the pain. Similarly, if the result of self-administered measured doses of morphine—in theory an excellent idea—is severe nausea to the point of exhaustion, surely the patient should be allowed to decide on other forms of relief. In one stay in hospital that lasted for about seven months, my worst memories are not about the pain, awful though it often was, but about the times when my wishes regarding pain control were ignored. However, I am happy to record that it is to the great credit of the NHS that those occasions were mercifully few. The best memories always centre around the way that caring people were prepared to consider me as an individual, and even to depart slightly from the rules; to discuss with me how drugs could be administered when I was unable to swallow anything for five months; and to maintain my dignity when those drugs had to be administered in most undignified ways. I recall also people like the young Nigerian charge nurse who would himself shed tears of sympathy when trying to find somewhere to inject me that did not cause excruciating pain to a body already like a pin cushion from repeated injections. As in many things, nothing can substitute for good communication when it comes to pain relief, either for chronic or acute pain.
I hope that the Minister will be able to endorse the importance of communication when any new policies are being developed.
Baroness Emerton
My Lords, I wish to add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Luce for initiating this short debate, following up his previous attempts to improve the multi-disciplinary approach to managing chronic pain. I declare an interest as a retired nurse and fully support multi-professional involvement. I certainly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, about the importance of care, compassion and communication as vital accompaniments. I also support my noble friend Lord Luce in urging the introduction of the fifth vital sign. It is extremely important that that is implemented.
There also appears to be a hold-up in extending the prescribing role of nurse consultants to patients suffering from chronic pain, although they are able to prescribe opiates to those suffering from acute pain or if they hold the role as a palliative care nurse. However, in a chronic pain clinic they have to refer the patient back to the GP. I understand that this causes great frustration to the patient, the GP and the nurse, and is wasteful of resources. I urge the Minister to look into this, please, to see whether it can be untangled.
I wish also to draw the Minister’s attention to an aspect of chronic pain that is preventable and very cost-effective. Reference has already been made to Dame Carol Black’s 2008 report, Working for a Healthier Tomorrow, which found that early intervention enables staff to return to work quickly, particularly where illness has the potential to become chronic and long-lasting, such as in the musculoskeletal disorders. Her report found that for employees with lower back pain, early intervention sees them return to work up to five weeks earlier than under normal care and reduces the recurrence of back pain in the following year by up to 40 per cent.
The Secretary for State for Health has made much of the need for an NHS that is focused on prevention and wider public health. Taking measures to safeguard nurses from back pain could be a tangible commitment to this. According to the Boorman review of November 2009, NHS Health and Wellbeing, which was acknowledged by the former Government, sickness among NHS staff in England currently accounts for 10.7 million lost work days at a cost of £1.7 billion. Some 30 per cent of the staff of the NHS are nurses. A national audit into clinical back pain management found that nurses and nurse support staff were more frequently absent than any other healthcare professionals with back pain caused by the level of manual handling in their jobs. It is not clear what the exact cost of back pain related nurse illness is to the NHS, but as nurses comprise the largest part of the workforce, it must make a significant contribution to the costs highlighted by Boorman. In addition, professional compensation awards can be significant. In recent years, awards of £800,000 and £400,000 have been made for work-related injuries. Early intervention to prevent nurse back pain related illness could help prevent a genuine risk to patient safety.
In the interests of ensuring patient safety, saving large sums of money as a result of preventive action and producing a healthier workforce, will the Minister add to the requests of other noble Lords my request for government action to encourage regular risk assessments, training in updated manual handling procedures and the supply of adequate equipment, especially in the community services, as well as a recognition of the need for early intervention in signs of lower back pain in nurses, support workers and other healthcare professionals? There is a saying that prevention is better than cure. Focus on prevention in this field would be of great benefit to patients, staff, management and the economy generally.
Baroness Morris of Bolton
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, has grown even more in my estimation. At 17, I fractured my spine—and if I had not had regular and large doses of morphine I do not know how I would have coped.
Just over four years ago, for reasons known only to itself, my immune system started to attack my body and I experienced the most excruciating pain in my feet, which spread to my hands, my wrists and then just about every other joint in my body. I could walk only if I wore the clumpiest of trainers, and I will always be grateful to your Lordships for allowing such glamorous footwear to be worn in the Chamber. At times the pain I experienced was so bad that my husband would walk downstairs in the morning to find me with my hands inside the deep freeze, so desperate was I to find relief.
I am not alone in my discomfort, and when I recount my own experiences I know I speak on behalf of around 600,000 people in the UK who suffer from one form or another of inflammatory arthritis. Some 380,000 of these have rheumatoid arthritis, which affects three times more women than men. Therefore, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Luce, for securing this debate.
According to the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance, musculoskeletal disorders are the second biggest cause of work-limiting health problems and sickness absence in the UK, with an estimated cost to society of some £7 billion per annum—and that is at 2007 prices.
There is a high divorce rate among women with this disease, probably because there are times when we cannot lift a kettle, cut a loaf of bread, do the washing up or iron a shirt. There are some days when you just cannot do anything. We need understanding and supportive families, and I am blessed with a great family.
I now inject drugs which keep most of my symptoms at manageable levels. I am lucky, if that is the right word to use, that I contracted this horrible disease at a time when medical research is making such tremendous breakthroughs. It has been my experience and, as research shows, the experience of most people, that services are most effective when they are delivered through a well-established multi-disciplinary team. The care I get from the rheumatology department at Bolton, which I will probably receive for the rest of my life, is second to none. As well as having had my drug regime sorted out, I have had physiotherapy, occupational therapy, Pilates lessons, warm hand waxes, podiatry and, best of all, acupuncture, which simply took the pain away and left me feeling beautifully relaxed. If I had wanted it, I could have had counselling or hydrotherapy. You name it; there was something for every need.
The acupuncture was so popular that it was difficult to book sessions, which were available only during the working week. I ask my noble friend the Minister whether there are plans to train more practitioners in acupuncture, and might we ever see weekend clinics for all forms of pain relief? I know that Bolton has been running some sessions to train patients in the self-administration of acupuncture, the results of which would be interesting to look at.
I have had excellent access to care in the NHS but, as the noble Lord, Lord Luce, said, this is unevenly resourced. For anyone suffering from chronic pain it is vital, not only for the well-being of the individual but for their families and society as a whole, that they get quick and consistent access to drugs and pain relief, delivered over a range of disciplines, so that they can lead as normal and economic a life as possible.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lord Luce for initiating this crucial debate because pain is one of the most distressing of human experiences. I shall concentrate on the importance of accurate diagnosis of the cause of pain before an appropriate programme of treatment can be initiated.
Everyone recognises chronic pain in osteoarthritis and multiple arthritis and in patients with cancer and terminal illness, but a number of chronic pains are recurrent and not continuous. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, referred to trigeminal neuralgia, which is a momentary acute lancinating pain in the face that may be precipitated by touching the face, by washing, by cold winds, by chewing. It is momentary and lancinating, and is a very severe and distressing pain that must be distinguished from the chronic low-grade continuous pain in the upper jaw that is not uncommon in middle-aged people and that has been shown to be a psychogenic regional pain that not infrequently responds to anti-depressive agents once dental causes have been excluded.
There is another form of pain called cluster headache in which people, every few months, may have every night—often at the same time, such as two in the morning—a hugely intense pain around the eye and in the face lasting for about half an hour, or a full hour, which wakes them from sleep time after time. It disappears after two or three months and then comes back again two or three months later. It is not migraine, but it, too, is a special headache syndrome that remarkably has been shown to respond to a drug called indomethacin. Accurate diagnosis is crucial, which is why the education of medical students, of young post-graduate doctors and of other healthcare professionals in the recognition of the different pain syndromes is so important.
Several speakers have stressed the importance of multi-disciplinary management. I, too, stress that because, in my experience, some people with chronic low-back pain have become so anxious and tense because of it that it builds up a kind of vicious circle in which the pain is accentuated by anxiety and tension. This can sometimes be helped enormously by the prescription of anxiolytic drugs and anti-depressives, alongside analgesics. That is why the multidisciplinary approach is crucial.
There are, of course, many physical methods of treating pain, including manipulation, injections, occasionally acupuncture and cutaneous nerve stimulation. There is a huge number: far too many to mention in this setting. However, at the same time, the recognition of the nature of the pain is crucial.
Another curious pain, proctalgia fugax, is an agonising pain in the anus that lasts for five to 10 minutes. It may recur completely out of the blue and for no reason at all. I have experienced it and so have two of my daughters. It is totally benign; it is alarming but of no serious significance. Its recognition is important.
I simply stress, as have others, the important work of the Chronic Pain Policy Coalition. It has highlighted five areas of action which I hope will be accepted in principle by the Government. I also hope that the vital report by the previous Chief Medical Officer, which contained so much invaluable material, will be accepted by the Government as a principle and will not only persuade local health authorities of all kinds—primary care trusts and so on—to embark on a programme of improving the establishment of pain clinics across the country, but will be used by educational bodies for the education of healthcare professionals.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Luce, who introduced the debate, and an astonishing number of other noble Lords have described how their own personal experiences have given them a profound insight into the importance of the dread subject of chronic serious pain. They have also shown an understanding and deep appreciation of the possibilities of treatment of this disorder.
In the short time available to me, I wish to stress three points. The first is the biopsychosocial aspect of pain. I hope that my noble friend will help the department to understand, as the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, pointed out—so clearly as he always does—the hugely important physical and biological aspect of much pain, and as other noble Lords have pointed out, its psychological aspects, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton. Others have pointed out the social aspects, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton. Pain of this kind is sometimes largely physical in its origins, but, at other times, the psychological and the social components play a very important role as well. They do so not only in its origin but also in its treatment and management. All those elements are extremely important. There is a tendency sometimes to think that the biological side of things is only about pain relief in the form of medication. There are other kinds of physical approach to the treatment of pain. My first point then is the need to understand the biopsychosocial nature of the disorder and its treatment.
My second point is the need to pay attention to the needs and wishes of the patient, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, pointed out. In principle, at least, that is not so difficult when the patient’s cognitive function is intact and they are able to communicate. Many patients suffer from pain, but their cognitive function is impaired and they may be suffering from dementia. Many elderly people suffering from dementia do not have their pain understood and attended to because they are not able to communicate it clearly. That is also true at the other end of the age scale. Many children are unable to communicate their pain clearly because they cannot even understand what is happening to them. Their pain is not properly dealt with and their misbehaviour is sometimes treated inappropriately. Likewise, the pain of those with psychiatric disorders is sometimes simply dismissed—“Oh, it is all in their head”—and is not properly dealt with. Those with learning disabilities also have great difficulty in communicating the nature of their pain. As the noble Baroness said, attending to the needs and wishes of the patient is crucial, but it is not always easy, and I trust that my noble friend the Minister will be able to assure us that it is appreciated that attending to the needs and wishes of patients is more complex than simply listening to them.
My third point is that, although it is extremely important to have expert pain clinics, only a minority of patients will ever be able to get to them. What can be very helpful to doctors, nurses and other clinicians who deal with patients with pain is to be able to contact such clinics and ask over the telephone directly for advice on how they might handle them. We shall never be able to train all our practitioners, GPs, community nurses and so on in the most up-to-date and complex ways of dealing with these patients, but we can make sure that they have access to those who are up to date. When I was a psychiatrist, it was possible to contact other clinicians who understood how to deal with such things and to receive advice from them and then make it available to my patients. I trust that my noble friend will be able to reassure us that practitioners will be able and encouraged to make such contact, and that it will be seen not as a failure of their professional ability but as a fulfilment of it if they do so.
Lord Tunnicliffe
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Luce, on initiating tonight’s debate. When preparing for this debate, I was shocked to learn of the suffering of so many of my fellow citizens, and commend the noble Lord, Lord Luce, on his determination that this issue should be given the priority that it deserves in healthcare planning. The account of his personal experience and that of other noble Lords serves to illustrate the need for a national and co-ordinated approach.
I accept the argument that chronic pain requires a multidisciplinary approach and rapid-access pain clinics to provide early intervention, as advocated by both the Chief Medical Officer in his report of 2008 and NICE in its May 2009 guidelines on the treatment of chronic low back pain.
In May last year, my noble friend Lady Thornton said in answer to a Question from the noble Lord, Lord Luce:
“My Lords, we welcome the recommendations on the management of chronic pain in the Chief Medical Officer’s 2008 annual report. Many of the recommendations are already in line with existing guidance and practice in the NHS. We will consider what further action may be needed in the context of advice from the National Quality Board on clinical priorities for the NHS”.—[Official Report, 6/5/09; col. 543.]
The first question that I therefore need to ask the Minister is whether the CMO's report was considered by the National Quality Board, and if so what its advice was and whether it has been acted on.
Chronic pain affects 7.8 million people; 25 per cent of them lose their jobs or have to leave them; and £3.8 billion a year is spent on incapacity benefit payments to those diagnosed with chronic pain. The noble Lord, Lord Luce, made a very valid point when he said that it is more cost-effective to deal with chronic pain through investment in teams at PCT level than to leave treatment and support to chance and the patchwork that exists, at least in some places, at the moment.
My second question, therefore, is whether the Government will address this kind of investment in their reconfiguration of the National Health Service. Further, I hope that the Minister will agree to meet the noble Lord, Lord Luce, and the Chronic Pain Policy Coalition to discuss their legitimate concern that the impetus to deliver a national and co-ordinated approach will be lost in the change in government and the proposals of the coalition to devolve commissioning to GPs.
It is no longer acceptable in the modern world to tell people to grin and bear it when it comes to chronic pain. For many, medical and pharmaceutical advances mean that the remedies are available. Political will on the part of the Government and the management of the NHS is required to deliver effective solutions.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. I begin by expressing my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Luce, for calling it and congratulating him on the eloquent way in which he has introduced a topic which I know is close to his heart.
Chronic pain can be a devastating condition, as many of your Lordships have testified. It affects a large proportion of the population, especially those of advancing years. The noble Lord has already quoted a number of relevant statistics; let me just add another. Data from the Health Survey for England suggested that more than half of the total impact of disease on quality of life is due to pain.
There are examples of really effective, joined-up, multidisciplinary pain services providing support to patients as and when they need it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, said, that is how it should be. But, all too often, patients do not get the support and the treatment that they need.
In his 2008 annual report, the then Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, described how the system was failing to give sufficient priority to chronic pain. A key response from the previous Government was to agree funding for a national pain audit. We are maintaining support for this initiative, which is led by the British Pain Society in collaboration with Dr Foster. More than 200 pain clinics are already signed up to provide data. The work is being piloted and data collection will begin later this year. We are expecting a report in the early part of 2012. The audit will not only assess the organisation of local services—location, staffing and equipment—but also assess the quality of patient care across NHS providers by measuring activities and outcomes.
What can the Government do? Our vision for the NHS is for a transfer of power away from the centre down to the people who really understand what is needed: to patients, GPs and other front-line health professionals. It is only by doing that that we will fashion a health service that is truly patient-centred. This is why we intend to devolve budgets to GP commissioners, working in small local consortia. They are best placed to understand their patients’ needs and to prioritise and commission appropriate services, including multidisciplinary pain management services.
On average, someone with chronic pain will have direct contact with a health professional for only around three hours a year. The rest of the time they care for themselves. Patients therefore need to be informed. By our educating people about their condition and ensuring that they have access to support from others in a similar situation, people’s health can be significantly improved. This also helps to reduce the number of GP visits and prevent unnecessary hospital admissions as well as reducing the length of any hospital stays.
I recognise that some patients cannot take decisions for themselves or express themselves, among whom are children, as my noble friend Lord Alderdice rightly pointed out. The detection of children's pain can, however, be improved by strategies to facilitate their expression of pain in ways that are appropriate to their cognitive development and that can be understood by the adults caring for them. So there is work going on in this area.
Good management of chronic pain takes account of the whole person. People agree goals and actions to be taken in a personalised care plan. This allows people to make choices about the care that they receive. The issue of choice was rightly mentioned by a number of noble Lords. It puts people at the centre of any decisions about their care. As my right honourable friend the Secretary of State put it recently,
“no decision is made about me, without me”.
Information from care plans can also help commissioners consider how to use funds most efficiently to support people to self care and identify services that are successfully meeting patients’ needs and expectations. It also enables them to recognise gaps where there is unmet need. This is an important way for the patient voice to have direct influence over the design and commissioning of services in a particular locality.
Of course, devolving decision-making in this way does not mean that the Government are devoid of responsibility. There are a number of ways in which the Government and other organisations can support patients and front-line staff, ensuring that funding is spent on appropriate and effective services. First, we can ensure that clinicians and commissioners have up-to-date, evidence-based clinical guidance. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence plays a key role here. As the noble Lord, Lord Luce, mentioned, NICE issued a clinical guideline last year on lower back pain and has more recently published a guideline on neuropathic pain. Over time, NICE will create a library of quality standards that support NHS organisations as they look for evidence on how to improve outcomes for patients.
Secondly, we can promote the development and diffusion of ideas on the service models that work best for patients. Patients with long-term conditions want services that are based in the community and which support and affirm their ability to manage their own conditions. They want to be referred to secondary and tertiary care only when really necessary. That requires excellent co-ordination between all levels of the system. One of the workstreams of the quality, innovation, productivity and prevention programme is focused on delivering this approach for people living with long-term conditions such as chronic pain.
Thirdly, we can promote the development of indicators of the quality and outcome of services. Outcome indicators will help patients to exercise choice and hold providers to account. They will help service providers to benchmark their performance against their peers and improve the services that they offer. They will help to ensure that any serious failure in quality is identified quickly and action taken to ensure the safety of patients.
An aim of the national pain audit will be to measure patient outcomes using the brief pain inventory scale—an accepted pain management assessment tool. This, combined with an assessment of patients’ outcomes using other patient-reported outcome measures, will make for a comprehensive review of the quality of care. The audit will help to identify indicators that could be suitable for routine use.
Finally, we can ensure that the right financial incentives are in place. The tariff system already ensures, in broad terms, that money follows the patient and that providers are rewarded for delivering best practice. We will build on that by increasing the proportion of provider income that is responsive to the quality, not just the quantity, of care provided. It is just worth adding that in due course, patients with long-term conditions may be able to influence their choice of treatment and provider even more directly through the use of personal health budgets, which are being piloted at the moment.
My noble friend Lady Morris spoke about acupuncture. Use of acupuncture in the NHS is quite limited. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence provides guidelines to the NHS on the use of treatments and it currently recommends that acupuncture is considered as a treatment option for lower back pain. However, it is often used to treat musculoskeletal conditions and a wide variety of pain conditions. Unfortunately there is an absence of clinical evidence in this area. We simply do not have the evidence base to be sure that it works for many of the conditions for which it is often used. More scientific research is undoubtedly needed to establish whether acupuncture is effective against many conditions.
My noble friend also referred to the problem of gaining access to hospital appointments at weekends. There is an important case for services such as pain control to be provided outside working hours. We would encourage local commissioners to continue to develop services such as this to meet the needs of the working public. The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, with her wide experience, pointed out that the elderly frequently suffer worse treatment than those in other age groups. Those who commission services locally clearly have a duty to ensure that the needs of the whole community are met, with particular attention given to vulnerable older people. The multidisciplinary nature of teams is pivotal in making pain relief available to all age groups in society.
The noble Lord, Lord Luce, asked whether we would consider a national strategy for chronic pain or indeed a tsar. I am not persuaded at the moment that a tsar or a national strategy for chronic pain over and above our current policies for improving the quality of services is necessary. We need to liberate front-line staff as a first priority to enable them to work with their patients to improve the quality of services that they provide or commission. We need to ensure, too, that they have access to the guidance that is available. As I mentioned, there is a wealth of available guidance, including a commissioning pathway published by the Department of Health, and guidance for secondary care and primary care has been published by the British Pain Society, as he will know.
The noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, asked whether a pain score should become part of the vital signs that are monitored for patients in hospital. Current guidance from NICE recommends that all patients admitted to hospital should be assessed and a decision made on which clinical indicators should be monitored. A pain score is one of the indicators that should be considered.
The noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, referred to nurse prescribing and how that might be improved in this area. In prescribing medication it is essential that the right person gives the right medication at the right time and that stands to reason. Nurse prescribing is a welcome development that can benefit patients significantly. She would agree that services should continue to look at what professional mix can best deliver safe, timely and effective treatments for patients. She also referred to the need for risk assessment among nurses. I have every sympathy with that point. Back pain among nurses as a result of injury at work is a great concern, both for the nurses and their families. Local employers also have a duty of care to provide safe working environments and prevent unnecessary and avoidable harm.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked about investment in services at a local population level. We share a commitment to improve health and healthcare. This is our driving principle and our proposals for reconfiguration of the NHS will drive the improvement for all patients.
I conclude by reassuring noble Lords that I should be happy to meet the noble Lord, Lord Luce, and the Chronic Pain Policy Coalition to discuss these issues further.
Academies Bill [HL]
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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22:45 - Division on Amendment 26 - Ayes: 44 / Noes: 111 - Amendment 26 disagreed.
Lord Whitty
“( ) An Academy is a public authority for the purposes of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010.”
Lord Whitty
This amendment should be fairly straightforward. In a sense, I am on the same page as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, was at the very beginning of proceedings today. It appears slightly odd that we should propose amendments that require schools to obey the law, but life is more complicated than one would think. The point of my amendment is to clarify that, for the purposes of the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act, academies are regarded as public authorities. This is important in both contexts. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, got an assurance in fairly unequivocal terms on the Human Rights Act, and I should like an equivalent assurance, at least, on the Equality Act. I am proposing this in the hope that the Minister will be disposed, if not to accept the amendment, at least to give me a statement that meets the points of the amendment.
Notwithstanding what was said about governing bodies just before the break—and the Minister and others will know that I am not entirely well disposed towards this Bill in principle—I and, I think, most people in this House, would accept that the majority of governing bodies and managements of academy schools that come through this process will operate within the mainstream of educational approach and activity. Nevertheless, it is possible and, at the edges, probable, that the process of establishing academies—and even more so free schools, which will eventually be subject to the same provisions—can lead to governing bodies that are outside of the mainstream. I put that as delicately as possible. There are particular subsets of parents who have particular views on education; particular faith groups will have views on matters of gender and sexuality that are not the normal approach that would be guaranteed if the organisation were subject to the Equality Act and the Human Rights Act. We have to bear in mind that, whatever safeguards we build in, such minorities could qualify to establish a school under that process. Alternatively, it could be that the management of the school is proved to be so lax that, whatever the ethos of the governing body, it is not properly observed. I should therefore like it clarified that the requirements under the Equality Act and Human Rights Act that apply to public authorities will apply to academies, despite their slightly ambiguous position. If the Minister can give me that assurance, we can move on to the next amendment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are happy to confirm, as I thought that we had in Committee, that the Government accept that academies are public authorities for the purposes of the Human Rights Act 1998. We welcome the noble Lord’s intention of ensuring that; we will, as we said in Committee, ensure that academies are included in Schedule 19 to the Equality Act 2010. As the noble Lord will know, academies as independent educational institutions will be required to comply with all the duties in the Act that apply to schools more generally with respect to non-discrimination, reasonable adjustments for disabilities and the like, including gender issues. Academies are not currently included in Schedule 19, but the schedule will be updated before the duties come into force in 2011 and academies will be included in time for that commencement. Therefore, by the time those duties are implemented, it will be clear that an academy is a public authority for the purposes of the Equality Act.
With that clear reassurance, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I am grateful for that clear assurance. I shall not even pursue the avoidance-of-doubt argument. I shall accept the Minister’s remarks in good faith, and am very grateful for them. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
“(9) Before entering into Academy arrangements with any person the Secretary of State must make regulations which set out the criteria under which proposals for such arrangements may be granted.
(10) Regulations under subsection (9) shall not come into effect unless a draft has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I move Amendment 17. In this group is Amendment 53 on a related issue, in the names of my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby and myself, to which my noble friend will speak later.
This is really about the accountability of the new academy system and of the Secretary of State when he is exercising the powers that he will have in the management of the academy system. It has been pointed out on a number of occasions in debates on this Bill that in some crucial areas the Bill represents and provides a significant increase in the powers of the Secretary of State and a significant centralisation of the education system and the school system with regard to the academies. The more academies are created, the more that will be the case. There is a movement of powers of supervision, monitoring and various other aspects that have been discussed away from local education authorities to the Secretary of State and the processes that the Secretary of State will put in place, such as through the Young People's Learning Agency.
These amendments look at two aspects of this. The first is the creation of academies. There were amendments in Committee to make the academy orders—in relation to the conversion of individual schools, for example—subject to parliamentary approval. I think that there were some amendments from the Labour Front Bench suggesting that this should be the case. The argument was put forward, with, I think, considerable justification, that in most cases, or all cases, they would simply be a formality and that would clog up the system because there were going to be quite a lot of them. Rather than parliamentary approval being required for individual academies being set up or converted, however, this amendment would require parliamentary approval for the criteria by which academy arrangements will be created. It suggests that before entering into academy arrangements, the Secretary of State must make regulations that set out these criteria, and the criteria will be subject to parliamentary approval.
A later amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty—Amendment 28, I think—is similar, in a sense. It refers to academy orders and says that the Secretary of State has to publish the criteria by which academy orders will be made, but it does not actually go as far as requiring parliamentary approval.
Whether this is about the orders or about the arrangements—obviously they are all part and parcel of the system that is going to exist—there are important policy issues here. It is not just a question of mechanically carrying out a system of creating academies; it is a question of setting out the criteria by which academies can be created. To some extent, it is a matter of whether or not schools qualify. To another extent, it is a matter of the model academy agreement, and it may be that that agreement, which this amendment does not cover, requires some sort of parliamentary scrutiny as well.
These are important issues. All these important central policy issues are being concentrated on the Secretary of State, who will have considerable power. No doubt Parliament can find ways of scrutinising these as it wishes through various parliamentary mechanisms, but there is nothing automatic in the Bill that sets that out.
That is the purpose of Amendment 17: to probe, and to promote yet again the concept that when the Secretary of State is making these decisions, the basis on which he is making them—the fundamental policy—really ought to be subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
The second amendment, which my noble friend will speak to, is about scrutiny of the system after it has been operating. It is the other side of the same coin. I beg to move.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 53, which is also part of this grouping. I agree with my noble friend that the proposal that he makes under Amendment 17 would be appropriate.
Owing to the lateness of the hour, I shall keep to my own amendment, the purpose of which is essentially to give Parliament an ultimate level of accountability for what happens in the secondary and primary education system through the process of an annual report repeated every year about the progress of academies, their successes, their failures, their record and so forth.
I shall say clearly, but briefly, why this matters so much. The present structure of accountability is by way of local authorities through to, eventually, their electorates. That system will be largely disappearing by the time that this Bill is passed, certainly for whatever group of schools that apply to be academies. The question then becomes, as my noble friend has said, whether there is any level of accountability, other than directly that of the Secretary of State to Parliament, more precisely related to academies themselves.
It is of the greatest importance that we have a report to Parliament. There will of course be reports to Select Committees, but we all know that Select Committees—although we hope that this situation will be substantially reformed—do not get the public or media coverage that is given to Parliament itself. The idea of a report to Parliament in which all parliamentarians, Members of both Houses, can ask questions is of the first importance. I cannot emphasise enough the crucial nature of accountability in any major democratic reform of this kind. I will simply say that the purpose of Amendment 53 is to arrange for an annual report. That report would clearly be greatly strengthened by the belt-and-braces approach suggested by my noble friend, as we would then know whether academies maintained and ascribed to the agreements and arrangements that were made for them. Even so, the importance of a report to Parliament is central. We have reports to Parliament on a wide range of issues, so why not on a major part of the education of the people of this country?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, we see a bit of a dilemma. In order to give individual schools more authority over their affairs through academy status, the Secretary of State is having to take powers to himself to authorise that. Clearly, that approach has been used before, but with power goes accountability. There is a gap. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that in some way the Secretary of State needs to be more accountable to Parliament for the responsibilities that he will discharge.
In Committee, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said, we debated a number of amendments tabled by Members on this side of the House, which, in retrospect, were probably too detailed and would have required many hundreds of statutory instruments coming to your Lordships’ House and the other place. The noble Lord has come forward with a more sensible approach, which deals with the principles of the granting of academy status and allows Parliament to debate the criteria. As the Secretary of State will be given considerable powers in this area, it is right for Parliament to ask for greater parliamentary scrutiny. I certainly think that the noble Lord has got it right.
How quickly the party opposite has warmed to Executive power. For how many years have we heard noble Lords from both parties opposite ask for more parliamentary scrutiny? I find it surprising that the Government are not able to respond on this matter. Surely what the noble Lord suggests is not too much to ask.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I, too, support the amendments in the names of my noble friends. I remind the House that we have already today—and, indeed, in our debates yesterday—come up with several examples of things that could legitimately be included in the annual report. Yesterday, we talked about the effect on primary schools; today, we have talked about the effect on young people with special educational needs and young people leaving care. To that, you could add achievement in exam results and all kinds of other issues. The amendment is not prescriptive in any way, but it is as well to bear in mind the sorts of subjects that Parliament may wish to consider in holding the Government to account when asking questions about such a report. This is a valuable proposal.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I support this suggestion. There will be considerable power at the centre and a need for parliamentary accountability. The approach proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and spelt out in more detail by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, is one that I certainly find acceptable.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, the issue of accountability that we have just been debating is extremely important, as the amendments rightly reflect. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, as he prompted me to think whether it is right to make provision for greater parliamentary scrutiny. I think that there is broad agreement across the House on the need for that, which I shall come back to in a moment.
Amendment 17, moved by my noble friend Lord Greaves, would, as we have debated, require the Secretary of State to make regulations to set out criteria for entering into academy arrangements. I hope that he will accept that the Government have made it clear that they will apply a rigorous fit-and-proper-person test in approving any sponsors of an academy or promoter of a free school. We have circulated the draft funding agreements so that noble Lords can see the kind of terms and conditions that will apply to academies. We will publish the criteria for deciding applications from schools that are not rated as outstanding by Ofsted, which, as my noble friend knows, are proceeding on a slower timetable in any case.
That said, since the academies programme started, the signing of the funding agreement has always been a matter between the Secretary of State and the academy trust. The Secretary of State has discretion over his decision in that respect to enter into academy arrangements and will want to review each application for an academy order on its merits. We think that some flexibility is needed in his consideration of these factors to ensure that he can make the right decision in each individual case. We have touched before on the point that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has scrutinised the Bill and is satisfied that the level of parliamentary scrutiny it includes is appropriate. Nevertheless, as I alluded to yesterday on Report, there is a case for the Government going further in trying to make sure that Parliament has the opportunity to see how the policy is working.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am grateful for what the Minister said about Amendment 53, which is half of what we are putting forward. We would be very happy to take up his offer. On that basis, no doubt my noble friend will not move Amendment 53 when we finally get to it some time tonight.
In relation to Amendment 17 there is a question that will not go away. There are fundamental issues that go beyond whether an application for academy status is being made by a fit and proper person. While the criteria for approving academies will be published, it seems that there need to be ways in which Parliament can discuss those criteria. We have a Secretary of State at the moment who is full of revolutionary zeal in this area. He is being very open and honest with us, through the Minister, about how he will approach this and the kind of criteria which will be looked at. However, Secretaries of State do not last for ever. There will be further Secretaries of State in the future; they will be different people with different ideas, and may wish to change the criteria. Under those circumstances it seems absolutely right that he or she should come back to Parliament.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, given the complete mess over the schools building programme, how long does the noble Lord give the current Secretary of State?
Lord Greaves
That question is a long way above my pay grade. The Secretary of State seems to have quite a lot of influence in the Government at the moment. We will see how it goes and I wish him the best of luck.
The Minister said that the funding agreements would be published for each school; each application would be considered separately; and freedom of information requests will get all the information they require in relation to each school. We understand all that but it is different from parliamentary scrutiny of the overall policy and the criteria on which the Secretary of State will make the decisions. This is an issue which will not go away. It will probably be debated in considerable depth when the Bill gets to the House of Commons. We will observe with interest how it gets on. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Wilkins
“( ) In Schedule 1 to the School Finance (England) Regulations 2008, after paragraph 8 insert—
“8A Where a child is a registered pupil at an Academy, expenditure in respect of services for making provision for pupils with low incidence special educational needs or disabilities.”
( ) Where a local authority fails to secure satisfactory provision for pupils with low incidence special educational needs or disabilities, the Secretary of State may make alternative arrangements.”
Baroness Wilkins
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 21. In Committee, I spoke about my concerns that the Academies Bill will fatally undermine specialist support services for children with low incidence needs. I am grateful to the Minister for his letter of 2 July in response to these concerns, and to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for his reply in Committee. I particularly welcome the Government’s commitment that pupils in academies with low incidence SEN needs or disabilities will receive the support they require from specialist support services. But, unfortunately, my worries have not yet been allayed. The Special Educational Consortium, particularly the National Deaf Children’s Society, RNIB and Sense, share my concerns.
The funding arrangements for specialist support services may be complex but the problem is clear. If funding from the schools budget for specialist support services is to be dispersed widely to a large number of academies in a given area, this will reduce the funding available to existing specialist support services in local authorities. It takes away the pooling of resources that ensures services to children with low incidence needs can be met at reasonable value for money. As the noble Lord, Lord Hill, put it in his letter to me, this will result in “dis-economies of scale”. The noble Lord noted that academies will be able to buy back support from their local authority. However, a survey by the National Deaf Children’s Society raises serious concerns that this is simply not happening. The society found that of 66 local authorities where a deaf child with a statement of SEN was enrolled in an existing academy, in only 17 of these local authorities were the academies buying in support.
So what is happening to the deaf children in the other 49 local authorities? The society suspects that many local authorities are providing services free of charge, but that clearly will not be sustainable with greater numbers of academies. The worst case scenario is that children with sensory impairments are going without the support they need. NDCS is aware of examples where this is currently happening—for instance, in one local authority in Yorkshire and the Humber, where uncertainty over funding and buy-back has left deaf children totally unsupported.
In Committee, the Minister stated that he recognises this is a continuing problem, and that was very welcome. However, I would like him to go further and commit to finding an urgent solution to this problem. I recognise that it is not a new problem. However, if the Academies Bill is going to make matters worse, surely the Minister has a responsibility to act now before the Bill becomes law. In Committee, he suggested that “partnerships among schools” will clearly be the best way forward. Will he say a little more about how this will work in practice? How will these partnerships be funded? What support and guidance are being provided to schools to develop them? How many partnerships are there in place already? Most importantly, what evidence is there that these partnerships will ensure that every child with low incidence needs gets the support that they need?
The Minister also stated that academies will have access to top-up funding to cover the costs of support for children with low incidence needs. He went on to say that this will be funded by the local authority from its schools budget. Will he confirm that this is the same schools budget which will be cut if a large number of schools convert to academies? If so, how can these specialist support services be funded and provided on a reliable and sustainable basis?
The Minister stated that if the academy fails to secure the necessary support, it will be in breach of its funding agreement, and that the Young People’s Learning Agency can investigate, following a complaint. In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, made the important and obvious point that the YPLA is not an inspection agency. In response, the Minister stated that voluntary organisations will monitor the situation. However, surely he must agree that this is a very weak and unacceptable safeguard against the risk that children with low incidence needs will be denied the support they need. Many voluntary organisations simply do not have the capacity to monitor provision in large numbers of individual academies across England. It is not appropriate for such organisations to act as a watchdog, relying on them to make sure that the Government and academies fulfil their legal duties towards children with special educational needs.
My amendment would move funding for specialist support services out of the schools budget and into the LEA budget. This would protect these services from some of the unintended consequences to which I referred earlier. In Committee, the Minister did not set out his view on this. If it is his view that this amendment should not be passed, I should be grateful if he could explain why, and what alternative remedy will be put in its place. My amendment would also give the Secretary of State the power to make alternative arrangements if specialist support services in any particular area are inadequate.
In his letter, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, noted that academies will in future be free to buy in services from other providers. In light of the difficulties that some local authorities have in meeting the needs of children with low incidence needs, I recognise the appeal of this and hope that this option will be explored further, as I have no desire to prop up services that are not doing a good job. However, I stress that this needs to be fully thought through and fully planned for.
I very much welcome the fact that officials have met with the National Sensory Impairment Partnership, as the noble Lord, Lord Hill, pointed out in his letter. I have been told that the partnership also welcomes this and believes that there has been a useful discussion and exchange of views, which it is keen to continue. However, it does not believe that there has been sufficient progress in resolving the outstanding questions and concerns.
The partnership believes that the Government should set up a time-limited working group that will consider alternative arrangements and make urgent recommendations. This group should include representatives from the Department for Education, local authorities, professionals, head teachers of academies and maintained schools, and parents. I firmly agree with the partnership. If the Government wish to show that they are serious about addressing these important concerns about specialist support services and diseconomies of scale, it is imperative that a working group be set up immediately, and I very much hope that the Minister will give me a positive reply to this proposal, which would do much to alleviate the concerns.
Children with low incidence needs may, by definition, be fewer in number. That cannot be an excuse to pass a Bill which would potentially prevent many from getting the support that they need. I urge the Minister to do more than just recognise that there is a problem. He must find solutions before this Bill is allowed to pass. I beg to move.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Wilkins, as I did with regard to her amendment in Committee. I agree with my noble friend and share her concerns on specialist support services for children with low-incidence needs. I also agree that the Minister has not yet, I fear, provided a satisfactory response on these important concerns. I also reiterate the point made by my noble friend that the Government’s desire to pass the Bill speedily must not be at the expense of children with low-incidence needs.
In Committee, I highlighted my concerns about the impact of the Bill on the range of services delivered by specialist support services outside school. For example, many services provide pre-school support directly to families and children to aid language acquisition and to teach Braille. Support may also be given to ensure that children with visual impairments have the necessary independent living skills. Such support is essential if we wish to ensure that children with low-incidence needs are able to fulfil their potential and live independently later in life. The cost of failing to provide such support is likely to be prohibitive to individuals with low-incidence needs and also to the Government’s welfare budget. I am concerned that such services may be compromised if the schools budget for specialist support services is cut when a large number of schools convert to academies. When it comes to low-incidence needs, surely it is vital that our limited resources are pooled and used effectively to fund the services and ensure the best possible value for money.
I am concerned also that these unintended consequences will result not only in wastage but also in very poor value for money. These concerns are shared by the Special Education Consortium. I regret that the Minister did not address the concerns that I expressed in Committee that such preschool services would be undermined by the Bill. I strongly urge him to do so today.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I will speak briefly given the hour. Despite the reassurances received by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, there remain a number of concerns that need to be addressed. The specialist services of which the noble Baronesses, Lady Wilkins and Lady Howe, have spoken are at the heart of special education provision. As we have heard, they include support for mainstream teachers, Braille teaching and mobility instruction for visually impaired pupils, communication support, advice on equipment and speech and language support for pupils who are deaf or hard of hearing. I declare an interest as a vice-president of the RNIB, an organisation that is very concerned about the maintenance of services for blind and partially sighted pupils.
The services that I have mentioned are examples of those that meet low-incidence needs. The LEA is a large enough unit for these needs to attain a critical mass and generate demand for a level of support services that is capable of being sustained. The academy system is much more atomised and fragmented, and much less able to sustain a critical mass of support services. Of course, academies can form consortium arrangements, and the Minister spoke of partnerships; but it will inevitably take time to get these up and running, and in the mean time local authority arrangements are likely to become increasingly vulnerable as academies, with their attendant funding, opt out of the local authority system. Therefore it is absolutely essential that the Government make clear in detail exactly how specialist support services will be sustained in the new environment.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I support the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins. The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, wanted to speak in support of the amendment, but could not make the late hour for health reasons. I am therefore pleased to take her place, after taking her considerable briefing.
I share her concern about losing essential support for disabled children if we do not ensure that the Bill delivers an appropriate system to do the job. I am a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Disability, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell. The group has frequently been told that too many disabled children are not getting the specialist support that they need at school fully to engage with the curriculum. I am concerned that the Bill may have the unintended consequence of worsening this problem. I will give an example. The National Deaf Children's Society identified a case in the West Midlands in which a small all-through school became an academy. It admitted a disabled child who required significant levels of support. However, the academy had difficulty in funding this support as it took up a disproportionate amount of its special educational needs budget. As a small school working with one deaf child, the academy was unable to access the economies of scale that would have made the support for this child affordable.
On a more positive note, I am pleased to hear about Waltham Forest local authority, which decided to adopt a different funding model when a delegated structure similar to that proposed in the Bill failed to support the needs of disabled children. Now, a local special school receives its funding to operate an outreach service for all other local schools free of charge.
The lesson from Waltham Forest demonstrates how important it is to think through the impact of any changes to funding, especially for support services, before proceeding. I believe that this amendment helps us to do that and to avoid unnecessary damage to the education of disabled children. I urge the Minister to respond positively to it.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment and apologise for not being present when the noble Baroness moved it. I know that, with his wife’s experience as a volunteer, the Minister is familiar with these issues. Recently I spoke to a teacher who had completed her first year working with teenagers with autism and she told me how exhausted she was. She had spent an outward bound weekend with them; they had been doing a school play the previous evening; and she had had to complete the school reports. She was utterly exhausted and told me how challenging these children could be. However, she said, “I love these children. It’s so satisfying to do this work”. We need to ensure that the professionals who work with these children get the best specialist support available. I share the concern raised by my noble friend Lord Low about the dangers of atomisation and fragmentation, and I know that the Minister will also very much bear that in mind. We all have to work in partnership if we are to achieve the best outcomes for these young people.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in supporting the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, in this amendment. Yesterday, when we had a debate about numbers and needs, we raised some questions about the funding formula. We also spoke about the ready reckoner which the Government have produced and which is on their website.
Looking in more detail at the ready reckoner, they make it quite clear that home-to-school transport, educational psychology, SEN statementing and assessment, monitoring of SEN provision, parent partnerships, prosecution of parents for non-attendance, individually assigned SEN resources for pupils with rare conditions needing expensive tailored provision, and the provision of pupil referral units or other education for a pupil will all be paid for by retained funding by the local authority, but the other general support services—this is the issue with which we are concerned here—will fall under the part of the funding that will be dispersed among the schools, or certainly the academies. Looking at the list of what comes under the local authority central spend equivalent grant, which is the one that is going to be shared out among the schools, the services and costs that are funded from local authorities’ schools budgets include things such as museum and library services, the costs of the local authority statutory and regulatory duties, and so on. In other words, it would appear that the Government currently envisage that this funding should come not just from the dedicated schools grant but from general funding which comes out of council tax, plus some money from the Department for Communities and Local Government which goes towards, for example, the funding of museums and libraries and outdoor education services.
There are very real reasons to worry. Yesterday, I asked the Minister whether we were raising the expectation of many of these schools that they would receive rather more funding than they will actually get. Looking in detail at the advice given on the website, I think that there is more to it than that. Questions arise about whether this money comes within the schools budget. As I said, we are looking at the fair funding formula and the problems that dispersing this money will cause local authorities. It will give them very real problems in providing those support services because of the loss of economies of scale and so on.
I also endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, said about the problems of following through on complaints in relation to the YPLA. As she said, the Minister suggested that voluntary organisations might do the monitoring. That is a very unsatisfactory reply. I asked the Minister yesterday about the capabilities and capacity of the YPLA which is a new organisation that is only just off the ground. It is still finding its feet and I wonder whether it has the capacity, as the number of academies grows, to fulfil these functions. I press the Minister to think further about the proposals made by the noble Baroness.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for his letter to my noble friend, which has been extremely helpful and has very much informed our debate. As I said in an earlier debate on SEN, the response that academies can buy SEN support services from their local authority, from neighbouring authorities or from other providers is in itself unexceptional. It is absolutely right that academies should be able to do that.
There could be a problem in two cases. The first, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, is where an expensive support service is required for an individual student. Secondly—I am thinking of our previous debates on the role of governing bodies—I should have thought that when academies are first established their governing bodies will be very cautious when it comes to budget making. That will be entirely understandable. I can see that budgets for expensive special support services will be cut back as it will be the natural thing to do. By the time they realise that that was probably a mistake because they are faced with demands that must be met, the risk is that the kind of high quality services funded at present by local authorities will have gone out of business. That is why the Government need to reflect carefully to ensure that good services are protected.
I know that the noble Lord has talked about partnerships and we would all like to hear more about that, but this is an area in which there could be a positive role for local authorities. Again I urge the Government to think carefully. If they do not take action in this area there will be a decline in the special support services that are required. Surveys will be undertaken and because the Government are taking local authorities out of the picture the problem will come right back to Ministers. They may think that in developing this new system they can withdraw and say that it is the responsibility of individual academies, but I can tell the Minister from bitter experience that in the end it will come back to Ministers who will have to have a response.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I will be fairly brief because in our earlier exchange I accepted the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that as regards low-incidence SEN there is an issue that we need to look at.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, for referring to the work that my officials have been doing with her and the National Sensory Impairment Partnership. She made a powerful case, and I shall reflect on what she said and perhaps talk to her further about it. If she can spare the time we can meet officials to consider practical ways forward. I do not have an answer tonight and I cannot go further than I should, but I hope that she and others will accept that on the issue of SEN I have sought to be sensitive. I am not dismissive and if the noble Baroness will agree to meet, we can discuss her concerns. If she thinks that that is a fair and reasonable way forward, perhaps she will withdraw her amendment and we can meet outside the House.
Baroness Wilkins
First, I thank all noble Lords for their support for the amendment and for recognising and emphasising what a serious concern it represents. I am most grateful to the Minister for his awareness and the trouble that he has taken. I will definitely take up his offer to meet his officials, and I hope that we can reach a satisfactory conclusion. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Monitoring provision in Academies for children with special educational needs
(1) The Secretary of State shall, in respect of each academic year, prepare a report and lay it before Parliament on the quality of educational provision made for children with special educational needs who are registered pupils of Academies.
(2) The report shall record the number of children with statements of special educational needs made under section 324 of the Education Act 1996, and state whether or not this figure is reasonable given the characteristics of pupils on the rolls of Academies and maintained schools.
(3) The report shall state what action the Secretary of State intends to take to improve the quality of provision of children with special educational needs in attendance at Academies.”
Baroness Garden of Frognal
I move Amendment 22 and speak to Amendments 45 and 46, also in this group, which are in my name and those of my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Sharp. The amendments complement those that we were discussing earlier under the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hill—Amendment 11. We warmly welcome what the Government have done in their amendments, but feel it desirable to go a bit further for the avoidance of any doubt. That is why we have tabled the amendments. I give credit to the Minister and the Government for responding so fully to us and others on SEN matters.
Amendment 22 provides that the number of SEN statements is monitored, so that corrective action can be taken if the proportion of children in academies rises significantly. It was drafted with the perspective of a parent of a child with special educational needs in mind. Much has been done in recent years to reduce the need for parents to see the statement as the only guaranteed way to ensure that their child gets a special educational provision that he or she wants. A major inquiry by the House of Commons Education and Skills Committee addressed that topic. Change brings uncertainty, which will almost inevitably be the case if a large number of schools move to the academy sector. Parents, whose views are pivotal in the assessment process, are likely to want their children's provision to be safeguarded in a statement, so that they know what will be guaranteed, rather than rely on oral or even written commitments from schools that the assessed needs will be met.
It would be wrong to put limits on how many children can be statemented, but there is probably not much that can be done in the short term. Clearly, this issue needs to be monitored, and the proposal here is for an annual report, as proposed by my noble friend Lady Williams. As the Minister said, that annual report is acquiring biblical proportions. We are asking for some straightforward statistical information about numbers of SEN pupils in academies, along with the numbers of those with statements, so that the proportions can be monitored. That information should be readily available. The amendment also proposes a review and recommendations from the Secretary of State on the quality of provision. It is a probing amendment to see whether the Government share that concern and, if so, how they will address the specific concerns of parents of children with special educational needs attending academies who seek to have them statemented.
Amendments 45 and 46 take us back to government Amendment 11, which is drafted to meet concerns about academies meeting their responsibilities for pupils with special educational needs. The letter on the amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Hill, sent to Members of the House states that,
“my starting point has been to try to secure parity between Academies and maintained schools in the requirements placed on them in respect of SEN”.
That approach is of course welcome, but does not take into account the totality of arrangements for special educational provision in an area and the arrangements to support children outside school. It looks at one very important aspect, the role of school governors, but not the whole picture.
Amendments 45 and 46 attempt to redress the imbalance in the Minister's approach. The Minister's amendment refers to the governing body’s responsibilities under Chapter 1 of Part 4 of the Education Act 1996. Noble Lords may well recall that that has its origin in the Education Act 1981, which implemented the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, on special educational needs. It is interesting to note that that was commissioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, when Secretary of State, received when the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, was Secretary of State, taken through the Commons by the late Lord Carlisle, with the Labour Opposition speaker being the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, when Clement Freud was the Liberal Party speaker—an impressive, distinguished and diverse cohort, I am sure that your Lordships will agree.
The 1981 Act was innovative in that it was the first legislation to give specific responsibilities to governing bodies and head teachers. It followed Lord Carlisle’s 1980 Education Act, which required working governing bodies for all schools. It is therefore worth examining why certain responsibilities were given to governing bodies, why other responsibilities were given to local authorities and the effect of the government amendment on those local authority responsibilities if Amendments 45 and 46, or something similar, are not adopted.
Amendment 45 applies to Section 321 of the 1996 Act, which is entitled,
“General duty of local education authority towards children for whom they are responsible”.
It is the first of the sections on the identification and assessment of children with special educational needs that enable local authorities to statement children whose needs must be safeguarded. Section 321 places responsibility on the local authority to identify children in local authority maintained schools. The reason why the responsibility is placed on the local authority is to enable a local authority-wide approach to provision. The level of statementing varies widely between authorities, not because of anything to do with the efficiency of the local authority, but because of collective decisions about what sort of provision to make for what sort of need locally. Indeed, inefficiencies might well occur if this were attempted nationally, rather than locally, as matching need to provision is best done locally, or, indeed, if schools chose who they wanted statemented without reference to a local policy.
The code of practice on special educational needs puts responsibility on the school for the initial assessment process through the school action and school action plus stages, but it is done within an agreed local framework that matches need with provision through a local authority-wide assessment policy. Section 321 permits other bodies to inform the local authority of children for whom the authority may have to determine the special educational provision. Academies are included under Section 321(3)(c). The Minister’s amendment does not require academies to comply with any local authority-wide strategy for the identification and assessment of children with special educational needs as there is no specific duty on maintained school governing bodies to do so. Amendment 45, however imperfect, attempts to meet that concern.
To clarify, the point is that if an authority has one or two academies with perhaps 5 to 10 per cent of the student population, then non-compliance by academies on the initial identification of children is perhaps not of great concern. However, if the proportion rises to a critical level—perhaps 20 to 30 per cent—it will become difficult for the local authority to manage and to take responsibility for an authority-wide identification process that matches local provision. This was recognised in the previous experiment in allowing schools to opt out of their local school system through grant-maintained school status and, right on cue, the Education Reform Act 1998, which was introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, brought grant-maintained schools into the equivalent provision in the 1981 Education Act. This is a probing amendment to ask why the Government have not taken the lessons from the 1988 legislation.
The same argument applies to Amendment 46, which amends the other specific local authority duty in relation to schools for children with special educational needs. Once the authority has made a statement of special educational needs, it is right and proper that it should monitor the provision made for a child in school and can take responsibility for the use of any additional resources allocated to a child to support his education. If a child is in a maintained school, there is no need to have specific legislation allowing the authority to monitor the child’s education. Section 327 is entitled,
“Access for local education authority to certain schools”.
It gives the local authority the right to access at any reasonable time one of the authority’s children who has been placed in a maintained school in another local educational authority area or in an independent school. The latter will include academies. Will the Minister confirm that that is the case and also indicate how the local authority can exercise this responsibility should an academy not wish to comply? I look forward to the Minister’s reply and beg to move.
Lord Astor of Hever
I remind noble Lords that we are on Report and encourage them to keep their speeches as short as possible.
Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, I rise to speak briefly to Amendment 44A, which rather oddly is in this group. The arguments I made to ensure that the design of academies in new or refurbished buildings must be conducive to good education and not a waste of public money in Committee are still the same. I will not repeat them now.
I have tabled this amendment again because the answer from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, although helpful, did not deal with what general minimum design standards would operate, and no letter was forthcoming from the department to amplify his, perhaps I may say rather vague, response that he had no reason to doubt that they did. I would not press for a statutory requirement if it were definite that the free schools network would include such design advice in the general advice that the Government are funding them to give to aspirant academy-makers.
The noble Lord cited the law covering access for students with disabilities, which was welcome, but I am sure that groups of parents, teachers or others need to get themselves guidance on how the broad provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act and successor obligations under the Equality Act should be translated into design.
The Government’s approach to housing, in their letter to me of 15 June, says that they will issue guidance by,
“setting out minimum environmental, architectural, design, economic and social standards”.
Are academies where children will spend a large proportion of their time at a formative period of their life really so much less important?
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I shall say a brief word about Amendment 52, which is tabled in my name, and I hope that I can perhaps win the prize for the briefest speech of the evening. The object of Amendment 52 is to impose the SEN obligations on existing academies, which we already discussed to a fair extent when we considered government Amendment 11. The Minister made it clear that the SEN obligations would be inserted into the funding agreements of existing academies. The only point of unclarity that remained was whether we would have to wait for the existing agreements to run their course or whether the obligations could be inserted before that. If the Minister accepts the spirit of this amendment, it would enable the obligations to be inserted into the funding agreement within 12 months of the Act coming into force. I urge that that approach be adopted, rather than that we should be made to wait a number of years for existing agreements to run their course.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I should like to speak to Amendment 44A, and I thank my noble friend Lady Whitaker for once again tabling the issue of the design of school buildings on Report. To take care to design school buildings well is a mark of respect for school communities. It is also plain common sense, not only because of its effects on the morale of the school community but because of its benefits for practical functioning and, very importantly, for the benefit of disabled children in schools. Inclusive design that enables disabled children to be fully integrated into the whole life of the school community is design that is good for everybody. This is not simply a matter of aesthetics but of fitness for purpose.
By no means all the schools that have been built under the Building Schools for the Future programme have been exemplars of good architecture and good design, but a number of them have been very good indeed. One of the virtues of this programme has been that it has encouraged some of our leading architects in this country, who are of course leading architects in the world, to return to school-building in their practices.
If they are retained, minimum design standards will do much to ensure that the schools that are built in the future are built to good design standards. We did not get a clear answer in Committee—I make no criticism whatever of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who was unable to clarify the point—as to whether the Government intend to retain minimum design standards. I hope that they will be able to give us that assurance this evening.
I have to say that I draw no encouragement from the Secretary of State’s Statement on education funding on Monday after we finished Committee. In the course of that long statement on school buildings, the only references he made to design were disparaging. He picked out care to ensure good design as an instance of what he regarded as undue bureaucracy, cost and delay. He cited as instances of wasteful process that,
“local authorities involved in this process have employed … an enabler from CABE, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment—another non-departmental public body”.—[Official Report, 5/7/10; col. 40.]
It is a great pity to dismiss CABE. The enablers that CABE has ensured have been available to assist people who face the difficult and complex responsibility of commissioning and securing good new school buildings. CABE enablers are design professionals who generously and public-spiritedly are willing to give their services for modest fees, well below market rates, to enable people facing these challenging, difficult and important tasks to know better how to handle them.
A moment later the Secretary of State said that,
“local authorities were expected to engage a design champion”,—[Official Report, 5/7/10; col. 41.]
Design champions exist in some local authorities, although they are not compelled to have them. These are people who are already there, whether as elected members or as senior officers, whose role in the local authority is to advocate good design. Given the enormous power that local authorities have over the built environment for good or for ill, through planning and through the procurement of buildings, it must be a good thing that they appoint someone from within their midst to prompt and remind them all the time of their responsibility to ensure that the buildings that are built under their auspices are well designed. I suspect that the Secretary of State had not understood what these functions were when he ridiculed them.
Later in the Statement, the Secretary of State went on to announce that he was going to appoint a “capital review team”. Among the people he named as members of that team is Sir John Egan. Sir John is, of course, deeply versed in the issues of building design and quality, and will be a most excellent member of that team. I am more concerned to see that the group operations director of Dixons Store Group and the director of property services at Tesco are included in the group. I know nothing of these individuals. They may be the most enlightened people, but I do not think that the most ardent admirers of Dixons and Tesco—and they have many good qualities—would claim that they have been patrons of fine architecture: rather the reverse. The banality and triteness of the design of modern supermarkets is a sad and indeed disgraceful falling away from the best of our historic traditions in the design of department stores and shop fronts.
The Secretary of State says that he wants buildings to be built more quickly and to look at the scope for savings. The reality is that a little time taken to achieve good design is an investment that richly pays for itself in reduced lifetime costs of the building, in the better performance of all those who work in it, and in the quality of life for years ahead of the people in the community immediately around it. The Secretary of State is a civilised man with a sense of history, and so of course is the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hill. I hope that they will think more deeply about their responsibilities in this area.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 44A. Your Lordships may recall—and I hope that I recall it correctly—the head teacher of a new academy school saying, “We didn’t need to build a playground for this school because we’re going to be working our students hard in the school premises”. I hope that the Minister will bear in mind, when he considers the issues of minimum standards, that children need to have a playground area. It is important in tackling obesity, in socialisation, and as a release from study so that the children can better concentrate on their work. Research indicates that the amount of time children have for play has been picked away at over the years, so I hope that he will keep in mind the importance of school play areas.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I shall be brief. As the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, know, I support a great deal of what they have said about design. The only question I have is on the Building Schools for the Future programme. Why are so many of those schools externally drab at best, and in some cases quite hideous? Given the apparent pause in school building, would it not be a good idea if that was used to ensure that, when building starts up again in a big way, as no doubt it will in the future, the external design of many of the buildings will be much better than the ones that have been erected in the past two or three years?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, Amendment 22 provides that an annual report should be made to Parliament on the quality of SEN provision in academies and seeks to ensure that academies are effectively doing their fair share. As we have discussed, I have sympathy with those aims but I believe that they will be delivered through different processes. Academies will continue to be, as they currently are, accountable for making provision for children with SEN and subject to the same accountability mechanisms as maintained schools. These mechanisms include published Ofsted reports that give judgments about the quality of SEN provision; the publication of attainment data, including for SEN pupils; and school census returns from which comparable data are published about the numbers of SEN pupils, including those with statements, in different types of schools. There will not be any reduction in the amount of information about academies that we make public but, as regards the report to Parliament—which we have spoken about in a different context—we want to reflect on the quality of SEN provision in academies.
On Amendment 44A, I take the points that have been made about design. I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, that she has not had her letter sooner. We have been awaiting the announcement of an independent review of capital investment—this relates to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth—which is due to report to Ministers in mid-September. As the noble Lord pointed out, that review will include consideration of school design requirements and school premises regulations. I know that both noble Lords have strong views on that—the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, also has strong views about its membership—and their points on the design aspect ought to be made to the review. I am sure they will be. I accept totally the case that has been argued that the environment in which learning takes place must be conducive to education as far as possible, and that good quality buildings, classrooms and equipment are necessary for children to learn and to ensure that school is a place where they feel happy and secure in their learning.
No one is arguing for unnecessarily prescriptive building and design requirements—this may be a point made to me by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, in a different setting—particularly in times of straitened financial conditions. The balance must be to ensure that we have effective regulation which delivers the design features that noble Lords have talked about but which is not bureaucratic, cumbersome and wasteful. There is a balance to be struck and we need to consider the evidence on it.
The core point is that it is our intention that the same standards should apply to academies as to maintained schools. As my noble friend Lord Wallace said in Committee, all schools are required to comply with the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 to draw up and implement accessibility plans which provide for the implementation of improvements to school premises to accommodate existing and future disabled pupils within a reasonable period.
Amendments 45 and 46 would require academies to alert local authorities when a pupil is identified with SEN. This is already a requirement on academies. Section 317 of the Education Act 1996 imposes an obligation on governing bodies of maintained schools to use their best endeavours to ensure that special educational provision is made. That would include notifying the local authority where necessary. Obligations under Section 317 are replicated in the current academy funding agreements and will continue to be replicated in the new academy arrangements. I can pick up on more detailed points with my noble friends.
I turn briefly to Amendment 52, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Low. I understand the purpose of the amendment, but there are legal reasons, as we touched on earlier, why the Secretary of State cannot take powers to vary the contracts unilaterally. They have been entered into willingly by both parties, so the retrospective change that the noble Lord, Lord Low, requests would be difficult. My main concern in thinking about SEN has been to ensure that, where there is a policy change and where there could be a reasonable number of schools converting, all those new academies are put on an equal footing. I believe that we have achieved that. It is a significant step forward which I know has been welcomed by the noble Lord. Existing academies which move to the new model funding agreement will also have to comply with our new requirements. Not all existing academies will have to wait for the whole period. Those which move to a slim-line funding agreement will automatically be covered by the new requirements.
I hope that that has dealt with the main points that have been raised.
Lord Puttnam
I thank the Minister for giving way. Perhaps I may make a general point which I suspect the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, whose experience is greater than mine, would agree with. Teachers are peculiarly sensitive people. They are used to being let down; they are used to being underappreciated. I used possibly the wrong word earlier when I said that a lot of what is going on at the moment is clumsy. I cite an example that my noble friend Lord Howarth mentioned. Use of Dixons and Tesco as advisers on school building gives the impression that there is an interest in shelf space as opposed to aesthetics. That is not a good impression. I suggest to the Minister—who has done very well during the passage of this Bill—that at every single turn he thinks through the message that is being sent out to the professionals. It is very important that the Secretary of State’s intent is understood, that it is couched in terms that they can empathise and sympathise with and that they do not feel that they are being bullied or taken advantage of.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I take the point that the noble Lord makes; I take also his point about aesthetics. He and the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, mentioned Tesco. I had better not be drawn into commenting on its designs since it has kindly agreed to serve on the review, but one thing that I know about it is that it is brilliant at finding ways of delivering what it is tasked to deliver in the most efficient and cost-effective way, learning each time and driving down costs. If one can find an approach that does not send those messages about aesthetics but enables us to deliver more well-designed school buildings for a lower cost, and if, as some people allege, Building Schools for the Future has been running 30 per cent over budget—
Lord Knight
I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way and I shall be very brief. Will he ensure that the expertise within Partnerships for Schools is used by this review? Contrary to what the Secretary of State said in his Statement on Monday, Partnerships for Schools has met every one of its targets in the past three years—he said that it had not met any of them—delivering good design, really good value for money and great learning environments.
Lord Hill of Oareford
We work closely with Partnerships for Schools. I know that the noble Lord has direct experience of that body and I shall bear his points in mind. I shall also be less long-winded next time. I hope that I have given some answers to the questions raised and that noble Lords will agree not to press their amendments.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken on a variety of topics in this short debate. I also welcome the Minister’s reassurances about monitoring the quality of provision for SEN. I will read in more detail in Hansard his reply to the amendments. Meanwhile, I thank the Minister for his reply and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
“(4A) Before making an application under this section, the governing body of a school—
(a) must consult the local authority with regard to the appropriate balance of educational provision in the local authority area, and(b) have the school’s intended policies on curriculum, admissions and employment approved by the Secretary of State for Education.”
Baroness Massey of Darwen
In moving this amendment, I shall also speak to Amendment 33 and win the second prize for the shortest speech. Many issues have been raised about these amendments, both this evening and before, but important as they are, I do not intend to go into detail or spend much time on them.
Amendment 23 is about consultation and schools’ intended policies regarding the curriculum, admissions and employment. Local communities and local stakeholders should be involved in decisions about what type of school should be provided in an area—points which have already been raised and will be raised again. Taken with my next amendment, Amendment 33, a consultation process would allow faith schools time to consider whether they wanted to retain their religious character or become inclusive academies. I wish to have the Secretary of State for Education approve the curriculum, admissions and employment policies because I foresee dangers affecting the rights of children to a broad and balanced curriculum and to admission to particular schools—as discussed earlier—and dangers to the rights of workers to be selected or promoted.
This is partly a faith schools issue, but partly not. I acknowledge the remarks made earlier by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln about some excellent faith schools, but that is not the point. The school curriculum should provide all children with the entitlement to develop to their full potential in UK society. To do that, they will need information, skills, and the development of aspiration. Academies do not have to follow the national curriculum, and those of a religious character will be able to discriminate on religious grounds against pupils and staff.
The notion of free schools fills me with some horror. I have terrible visions of children being taught, or rather indoctrinated, in some fanatical ways, and not just religious, in limited and unsuitable premises. The responsibility for offering a balanced and broad-based curriculum could be neglected or avoided. There are curriculum concerns with regard to, for example, the teaching of creationism. Will the Minister reassure me that all our children will have as their right a balanced curriculum that will fit them for life?
On Amendment 33, the Academies Bill forces state-maintained schools with a religious character to automatically become independent schools with that religious character, permanently removing the possibility for state-funded religious schools to become inclusive academies. That removes choice and freedom from governing bodies, running counter to the spirit of the Bill, which aims to increase school autonomy. This could mean a proliferation of state-funded faith schools that are their own admission authorities and more likely to be unrepresentative of their surrounding areas than faith schools where the local authority is the admission authority. A report on community cohesion in Blackburn by Professor Ted Cantle describes religious schools as,
“automatically a source of division in the town”.
Opinion polls suggest that the public are aware of these issues, with 64 per cent agreeing that,
“the government should not be funding faith schools of any kind”.
Can the Minister give me any reassurance on these issues? I beg to move.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, we had a good debate in Committee on the importance of consultation, as a result of which we have thought again, and we will come to a group of amendments that deal with that issue. We have accepted that we need to make explicit on the face of the Bill the requirement that schools should consult. Although we recognise the important role that local authorities can play—as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, knows—we are keen, so far as the consultation with local authorities is concerned, not to be prescriptive.
On the second element of the first amendment, it is certainly the case that the school will have to agree its admissions policy with the Secretary of State, but that would be at the point of entering into the funding agreement, just as has always been the case with academies. As she knows, I share her concerns about creationism, but one of the core aims of the policy is precisely that the Secretary of State should not dictate to academies what they should teach. The whole direction of government policy is to interfere less and trust teachers and head teachers more. It is not easy and a lot of debates that we have had have been around the tension between trusting people and being worried about what happens if you trust people and things go wrong. I fully accept that if you trust people things do go wrong, but that is the direction that we want to try to go in.
On the point that the noble Baroness made on employment, we want academies to have freedom around their employment terms and conditions. We do not want the Secretary of State to micromanage all that from Whitehall. As for faith schools, which we touched on briefly in earlier amendments, the Bill simply seeks to maintain the status quo. We are not seeking to make it easier for there to be an increase in faith schools or to change their character, but we believe that there should be the same chance to become an academy as any other maintained school. We do not think that any faith school seeking to convert should have to go through an additional application simply to stay as they are.
We do not propose to prevent academies from seeking designation after conversion, providing that they meet the relevant tests, just as will be the case for maintained schools. However, any new faith academies, including the free schools, about which I know she has some concerns, will have to balance the needs of children, both with a faith and with none, and admit at least 50 per cent of their intake without reference to faith. I hope that that is of some comfort to the noble Baroness and that it responds to some of the points that she made. I also hope that she will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response. I am somewhat encouraged. I think that we need more discussion on the issues around faith schools. My concern is that the welfare of the child is paramount and that they are entitled to certain things in a curriculum which may be excluded by certain types of school. I am very happy to discuss this with the Minister. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Whitty
“( ) Before making an application for an Academy order, the governing body shall, over a period of at least 6 weeks during term time, consult the following on whether to make the application—
(a) pupils at the school,(b) the parents of pupils of the school,(c) the parents of pupils at any other school from which at least 10% of the pupils have come in the previous 3 years,(d) staff at the school,(e) trade unions representing staff at the school, and(f) the governing body of other schools within its area which might reasonably be considered to be affected by the making of an Academy order.( ) In that consultation, the governing body will make available in writing at least the following information relating to the proposed Academy—
(a) details of the proposed Academy arrangements,(b) details of the proposed governance arrangements including details of the directors of the company which will enter into the Academy, arrangements and details of the composition of the governing body,(c) details of the arrangements for the curriculum, for admissions, for special educational needs, for pupil discipline and exclusion and for complaints,(d) details of any arrangements by which any other person will provide the education the proposed academy including details of the extent to which such arrangements will allow for that other person to make a profit from doing so,(e) details of any additional money which would be available to the school (either as capital or revenue funding) if it became an Academy, (f) details of any additional obligations which fall on the school if it became an Academy, and(g) details of the criteria which the Secretary of State would apply in deciding whether to make the Academy order.The governing body will take all reasonable steps to enable suporters and opponents of the proposal to circulate materials relating to the proposed application for an Academy order to other consultees.”
Lord Whitty
My Lords, in moving Amendment 25, I shall also speak to Amendments 26A and 28 in my name and to Amendment 26 on behalf of my noble friend Lady Royall, which I support. I shall also give some comments on the government amendment and the amendment to that. It is a difficult time of night to come to what I regard as one of the most important aspects of the process of setting up academies that is implied in this Bill. I shall try to be short, but I shall not be as short as all that.
We have had some debates on this matter but I fear that the Government, even with the amendment that they have put down for today, have moved nowhere near as far as is necessary. Whether we are in favour of academies or not, whether in general or in a particular instance, we would all recognise that the conversion of a school that has hitherto been a maintained local authority school into an academy is a momentous event. It is important for the pupils and parents of the school as well as for the staff of the school, which will have a different relationship with the local authority that no longer has oversight and no longer provides most of the services or administrative support. That is particularly important for the smaller schools in this category. It will change that relationship and there will be a different sort of relationship, both in terms of the powers of the governing body and the Secretary of State. After all, although the academies programme is portrayed as being a devolution of power, in reality these schools had previously been governed or overseen by a local authority and are now going to be funded, regulated and to some extent controlled by central government. That is not a move that either of the coalition parties was advocating to the electorate a few months ago—but there we go.
If this Bill goes through in more or less its present form, as undoubtedly it will, there is no current provision in the present draft of the Bill for consultation. I submit that there is a requirement for consultation at two points. There should be a requirement on the governing body proposing the change and a requirement on the Secretary of State in taking a view on that proposition. Neither is in the Bill at present. It is important, therefore, that we lay down requirements for consultation at both points. My first amendment does that in some detail. It may be argued that we do not need that degree of detail, and in normal circumstances I would probably have agreed. However, there is no general proposition coming from the Government that the governing body should consult.
The pupils are important—not only the current pupils and their parents but future pupils and parents. It is the whole community; it is schools that could be affected by the abstraction of one outstanding school from the community into a different form of control that will have an effect on the relative status and indeed, in practice, on the relative funding for that school against other schools in the neighbourhood. This could have profound effects on the town. This is why by and large I am in favour of maintaining local authority oversight rather than bringing in central government.
If we are going down this road, however, there needs at least to have been consultation with the parties that will be desperately affected by it. That consultation needs to set down what the broad provisions of the new arrangements are going to be. What will the governance of the school be? What will the changes in the curriculum be, broadly speaking? What other parties might be involved in the provision of education to the children of the neighbourhood? What financial provisions are there going to be, and what are the new obligations on the school?
My amendment sets all that out. It is conceivable to argue that that should be in a code or in secondary regulations rather than in the Bill. I would normally accept that argument, but only once the Government had come to the position of saying that the primary requirement for consultation is laid down in the Bill itself.
It is also important that the Secretary of State has some obligations in this area as well as the governing body. The Secretary of State is making the final decision. He is drawing up one side of the agreement both on funding and on the other provisions that will come in the charter for the school. It is therefore important that we have a Secretary of State able to consult independently with the major parties, particularly with the local authority.
My second amendment relates to the role of the local authority. Even those local authorities that are by and large in favour of the academies programme need to have the ability to tell the Secretary of State what the implications of this will be for education provision throughout their area of jurisdiction. If an outstanding school in a town is being taken out of local authority oversight, the local authority needs to have the ability directly to tell the Secretary of State or his officials what the effect of that will be. We therefore need to have a secondary level—or possibly a more important level—of consultation about who the Secretary of State should speak to.
I have stripped that part of my amendments down to the absolute minimum. I do not list anyone else except the local authority. I expect the local authority to have taken into account both the consultation that the governing body will have conducted and its normal relations with parents and providers within the local authority area. If localism and devolution mean anything, the views of a local authority that is losing an outstanding school must be taken into account before the Secretary of State can reasonably sign off on that academy order.
My amendments, taken together with Amendment 28, which deals with the Secretary of State setting out the criteria by which he has judged whether the order should be issued, would give all the parties to the agreement—all the parties to the school, if you like—the opportunity to give their views as well as an understanding of what is involved and what changes will affect their children and their neighbourhood, along with a balanced view to be taken by the governing body in the first instance and by the Secretary of State. Without specifically providing that the Secretary of State should consult local authorities, that relationship breaks down and this whole provision begins to look as if it is likely to lead to conflict rather than to a smooth change.
Everyone in this Chamber knows that I am not particularly in favour of the process, but if we are going to have it, we need to do it in a way that ends up with the maximum possibility of co-operation between all those concerned. To do that, you need consultation up front before the final decision is taken.
I fear that the Bill does not do this. We need to ask why. I suspect that the good intentions of the people in the education team—the Secretary of State, the noble Lord and others—mean that they would, in slightly different circumstances, have written these provisions into the Bill. The problem is that the Secretary of State said, “All this has to be started by September. We have to write to several thousand schools, get their letters in and decide by September”. That timetable is complete nonsense. It has left the Government very exposed. I am sorry for them—I am sorry for the Minister that he has to defend it—but it is not sensible. If we want in two or three years’ time to have a large number of academy schools without conflict and without outstanding issues still to be resolved and blamed on the Secretary of State, let us have that consultation and engagement up front. If the Secretary of State should somehow back off the September date—I promise not to make a big thing of it—we would have plenty of time to sort these things out. I beg the noble Lord to talk to his colleague to see whether we can go back a bit in the light of arguments that have been made in this Chamber and elsewhere; indeed, I suspect that the Secretary of State will hear similar arguments in another place.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the noble Lord is in the 15th minute of a speech on Report, which is a little long.
Lord Whitty
I accept that it is a little long, although I did warn the House, but it is actually only the 12th minute and this is an education Bill. I beg to move.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, in his Amendment 25 the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, replicates probing amendments that were tabled by at least three Members of this House in Committee and about which we had long discussions. As a result, the Government have come back with a very sensible amendment, accepting our feeling that we should insist that schools consult the most appropriate people. The words,
“such persons as they think appropriate”,
are particularly right in the light of what I have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. He suggested that we should list the future pupils of a school as being appropriate to consult. How far in the future are we talking about? What about children in the womb or the parents of children who may at some stage go to that school but who may have moved 50 miles away by the time the child is born? That is nonsense. To list the various organisations and groups of people who should be consulted is the sort of thing that the noble Lord’s own Front Bench resisted on many occasions.
Lord Adonis
The nonsense that I see in the amendments before us is subsection (3) in government Amendment 30, which, as my noble friend rightly says, allows there to be consultation after the order, in respect of which the consultation should have taken place, has been made. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is very anxious that we all shut up and do not speak. I have been very frugal in my interventions on Report. I was anxious not to have to make such a speech, but I badly need to hear the justification of the noble Lord, Lord Hill, for government Amendment 30, particularly subsection (3). How does he justify a requirement for consultation to be permissible after the event to which the consultation refers? We need to hear that before we know whether this needs a longer debate in which further views will be expressed. Perhaps the noble Baroness will give her view on whether she thinks it is adequate for consultation to take place after the event to which it applies.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I will come to my Amendment 31 in just a moment. I strongly suspect that the Minister’s answer to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is that the academy order is permissive. It does not force the school to become an academy; it is permission for it to do so. The school becomes an academy only when it converts. I suspect that will be the answer, but my noble friend will speak for himself. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that it is desirable that the school consults all the right people before it even applies. I very much suspect that all those groups who feel themselves to be appropriate consultees—
Baroness Thornton
Does the noble Baroness think that there should be a consultation before a school becomes an academy or not?
Baroness Walmsley
Indeed I do, which is why I have tabled my little tweaking amendment in the hope of persuading my noble friend that a school should consult before it applies to become an academy. Once it knows the shape of the proposed school, the terms of the academy funding agreement, and—particularly in the light of what my noble friend Lady Sharp said about schools’ expectations of that extra money being somewhat inflated—how much money it will get, it is highly desirable that a school should then go back to appropriate consultees and say, “These are the terms under which we will become an academy if we decide to go ahead. This is the extra amount of money that we will get and this is what we have to do with it. Are you still sure that this is the right way to go about it?”. That is why I have put my little tweak into my noble friend’s very welcome amendment about consultation. It is desirable, but if he suggests that it is another thing on which we should not prescribe, I would be happy to accept that.
For the record, however, I urge schools that are thinking of applying to consult widely. I am confident that any group of people who feel that they are an appropriate group under the terms of this amendment but have not been consulted will certainly kick up an awful fuss. I ask the Minister to consider in particular that the pupils of the school themselves and the local authority would, in normal circumstances, fall into the category of,
“such persons as they think appropriate”.
That would give me considerable comfort in supporting Amendment 30 without my Amendment 31.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I rise very briefly to speak to Amendments 26 and 29. I agree with many of the points that were made by my noble friend Lord Whitty, especially in relation to September and the timing of the Bill.
We had a full discussion on consultation in Committee, and I recognise that the Minister was listening to the concern expressed about the serious hole in the Bill to do with the lack of consultation. As a result, he has tabled Amendment 30. This is an improvement but I believe that it is simply not enough. First, the consultation required is far too narrow. The amendment states that it is up to the governing body whom to consult. A governing body that is determined to become an academy could decide to undertake an absolutely minimal consultation, ignoring many parts of the school community and the wider community that should, and must, take a view. I have no doubt that it will consult parents and teachers, but it might not, in the interests of speed, consult the local authority or the local community.
Secondly, the amendment appears to suggest that the consultation could take place after an academy order has been made. That is far too late. Consultations must take place before an order is made. I agree with some of the points made by the noble Baroness. I listened carefully to the debate in Committee and I was much taken by the view expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, that the consultation should be the responsibility of the Secretary of State. Our Amendment 26 would give the Secretary of State ultimate responsibility. It is also crafted in such a way that it answers the concerns of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Adonis, who expressed concerns about litigation.
Amendment 29 stipulates some of the bodies that we strongly believe should be consulted, and top of our list is the local authority. I recognise, of course, that current legislation does not address these issues. However, as I mentioned earlier, there is a vast difference between 200 academies and 2,000 academies and the potential impact on local school communities and the wider community. Consultation, especially consultation with local authorities, is a matter of due process. Local authorities are responsible for ensuring that a range of duties are complied with, and they are best placed to have a strategic view of education as a whole. They are also best placed to ensure that the system can cope effectively with demographic changes. All these things need to be considered in a consultation. In addition, I believe that education cannot be delivered in isolation from the wider range of local public services used by children and young people, many of which are currently commissioned by councils. It is right and proper that local councils should be consulted.
In my view, consultation is a key component of the success of any academy and is key to ensuring a balanced school community. I recognise that many noble Lords would not wish to specify in the Bill who should be consulted. I therefore urge them to support Amendment 26, which merely ensures that the Secretary of State can ensure that the appropriate consultation takes place.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, it is very encouraging to see my noble friend the Minister bring forward his Amendment 30, but I join others in hoping that he may bring forward an amended version of it at the final stage of the Bill. None of these amendments, except Amendment 26—that may be inadvertent—takes account of new academies: the so-called free academy schools. All these amendments speak of the conversion of existing schools into academies.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
As I understand it, throughout the passage of the Bill, there has been no such thing as a free school; free schools are academies. I am sure that will help the noble Lord.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am grateful for the intervention but I am not sure that it does. I was merely repeating the parlance used by the Government when they talk of academy schools that are not conversions as free schools. I am merely making the point that every one of these amendments is drafted on the basis of an existing maintained school converting to an academy: except Amendment 26, which would cover new free academies, as they are called, as well as existing secondary schools. It is blazingly obvious that our consultation provisions must apply to these new academies. In fact, the need for consultation where a brand new academy springs up in an area is even more acute than when an existing school converts into an academy. I hope that the Minister will say in response to this mini debate that he will bring forward an amendment at Third Reading that includes the new academies.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, my understanding of the rules of procedure is that if I do not speak now, I cannot speak after the Minister. Is that correct?
Lord Adonis
In that case, I need to speak now. I wish to put to him the specific points raised by a number of noble Lords—including, implicitly, the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in her Amendment 31—about subsection (3) of his Amendment 30. Why does he think that it is satisfactory for consultation to take place after an academy order has been made? The noble Baroness said that the order may be permissive. That may be true, but it would have to have been applied for in the first instance, and only the governing body can apply for it. My reading of subsection (3) of the noble Lord’s amendment is therefore that it will be possible for a governing body to apply for an academy order without any consultation, and then to go through a second procedure as to whether it wishes to activate the powers in the order. I am anxious to know what circumstances the Minister could conceive of in which that would be a reasonable course of action. Surely the reasonable course of action is for the consultation to take place at the point at which the school applies for the powers. I should be grateful if the noble Lord could explain to us why he thinks it would be reasonable for the powers to be applied for without any consultation, and then for the consultation to take place later.
In respect of my noble friend Lady Royall’s Amendment 26, I should point out that under the Education and Inspections Act 2006, for which of course the previous Government were responsible, schools may change from community to foundation status. That is a significant change of status that enables the school to become the direct employer of its staff, the owner of its land and buildings and its own admissions authority and to make significant changes to its governing body. It can undertake that process by a decision of its governing body without the Secretary of State playing any role at all.
In terms of consistency, I see no case for Amendment 26. Crucially, it depends on the validity and confidence of the local community in the consultation on the decision that a governing body takes in the first instance when applying for academy status. I look forward to the Minister’s response. However, it would look peculiar to the local community if the whole process of seeking to become an academy happens without any consultation, and if a consultation takes place only at the very last stage when it will be clear to all concerned that the school intends to go down that course.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, when we discussed consultation in Committee, I said that I would think further. In doing so, I have kept very much in mind the distinction drawn by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, in that debate between what he called the spirit of consultation and an overly prescriptive legislative approach. That is an important distinction that will inform my response to the other amendments in the group.
Before responding to those amendments, I wish to speak to Amendment 30, explain the background to it and respond to the points that have been made. Many noble Lords expressed the desire in Committee to see something in the Bill on the expectation to consult. That point was put to me by my noble friend Lady Williams and other noble friends, and by Members on the Benches opposite. I reflected on that and, while the general direction of our policy is rightly to be less prescriptive, I recognised the need to reassure the House further and came back with my amendment.
My amendment aims to introduce a statutory requirement for a maintained school to consult on its proposal to convert to academy status. The school's governing body must consult such persons as it thinks appropriate. The consultation, as has been pointed out in the amendment, may take place before or after an application for an academy order has been made in respect of the school, or after it has been granted. That will allow each school to determine when it has sufficient information on which to consult, and at what point during the application process it wishes to do so. It is our view that schools are in the best position to determine when and how best consultation should take place. They might prefer to approach parents or others at the point at which they have firm proposals. The requirement in the amendment is therefore that the consultation must be held before the funding agreement is signed, since that is the point at which the school would be legally committed to the conversion process.
My noble friend Lady Walmsley made a point about academy orders. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, knows probably better than I do, they are a step along the way but are not irreversible. It is proper for consultation to take place based on the facts, the evidence and the specific proposal, right up to the point at which the funding agreement is signed—when, as noble Lords know, the process is irreversible.
Many types of schools will have different views on whom and how to consult, and we prefer to trust them to determine how to do this rather than provide an inflexible checklist. I think that that point is broadly accepted, although not by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. I will pick him up on one point. He said that these deals could be stitched up in smoke-filled rooms. Because of legislation passed by his Government, the rooms could not be smoke-filled. We are not in favour of the more inflexible approach. We must trust professionals to make decisions of this sort. In line with the commitment that we are giving, we are amending our advice to converting schools on the department's website to include guidance on good consultation practice. We will discuss with an applying school as part of the conversion process what arrangements it has made for consultation.
I turn to Amendment 28. The Secretary of State will want to review each application for an academy order on its merits. As we discussed earlier, there needs to be flexibility in those considerations, as there always has been with academies policy. Our guidance for academy converters that are not yet rated outstanding will be published on our website. It will include details of the information to be included in an application.
We are not persuaded of the need for the Secretary of State to consult on academy conversions, as Amendment 29 proposes. It should be the school's decision to become an academy except in those cases where the school is eligible for intervention. Therefore, we do not believe that it is necessary for both the Secretary of State and the school to consult on the matter.
I do not expect that this will satisfy everyone. I have sought with my amendment to capture what I felt was the mood of the House and the desire for more reassurance, given the importance that the Government attach to consultation. Making it a statutory requirement in the Bill provides the greater degree of reassurance that noble Lords asked for. I therefore commend Amendment 30 and ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, am I right in thinking that an order does not convert a school into an academy but enables it to be converted into an academy, and that the conversion takes place later when the agreement is consummated? Am I right also that Amendment 30 requires that the consultation takes place before the school is converted into an academy, which can be after the order is made because the school has not yet converted into an academy?
Lord Whitty
As a matter of clarification, does the noble Lord not accept the amendment to his amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley?
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Perhaps I may ask the Minister for further clarification. Does he accept that his Amendment 30 does not cover new academy schools and therefore needs to be extended?
Lord Hill of Oareford
The amendment arose out of our debate about concerns relating to the potentially large number of converting schools. With the amendment that I have tabled in response to the point made by my noble friend, I hope that we have met the concerns that were raised about the impact of free schools. A free school, which is going to have to demonstrate parental support, will, by definition, have had to carry out a large amount of consultation.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for this interesting debate. The Minister’s position appears to be that his Amendment 30 stands. He has not told us whether he is accepting the noble Baroness’s Amendment 31, which would make his amendment slightly more acceptable with regard to the governing body’s responsibilities. I am being told that he has quite clearly rejected it.
Baroness Walmsley
My understanding, as the person who spoke to Amendment 31, is that my noble friend has said that he does not wish to accept it. My view is that it is desirable but not essential and I shall not be moving it.
Lord Whitty
That clarifies that matter, and it underlines my position in one sense. I do not believe that the Minister has gone far enough to persuade us not to pursue this matter, in that his amendment does not go far enough. It allows for consultation to take place only right at the end of the process, whatever is on his website in terms of guidance, which is no doubt desirable but not statutory or regulatorily required. It does not cover the Secretary of State’s responsibilities and nor, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said, does it explicitly cover the situation relating to free schools. Therefore, it is deficient, and I ask the Minister to consider coming forward at Third Reading with a more comprehensive amendment on consultation. The rules of procedure do not allow him to answer that but it seems to me that I ought to allow him the opportunity so to do.
I shall not press my Amendment 25 on the grounds that to some extent I accept that it is too prescriptive. I think that my Amendment 28, which would require discussion with the local authority, could be taken care of by the Minister coming back with a more comprehensive amendment. My noble friend Lady Royall will no doubt decide whether to move Amendment 26, which is not as prescriptive but does deal with the central issues of timing and widespread consultation.
At this time of night I am not going to win a vote, although I consider that I have won the argument. I think that the Minister needs at least the flexibility to consider everything that has been said and to come back with a better amendment at Third Reading—one which does not include lists of people but which allows some flexibility in the process and clearly imposes on both the Secretary of State and the governing body a degree of consultation. I hope that he will hear what I say in that regard. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Consultation before Academy order
Before entering into Academy arrangements with any person the Secretary of State must satisfy himself that relevant interested parties have been consulted by that person.”
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for his clarification and to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, for further clarifying the issue.
I believe that the government amendment is too weak in that it does not deal with the timing properly. That is the most important thing. While I understand from what the noble and learned Lord says that it is not the end of the process, the consultation comes too late. It needs to take place at the beginning or just as the process has begun. That is a fatal flaw in the government amendment. I also believe that the consultation required is too narrow.
My noble friend Lord Adonis referred to foundation schools. I accept that in the past they have not had to consult when they changed their status. However, I think that there is a quantitative difference in the number of academies and the free schools that will become academies. We could be talking about thousands of schools. I think that consultation—
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, procedure on Report does not permit such matters. Only questions for elucidation are permitted after the Minister has sat down.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
I am grateful to the noble Baroness. Essentially the government amendment is too weak. I beg to move Amendment 26.
Lord Hill of Oareford
“Consultation on conversion
(1) Before a maintained school in England is converted into an Academy, the school’s governing body must consult such persons as they think appropriate.
(2) The consultation must be on the question of whether the school should be converted into an Academy.
(3) The consultation may take place before or after an Academy order, or an application for an Academy order, has been made in respect of the school.”
Lord Hill of Oareford
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, Amendments 34, 35, 36, 37 and 54 are clarificatory amendments. Amendments 34, 35, 36 and 37 are intended to reflect the fact that the powers in Clauses 6 and 7 are intended to be used only when the school is very close to finalising funding arrangements with the Secretary of State, not merely because an academy order has been made.
Amendment 54 is necessary because the phrase “converted into”, which is currently found only in Clause 4(4), is now more widely used in the Bill. As noble Lords have previously commented, academy conversion is a two-stage process involving the making of an academy order and the agreeing of funding arrangements. These amendments ensure that should negotiations between the school and the Secretary of State not result in a final funding agreement being signed, there can be no question of the property transfer or financial balance powers being used. There would, of course, be no intention to use these powers other than to enable a school to make the necessary transition with all of its possessions, but we felt that this would make the position clearer.
Amendments 42, 43 and 44 provide further strengthening of the regime already contained in the Bill to provide protection for investments of public money into land held by schools and local authorities. The Bill’s provisions currently protect publicly funded maintained school land after a school becomes an academy by allowing the Secretary of State to make directions on the transfer of that land, should the academy close or vacate the site. However, as it stands, those protections apply only where interest in the land was transferred to the academy upon its conversion. If the foundation owning the land did not transfer it or any interest in it to the academy in the first place, then the public interest in the land would not currently protect it if the school were to close thereafter. I am grateful to the Catholic Education Service for bringing this issue to our attention.
We have made clear the importance of protecting investments of public money. This amendment therefore inserts a new provision to ensure that the powers to direct the transfer of land that was previously used for an academy also apply in circumstances where the land is retained by the existing foundation and used in any way for the purposes of the academy. It simply seeks to ensure that all possible and likely scenarios around land are covered equally and in a way that protects public investment in them. I beg to move.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for moving what I am sure are technical amendments. It would be helpful if he could explain whether these amendments apply equally to independent schools and to schools transferring from the maintained sector to become academies. If land is donated to a free school, a new academy, how will these provisions apply in those circumstances?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I believe that they apply across the board. Should I need to be precise in some of those details, it might be best if I follow that up subsequently. I believe that because this will be in the general provisions of the Bill, it will apply equally to all academies.
Lord Hill of Oareford
(c) the school is to be converted into an Academy.”
Lord Hill of Oareford
(b) the school is to be converted into an Academy.”
Lord Greaves
“Local authority duties
(1) The Secretary of State may by order arrange for a local authority to carry out any of the activities in subsection (2).
(2) The activities are—
(a) the oversight and monitoring of Academies in its area;(b) intervention and challenge when an Academy is under-performing;(c) strategies and plans of action for the conversion of schools in its area into Academies;(d) facilitating the integration of the work of Academies with that of maintained schools in the area;(e) anything else that the Secretary of State may do in relation to Academies.(3) An order made under this section is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”
Lord Greaves
My Lords, Amendment 38 stands on its own. A noble Lord seems to think that there is something funny in that, although I do not know what it is. I am trying to get a bit of enthusiasm and to get going so that it does not take so much time. With this amendment I return to the future role of local authorities, which I raised in Committee, particularly in relation to academies. It also raises the wider question of the future role of local authorities in relation to schools and education generally, which the whole question of academy conversions raises, particularly if they take place on quite a large scale in some areas.
I do not raise this issue particularly from the point of view of schools in the Lancashire authority, because we do not seem to have many schools applying for or expressing an interest in academies. Where I live, there have been just half a dozen in the eastern part of the county. In Pendle only one school was listed and it spent a lot of time last week telling everyone who inquired that it had appeared on the list by mistake and that it should not have been there at all. How many more there are like that, I do not know.
In some areas—it appears to be particularly so in parts of southern England and the south-east—there are rather a lot, so the future role of the local authority in relation to schools and pupils in those areas will become more pressing. In Committee I tabled two amendments on this matter. The Minister seemed to show some interest in the questions being raised and accepted that there are legitimate questions to be asked and answered. To paraphrase, he said that the Government believed that there was an important strategic role for local authorities in future in relation to schools, but that the Government had not really worked out exactly what that was yet and needed to think about it further. I think that that is a reasonable summary of what he said.
I have put this amendment down for further consideration in order to ask the Government their intentions in this matter, how quickly they might think about it and what consultation they might take in the mean time. I have rewritten it to be more general. I have suggested that future activities, even if all the schools in an area converted to academies, might include the,
“oversight and monitoring of Academies”,
which should be done locally rather than through a national quango or bureaucracy, and that there should be “intervention and challenge” when necessary. The issue which I raised in Committee about the,
“strategies and plans of action for the conversion of schools”,
to academies seems to be much more suited to local involvement and planning than at a national level where there is not likely to be much co-ordinated planning in each local area. Another activity listed in the amendment is,
“facilitating the integration of the work of Academies with that of maintained schools”.
The word “partnership” might have been better than “integration”, but the point is fairly fundamental; and there are probably other things that the local authority should be involved in in future in a strategic way—and, indeed, in a less strategic way—which I have not noted here.
This is a major issue. What I want to ask the Government is whether they will give a commitment that an important part of the education Bill that is expected in the autumn will tackle this vital area. Local authorities are going to be left in limbo if a lot of their schools convert quickly or do so over the next two or three years. They need to know where they stand and how to plan for the future, and everyone needs to know exactly what their role is going to be. Is that something that can be tackled in the promised education Bill, and if it is, will the Government carry out a serious consultation with local authorities over the summer to establish what local authorities think their role should be? That would create a genuine dialogue between the Government and local authorities about their future role in relation to schools.
This needs to take place with the Local Government Association and with educational bodies, and it also needs to take place with individual local authorities that have responsibility for schools. I know that the Government have written to local authorities just to ask them what their future role might be, but a proper consultation needs to take place. The Government need to set out the parameters of what could happen in the future, with alternatives and proposals, and ask local authorities what they think they ought to be contributing. If there is an important strategic role for local authorities, which the Government say there is, in a future in which an increasing number of schools in different areas are going to convert to academies, we need to know what that role is both while the process of conversion takes place and after a substantial number of schools have become academies. Either there is a role or there is not. The Government say there is, and we have several months before the education Bill arrives in the autumn for a thorough and serious debate about this extremely important matter. That is the purpose of this amendment. I look forward to a positive response from the Minister and I beg to move.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, it is a remarkable testimony to the drawing powers of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on local government that at 11.08 in the evening, so many noble Lords are present to hear him speak. I should say that when he addressed these matters in Committee, it was also at a late hour. He has raised issues that are of great substance, and I hope that he might be tempted to bring an amendment back at Third Reading when we could have a proper debate about the role of local government in relation to education in prime time.
I believe that local authorities could have a positive role in the future. I read with interest the briefing produced by the Local Government Association, and they could have a useful and constructive role to play, post this Bill, in relation to academies. We had a good debate on SEN where I could see the positive role for local government. I come back to the Minister’s earlier comment that there is a clear tension in all these debates between wanting to let schools have much greater freedom, which many of us sign up to, and the risk that that involves. The Minister said that if you trust people, there will be times when things go wrong, and I think that that is right. The problem the Government face is that unless they have a local mechanism in place for dealing with these issues, they will come right back to Ministers. However much they set up other agencies or say, “It is nothing to do with us, it is a matter for individual schools”, I can tell him that in the end they will come back to Ministers. In that context, local authorities could play a constructive role and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, might allow us to have a wider debate on this next week.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I agree with the thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has said. He referred back—as did the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath—to our debate on the necessary expensive services to children with special educational needs and the need for a strategic commissioning of such services. There could be an important role for local authorities in that area in future. Like the noble Lord, I would encourage the Minister to set up some kind of forum with the local authority so that there is an ongoing communication with it. Each local authority will have a councillor responsible for the welfare of children within its area; why could there not be informal meetings in which new academies are introduced to such people? This would enable the doors of communication to be kept open?
As my noble friend Lady Howarth made clear, if we want children to succeed at school, we need to make sure that their welfare is catered for. It is important that social services work in partnership with schools. I am sorry to repeat it one more time, but head teachers keep on telling me about the value of social workers when they are connected with a school; or, if they do not have a social worker, how much they would like one attached to their school. It is important to keep these matters in mind and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for making this debate possible.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the debate in Committee underlined the importance which many noble Lords attach to the role of local authorities. There are some very important questions here and we do not pretend to have all of the answers. Both parties within the coalition are committed to the principle of localism, with decisions and accountability returned from London to local communities. We are clear that we no longer want to hear the Secretary of State for Education—as happened under the previous Secretary of State—announcing on the “Today” programme that he had just dismissed a head teacher in Carlisle. However, it would be only honest to admit that neither party in the coalition is yet clear what localism means in detail, in this sector and others, and what the balance between the role of local authorities and of more local communities, including parents and others, should be.
In his letter to council lead members sent on 26 May, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for education made it clear that the Government see strong local authorities as central to their plans to improve education. This Thursday, the Secretary of State will be speaking on this theme to the Local Government Association conference. He will confirm that we want to see local authorities acting as powerful champions of excellence, both in education and in wider children’s services, and that we want to see local government playing a strong strategic role, working with schools to drive up standards, supporting schools in working together to share expertise, and in promoting the spread of innovation for the benefit of all.
We want to see a smooth transition to the new school system and we are pursuing a genuine dialogue with local government and other partners to that end. We will therefore pursue further dialogue with representatives of local government about these and related issues over the coming weeks and months. It may be, as my noble friend Lord Greaves suggested, that the local authority develops more of a commissioning role along the lines envisioned by the party opposite in its 2005 White Paper. It may also be that some of the other ideas that he alludes to in his amendment should be explored further as part of the future shape of provision and the relationship between local authorities and schools. I assure my noble friend that the Secretary of State is committed to this dialogue; he will be pursuing it further on Thursday and will make a number of proposals as to how it should be taken further in the next weeks and months. I invite my noble friend Lord Greaves, with his considerable expertise in this field, and other noble Lords who have expressed interest, to help shape our thinking in this area so that we can, in time, come forward with the best possible proposals. On that basis, I urge my noble friend to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, for his comments. He suggested that we might have a wider debate next week at Third Reading and that I should put down further amendments. If he can explain to me how to get further amendments past the Clerks, I may pursue that suggestion. I would take advice from him as a former Minister.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, perhaps I can help the noble Lord. It is quite clear that if he does not press his amendment tonight, the matter will not have been settled. The fact that there has not been an occasion other than at a very late hour should, I hope, be ample justification for him to produce another amendment.
Lord Greaves
I shall perhaps go into the Public Bill Office waving my copy of Hansard and quoting the noble Lord in evidence. How much good it will do, I will perhaps find out.
I was grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his response to my comments. The phrase “it may be” occurred quite a lot of times, which does not seem to be a very firm commitment, but I shall perhaps discuss with him outside this Chamber what it means in this context. I hope that I can get a firm assurance that the Government will look seriously at these matters. The fundamental question as far as this Bill is concerned is: what is the relationship between a local authority and academy schools in its area? That is why the amendment is tabled as it is. There is the wider issue of the role of what we used to call the local education authorities.
My noble friend the Minister almost got into a philosophical discussion of localism and then drew back—I would take part in such a discussion any time. However, he did say that he wanted local authorities to have a strong, strategic role in education. That is the nub of the matter. The question that he did not answer is whether we can expect this autumn’s education Bill to tackle the important question of the role of local authorities. That, again, is a question that I will want to pursue with him outside this Chamber before deciding whether to attempt to bring it back. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, this is a technical but important amendment that is causing some interest and concern in the charitable sector because of the implications for the authority of the Charity Commission. We had a very interesting debate on this matter in Committee on 28 June, when my noble friend the Minister was kind enough to suggest that I should withdraw the amendment so that some conversations could take place behind the green baize door. I am pleased to be able to say that we have had those conversations. Some interesting points were made by his officials, to which I shall respond in a minute. No definite conclusions were reached, however, so I have re-tabled Amendment 40 in the hope that the Minister will be able tonight to accept its purpose.
Just to set the issue in context, I remind the House that my original argument was as follows. The Charities Act 2006 created a delicate balance, reconciling the many and diverse views about charitable activities. It did so by removing the presumption under the 1601 Act that the advance of religion, relief of poverty and advance of education were automatically charitable. It was agreed that this was no longer appropriate. Instead of this, we were to have a single public benefit test, to be applied to all charities at inception and thereafter. It put the creation, administration and enforcement of the public benefit test in the hands of a single independent regulator, insulated from any political pressure: the Charity Commission. Thus, a level playing field was established across all charities.
Nowhere was this more important than in the field of education, because education has fee-paying schools and there are strong views about whether they can or should be able to have charitable status. I argued that the Bill as presently drafted upsets that balance, undermines the independence of the Charity Commission and, most importantly, creates a dangerous precedent of government and ministerial interference in the charitable sector. That was the argument.
The arguments of the Minister’s officials can be summarised as follows. First, the wording of the type used in Clause 8(1) has been used before and therefore changing it is not only unnecessary but creates a dangerous precedent. As a matter of principle, I find that an unsatisfactory response. Carried to its extreme, it is an argument for never changing anything and for complete bureaucratic inertia. If the drafting of a statute is defective, we should put it right and not argue that it is too difficult to change it subsequently. But I have a number of substantive arguments as opposed to that one of principle and issues about the way the Minister’s officials have sought to reinforce their position.
The first is that any precedents that are drafted before 2006 are irrelevant because they predate the ending of presumption: they assume presumption and therefore are irrelevant. Only those statutes that have come into effect post-2006 are relevant. There is only one such that the Bill team was able to produce and that was in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, so I went searching. In Schedule 8 (33M), I found:
““A sixth form college corporation is a charity within the meaning of the Charities Act 1993”.
That is quite different wording from what we have here. The Bill states:
“A qualifying Academy proprietor is a charity”,
not,
“a charity within the meaning of the Charities Act 1993”.
I am not enough of a lawyer to be able to weigh the significance of the additional words, but it indicates that sixth form colleges are much more closely tied to the remit of the Charity Commission and therefore reduced the risk of undermining the authority of that commission. Certainly, nothing in the 2009 Act envisaged the creation of a whole new class of exempt charities with their own regulator as Clause 8 does in subsection(4).
Further, the nature of the arrangements in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act are quite different from those envisaged in this Academies Bill. Inter alia, the former Act did not envisage the degree of independence for sixth form colleges as for schools under this Academies Bill. If noble Lords look at the Model Funding Agreement which the Minister has been kind enough to circulate, in many cases they will see a degree of independence that means that the charitable status of the academy is much more important. The Minister himself in his letter of 1 July that he kindly circulated to us says that:
“These different processes are necessary because of the contractual nature of our relationship with the Academies”.
Therefore, the Bill team is wrong to try to argue that there are a series of precedents out there that make this amendment unnecessary.
The second argument that the Bill team brought forward was to quote from my speech in Committee on 28 June when I said I was sure that academies would be able to pass the public benefit test. Why, then, they argued should I be concerned about the wording? I absolutely agree that it is likely that the academies will pass the charitable test, but that is not the same as believing that they should not be able to fail. I can envisage circumstances in which academies could fail a public benefit test. Indeed, the many debates that we have had tonight and in Committee have raised pinch points where that could happen. I hope that it does not, but it could. That is why we need to be very clear about charitable status.
To conclude, my amendment is designed to bring absolute clarity to the charitable status of academies by preserving beyond peradventure the delicate balance achieved in the Charities Act 2006—no ifs, no buts, no maybes and, above all, no requirement to pay expensive lawyers for interpretation of clauses the meaning of which is not absolutely clear. Along the way, this amendment has two further side benefits: we buttress the independence and authority of the Charity Commission as the regulator of the sector and, last but not least, we avoid creating a precedent of governmental interference in a sector that is heartily to be avoided. I beg to move.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 40A and 40B and build to some extent on what the noble Lord has just said. As a long in the tooth charity lawyer, I have come to believe that the law of charity is best regulated by the Charity Commission. It may not be a perfect regulatory animal but it is, by a measure that you cannot count, more experienced in regulating charities than any of the other principal regulators. It is worth adding that charity law is one of the most difficult branches of law, as it is both a combination of common law and statute law and calls for more judgment in its application than perhaps any other branch of law. It is not textbook law.
I have heard what my noble friend the Minister has said on past occasions and I am content, despite misgivings, to go along with Clause 8, but only on condition that, if the principal regulator proves inadequate to the difficult task of regulating not only the large number of academies to come but the 200-plus academies that already exist, the Charity Commission should then be able to intervene and exercise powers.
For noble Lords who are not aware of it, I should say that the Attorney-General has jurisdiction with regard to all charities. The Minister might say that that should be enough, but the Attorney-General will not intervene other than in quite exceptional circumstances and, frankly, he is not supposed to be an alias principal regulator. The problem is that the powers in Sections 8 and 18 of the Charities Act 1993 were given to the Charity Commission to ensure that charities are charitable—and there is no more precious name or reputation in this country, I suggest, than that of charity—and can be exercised only by the Charity Commission. They cannot be exercised by a principal regulator unless that regulator asks the Charity Commission to exercise those powers on its behalf.
My Amendment 40B says that when the Charity Commission has concerns over the regulation of a principal regulator and what it is doing, or more likely not doing—in this case it will deal with the Young People's Learning Agency, because my noble friend has indicated that that is to be the regulator of academy schools—the commission will consult the principal regulator, the YPLA. If, having consulted the YPLA, it remains unhappy at what the YPLA proposes to do or not to do, having given notice to the YPLA it can institute an inquiry under Section 8 of the 1993 Act that will lead to the much wider powers that it will have under Section 18 of that Act. This is a power, a provision, that I would not expect to be exercised at all, but it is well worth having in the Bill because it may prove to be just the sort of spur that may be needed—I hope it will not—in order for the YPLA to do the job properly. That longstop—the prospect of being exposed to public ridicule and contempt by the Charity Commission having to intervene under the provisions of this subsection—would ensure, as far as anything could, that the YPLA did the job properly.
Before finishing, I would like to say a word about the YPLA. It has been in existence for just three months. Noble Lords may wonder, as I do, whether such a new organisation can possibly be in a position almost immediately—we are talking about the autumn—to undertake this huge and difficult regulatory role. People capable of exercising these powers in a knowledgeable and practical way are few and far between, and it will not be easy to put in place the team necessary to do this job properly. It must be done properly because these academy schools are hugely important in public interest terms. I am anxious that it will not be possible for them to assemble the necessary expertise to do that job, which makes my amendment all the more important.
I am also concerned, to be honest, about the potential conflict of interest that the YPLA will have. Its principal responsibilities, as made clear by the former Minister, Ed Balls, are, first, to support local authorities in commissioning suitable education and training for 16 to 19 year-olds; secondly, to fund academies; and, thirdly, to provide financial support to young learners— none of which is anything to do with the difficult regulatory function that is to be cast upon it under the Bill. I am sorry to have had to explain all that at length, but it is not easy to get across the background to and the need for this amendment.
Finally, and much more simply, my Amendment 40A adds to Clause 8 the charitable incorporated organisation alongside companies limited by guarantee as the alternative vehicle for an academy school. This charitable incorporated organisation was brought into existence by the Charities Act 2006. It is a specially tailor-made corporate animal for charities and is therefore infinitely simpler than the company limited by guarantee, which is subject to the vast forest of company law. I have no doubt that when the regulations come into effect, which will in effect give birth to these charitable incorporated organisations, all the academy schools will want to convert into that new charitable corporate vehicle. It would be remiss if we were not to include that now alongside companies limited by guarantee. I hope that both these amendments will appeal to your Lordships and indeed to my noble friend the Minister.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I have listened to the debate on Report with even more concern than I did in Committee. I was hoping that, following meetings between noble Lords and the Minister, there would be more on offer to meet the concerns raised by the noble Lords opposite.
When thinking about this group of amendments, I had similar concerns to those of the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson and Lord Phillips. I was particularly concerned about the role of the YPLA as a regulator when there are conflicts of interest and about the YPLA’s capacity to deal with this. Will the Minister tell us how many staff with charity law experience the association has in place who are ready for this retrospective legislation that will put it in charge of regulating the academies that are currently charities, if that is what is going to happen? I am very concerned about Clause 8.
This reminds me of a storyline from “Yes Minister”. When a new Government come in, officials dust down an old policy that they were not able to convince the previous Government to pursue and suddenly it finds its way into legislation. That is what appears to have happened here. When we were in government, this proposal was put to us. We listened to the concerns voiced by many and to arguments similar to those put by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, and we did not pursue this approach.
In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, described the clause as “a dog’s dinner” and made clear his view that the regulator should be mentioned in the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, made the important point that the Bill would damage the “delicate balance” between,
“the many strongly held views about the charitable sector”.—[Official Report, 28/6/10; col. 1632.]
He said that this would particularly be the case in the area of education, which has been highly controversial.
The Government should tread carefully in this area. I offer the Minister some advice: it would be sensible to listen to the advice that he is being given at this Report stage and to think further about how the issue can be managed in the Bill. I do not think that it would be a good thing to go forward with this clause, as it would unsettle the settlement achieved in the Charities Act 2006, which was a well deliberated piece of legislation about a hugely controversial area. I hope that the Minister will think further about this.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, as usual this has been an interesting debate. My noble friend Lord Hodgson has set out important points of principle, which, as he said, we have had the chance to debate outside the Chamber—I am grateful to him for taking the time to do so.
I start by setting out the purpose of Clause 8(1), which is to put beyond doubt that academies are charities. Because it is proposed that academies will be exempt charities, they will not in the future be registered with the Charity Commission. It follows from that that they will not receive a charity registration number from the Charity Commission or the Charity Commission’s confirmation of charitable status that comes with being registered. Therefore, we think it important statutorily to confirm academies’ status as charities in this clause.
My noble friend Lord Hodgson has spoken powerfully and from a position of principle. I know how much work he and other noble Lords did on the Charities Act 2006 and, when I heard him arguing his case in Committee and when we met, I found what he said very much worth listening to. He touched previously on his concern that deeming academy trusts to be charities would set a precedent and he set out the response that he was given about that. I reiterate our view that there is a precedent. Our proposal to deem academy proprietors as charities will replicate the current legal position as it applies for a variety of other educational bodies whose status as charities is declared by statute. A range of educational bodies are deemed charities and are made exempt charities. Further education colleges and higher education colleges are deemed charities and are made exempt charities not regulated by the Charity Commission. The governing bodies of foundation and voluntary schools are deemed as charities; they are shortly to become exempt charities as well, following discussion and agreement between Ministers at the Cabinet Office and the department. It seems to me that it is not completely inappropriate for academies to be treated consistently with these other schools and educational bodies and for them to be deemed as charities under Clause 8(1) and made exempt under Clause 8(4).
My noble friend Lord Hodgson reiterated tonight the point that he made in Committee: he has no doubt that academies would be able to pass the public benefit test established by the Charities Act 2006. Given that, it would be appropriate to treat academies in the same way as these other educational institutions. The model articles of association for academy trusts provide that the objective of the academy trust is to advance education for the public benefit. It is only academy trusts which have exclusively charitable objectives that would be deemed charities. The provision of education to pupils without charge is in the public benefit. Therefore, their charitable status should be confirmed.
If Clause 8(4) is enacted, a principal regulator would need to be appointed to oversee academies’ compliance with charity law. The Minister for the Cabinet Office, as noble Lords know, has agreed in principle to appoint the Young People’s Learning Agency as principal regulator. I know that some reservations have been expressed about that. It will clearly need to recruit people to perform that role in just the same way as the Charity Commission would have to. It has made clear that it does not necessarily have the staff to perform this responsibility. As the government body with day-to-day responsibility for managing the performance of open academies, the YPLA could be an appropriate body to carry out this role, since it means that it would be managing academies as a whole. The YPLA and the Charity Commission would agree a memorandum of understanding about the principal regulator role to ensure that academy trusts remain fully compliant with charity law. On the matter of maintaining accountability and transparency, funding agreements or grant arrangements would place an obligation on academy trusts to publish their governing documents, reports, accounts and the names of their trustees.
Amendment 40A, spoken to by my noble friend Lord Phillips, would allow charitable incorporated organisations to enter into academy arrangements. If that is my noble friend’s intention, I am pleased to tell him that the Bill as drafted would allow that to take place. Clause 1(1) allows the Secretary of State to enter into academy arrangements “with any person”. I am advised that it is thus already possible for the Secretary of State to enter into academy arrangements with a charitable incorporated organisation, but it is not necessary for it to be deemed a charity or exempted to enter into such an arrangement. I know my noble friend’s expertise in this area and that he will want to reflect on this point. I will be happy to arrange to confirm that understanding with him.
Amendment 40B would give the Charity Commission the power to institute an inquiry if it considered that an academy trust was not complying with its charity law obligations. We would certainly accept and agree with my noble friend that the principal regulator should seek advice from the Charity Commission where necessary. We expect the YPLA to work closely with the Charity Commission, but are not currently convinced that the commission should be able to override the principal regulator. The Charity Commission has the power to conduct inquiries in relation to exempt charities under Section 8 of the Charities Act 1993, where the principal regulator requests this.
This next point may go some way to meeting my noble friend’s point about the backstop but, again, I am happy to discuss it with him. If the Secretary of State was satisfied that the YPLA was unreasonably refusing to invite the Charity Commission to carry out an inquiry in relation to an academy—I assume that is a conversation that he could have with the Charity Commission, or it with him—he has the power to direct the YPLA to make such a request to the Charity Commission, so that it could carry out that inquiry. I hope that provides a modicum of reassurance to my noble friend, but I am happy to discuss that further.
Overall, it is a clear principle of the academies programme that academy trusts should be charities. Clause 8 will make the process of establishing an academy easier by removing the need for each one to apply to the Charity Commission to be registered as a charity. It will simplify the regulation process. I hope that on some of these points I have provided reassurance that academies’ compliance with charity law, and public accountability and transparency, will be fully maintained.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
If the YPLA is the exempt regulator, does my noble friend expect it to have a public benefit test which it will apply to the schools, and will that be the same public benefit test as the Charity Commission applies to other schools?
Lord Hill of Oareford
We think that a state-funded school which becomes an academy would be deemed to have passed the public benefit test. However, if I am wrong about that, I will write to my noble friend and put myself straight.
I know that my answer will not have provided satisfaction to my noble friend Lord Hodgson, and that I have only part met some of the concerns raised by my noble friend Lord Phillips. However, given the answers that I have provided, I hope that they will feel able at this hour not to press their amendments.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his lengthy research and work and for the answers that he has given me, though I have to say they are slightly uncompromising in tone. However, it is obviously far too late to explore this matter further tonight. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I too will not pursue this matter tonight. I think that my noble friend the Minister is not right on either of the two legal points he puts forward, but we can discuss that tomorrow.
Lord Hill of Oareford
“( ) This paragraph also applies if—
(a) publicly funded land has been held for the purposes of a maintained school by the trustees of the school, (b) the land is held by the trustees for the purposes of an Academy, and (c) the first or the second condition set out below is satisfied.”
Lord Hill of Oareford
“Freedom of Information Act 2000 (c. 36)9A In Part 4 of Schedule 1 to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (public authorities: maintained schools and other educational institutions) after paragraph 52 insert—
“52A (1) The proprietor of an Academy, in respect of information held for the purposes of the proprietor’s functions under Academy arrangements.
(2) In sub-paragraph (1)—
“Academy arrangements” has the meaning given by section 1 of the Academies Act 2010;
“proprietor” has the meaning given by section 579(1) of the Education Act 1996.””
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, in Committee I said that I agreed with my noble friend Lord Lucas that academies should be included within the coverage of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I said that I would consider this issue further and come back to it on Report. Having thought about it, I can see no reason why academy proprietors should not be subject to the Freedom of Information Act in the same way as all maintained schools are subject to that Act. Amendment 47 would simply insert a new clause into the Bill that would amend the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to add academy proprietors to the list of public bodies covered by that Act.
The new clause brings academy proprietors within the coverage of the Act in respect of information that they hold for the purposes of their functions under academy arrangements. This will cover functions relating to establishing and maintaining an academy and the carrying on of the academy once it has been established. If enacted, it is our intention to commence this duty in sufficient time to ensure that any schools which become academies in September will continue to be subject to the Act after they cease to be maintained schools. In relation to existing academies which have up until now not been subject to the Act, we intend to commence this duty for them early in the new year in order to give them time to prepare.
We believe that extending the Freedom of Information Act to academies is right in itself, but it also has another advantage linked to our broader discussions in Committee and today about consultation and transparency. I believe that having information about academies in the public domain will help dispel suspicion and make people appreciate the positive contribution that they are making to raising educational standards. I know that noble Lords on all sides of the Committee will welcome this amendment and I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Lucas for flagging the issue up with his original amendment.
Amendment 55 is a technical amendment required to ensure that Amendment 47, the main amendment to the Freedom of Information Act, will technically extend throughout the United Kingdom, even though it will apply only in England. I beg to move.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am sure that all noble Lords would thank the Minister for this. I wish to ask him a question. Yesterday we debated the small primary school that would have been able to become a foundation trust. Today, we have the announcement of the review of the UEA e-mail issue in relation to climate change scientific research, which in itself raises FOI issues. All of us who have been involved in public authorities know that establishing the apparatus and support mechanisms to deal with FOI requests can be considerable. I can envisage a school, perhaps not so much a primary but a secondary, dealing with admission issues and being subject to FOI requests, which is quite likely. My question for the Minister is: what support mechanism will be put in place to help schools deal with the FOI system, because they will need something.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, that is a very fair and sensible point. At the moment, maintained schools would be helped by the local authority. I take the noble Lord’s point. Academies which find themselves in that situation will need the kind of support that he is talking about. We will think about that within the department. I do not know whether the department is the right place to deal with this—it may well be. I take the noble Lord’s point; I agree with him and I will reflect on it. Perhaps I can let him know how we get on.
Lord Whitty
“In section 237 (orders: supplementary) after subsection (3) insert—
(3A) An order under section 233(2)(d) or 234(2)(b) may also make provision by reference to actions taken or to be taken pursuant to Academy arrangements.
(3B) An order under section 233(2)(d) or 234(2)(b) or (4)(b) shall be formulated so as to apply to support staff employed to work at Academies with the same effect as it applies to staff employed to work in maintained schools.”
In section 238(3) (guidance) after paragraph (b) insert—
“(c) the governing body and proprietor of an Academy”.In section 240(3)(a) (school support staff) at end insert “or is employed under a contract of employment providing for the person to work wholly or mainly at an Academy in England”.
In section 241 (general interpretation) after “Chapter—” insert—
““academy” means an Academy within the meaning of the Academies Act 2010,
“Academy arrangements” means Academy arrangements within the meaning of the Academies Act 2010.””
Lord Whitty
My Lords, it is a bit of a forlorn hope that I can capture the Chamber’s attention at this time of night for a group of people who have not been mentioned at any other point during today, although they were mentioned at an earlier stage by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. I am very much on the same wavelength as her.
Among the groups that my amendment on consultation would cover are the teaching staff in general and teaching support staff in particular. This has been an area of expansion of employment in schools—in old jobs such as school secretaries and wider management roles, and in new jobs such as classroom assistants, paraprofessionals and other specialists. Because they are a relatively recent phenomenon, the terms and conditions under which such staff are employed are variable and are not on the same basis as other groups of staff within schools and local authorities.
Local authorities of all political persuasions, the LGA and the unions got together over the past three years to establish the support staff negotiating body and establish a national framework for the terms and conditions of such staff. This has proved beneficial to the management of schools which previously had found difficulty in having to manage individuals under separate terms. In some cases, there were serious conflicts.
This is not just a trade union point; it is a point about how smoothly schools can be managed and how we can avoid conflict in those schools. The problem of when academies are created under the Bill is that without consultation and the normal processes, public servants will be transferred into what will, in effect, be the private sector in terms of the employers they have to deal with. There would be an element of stability in that process if academies were to remain in the support staff framework. It is true that existing academies do not have to be in that framework, although they can opt to be, but it would be helpful to the management of schools which will face all sorts of more complex matters of self-management, once they become academies, if they were to remain or be assumed to remain within that structure.
When the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, raised this at an earlier stage, she was told by the Minister that it was not deemed appropriate since the market would determine the rates—that would be the situation with teachers and what was good for teachers must be good for all other staff. Actually, it is the opposite situation. Academies will compete for teaching staff who are specialists or good teachers or teachers in subjects where teachers are scarce and thereby improve their conditions above the norm. In the area of support staff, what is likely to happen is that they will undermine what has previously been the rate in the continuing maintained schools in the local authority area, and will provide pay and conditions that are worse than they were prior to conversion to academy status. That will cause unnecessary conflicts between the management of the schools, the staff and in most cases their unions.
This amendment would provide an element of stability. I hope that the Minister will consider the implications as we go forward with the Bill. I beg to move.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I am delighted to support my noble friend's amendment. It may be late, but the contribution that support staff make to our country’s schools is worthy of significant attention. In Committee, I and the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, reminded noble Lords of the important role of support staff, and I am delighted to support my noble friend's analysis of the challenges that they face with a major expansion of the academies programme. This amendment provides a framework that is markedly different from the national negotiating body that the Minister referred to in Committee. When one looks at the contribution that the 123,000 new classroom assistants have made across the school system, it is important that we take all possible steps to maintain stability in the workforce. A framework such as this would contribute to that. In the past, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, eloquently said, support staff have been undervalued, and we should put in the work to create a new school support staff negotiating body. A lot of work and thought has gone into defining the roles and contribution that the staff make, and this could be a great support, particularly to small academies such as the primary academies that some noble Lords have been concerned to promote. I hope that the Minister will support this approach.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, will forgive me if at this late stage I do not read out the whole of the 15-page brief that I have been given in reply. We are all conscious of the importance of support staff. From the anecdotal evidence that I have picked up both in Yorkshire and London, many classroom assistants and support staff working in maintained schools are working for remarkably low pay on part-time contracts that do not include lunch. Therefore, this is not simply a question about the transfer to academies: there is a broader question of how we all value the very useful contribution that they make. Having said that, and underlined the fact that it is not just a question of the conditions of support staff in schools that convert to academies, but that the problem exists across the board, I also emphasise that academies are intended to have freedoms over staff pay and conditions. That is precisely the point of freeing academies from the deeply complex, embedded structures of maintained schools across the country. Freedom in relation to pay and conditions has been a core freedom since the academies programme started under the previous Government, and indeed that was part of the reason why the previous Government set it up. It enables academies to establish pay and conditions which reflect their approach to the school day and to attract and appropriately reward innovative school leaders and practitioners.
As academies recruit good support staff, I urge them to value them as well, and perhaps to value them more than some maintained schools under local authority control do at present. Having said that, at this early hour, as it has just become, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I am not surprised but am gratified that the Minister did not read out his entire brief. However, he did get us past midnight and I congratulate him on that. It is the first time in this Parliament that I have been in the Chamber at this hour.
The Minister is right to say that the pay is not brilliant in the sector at present, but the framework that was agreed across the country has made the situation much more stable both for staff and for their employers. That was reflected in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, which of course has a statutory base and came into force after the previous Government’s academies programme had started. Therefore, we are now faced with a framework which has a statutory base, as well as being a voluntary agreement. As my noble friend Lady Morgan said, it does not precisely lay down the pay rates but it gives a framework within which employers can operate. I should have thought that that would be useful, as my noble friend also said, particularly if smaller academies come through the process in the numbers that the Government hope for.
I would have hoped that the Government would look more favourably on my proposal but, for the moment, and at two minutes past midnight, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hill of Oareford
“(2A) Section 4(3) (when a maintained school is “converted into” an Academy) applies for the purposes of this Act.”
Lord Hill of Oareford
“(2) An amendment or repeal made by this Act has the same extent as the provision to which it relates.”