House of Commons

Thursday 21st October 2010 Commons Chamber

Thursday 21 October 2010

The House met at half-past Ten o’clock

Prayers

Thursday 21st October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Thursday 21st October 2010 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

1. If he will take steps to increase access to senior positions in local government for women and people from black and other ethnic minority backgrounds.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)]

This Government’s guiding principles are freedom, fairness and responsibility. We want to remove barriers to equal opportunities and to build a fairer society. The new public sector equality duty in the Equality Act 2010 will require councils to have regard to the need to advance equality of opportunity between different groups, including between men and women and people from different ethnic backgrounds.

[Valerie Vaz]

I am grateful for the Minister’s response. However, my figures show that there are 248 local authorities where women are not chief executives or leaders. In London, there is a black and minority ethnic population of 31% but only one chief executive officer from that community. Could he therefore confirm that he will encourage local authorities to use sections 158 and 159 of the Equality Act, now in force, to redress that imbalance?

[Andrew Stunell]

I am very happy to give that assurance and to say, first, that her own local authority of Walsall has a good record in relation to the employment of BME staff. We need to recognise that local government has worked hard on this. The Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government has been working on it strongly. We had a conference in March—the Yes We Can conference—and are working towards a December follow-up. We need to remind local authorities that they have a duty under the Equality Act, but they also have a power to take positive action. I am certainly happy to work with the hon. Lady to achieve that.

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

Will my hon. Friend please confirm that offering salary packages to local government bureaucrats in excess of that earned by the Prime Minister will not form part of the strategy to recruit such people?

[Andrew Stunell]

Absolutely. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has had some stern words to say about local authorities that do not take the hint and has called on those earning high salaries in the public sector to take a voluntary pay cut.

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

2. What recent discussions his Department has had with representatives of voluntary organisations providing housing services for local authorities on the potential effects on that sector of future local government funding plans.

[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

My Department has consulted widely with the voluntary sector in relation to the provision of housing services for local authorities, and we have listened carefully to the points they have raised. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we have, for example, protected the homelessness grant, providing £400 million; protected the funding for disabled facilities grant; and minimised reductions to the Supporting People programme over the spending review.

[Mr Wright]

The voluntary groups in my constituency, such as Manor residents association, together in partnership with Housing Hartlepool and Hartlepool borough council, provide much-needed services such as handyman services, financial advice to tenants and tackling antisocial behaviour. Given that they derive their income from local authorities and the registered social landlord, and given yesterday’s announcement of a real-terms cut of 26% in local authority budgets and the cutting by half of the social housing budget, can the right hon. Gentleman tell the voluntary groups where they will get their money from and how these services can be maintained?

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Gentleman will know the backdrop to this, which is that when he was a Minister the Government literally ran out of money, and not just money from then taxpayers but money from the future, so some steps had to be taken. Despite that, however, we have still managed to protect all those different budgets, particularly that for Supporting People, which will be very important to his local authority: it is almost certainly where those voluntary services are getting quite a lot of their funding. We also heard the Chancellor announce yesterday a £100 million transition fund. I can further tell the hon. Gentleman that I am today announcing £12.25 million for local authorities and the voluntary sector to help households affected by changes in housing benefits. There is a whole package of services there. We absolutely recognise the need to protect the most vulnerable; it is a shame that his Government did not do the same as they spent all the money.

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

That was very interesting from the Minister, but it is clear that yesterday the Chancellor announced devastating cuts to house building and local government funding. Is it not the case that while across Whitehall Departments average cuts are 19%, town halls up and down the country will lose 28% of their funding?

[Grant Shapps]

I start by welcoming the right hon. Lady to her new position and to our exchanges across the Dispatch Box.

We have already covered the backdrop. We know that the financial crisis was incredibly sharp and, as has been said, if the Opposition do not have a plan they cannot criticise the plans that have been put in place. Everybody in the country will want to know what the right hon. Lady’s plans would have been. However, as it happens, and as she mentions house building as part of her critique, let me tell her that in the 13 Labour years, there was a net gain of just 14,000 affordable homes. We will build more affordable homes in every single year of our Government than Labour did in all its 13 years put together.

[Caroline Flint]

I thank the Minister for his words of welcome. There may come a time when we agree across the Dispatch Box, but today is not that day. The Chancellor was right about one thing yesterday: the cuts are the Government’s choice, and their choice is to dump the cuts on local communities. I am afraid the Secretary of State and his team have failed to stand up for local councils. Can the Minister tell me how many jobs in the public, private and voluntary sectors will be lost as a result of the Secretary of State’s failure?

[Grant Shapps]

It is really no good not having a plan and then criticising the Government when they come up with a serious plan to rescue this country and this economy from the rocks that we were surely headed towards when the right hon. Lady was on the Government Benches. We have set out our plans in great detail, and we look forward to Her Majesty’s Opposition getting round to setting out some of theirs.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

3. What plans he has to introduce incentives to encourage the building of new homes.

[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

I am pleased to announce that the new homes bonus will commence in April 2011, which means that local authorities that grant planning permission now will benefit from it next year. I can also announce that the bonus will last a total of six years, facilitating the building of many more homes in every area of the country.

[Mike Freer]

I thank the Minister for that answer. Will he also explain how the new affordable rent scheme will encourage development?

[Grant Shapps]

Absolutely. Until now there has been only one way to get into social housing, and for most people that way has not led to their getting a social home. That is why housing waiting lists doubled under the last Government from 1 million to nearly 2 million. There was only a single offer, and not enough homes were being built. We have introduced affordable rent, which means that rents can be up to 80% of the market rent. That is a more viable option, and it means that less money can produce more homes and that new investment will go into providing homes for the most needy in society, who were so badly let down by a Government who produced only a 14,000 net gain in affordable homes during a 13-year period in office.[Official Report, 27 October 2010, Vol. 517, c. 5MC.]

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Will the Minister not accept that the new homes bonus scheme is in chaos? Can he explain what the incentive will be for local planning authorities, which according to the policy that the Government have set out will receive only 15% of the receipts, with 85% being returned to the shire authorities outside unitary areas, which are not involved in the planning process? Will the incentive be 15%, or will it be greater?

[Grant Shapps]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is so confused about this. It is actually a very simple scheme, unlike ones such as the local housing delivery planning grant, which his Government used. That was so complex that literally nobody understood it or had any idea how much money would come in. Our scheme is simple. For every home built, there will be match funding for six years at the actual band price at which it is built. By the way, if it is affordable housing, 125% of receipts will be provided. We will consult on the split between district and upper-tier authorities, but something like 80% is likely to go to the planning authority. That will be a massive incentive for this country to get out and build the homes that Labour failed to build during its 13 years.

[Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)]

Can the Minister confirm that housing market renewal pathfinder funding will continue in the short or medium term, to enable the removal of all unwanted and uninhabited properties in the pathfinder areas? The acquisition and removal of those properties will clear inner areas of our towns and cities to enable the new affordable homes that we desperately need.

[Grant Shapps]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I have visited pathfinder schemes on many occasions, and some were very good and some had some problems. We will complete all the committed HMR schemes, and we will then roll the funding up into the regional development fund to continue the good work.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

The Minister can try, but he really should not duck responsibility for his own policies. When he announced this particular scheme in the summer, he told councils, “Build now, develop now, and you’ll get substantial benefits in the future.” Can he confirm that 70 local authorities have cancelled developments, 160,000 homes have not been built, the house builders are taking the Government to court and his scheme has been kicked into the long grass of 2011? Just how many homes will be built in the next 12 months?

[Grant Shapps]

May I start by welcoming the new shadow Housing Minister to her post? I hope that she does it for as long as I did—I shadowed many different Front Benchers. In the autumn, she made an interesting statement. She said that too many people thought her Government had not listened to them about housing. The difference is that we will certainly listen, and the new homes bonus will reward all the planning applications that have already been made where homes have yet to be built, so it will include all those homes. It will provide a far more compelling incentive than the local planning housing delivery grant ever did. The Conservative party has a proud record of house building. We have already heard that the previous Government managed a net addition of just 14,000 affordable homes in 13 years.

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

4. What progress has been made in publishing the pay and expenses of staff of non-departmental public bodies sponsored by his Department.

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)]

My Department has been at the forefront of transparency, and the Department’s public bodies will publish their senior salaries and expenses data on Friday 29 October.

[David T. C. Davies]

We know from information that has already been published that the heads of the Audit Commission spent thousands of pounds wining and dining people in a gentleman’s club. We also know that the head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission is chauffeur-driven in his own personal car. May I therefore congratulate the Secretary of State on his actions to ensure that those quango bosses publicise their expenses and salaries, and urge him to do more so that they are held to the same standards of transparency and scrutiny as Members of Parliament, who represent the people?

[Mr Pickles]

In fairness to the Audit Commission, my hon. Friend will want me to point out that the gentlemen’s clubs are those in the west end, not Soho. I have been concerned for some time about some of the Audit Commission’s excesses. One of my first decisions was to veto a suggested £240,000 salary for a chief executive. I was not particularly impressed by the chairman’s suggestion of a whip-round among members of the private sector that audit to top up his salary. I thought that that suggestion might well have been misinterpreted.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

5. What the timetable is for abolition of regional spatial strategies.

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

The previous Government’s regional spatial strategies were revoked on 6 July, and the remaining provisions will be repealed through the localism Bill, which will be introduced later this year. Along with the new homes bonus, which my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government described, it is a key element of our plans to return decisions on housing and planning to local communities, allowing them to shape their neighbourhoods.

[Chris Skidmore]

Green belt land in my constituency and elsewhere remains under threat as a direct result of the previous Government’s regional spatial strategies. What steps will the Government take to ensure greater green belt protection in future?

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. One of the problems of the previous regional spatial strategies was the imposition on local communities. In my hon. Friend’s area, the region forced green belt reviews on his community. The same applies to Manchester, Liverpool, West Yorkshire, Stevenage, Hemel Hempstead, Woking, Guildford, Harlow and Oxford. That is not the way to proceed. If one wants consent for development, one must involve local people and allow them to determine the character of their area.

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

Yesterday the Prime Minister said it was important to protect economic growth, but actions speak louder than words. Since the Government came to power, local authorities have already ditched plans for 160,000 homes—1,300 every day. Is it not the case that abolishing the regional spatial strategy has paralysed the planning system, forced building workers on to the dole and contributed to slower economic growth?

[Greg Clark]

The answer is no.

May I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the Front Bench? He is an ambitious sort. I do not know whether it reflects on the current performance of the Leader of the Opposition, but I note that the hon. Gentleman has registered the website chriswilliamsonlabourleader.com. I do not know whether that is the start of a glorious career here.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I have to tell the Minister that although that is a fascinating nugget of information, it has nothing to do with regional spatial strategies, on which I know that he will now focus.

[Greg Clark]

I am glad that you are as fascinated by that as I am, Mr Speaker. If we want a serious discussion, it is important that we change the situation in which all planning applications in this country are seen to destroy quality of life and are fiercely resisted. That is the sad state of things, and we must understand that we need to unblock that. One way to do so is to ensure that communities benefit financially through incentives. The other is to allow local communities to help to specify and design the characters of their local neighbourhoods. If we do that, we can take some of the poison out of the system and have more new homes.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

6. If he will take steps to reduce the number of councillors in local authorities headed by an elected mayor.

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)]

I appreciate that my hon. Friend has a distinct personal interest in the welfare of elected mayors. Decisions on the number of councillors in any local authority are handled by the independent Local Government Boundary Commission, in which process I have no role.

[Philip Davies]

As the Secretary of State indicated, I should declare that my father is the elected mayor of Doncaster—quite how, nobody knows. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be bizarre if his introduction of elected mayors around the country led to an increase in costs and an increased layer of bureaucracy in local government? Therefore, when introducing elected mayors, should he not take the opportunity to reduce the number of councillors in those areas at the same time?

[Mr Pickles]

It is within the purview of a local authority to ask the Local Government Boundary Commission at any time to review its boundaries and the number of members. Mansfield district council has done that, and is moving from multi-member wards to single- member wards. When the commission publishes its recommendations, they will be laid in the House under the usual 40-day rule.

[Diana R. Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

How does the Secretary of State square the imposition of elected mayors in the 12 largest cities in this country with his commitment to localism? How does that work if people will not be asked whether they would like a mayor or whether they wish to continue with local councillors?

[Mr Pickles]

The hon. Lady is mistaking this Government’s position with that of the previous one, who would often impose things on local people. She seems to be suggesting that we would somehow impose mayors on those 12 cities, but of course we will not—that is completely out of the question. The proposals will be subject to referendums. Once we know the views of the people in those 12 cities, we will move on to the election of a mayor if people vote for that.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

7. What timetable he has set for the closure of the Standards Board for England.

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)]

The provisions will be in the localism Bill, and we will move as speedily as possible.

[Rehman Chishti]

What will replace the board and how will members of the public be able to hold their councils and councillors to account?

[Mr Pickles]

We have been in discussions with the Local Government Association and we will have a code of conduct, which seems to me to be a sensible way of doing that—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) seems to think that the boards have achieved something, but their only achievement has been to be petty, silly and pointless.

The latest example of that concerns a Green party councillor, Jason Kitcat, who placed unofficial video footage of a council meeting on his website. He has been referred to the board for not showing his council respect. With the joyous news of the Lady Thatcher’s improving health, perhaps I could say to Councillor Kitcat: “YouTube if you want to.”

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

8. What guidance his Department provides to local authorities planning large housing developments in their area on consultation with residents of neighbouring local authority areas likely to be affected.

[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

Local authorities must follow the regulations on preparing their local plans and consult widely with local people affected by proposals. They must also ensure that that public consultation has real meaning and that it is taken into account when putting local plans together.

[George Hollingbery]

I am grateful for that answer and I should like to push the issue of cross-border co-operation a little further. Under the Government’s new homes bonus scheme, it is reasonable to suppose that some local authorities will be tempted to build large settlements at their boundaries, where the disbenefit accrues to local authorities across the boundary. Does the Minister have any plans to ensure that the income flowing from the new homes bonus will flow across local authority boundaries where appropriate?

[Grant Shapps]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. First, we are introducing a duty to co-operate, so that one authority has to be talking to its neighbour in order to get its local plan signed off. Secondly, I can confirm today that the flow of new money from the new homes bonus will be some £900 million, even before top-slicing in the later years, so it will be a significant amount. In that context, there is nothing to prevent one local authority from speaking to its neighbour and saying, “Look, we’d like to build these homes here, but we recognise that this would have some impact on you there. We will come to a deal with you, and if we’re both happy it will go into our local plan.”

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

When a local authority has decided to take the money from the homes bonus, little though it is, at the expense of a neighbouring local authority or in the face of local opposition, whose views will take precedence—the local authority taking the money, local people, or the neighbouring local authority?

[Grant Shapps]

I am amused that the hon. Gentleman thinks that billions of pounds is little money: it shows how the Opposition thought about taxpayers’ money when they were in power. It is a large amount of money and it will make a significant difference. The answer—although I know this is a strange concept to Opposition Members—is something called democracy. It is called asking voters what they want and putting a local plan in place that reflects the local population’s wishes, not what the Minister wants here in Whitehall, as happened under the old regional spatial strategies.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that his guidance seems to be being ignored by the Planning Inspectorate, which is insisting on making the five-year housing supply paramount in its decisions, causing great concern in Burbage and Groby in my constituency as representations are made and ignored?

[Grant Shapps]

It is enormously important that the Planning Inspectorate notices that there has been a change of Government and therefore changes in policy. If it is not entirely certain, we will have the localism Bill next month and I hope that that will clarify the matter once and for all.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

9. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills on the effect on levels of employment in small businesses of reductions in his Department’s funding to local government.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)]

The Secretary of State has had discussions on a number of topics with the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. We are aware of the need to offer continued support to small businesses in this difficult economic climate. That is why we are committed to providing local authorities with the freedom to determine how best to allocate their resources to meet local priorities.

[Mr Brown]

In many areas, the local authority is far and away the largest employer and as a result many small and medium enterprises depend heavily on it for contracts and to keep their businesses going. The tightening up that we will see will therefore inevitably lead to small businesses suffering as a result of what has happened in the last 24 hours.

[Andrew Stunell]

I certainly agree with the first two thirds of what the hon. Gentleman says, but his conclusion is wrong. In the Secretary of State’s conversations with colleagues at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, they drew our attention—as did the Chancellor—to the small business rate relief, which gives 100% relief for properties, up to £6,000. There is also the holiday on national insurance contributions for the first three years of start-up companies, and this Department is responsible for the local enterprise partnerships, on which we are working closely with the Federation of Small Businesses to ensure that they can play an effective part.

I remind the hon. Gentleman that a large proportion of our housing programme, which will spend £6.5 billion, will of course involve the small construction sector. Our regional growth fund of £1.4 billion will also contribute. We are working hard to ensure that councils understand their role in procurement and delivery of services to ensure that small companies and the voluntary and community sector can be involved. If he asks the question—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The comprehensiveness of the Minister’s answer is equalled only by its length. We need snappier answers from now on.

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Does the reduction of 7% for four years in local government funding include the 3% efficiency target proposed by the previous Government, or does it exclude it?

[Andrew Stunell]

The figures announced yesterday were in relation to a base that was set by the outgoing Labour Government. I do not know whether that is the complete answer my hon. Friend wants, but I am happy to write to him further if he needs me to.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that on the back of the cuts announced yesterday, 82,000 jobs will go in Yorkshire. Could the Minister describe the mechanism to avoid a further double whammy for the city of Sheffield—its individuals, businesses and communities—from the 26% reduction in the overall grant to the city over the next four years and the 18% reduction in the area-based grant, which is theoretically being un-ring-fenced, but which will actually not exist at all unless there is a mechanism to retain it in the communities that were receiving it?

[Andrew Stunell]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question, but would remind him that the economy has shrunk by 6%, and that was before the general election. Many, many people in the private and public sectors have already faced the devastating consequences of that. We are setting that right.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will the Minister confirm that there will be many opportunities for economic development in York and North Yorkshire, which have suffered owing to the mass investment in places such as Boeing in Sheffield, under the local economic partnerships?

[Andrew Stunell]

I hope that each local economic partnership will be a focus for growth, jobs and development. Obviously there is competition, but we need every part of the country to grow quickly, to get back to the level of prosperity that we should have.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Small businesses all over Britain depend on £20 billion of local government procurement. PWC has predicted 500,000 job losses in the private sector, with 100,000 in the construction industry and 180,000 job losses in business services. Does the Minister therefore not agree that it is an abrogation of the Government’s responsibility to have failed to conduct an impact assessment study of the effect of their actions in the public sector on the private sector, thereby avoiding coming clean? Does he also agree that the evidence is clear: for every job that goes in local government, at least one will go in Britain’s small businesses?

[Andrew Stunell]

Let me welcome the hon. Gentleman to his role, and say that I would have thought that, with his background, he would be the last person to put a lot of dependence on a private consultant’s report about what was going to happen next. From our point of view, we think that we have got the right remedy for Britain’s ills, and I believe that in a year’s time he will agree with us.

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

10. What progress has been made in establishing projects in the big society vanguard communities.

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

Good progress is being made on removing barriers to local action in the vanguard areas. In my hon. Friend’s constituency, we are working with the local community in the Eden valley on the roll-out of next-generation broadband, on advancing neighbourhood planning and on devolving budgets to communities. Similar progress is being made in the other areas, as part of my commitment to put my civil servants, in my Department, at the service of communities across Britain.

[Rory Stewart]

I thank the Minister for the work that his team is doing to support the Eden communities and the councils, and for the real progress on broadband. What lessons and experience can we take from Eden and apply to other parts of the country?

[Greg Clark]

Let me pay tribute to the leadership that my hon. Friend has given during his six months in this House, and extend an invitation to other hon. Members across the House, who are leaders in their communities. I have made an offer: if we believe, as I do, that the best ideas come from people in communities, rather than just from senior officials in Whitehall, then we need to make the resources of the Department available to people in communities. I extend this invitation to all hon. Members: if they have good ideas that are facing barriers that need busting, let us know and we will help.

[Malcolm Wicks (Croydon North) (Lab)]

Given that one of the building blocks of the big society, which I believe in, is the voluntary sector, will the Minister comment on the decision by Croydon council to axe the grants to more than 20 voluntary organisations? Those organisations form the great majority of those that the council has been funding, and they include the Croydon rape and sexual abuse support centre. Does he agree that if the same thing happens nationwide, that will not be about building the good society—or, if he prefers, the big society—but will put us on a slippery slope towards a painful and bad society?

[Greg Clark]

The right hon. Gentleman and I agree, I think, that it is highly desirable that we should transfer power from the centre to local communities, and that involves councils, too. I do not expect them to pull up the drawbridge in the town hall when we decentralise power and resources to them. I look to councils to increase their contacts with the voluntary sector as part of the decentralisation initiative, which affects everyone.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

There are

“real fears that spending cuts will impact adversely on the capacity of the charitable and not-for-profit sector. Far from taking on more… it may be able to do rather less.”

That comment on the big society was from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives. Can the Minister tell the House just how he expects expansion in a sector that will suffer loss of grants and support—as we have heard, it is already happening—due to the 28% budget cuts over the next four years that this Government have forced on to local councils?

[Greg Clark]

May I welcome the hon. Lady to the Dispatch Box? She has long experience in local government, which I know takes these issues very seriously. One thing that councils and central Government have had the chance to do in the past is to hold on to power and to avoid bringing in the voluntary sector as of right. I think we need to change that. The hon. Lady will see that, in the localism Bill, we are going to entrench rights for community groups to take over some of the services of local authorities if they can demonstrate that they can have a more effective outcome. Rights, I think, rather than discretion, is the best source of guarantees for the sector.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

11. What steps he has taken to reduce the burden of administration in the planning system.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

Reducing and minimising burdens in the planning system is essential if the system is to work effectively and if we are to remove a financial burden on the economy, which has been estimated in figures quoted in the Killian Pretty report as being up to £2.7 billion a year. That therefore forms a central part of the Government’s reform proposals in the localism and decentralisation Bill and the national planning framework. We have already taken specific steps, with which I would be happy to acquaint the House in more detail if time permitted—for example, by consolidating 17 regulations into one and three preservation orders into one, saving £1.5 million already.

[Richard Graham]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The £400 million redevelopment project in the Gloucester Quays in my constituency was unnecessarily delayed for more than a year as a result of being called in by the previous Government. Does the Minister agree that local planning decisions are now precisely that, that they will no longer be subject to frequent interference by the Government and that today we can send a clear message to developers and investors—in Gloucester and elsewhere—that we are open for business without delay?

[Mr Speaker]

Briefer this time.

[Robert Neill]

Localising decision making and planning is central to the Government’s policy. Ministers have made it clear that they will exercise the power to call in only very sparingly where matters of significant national interest and policy are concerned.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware that in looking at the abolition of the regional spatial strategies, the Select Committee is receiving evidence that because those strategies had an evidential base—not merely in respect of house building numbers, but in many other matters on which local development frameworks were based—many local authorities are now having to go back and redo that evidential base at a local level, causing an enormous amount of work and inconvenience to them? Did the Minister take account of those extra burdens when he decided to abolish the regional spatial strategies?

[Robert Neill]

The vast majority of local authorities I have spoken to greatly welcome the abolition of those strategies, which imposed undemocratic targets on them. There is no need to rework the evidence base—it is already there. We have given local authorities the power to revise the figures that were arbitrarily imposed on them from above.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

12. What steps his Department is taking to encourage locally supported sustainable development through the planning system.

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

The coalition programme for government included a commitment to a radical reform of the planning system to give neighbourhoods far more ability to determine the shape of the places in which their residents live. Our proposals to decentralise planning back to neighbourhoods will be set out in the localism Bill, which will be published shortly.

[John Glen]

I thank the Minister for his answer. Following recent discussions in my Salisbury constituency, particularly with individuals in Winterslow who have created parish plans, will the Minister comment on the role parish plans will play in influencing sustainable development in the planning process?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend asks a very important question. I think neighbourhoods, parish councils and town councils, which intimately understand their areas, have been cut out of the planning process for too long. We will introduce rights in the localism Bill for neighbourhood plans to have statutory force so that people can actually have a say in how their communities develop.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Bromborough Dock landfill site in my constituency desperately needs sustainable development. The Forestry Commission had a plan to turn it into a publicly accessible park, but that plan has now been withdrawn, following the abolition of the Northwest Regional Development Agency. What advice can the Minister give me about how to turn this former industrial site into a beautiful green riverside park, given the actions of his Government?

[Greg Clark]

I am very happy to take forward the hon. Lady’s suggestion, and I will follow it up after this. I will make my team of civil servants available to her, to see whether we can help her with any barriers that might be preventing that from happening.

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

13. What progress he has made on his proposals for the future of small business rate relief; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

The coalition agreement contained a commitment to find a practical way to make small business rate relief automatic. We have had discussions with interested parties, and we are now assessing the options.

[Mark Lancaster]

Milton Keynes is a dynamic and entrepreneurial city, and the Government’s moves on small business rate relief are most welcome, but will the Minister tell the House what more the Government could do to encourage local councils to be more flexible in offering different incentives to new businesses?

[Robert Neill]

We are considering the possibility of giving local authorities wide-ranging discretionary powers to grant business rate discounts, so that they can respond to local circumstances by reducing local businesses’ bills. We are also taking steps to ensure that no new supplementary business rate can be imposed without the backing of local firms in a referendum.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

14. What plans he has for future funding to facilitate community management and ownership of local community assets; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

The Government will be making it much easier for communities to take on community assets, through the community right-to-buy provisions in the localism Bill. Following the spending review statement yesterday, we will shortly be announcing our plans to provide further funding to support communities in exercising that right. Communities can now get advice and practical help from the Government-funded asset transfer unit, and money is available this year through Communitybuilders for business development support and investment capital.

[Stella Creasy]

Residents living near the former St James street library in Walthamstow want to be part of the big society by buying the building and turning it into a community centre. The previous Government committed £20 million to an empowerment fund to help local people to make these things happen. Rights and announcements are all very well, but what actual funding can residents in my area expect to be able to bid for, to help to turn the rhetoric surrounding asset management into a reality?

[Greg Clark]

I know that the hon. Lady is a great champion for community facilities. She has had correspondence with me on this matter, and as a Co-operative party MP, she shares our belief that co-operatives have a great deal to offer. Perhaps I should refer to her as my hon. Friend in this context. The big society bank, which was announced by the Chancellor yesterday, will be expressly designed so that part of its purpose will be to make capital available, and I hope that her project will make one of the early applications to it.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

15. What representations he has received on his proposals to establish directly elected mayors in 12 cities in England.

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)]

We have received many communications from various people who are interested in mayors, and it is our intention to introduce 12 mayors. We will also be introducing additional powers. I think the problem with mayors in the past is that they have been just another politician—[Hon. Members: “Boris!”] But as Boris Johnson has demonstrated in London, with passion and with power one can transform the post.

[Mrs Glindon]

We have had elected mayors in North Tyneside for more than eight years, and our most effective one was Mr John Harrison, who was the Labour mayor for four years. He did much to progress the area, but, unfortunately, we now have a Conservative mayor. Regarding the proposal for 12 elected mayors, one of the Local Government Ministers has said that they will be chosen from among council leaders, with a referendum to follow afterwards. Should they not be chosen in an election, as the coalition agreement states?

[Mr Pickles]

I have to say that Linda Arkley is doing a fantastic job as the Conservative mayor, and a very effective one, too. Perhaps the hon. Lady should have paid a little more attention to the earlier question, when I ruled out the possibility that we would be imposing mayors. This will be subject to a referendum. It was the Labour party that imposed forms of government on local government without consultation and without listening. This Government have learned the lesson; we will follow the will of the people.

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that, in regard to the localism agenda, there might be a case for arguing that the imposition of a referendum on elected mayors is as bad as the imposition of elected mayors themselves?

[Mr Pickles]

My hon. Friend, whom I have known for the best part of 30 years, is sometimes a stranger to democracy. I know that democracy is an inconvenience, but I do not think it that it will do any harm to consult the people of Bradford.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

16. What steps he is taking to reduce the regulatory requirements his Department places on local community groups.

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

I am determined to make it easier for local community groups to thrive. There are three ways in which we can help. First, there is a determination across Government to remove unnecessary burdens. Lord Young of Graffham is reducing the burden of health and safety legislation, while Lord Hodgson is tasked with reducing burdens on voluntary groups and will report in 2011. Secondly, as I said earlier, I have established a team in my Department to help local communities directly to get rid of barriers that stand in their way. Thirdly, I look to local government to avoid being over-prescriptive when issuing contracts to voluntary organisations.

[Nicola Blackwood]

My constituency contains many dedicated volunteers, but many others are put off by the intrusive system of multiple Criminal Records Bureau checks. One deputy head, who had been checked for his school, was unable to accompany his own students in a cub activity unless he obtained another CRB check from the scouting organisation. While I share the House’s commitment to child protection, as deputy chairman of the all-party parliamentary scout group I also feel deeply frustrated by bureaucratic barriers of that sort. What steps is the Department taking to ensure that we support volunteerism rather than stifle it?

[Greg Clark]

That is a brilliant question, and my hon. Friend has a fantastic track record of social action.

Although scouting is more popular than ever before and more teenagers are joining the movement than ever before, the waiting list is at a record level because there are not enough volunteers to catch up with it. CRB checks are an important aspect of that, and the Home Office is reviewing the vetting and barring arrangements. In response to a suggestion made by a member of the public through the “spending challenge” process, we will make it possible for relevant organisations to share CRB checks.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer)(Con)]

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

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)]

The Department has been concerned with the spending review. It is essential for us to bring down the budget deficit, drive economic growth, and pull Britain together.

The Department has also had an opportunity to decentralise power and promote fairness in our society. We are committed to a £6.5 billion affordable housing and decent housing regime; we are tackling the pressure on social services by providing an additional £2 billion in support for adult social care; we are helping the vulnerable with the £6.5 billion Supporting People programme; we are giving councils unprecedented flexibility by ending ring-fencing; and we are folding £7 billion into formula grant.

[Julian Sturdy]

Can the Minister outline the powers invested in local authorities to restrict the spread of houses in multiple occupation in areas where large numbers of such houses are causing concern to local communities?

[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

My hon. Friend is right to point out that there are instances in which HMOs cause problems for local communities. Indeed, it happens in my own constituency.

On their last day in office, the last Government introduced a blanket authority requiring HMO planning permission to be obtained everywhere in the country before the use of a property could be changed. On 1 October, we altered the arrangement to ensure that it could be zoned as and where a local authority needed it to be.

[Diana R. Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

T3. In the light of the 60% cuts in the social housing budget that were announced yesterday, will one of the Ministers tell me whether the private finance initiative scheme in Orchard Park and the stock transfer in Bransholme will go ahead?

[Grant Shapps]

Now that the spending review is out of the way, we shall be able to announce which PFI projects will be able to continue.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

T2. Council tax payers in my constituency have been dismayed by golden goodbyes for council bosses since the move to one council for Wiltshire. Just four staff shared nearly £2 million in remuneration in their final 12 months in post. Will the Secretary of State bring into line the Local Government (Early Termination of Employment) (Discretionary Compensation) Regulations 2006, which have made that scandal possible?

[Mr Pickles]

This has been a more than unfortunate feature of local government for a long time. We have seen chief executives move from one authority and receive a very generous farewell, only to join another authority. It is completely unacceptable. If local authorities do not deal with the position themselves, the Government will be left with no alternative but to take the necessary action. However, I believe that allowing an entire council, rather than a tiny, cosy elite, to decide such matters on the floor of the chamber will make a difference.

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

T6. Last week, the Government announced that in London the responsibilities of the Homes and Communities Agency would be passed to the Mayor. What assurances can the Secretary of State give that this decision is not being used as a ruse to deprive London of much-needed investment in affordable housing? What extra funding will the Mayor of London get to enable him to fulfil these new responsibilities?

[Grant Shapps]

We think that, in line with localism, it is very important that money goes directly to the place where it is required. The way in which the Homes and Communities Agency operated in London was a great example of how not to do it, because we ended up with the chief executive of the national HCA, a London chief executive for the HCA and the elected Mayor having to work almost against each other. There is no point in that, because we can simplify things by having the money go direct. The amount of funding will now be resolved, with the spending review out of the way.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

T4. The abolition of the Standards Board for England is greatly welcomed across the country, but it will have to be in the local government Bill. At the moment, there is a rush of new complaints, many of which are frivolous and malicious. Is there any way in which those can be stopped now, by stopping referrals to the Standards Board for England?

[Mr Pickles]

In fairness to the standards boards, they are trying to take away some of the more frivolous and silly complaints, the lowest level of which was the complaint that Ken Livingstone had been rude to a journalist—the very thought sends shivers down my spine, of course. Even if Ken had been a little emotional that night, the right thing is for the people to decide; it is for the electors to decide, not a quango. That entire investigation cost £200,000 and it was utterly pointless. I am doing my bit by taking substantial sums away from the standards boards.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

T7. Has the Minister assessed how the 28% cut in local authority funding over four years will affect women, who are more likely to use and work for local authority services?

[Mr Pickles]

We will of course be making a full assessment. I say to the hon. Lady that the correct figure is 26% and that if we had not taken this decision, we would be facing savage and uncontrolled cuts in local authorities, because of the Labour party’s failure. We have a plan—the Labour party does not.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

T5. As we all know, the previous Labour Government managed to build only 14,000 new social houses during their entire period. [Interruption.] Oh yes it is true.

[Hon. Members]

Oh not it’s not.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I ask the hon. Gentleman to spit it out.

[Neil Carmichael]

My question is: how will the measures that we announced yesterday help to ensure more supply and enable people to get on a waiting list that has some meaning and where there is some chance of their getting a house?

[Mr Pickles]

The reaction of those on the Labour Benches clearly demonstrates that the previous policy was indeed a pantomime. We are determined to break through the hypocrisy that exists on social housing. In order to halve the existing waiting list, we would have had to spend about £50 billion. The Labour party produced a scheme that did not work. Ours goes with the natural flow of the housing market, and I am pleased to see chief officers of housing associations welcoming it and welcoming the flexibility. We will be able to implement many of the plans that the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) so gallantly pioneered, only to be stopped by the previous Prime Minister.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

T9. According to Allister Hayman of the Local Government Chronicle, regional development agency network liabilities have reached £1.5 billion and could rise as high as £2.5 billion. The Government plan a freeze on RDA spending beyond March 2011, which includes match funding, so how will this funding gap on Department for Communities and Local Government programmes partnered by the eight RDAs be met? Will the Government’s new local enterprise partnerships be adequately funded when they begin?

[Mr Pickles]

We are clearly examining the commitments made by RDAs. I express a high degree of disappointment that in the purdah period between the change of Government a number of contracts were entered into inappropriately. We will be doing our best to sort out that mess and see that the assets are returned to the new local enterprise partnerships. I must say that I am very disappointed at the irresponsible attitude that some RDAs displayed during that period.

[Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)]

T8. We have just heard about RDAs, and it is great news to me that we are moving towards local enterprise partnerships. People across Norfolk have come together—businesses, small businesses, the Federation of Small Businesses, the chamber of commerce, some big organisations, local authorities and the university—to put together a bid just for Norfolk. Does the Minister agree that this is a much better way to true localism, which enables us to see local economies grow, and will he look sympathetically at the Norfolk bid for a LEP?

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

I will certainly look sympathetically at it, although I cannot pre-empt the conclusions of the review. I think the process of inviting bids between business, local authorities, universities and the voluntary sector for LEPs has resulted, as Members will see shortly, in a fantastic set of proposals that will give energy and dynamism to the regeneration of some of the communities that need it most.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Last year, the Minister for Housing in the Labour Government allocated money to replace more than 100 council pre-fabs because the foundations were collapsing. Earlier this year, this Government decided to stop that money even though it had been allocated. All those pensioners and disabled people are waiting for those new homes. In this brave new world of £6.5 billion, can I get on the phone to Bolsover district council now and tell them that the Tarran bungalows are to be replaced?

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Gentleman will be delighted to know that out of the £6.5 billion of money going to social housing, £2.1 billion is going to continue with the decent homes programme. I can also give him a further undertaking: we will ensure that, unlike my immediate predecessor, I do not raid that budget—as he did last July—to take some of the money and put it into a re-announced announcement elsewhere in the budget.

[Mr Skinner]

So the answer is no, then, is it?

[Mr Speaker]

Order.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

T10. How will the Department impress on local authorities the need to commission as many of their services as possible from the voluntary sector, small business and community groups seriously to deliver more cost-effective, creative and innovative services at the front line?

[Greg Clark]

That is a very good question from my hon. Friend. It is important, as I said earlier, that we do not centralise in the town hall at a time when we are decentralising from the Government. In fact, the chief executive of the voluntary organisations’ umbrella body said that he was highly encouraged by our proposals to entrench these rights for community groups to receive funding from local authorities.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

May I ask the Secretary of State, on the invitation of Haringey council, whether he would come to Tottenham and spend an evening in one of my estates? There is now real concern about homelessness in Haringey with the cut to housing benefit, the desire to take social housing rents to the same level as those in the private sector and the cut of 28% to local authority grants. Will he come to Tottenham and spend an evening with the community?

[Grant Shapps]

The question relates to the problem of homelessness, which is close to my heart. I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that there is £12.25 million, much of which will go to London authorities, to help with transition. I know that he has 4,500 non-decent homes left within his arm’s length management organisation stock that the new £2.1 billion will assist. On behalf of the Secretary of State, I shall be happy personally to accept his invitation and come and spend an evening in the estates with him. I look forward to it.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. If I am to accommodate a few more questions, they must be very brief, and so must the answers.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Because it is both topical and urgent, I ask the Minister to refer back to question 5. Local authorities are not necessarily taking any notice of what the coalition Government Ministers are saying in their pronouncements, particularly in the case of officers at Colchester borough council. Will he therefore visit Myland parish council in Colchester to see the absurd proposals that are going forward there?

[Mr Pickles]

If we are organising trips around the country, the least I can do is come and see my hon. Friend in Colchester.

[Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State tell the House whether he believes that house prices will rise or fall over the next six months? If they fall, would he see that as a good thing or a bad thing?

[Grant Shapps]

House prices will fluctuate. [Interruption.] It is obvious. We do not want to see house prices doubling in a period of just 10 years as happened under the last Labour Government, locking generations out of being able to get a foot on the housing ladder. This Government want to help people on to the housing ladder, not exclude them.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

Last Friday, local volunteer groups in conjunction with Tamworth borough council launched the Tamworth community action network, which enables local volunteers to use council office space to provide volunteer services and recruit more volunteers. Will Ministers commend this local initiative, and will they consider visiting when time allows?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)]

I think that is the third invitation to Ministers to visit Members’ constituencies in this set of topical questions. The hon. Gentleman has referred to an excellent project. It is an exemplar that we are keen to see replicated elsewhere, and I look forward to visiting it.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

Yesterday we heard about the supposedly extra money that councils will get to meet the care needs of the elderly and disabled. How much is that sum of money compared with the total overall cuts faced by local government? I am concerned that what is being given with one hand is being taken away with the other.

[Mr Pickles]

That is an outrageous suggestion. For years upon years I stood at the Opposition Dispatch Box demanding that the money be released from the health authority to local authorities to deal with this. We have done that; the hon. Lady should be saying thank you.

[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State join me in welcoming the plan set out by Wirral council under its leader Jeff Green to tackle the debt left in the council by the previous, Labour, administration, first through introducing transparency by publishing all expenditure over £500 and, secondly, through a wide consultation with all the Wirral public?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

I recently visited Wirral and met Councillor Green, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right that the council is using a number of innovative measures not only in the transparency agenda, but in the imaginative use of community facilities such as fire stations working conjointly with youth groups in the big society.

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

Will the Liberal Minister now answer the question that has already been asked twice during this Question Time? What is his assessment of the PricewaterhouseCoopers report about extensive job losses in the private sector?

[Andrew Stunell]

My assessment is that, like a lot of reporting of what the coalition agreement and the comprehensive spending review are about, it is purely speculative. What we have actually got is a programme for growth in the private sector and in small businesses, and we are putting the British economy back on its feet.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Is the Secretary of State aware that hard-pressed taxpayers in Harlow and elsewhere are paying the East of England Development Agency chief executive a higher salary than the Prime Minister? When the Secretary of State gets rid of this unnecessary and wasteful bureaucracy, will he ensure that the new local enterprise partnerships no longer waste taxpayers’ money in this way?

[Mr Pickles]

Absolutely, and I will certainly be willing to go to the chief executive’s leaving party.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that changes to housing benefit, secure tenancies and the raising of rents will take us back to the “Cathy Come Home” era?

[Grant Shapps]

No, I do not agree with the hon. Lady and I will tell her this. The last Government used to claim there were just 440 people sleeping on our streets. That is not true. When we came into office we conducted a proper count, and the right figure is 1,247. Hiding the problem is not solving it; this Government are protecting the most vulnerable in society, and that includes the homeless.

Business of the House

Thursday 21st October 2010 Commons Chamber

11:33

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

May I ask the Leader of the House to give us the forthcoming business?

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

The business for the week commencing 25 October will be as follows:

Monday 25 October—Proceedings on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill (Day 5).

Tuesday 26 October—Second Reading of the Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill.

Wednesday 27 October—Second Reading of the Postal Services Bill.

Thursday 28 October—General debate on the comprehensive spending review.

The provisional business for the week commencing 1 November will include:

Monday 1 November—Remaining stages of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill (Day 1).

Tuesday 2 November— Remaining stages of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill (Day 2).

Wednesday 3 November—General debate on the report of the Bloody Sunday inquiry.

Thursday 4 November—General debate on the strategic defence and security review.

Colleagues will also wish to know that, subject to the progress of business, the House will rise for the February recess on Thursday 17 February 2011 and return on Monday 28 February 2011. The House will rise for the Easter recess on Tuesday 5 April 2011 and return on Tuesday 26 April 2011. The House will rise for the Whitsun recess on Tuesday 24 May 2011 and return on Tuesday 7 June 2011. The House will rise for the summer recess on Tuesday 19 July 2011 and return on Monday 5 September 2011. The House will rise for the conference recess on Thursday 15 September 2011 and return on Monday 10 October 2011. The House will rise for the Christmas recess on Tuesday 20 December 2011 and return on Tuesday 10 January 2012.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 4 November will be:

Thursday 4 November—Impact of the comprehensive spending review on the Department for Work and Pensions.

[Hilary Benn]

I thank the Leader of the House for his statement and the recess dates, but when will we know the dates for the rest of the Session?

Last week I raised with the Leader of the House the fact that major Government announcements were appearing in newspapers before they were made to the House. This week—one of profound importance for the country—we find that exactly the same thing has happened again. Details of Tuesday’s strategic defence and security review were in the newspapers over several days leading up to it. In other words, journalists got lots of advance information, whereas the Leader of the Opposition got the Prime Minister’s statement only 15 minutes before it was made, and in recent days much of the comprehensive spending review has been leaked before the Chancellor got around to telling us about it yesterday.

It seems pretty clear now that Ministers believe that those who report on Parliament are much more important than those who are actually Members of Parliament. It has got so bad that the Conservative former parliamentary candidate and blogger Iain Dale has urged you, Mr Speaker, to take the Government to the cleaners over what has been going on. I wonder, therefore, whether the Leader of the House has plans to clean up this mess. He did not explain last week, but perhaps he can do so now.

On the rights of Members, and following our exchanges last week about the amount of time we will have to debate the CSR, will the Leader of the House now recognise that one day for debate is simply not enough, and that denying the House the opportunity to vote on what is a reckless gamble is simply not good enough either? Will he find more time so that we can debate why Ministers, who have just got jobs, were cheering at the end of yesterday’s statement when other people are about to lose their jobs? Will he also find time to debate the inability of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury on television yesterday to explain why the poorest 10% in society will be forced to pay more to reduce the deficit than almost anybody else, when his boss claims that the spending review is anchored in fairness? If the Chief Secretary cannot manage to find the words, perhaps he could walk into the Chamber carrying his briefing folder so that we can take a photograph of it and put a copy in the Library.

Will the Leader of the House find more time so that we can debate why families with children will have to pay more than twice the amount that the banks, which caused the problem, are being asked to contribute? And how exactly will making nearly 500,000 people in the public sector lose their jobs help the economy to recover and create new jobs?

All of this will require time, especially given that we know from last summer’s emergency budget that the truth has a habit of seeping out once the fine print starts to be examined. So can the Leader of the House now give the House the assurance it is looking for from him that Members will have the chance to debate the CSR properly, and to vote on it?

Finally, this week we have been debating the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill on the Floor of the House. On Monday about 100 pages of amendments were tabled. We are now told that there will be a number of statutory instruments to allow for a combination of polls, with even further amendments to follow. The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) told the House:

“I am very keen that on matters to do with elections this House should get to pronounce before the Bill goes to the other place…we will seek to achieve that.”—[Official Report, 18 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 653.]

As far as I can see, the only way to do this is to reschedule either the fifth day of the Committee stage or the remaining stages that the Leader of the House has outlined this morning. Otherwise the House, which has already been unable to discuss very important parts of the Bill because of the speed at which it is being rammed through, will not be able to consider the amendments before they go to the other place, and the Minister’s pledge will not have been met. Will the Leader of the House make a statement on this matter?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his questions. I have already announced the dates of the Christmas recess, so I am not quite sure which further dates in this Session he was asking about.

May I return to the right hon. Gentleman’s question about a second day for debate on the CSR? The last time this House heard a comprehensive spending review was in 2007, under the Government of whom he was a member. All we had then was a statement, and—at a time when the Government were in total control of the parliamentary timetable—there was no debate whatever. Indeed, so badly did the previous Government behave that the Liaison Committee said about their performance:

“It is absurd that the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review was discussed for only an hour and a half in the Chamber, and makes a mockery of the House’s right to scrutinise government expenditure.”

That is what happened last time there was a CSR.

In the meantime we have had the Wright Committee report, which recommended transferring to the Backbench Business Committee responsibility for fixing debates, and made it absolutely clear that debates on spending reviews were a matter for the House, not for the Government. Notwithstanding that, the Government have found a day out of their own time to debate the CSR, and that is what we will do next Thursday. The right hon. Gentleman may want to restore his party’s reputation on the matter, and when the Opposition are given an Opposition day, which I hope to announce quite soon, it will be perfectly open to them to use that day for a second day of debate on the CSR.

The right hon. Gentleman then asked me about the leaks. I was slightly surprised to hear Opposition Members having the chutzpah to complain about leaks and pre-briefing, when for 13 years this House was deliberately and systematically sidelined by professional spinners and manipulators in No. 10. I listened to the Chancellor’s statement, and the reason why my colleagues waved their Order Papers was that it was an outstanding parliamentary performance. When the shadow Chancellor sat down, he did not get the same response from his Back Benchers.

On the question of leaks, I listened to the CSR statement, and the vast majority of the CSR was announced first to the House, including the housing benefit reforms, the child benefit changes and the replacement of the education maintenance allowance. But, as with any major announcement, there is inevitably speculation in the press and in the media, and hon. Members should not believe everything that they read in the press. For example, I read that the cold weather payments were going to be abolished, and they were not.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. A very large number of right hon. and hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye and there is some pressure on time, so I appeal, as always, for single, short supplementary questions and, of course, to the Leader of the House to exercise his characteristic pithiness in reply.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

On the eve of European health and safety week, is the Leader of the House aware of the excessive bureaucracy that Essex county council highways department has imposed upon the village of Coggeshall in my constituency just to put up its village Christmas tree and lights? Can he please reassure my constituents that he will work across Government to ensure that the over-zealous bureaucrats at the highways department do not kill Christmas in Coggeshall?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. But first, I should have answered the question that the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) asked about the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. I must say that if the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) did not speak for quite so long—he spoke twice for 50 minutes—we would have more time to reach other parts of the Bill. We have allowed five days for Committee, which is a generous allocation, but it is up to Members to respond intelligently to the extra time that we have allocated.

On the specific issue that the right hon. Gentleman raised, I am aware of the discussions that took place, and the Minister said that the Government would seek to ensure that amendments to the Bill following the territorial elections statutory instruments would be made in this House. On 18 October we tabled an amendment to the Bill providing for a combination of the referendum with other elections in order to allow the issue to be debated in Committee, and we expect the territorial orders to be laid before Report. We will then make any necessary further amendments to the combination provisions.

I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) that we are in favour of Christmas; indeed, we are in favour of Christmas in Coggeshall. My noble Friend Lord Young—no relation—has published his report, “Common Sense, Common Safety”, and we are committed to that. We need some proportionality in all such matters, and Lord Young has recommended that officials who ban events on the grounds of health and safety should put their reasons in writing, and that citizens should have a right to challenge such decisions. If my hon. Friend gives me further details of the incident to which she has referred, I shall take it up with the appropriate Department.

[Mr Frank Doran (Aberdeen North) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House referred to the many amendments tabled to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, of which some relate to Scotland. Will the Leader of the House say whether consultations with the Scottish Government have taken place? Will he also let the House know whether a Sewel motion relating to the legislation is needed? It would need to be considered by the Scottish Parliament before issues are discussed in this House.

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House, who is taking an active part in proceedings on the Bill, has noted the hon. Gentleman’s point. To answer his first question—yes, there were consultations and discussions with the Scottish Parliament in relation to those provisions of the Bill.

[Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)]

The Government made clear yesterday their desire to see the private sector grow, increase employment and rebuild the economy. My constituency has the world centre of excellence for subsea engineering that supports the global oil and gas industry—an industry that needs to meet contracts at short notice anywhere in the world. Can the Leader of the House arrange for a ministerial statement to reassure investors in that industry that they will be able to continue to locate in this country, and still be able to move key skilled people in and out of this country at short notice?

[Sir George Young]

I understand the importance of that industry to those who work in my hon. Friend’s constituency. I will raise with my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration the question of the cap on non-EU work permits, if that is the specific issue that my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) is raising. There will be a further opportunity to raise the matter on the Floor of the House at Home Office questions on 18 November.

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

May I return to the important constitutional matters in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill that there has not been time to debate on the Floor of the House? One of them relates to Wales. The main clauses relating to Wales were debated yesterday, but we did not get to the critical clause—clause 11, which relates specifically to the National Assembly—although the Secretary of State for Wales stated in a letter to all Welsh Members that that clause would be debated. Indeed, that was the very reason why she denied our request for a sitting of the Welsh Grand Committee. May I therefore ask the Leader of the House to make urgent representations to the Secretary of State for Wales on the pressing need to reinstate the Welsh Grand Committee, so that we can debate that critical matter for the people of Wales?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but I cannot accede to that request. When I came into the Chamber to listen to the debate yesterday, Wales was being discussed most of the time, so the notion that it has not been possible to discuss matters relating to Wales simply does not stand up. There will be opportunities on Report to debate the parts of the Bill that were not reached in Committee—but I have to say that if hon. Members want to reach the necessary clauses they should exert some self-discipline, and not speak interminably on certain matters so that key parts of the Bill are not reached.

[Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

Mrs Jan Berry, the independent Reducing Bureaucracy in Policing Advocate, has recently reported that it takes up to 10 police officers to investigate a single burglary. Constituents of mine in Bury St Edmunds, and Stowmarket in particular, are fed up with antisocial behaviour and want to see more police on the streets, not behind their desks. Given that, will my right hon. Friend allow an urgent, and in my opinion long overdue, debate on slashing police red tape?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and agree entirely with what he says. Jan Berry has indeed produced a report, and we are grateful to her for her work on identifying some of the root causes of the sort of red tape that stops officers getting out on the streets, where people want to see them. Police officers should be crime fighters, not form writers, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is determined to reduce bureaucracy and improve efficiency, so that resources are not wasted and can reach the front line.

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

The Leader of the House announced earlier that the subject for debate in Westminster Hall selected by the Backbench Business Committee is the effect of the CSR on the Department for Work and Pensions. May I take this opportunity to remind right hon. and hon. Members that the next open public session for representations to the Backbench Business Committee is next Monday at 5 pm in Committee Room 15, when we will welcome bids for debates on the CSR and its impact on different Departments? May I also invite the Leader of the House to attend the sitting and witness that innovation for himself?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and I will be attending her salon next Monday to see how this important innovation in how the House works operates in practice. She makes a serious point: the Chamber is not the only forum in which the Government can be held to account. There is also Westminster Hall, and there are the Select Committees. We need to put the debate on the CSR in that broader context, looking at all the opportunities to hold the Government to account.

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

On 1 October the Government reversed the planned changes to legislation on houses in multiple occupation without giving Members a chance to debate the changes. As 92% of respondents to last year’s consultation said that there should be change, will the Leader of the House ensure that Members on both sides of the House have the chance to debate this important matter?

[Sir George Young]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern. My recollection, as a former Housing Minister, is that with HMOs over a certain size there is an obligation for the local authority to inspect and license them. With HMOs below that size, the local authority has all the powers it needs to intervene on a discretionary basis if it thinks that is right. However, I shall raise this issue with my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government and ask him to write to the hon. Gentleman.

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

The Leader of the House will know of the interest in and passionate support for Sure Start children’s centres that I and many other hon. Members have. Many of us feel betrayed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s remarks yesterday that there will be savage cuts to those children’s centres in this country. What does the Leader of the House have to say about that issue, and when can we debate it?

[Sir George Young]

I believe that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said in the CSR statement that there would be a steady cash settlement for the Sure Start programme, and that there would not be any cash reductions.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Mr Speaker, you were kind enough to grant me a debate in Westminster Hall yesterday on the regulation of independent financial advisers, which was extremely well attended by colleagues and generated an enormous amount of interest nationally. Will the Leader of the House consider holding a debate on the important topic of the regulation of the Financial Services Authority, and its performance against statutory objectives?

[Sir George Young]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her well-attended debate yesterday. The Government will be introducing legislation to reform the FSA, as she knows, and that will provide the House with an opportunity to debate the issues she has touched on.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

In the first five years of the Afghan war, only two British soldiers died in conflict. As a consequence of the incursion into Helmand province that figure is now 341. When can we debate the report of the Public Administration Committee that shows the appallingly trivial reasons why that decision was taken, which proves that the incursion into Helmand was a blunder on the scale of the charge of the Light Brigade, but with three times as many British deaths?

[Sir George Young]

Obviously, I regret any loss of life in Afghanistan. I believe that the House debated this issue, on a motion tabled by the Backbench Business Committee, in September. The new Government will respond formally in due course to the Select Committee report, which welcomed their aspirations to think more strategically through the National Security Council.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

The killer of my constituent’s sister is due to be released at weekends, despite having been sentenced barely 12 months ago to eight years for manslaughter. Can we have a debate to ensure that the Government’s drive for greater honesty in sentencing covers the decisions of judges, the Parole Board and prison governors, and also encompasses offences of homicide, because the families of victims often feel let down, shut out and deceived by the criminal justice system?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and my sympathies go first and foremost to the victim’s family. As in all criminal cases, it is for the court to decide what sentence is appropriate—but the sentencing assessment currently being conducted by the Lord Chancellor is now considering the sentencing framework as a whole. In response to my hon. Friend’s specific point, we intend to publish proposals for the reform of sentencing and criminal justice in the autumn, and I am sure that there will be an opportunity thereafter to debate them.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I am holding in my hand the most recent paper from the Library about the hours of the House. It claims that the House adjourns at 10 pm on Monday and Tuesday, at 7 pm on Wednesday and at 6 pm on Thursday. The right hon. Gentleman will have noticed that last night we did not move to the Adjournment debate until 3 minutes past 10. What is he going to do to make the hours of the House more predictable and family-friendly?

[Sir George Young]

One has to put the hon. Lady’s request in the context of the earlier request for more time to debate the constitutional measure currently going through the House. The events of this week and last week are unusual, in that we are debating a constitutional Bill on the Floor of the House and we have allowed injury time for statements that we knew were going to take place. That will not be the normal pattern of sittings, and I hope that normal service will be resumed quite soon.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Following yesterday’s vote in the European Parliament to increase the costs of maternity leave, can we find time for a debate on the impact of the additional burdens being imposed on British businesses by the European Union?

[Sir George Young]

I am disappointed by the outcome of yesterday’s vote in the European Parliament, but that is not the end of the process. The UK will work hard in Council to oppose the imposition of a requirement for fully paid maternity leave, and we expect other member states to join us. [Interruption.] If Opposition Members look at the details of the directive, they will see that it is entirely regressive, as the greatest benefits would be obtained by those earning the most.

[Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

Can we have a debate on the so-called fairness of the CSR? May I draw the right hon. Gentleman’s attention to early-day motion 862, which effectively calls on the top 10%—the wealthiest people in the country—to make a significant financial contribution to the country’s deficit?

[That this House agrees with Professor Greg Philo, research director of Glasgow University Media Group, that the UK's current financial deficit could be significantly reduced if the richest 10 per cent. of Britain's citizens paid a one off tax of just 20 per cent. of their personal wealth, which would not have any immediate impact on their quality of life; notes that 74 per cent. of the British public polled recently agree with this proposal; further notes that if this were to happen there would be no need for drastic cuts to public services and armed forces, and there would be less need for major job losses; and therefore calls on the Government to explore how this objective could be achieved, either on a voluntary basis or by legislation if necessary.]

That money, which those people will never spend, would make a significant contribution to reducing the deficit and alleviating the anxieties of UK citizens.

[Sir George Young]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have announced when the CSR will be debated, and those points can be made then. If he looks at the tables in the back of the paper published yesterday—tables B4, B5 and B6—he will see that the top 10% are bearing a disproportionate part of the burden, and rightly so.

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

As has been highlighted by both the Burton Mail and the Federation of Small Businesses, small businesses in Burton and across the country are suffering as a result of larger firms unilaterally extending payment terms from 30 days to 60 days—or to 90 days in some cases. Given that those firms are struggling as a result of difficulties in accessing finance from the banks, can we have an urgent debate to see what we can do about that double whammy, and to support small businesses across the country?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He will know that the Government are taking steps to help small businesses by, for example, requiring that a certain percentage of contracts be put out to be bid for by small and medium-sized businesses. On whether there should be a statutory requirement to settle a bill within a finite number of days, the House has discussed this issue and has so far resisted legislating on it. However, I shall certainly draw his concerns to the attention of my colleagues at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to see whether this is an issue that we might reconsider.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Yesterday the coalition Government announced huge projected increases in unemployment. How high will unemployment have to rise before the Government change their economic strategy? Can we have a statement please?

[Sir George Young]

I am not aware of any forecast increases in unemployment. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the figures that the Office for Budget Responsibility published after we made clear our intention to tackle the deficit and take £83 billion out, he will see that for every year in the coming four years, it predicted a fall in unemployment and a rise in employment. In the second quarter of this year about 300,000 jobs were created, so we need to put all that in a slightly different context.

[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

On Second Reading of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill there was not time for every hon. Member who wished to contribute to speak—and that includes me. During last night’s Committee deliberations the guillotine fell before we got to the debate on the contrast between the Government’s benchmarking of constituencies except for the Western Isles—or Na h-Eileanan an Iar—and the situation for my constituency. The Western Isles constituency has only three islands, whereas mine has 13, which can be reached only by sea or air. The Western Isles has an electorate of 22,000, whereas Argyll and Bute has 67,000 and has double the land area of the Western Isles. Can we have a debate on that important issue on Report?

[Sir George Young]

I am sorry that because of the verbosity of certain Members we did not reach as many stages of the Bill as we would have liked. However, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that those issues are important, and I hope that, within the constraints that he will understand, it will be possible to debate them on Report.

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

Bearing in mind that the Foreign Secretary hosted a visit by the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister this week, may we have an early debate on the situation in Sri Lanka so that Members can ask whether robust statements were made about that island regarding the continuing detention of people, the human rights position, the freedom of the media, and the imprisonment of people who stood in elections?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that question, and I will pass his comments on to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. In addition, on 16 November he will have an opportunity to put those points to Foreign Office Ministers when they are at the Dispatch Box.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the future of the politically correct Equality and Human Rights Commission? In a recent parliamentary answer to me, it emerged that in the past four years the commission has had 25 complaints from its own staff about sex discrimination, race discrimination or disability discrimination. Is it not ludicrous that it is given so much public money to stamp out discrimination across the workplace when it has such a bad record itself, and is it not time that this ridiculous body was abolished?

[Sir George Young]

As always, I welcome my hon. Friend’s robust comments. We will shortly introduce a public bodies Bill following the statement that my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office made last Thursday. If my hon. Friend catches Mr Speaker’s eye during the Second Reading of that Bill, he may find an opportunity to develop at greater length the points that he has made.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The Leader of the House made the very welcome statement that the statutory instruments will be laid before the Report stage of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, but he left two things out. First, can he confirm that he will be using the affirmative procedure for those statutory instruments? Secondly, given that they are statutory instruments consequential to a constitutional Bill about elections, will he be taking them here on the Floor of the House?

[Sir George Young]

I should like to reflect on the points that the hon. Gentleman has made and write to him.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Earlier this year, the Chancellor made a welcome announcement about proposals to look into growth hubs. Staffordshire university in my constituency, and Keele university in the constituency of the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly), are both looking at the possibility of forming such a growth hub. These are extremely important in enabling new, high-growth-potential businesses to get going, so may we have debate on the subject?

[Sir George Young]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s interest in this, and I agree that it is important that we have a debate. He could apply for a debate in Westminster Hall or an Adjournment debate, or he could come along with me to the Backbench Business Committee on Monday and make a bid for a debate in Back-Bench time.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

First, I thank the Leader of the House for his assistance in seeking answers from the Ministry of Defence on the issue of nuclear test veterans.

May I draw the Leader of the House’s attention to column 638W of Tuesday’s Hansard, where the Home Office confirmed that almost 5,000 children hold shotgun licences, including 26 10-year-olds, 72 11-year-olds and 134 12-year-olds? Will he ask the Home Secretary to contact the Association of the Chief Police Officers to find out why there are so many licences and whether the rules should be checked again, and then come to the House to make a statement?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and commend his energy in finding these important pieces of information. The Government are committed to a debate on our gun laws following the tragic shootings in Cumbria in July. That debate will be an opportunity to consider all aspects of gun legislation, including the age limits that he touched on.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the kite mark standard for British car garages, which I raised in my early-day motion 376?

[That this House believes that the British Standards Institution (BSI) Kitemark for Garage Services is a good step forward in supplying formal recognition of the good workmanship of some garages and their value for money; notes research which shows that 58 per cent. of people who have had a car serviced in a garage before are not totally confident that the work they have paid for has been carried out; further notes that the BSI is an independent body that owns and operates the Kitemark scheme, and has done much to improve consumer confidence in the quality of a good or service; and therefore calls on the Government to support the BSI Kitemark for Garage Services as a demonstration of compliance to a known national standard.]

Six out of 10 people who have their car serviced in a garage are not confident that the work has been carried out properly. Does my right hon. Friend agree that motorists should be assured of getting the proper service they deserve?

[Sir George Young]

Of course motorists are entitled to a high-quality service. I should like to raise with the Secretary of State for Transport the proposition that my hon. Friend has put forward and get a response. He may have an opportunity to develop his argument at greater length in an Adjournment debate or in Westminster Hall.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

My question is about the continuing disastrous handling of the Building Schools for the Future programme and the savage cuts to it. When I asked the Secretary of State for Education a very simple question—how much money was allocated to two schools in my constituency, The Grange and Wade Deacon, which had been given the go-ahead and which the Government had made great play about—I got a holding answer suggesting that he does not have a clue about what money is available for those schools. Is that not a disgraceful situation? Can the Leader of the House arrange for an urgent statement to be made to this House by the Secretary of State?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his questions. If there has been any discourtesy, I apologise for that. I will contact the appropriate Department and see whether we can expedite an answer to his specific question about the costs in those two schools.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Job creation in British small businesses is vital to the economic recovery. As well as a debate on European Union employment legislation, can we have a debate on the coalition’s proposals for further employment legislation in the coming months?

[Sir George Young]

I agree with my hon. Friend that that is an important issue. It may be possible for him to raise those important issues in the debate on the CSR that I have announced and get a response from my hon. Friends.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman, who is a former Housing Minister, may have noticed these comments by the chief executive of Shelter on the CSR:

“The government is denying responsibility for an entire generation’s ability to access affordable housing”.

Given the near-market rents for new social tenants, the lack of security, the 16% cut in capital funding and the cuts in housing benefit, when can we have a full debate on the Floor of the House on housing for a future generation, for which this Government are the first to abdicate responsibility?

[Sir George Young]

We have just had Communities and Local Government questions, when the Housing Minister said that during the 13 years of Labour Government there was a net gain of 14,000 affordable homes over 13 years. If one sets that against the 150,000 affordable homes which, following the CSR, we hope to provide over the next five years, that puts a slightly different gloss on the hon. Gentleman’s point.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

The Leader of the House has announced a full day’s debate on the comprehensive spending review. I am not sure whether he will be in a position to do this, but can he clarify who will speak on behalf of the Government, as that might be helpful for Members preparing for the debate? Who else, in an ideal world, would he like to see speaking in that debate?

[Sir George Young]

My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary will open the debate and my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary will respond. Who else takes part is a matter for Mr Speaker. However, I think it would be helpful if the former Prime Minister were able to come along and explain what steps he would have taken to address the deficit that he has left us with.

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

On the constituencies and boundaries Bill—the Parliamentary Voting and Constituencies Bill—the Leader of the House mentioned the importance of a variety of means of scrutiny. First, will he ensure that the recommendations of the Welsh Affairs Committee, which are to be published next week, will be taken seriously by him in his deliberations and by the Government? Secondly, will he confirm that the SIs will be dealt with before Report? Finally, will he ensure that the Welsh Assembly is properly consulted?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. In future, Members should avoid asking three questions. It is a bit cheeky and rather unfair on colleagues.

[Sir George Young]

I will choose to answer one of them. The Welsh Affairs Committee report will be available to the Government before the Report stage, and it will therefore be possible to take it on board before we reach the final stages of the Bill.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

When the House introduced experimental sitting hours in 2003-05, whereby we sat from 11.30 am to 7 pm on a Wednesday—as we do now—and also on a Tuesday, it was never intended that the House should sit in the morning and then through the evening until 10 o’clock, as we did yesterday. Will the Leader of the House consider reintroducing Tuesday morning sittings? Is he aware that we have sat later hours in this Parliament than we did on any night in the 2005 Parliament?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who raises the broad issue of the parliamentary calendar and whether we should change Tuesday hours back to ending at 7 o’clock instead of 10 o’clock. The Procedure Committee will examine the sitting hours and the whole parliamentary calendar, and following its inquiry I understand that it will put a range of options before the House. I agree that it is right that the House revisit the issue, because there has been a substantial change in membership since we last visited it. There will be an opportunity to look more radically at how we operate.

On my hon. Friend’s specific question, as I said in response to the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), the last two weeks have been unusual, partly because this Government want to allow adequate time to scrutinise Bills, particularly important constitutional measures. However, we do not envisage the regime that we have had for the past two weeks being the normal pattern.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

One of my constituents is serving a tariff of five years, which will come to an end in December. He has been told that he will not be released unless he undertakes a number of courses. He has undertaken 25 so far. May we have an urgent debate about why those who have paid their debt to society are further punished due to a lack of funds?

[Sir George Young]

I understand the hon. Lady’s concern on behalf of her constituent. If she would be good enough to give me the details, I will raise them with the Lord Chancellor and see whether we can get a direct response.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

This new Government have shown themselves willing to put themselves up for scrutiny, especially from Members on their own side of the House—the Opposition seem to have given up. May we have a statement from him on whether we could go slightly further and look into having confirmation hearings for new Cabinet Ministers?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend introduced a ten-minute rule Bill on Tuesday proposing the abolition of the Whips Office. I am not sure that it was an intelligent career move. The notion of confirmatory hearings for Cabinet Ministers is a novel constitutional innovation, because responsibility currently rests with the Prime Minister. Whether he would want to share it with my hon. Friend and others is a matter for him, so on this particular issue my hon. Friend will just have to hold his breath.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The Leader of the House must understand that the comprehensive spending review is unprecedented. It will make 500,000 public sector workers unemployed, cut investment in housing by half and make families pay more towards cutting the deficit than the bankers who created the problem in the first place and who still pay themselves excessive bonuses. We need extra time to scrutinise all that, and Opposition Back Benchers need to be able to hold the Government to account for what they are doing right across the public sector as a result of the comprehensive spending review. Comparing the situation with what the previous Government did will not wash. We need more time to discuss the CSR, in Government time.

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Gentleman should read what the Wright Committee report said about debates on spending reviews. It made it absolutely clear that they were a matter for the House.

I simply do not agree with what the hon. Gentleman says about who will pay for the CSR. For the first time, we have produced and published distributional analyses of the impact of the spending review. They show clearly that those with the highest incomes will shoulder the greatest burden, and rightly so. It is not the case that families with children will pay more than twice the amount that banks are being asked to contribute. The child tax credit provision introduced yesterday will protect the least well-off families. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s premise, but he will have an opportunity to debate the matter in the time that we have made available to debate the CSR, which strictly speaking we need not have. My right hon. and hon. Friends will rebut all his propositions.

[Diana R. Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

The Leader of the House will know that in 2007 Hull was one of the areas that were very badly flooded. Ever since, it has been very difficult for my constituents to get reasonably priced insurance, or indeed insurance at all. In the light of the cuts that were made yesterday to the available flooding protection money, may we have a debate in Government time to discuss the direct impact on my constituents, who will now have sky-high insurance premiums, or whether insurance will be withdrawn from the city of Hull altogether?

[Sir George Young]

I understand the problem of those who find it difficult to get insurance because of either past floods or the prospect of floods. There will be an opportunity on 4 November to raise the issue with Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Ministers, but in the meantime I will write to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to share the hon. Lady’s concerns and see whether we can take any measures in consultation with the Association of British Insurers and others to ensure that householders get the insurance they need at an affordable price.

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

International research has been cited in The Observer showing that black people are 26 times more likely to be stopped and searched in England and Wales. The researchers said that that was the most glaring example of racial profiling that they had seen. That figure is shocking, and I say to the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who appears no longer to be in his place, that it is precisely why we should retain the Equality and Human Rights Commission. May we have an urgent debate on the matter, to discern whether the police in England and Wales are using their powers of stop and search appropriately?

[Sir George Young]

I think those powers were extended to the police by the previous Administration. We are not abolishing the EHRC, and we are against any racial profiling when it comes to stop and search. I will raise the issue with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and ask her to respond.

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the Leader of the House and to colleagues for their economy, which has enabled everyone to get in within a pretty reasonable time frame.

Points of Order

Thursday 21st October 2010 Commons Chamber

12:15

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I was not here for the Leader of the House’s business statement, but I gather that the issue was raised of the statutory instruments that will have to be laid in relation to combining polls in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. They have not yet been laid, but after they are, amendments will have to be made to the Parliament Voting System and Constituencies Bill, which will complete its Committee stage on Monday.

The Leader of the House has not yet said whether those statutory instruments will be laid and considered before Report. Otherwise, we would not be able to debate all the processes for elections in this House, and they would have to be debated in the other House. Is there any way in which we can ensure that we have clarity? As the junior Minister said in the debate the other day, it would be wholly inappropriate if matters affecting elections were decided not in this House but in the other, unelected Chamber.

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. He is seeking light to be shed on the matter. It is possible that the Leader of the House might wish to assist, but he is under no obligation to do so. It appears that he does not wish to do so at this stage. However, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is nothing if not an assiduous and conscientious parliamentarian, and he has got his point across with some force. Although the Leader of the House has not responded to it, I think I can confidently say that he has heard it.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I refer to column 990 of this morning’s Hansard. You may recall that yesterday, the Chancellor made great play of his support for the Mersey Gateway bridge, which would be in my constituency. I welcome that, but I asked him a very simple question about what funding the Government had allocated. He said that he did not know, but that he would come back to me “this afternoon”. He later said that he would do so “later today”. As of a few minutes ago, I have heard nothing from the Chancellor’s office even though my office has been in touch with his. May I ask for your advice? Is that not a discourtesy not just to me but to the House? Opposition Members are concerned about the smoke and mirrors of the Government announcing schemes and cutting funding at the same time. There is a very simple way for the Government to deal with that—they should tell us what funding there is.

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order, which I dare say he will share with his local media. I entirely understand his frustration and disappointment, but there are other ways in which he can pursue the matter. He may choose, of course, to provide the extract of his point of order and my response to it to the Treasury, to hasten the very reply that he so eagerly seeks. I do not think I can offer him any further encouragement than that, but he has been in this place for quite a long time, and I have a feeling that questions will be forthcoming if the reply that he wants is not.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Could you clarify for me, as a new Member, whether a Member who seeks to ask a parliamentary question and has registered a shareholding in the industry to which they are referring should, when they stand, make that share interest clear to the House?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. The answer to his question is that it is up to the Member to decide whether to do so in the way that he favours. Members certainly have a responsibility to declare their interests in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Some Members, on speaking in a debate to which they might think those interests are relevant, do choose to announce them, usually at the start of a speech, but as far as I am aware there is no absolute obligation to do so. I have a feeling that the hon. Gentleman will probably wish to pursue the matter with his usual intensity.



Bills Presented

Equality and Diversity (Reform) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Philip Davies, supported by Mr David Davis, Mr Peter Lilley, Mr John Whittingdale, Mr Greg Knight, Mr Graham Brady, Mr Christopher Chope, Mr David Nuttall and Mr Philip Hollobone, presented a Bill to prohibit the use of affirmative and positive action in recruitment and appointment processes; to repeal the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 21 October 2011, and to be printed (Bill 82).

Further and Higher Education (Access) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr David Nuttall and Priti Patel, presented a Bill to make provision to require all institutions of further and higher education in receipt of public funds to allocate places on merit; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 4 March 2011, and to be printed (Bill 83).

Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulation Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr David Nuttall and Priti Patel, presented a Bill to reduce the duties on employers to report matters under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 17 December 2011, and to be printed (Bill 84 ).

Compensation (Limitation) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr David Nuttall and Priti Patel, presented a Bill to prevent conditional fee agreement success fees and after the event insurance premiums being recoverable from the losing party in civil litigation; to facilitate damages-based agreements for contingency fees in respect of successful litigants; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 18 March 2011, and to be printed (Bill 85).

Local Government Ombudsman (Amendment) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr David Nuttall, Mr Greg Knight and Priti Patel, presented a Bill to extend the powers of the Local Government Ombudsman to provide redress against local authorities which unreasonably ban events on the grounds of health and safety.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 18 March 2011, and to be printed (Bill 86).

Low Hazard Workplaces (Risk Assessment Exemption) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr David Nuttall and Priti Patel, presented a Bill to exempt employers from the requirement to produce a written risk assessment in respect of low hazard workplaces and the premises of those working from their own home with low hazard equipment.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 24 June 2011, and to be printed (Bill 87).

Self-employment (Risk Assessment Exemption) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr David Nuttall and Priti Patel, presented a Bill to exempt self-employed persons engaged in low hazard activity from the requirement to produce a written risk assessment.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 1 July 2011, and to be printed (Bill 88).

Health and Safety Consultants (Qualifications) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr David Nuttall and Priti Patel, presented a Bill to introduce qualification requirements for health and safety consultants; to provide accreditation for such consultants; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 8 July 2011, and to be printed (Bill 89).

Criminal Records (Public Access) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr David Nuttall, Mr Greg Knight and Priti Patel, presented a Bill to facilitate access by members of the public to the registers of the Criminal Records Office.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 13 May 2011, and to be printed (Bill 90).

Activity Centres (Young Persons’ Safety) (Amendment) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr David Nuttall, Mr Greg Knight and Priti Patel, presented a Bill to abolish the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 20 May 2011, and to be printed (Bill 91).

Health and Safety at Work (Amendment) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr David Nuttall and Priti Patel, presented a Bill to amend the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 in respect of systems of risk assessment; to make provision for separate requirements for play, leisure and work-based activities; to introduce simplified risk assessments for schools; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 15 July 2011, and to be printed (Bill 92).

Sale of Park Homes Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr David Nuttall, Mr Greg Knight and Priti Patel, presented a Bill to facilitate the sale of park homes by residential owners; to restrict the ability of site owners to interfere in such sales; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 1 April 2011, and to be printed (Bill 93).

Volunteering Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr David Nuttall and Priti Patel, presented a Bill to make provision to promote volunteering; to enable potential volunteers to obtain a fit and proper person certificate for their activities; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 10 June 2011, and to be printed (Bill 94).

Road Traffic Accident (Personal Injury) (Amendment) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr David Nuttall, Mr Greg Knight and Priti Patel, presented a Bill to raise to £25,000 the upper limit for awards for road traffic accident personal injury claims introduced under the simplified claims procedure.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 11 March 2011, and to be printed (Bill 95).

National Health Service Redress (Amendment) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr David Nuttall and Priti Patel, presented a Bill to amend the National Health Service Redress Act 2006 to facilitate faster resolution of claims and reduce costs; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 9 September 2011, and to be printed (Bill 96).

[Mr Speaker]

We are grateful, and the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) will prove to be a very busy bee.

Local Government Bill [Lords]

Thursday 21st October 2010 Commons Chamber

Second Reading

12:23

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

It was not possible in Question Time to address the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) directly, and I want formally to say how welcome she is to her appointment. I am sure that she will be a formidable opponent at the Dispatch Box. I noted her expressions of willingness to work with us on several issues. As we share similar views on several matters, I expect that to happen. However, if it does not work out, we will always have Paris. I just leave that hanging in the air.

The Bill simply fulfils the commitment in the coalition agreement that

“we will stop the restructuring of councils in Norfolk, Suffolk and Devon.”

It is a short Bill—indeed, the explanatory notes, the European convention on human rights certification, the contents and the front page are longer than the Bill, which has only one substantive clause. I doubt whether all the Bills that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) moved will be as short as this Bill. However, at last we know exactly what the future holds for people living in the aforementioned counties. In fact, since the Bill is so obviously a common-sense and worthwhile measure, it is worth reminding the House why it is needed.

It is quite a saga, worthy of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce in Charles Dickens’s “Bleak House”. Through the magic of Mr Dickens’s words, that case has become a byword for an interminable and pointless proceeding. So we find ourselves with the Bill. With judicial reviews, a league of lobbyists and dubious challenges on hybridity, the measure ran the risk of becoming, to misquote Dickens, “a scarecrow of a”

Bill, which would,

“in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means.”

So let us remind ourselves of how we got into that mess.

In the dying days of the Labour Government, the then Secretary of State chose to defy common sense and overturn the decision of his Labour predecessor. He decided to ignore independent advice and unilaterally impose unitary councils in the areas that we are considering. He has moved to pastures new, leaving us with an unwanted and worthless legacy. Why was that Labour civil war necessary? Why was Labour Secretary of State pitched against Labour Secretary of State? No one really knows. In the former Secretary of State’s absence, I suppose that I will do my best to guess and help out.

Was the reason to save money? No. There were sketchy and dubious estimates that eventually the decision might save £6 million a year, but only after spending £40 million on the costs of reorganisation. A critique by Professors Michael Chisholm and Steve Leach, noted local government experts, stated:

“The Government was economical with the truth about LGR”—

local government reorganisation—

“selective and inconsistent in its use of evidence, with the result that misleading impressions have been conveyed to local authorities, the public and Parliament.”

Perhaps that was a harsh judgment, but it is difficult to argue against it. The professors also argued that

“there are cogent reasons for thinking that minsters are exaggerating the financial benefits of unitary councils”.

If the reason was not money, perhaps it was popular fervour. Perhaps the people of Norfolk, Suffolk and Devon were crying out, “What do we want?” “A unitary council!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” Sadly, we were spared that surreal spectacle. In the most recent consultation, more than half the responses in Norfolk and 85% of those in Devon showed that the people did not want any change. That is not surprising; they just wanted the councils to get on with more important matters.

Perhaps the reason was that the councils could work more effectively if they became unitaries. No. In fact, the councils did not even fulfil the Labour Government’s own criteria for becoming unitaries. The Labour Government’s assessment was that the proposal in Exeter was unaffordable, and that the proposal in Norwich was both unaffordable and poor value for money. Yet the former Secretary of State blithely disregarded that. Instead, he cited his own deep and mysterious “compelling reasons” why those councils should become unitaries, which are perhaps the same compelling reasons why a suicide of lemmings feel the need to speed to the Scandinavian seaside. However, those reasons were not sufficiently “compelling” to persuade his own civil servants.

The former permanent secretary of the Department for Communities and Local Government, as chief accounting officer, wrote to my predecessor warning that the change

“would impact adversely on the financial position of the public sector.”

He went on to say that

“the evidence for such gains is mixed and representations that you have received provide no evidence to quantify such benefits.”

He further remarked that

“there is every likelihood of such judicial review proceedings being commenced”

and asked, as is normal in such circumstances, for written instructions to implement the proposals.

The reasons were rejected in the other place, where a motion of regret expressing strong concerns was passed overwhelmingly. All that was ultimately overturned by the High Court, which found on 5 July that the decision was unlawful, because the former Secretary of State failed to consult on departing from his Government’s own criteria. I suppose that we should forgive him for getting involved in judicial reviews—it can happen to the best of us. As a result of the court case, the structural change orders were quashed, and elections have since been held for seats in Exeter and Norwich, where contests were deferred by the orders.

Hon. Members, being reasonable people, may well ask why we need this Bill at all. I have some “compelling reasons” of my own. Although the High Court has struck down the orders that would implement the proposals, the proposals themselves still theoretically exist. They are zombie proposals that have refused to lie down and die. Anyone who follows horror movies knows that the only way to kill a zombie is to sever its head from its body. I am here today, shovel in hand, ready to perform, with the help of the House, that very task. We need to remove the possibility of anyone wasting any more time on those near-dead orders. We need to release councillors in Norfolk, Devon and Suffolk from the legal limbo in which they are trapped, so that they can get on with what really matters: protecting the front line and providing the best possible local services.

This whole story of woe illustrates the consequences of the previous Government’s command-and-control approach to local government. It mattered not what local people thought or how much it cost—they simply pressed on regardless. In contrast, this Government genuinely believe that councils work best when they are freed from the interference and micro-management that were the hallmark of the previous Administration.

The measures were the last, dying attempt of a lost, dying Government to change the structure of local government. In many ways, that was the culmination of the way in which this House has traditionally dealt with local government: it tries to change structure first, and then to allow function to follow. I am much more interested in changing the function of local government. If it is necessary in future to catch up on structure, so be it, but I do not envisage that happening for some considerable time.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State clarify for the House his understanding of the implications of the Bill? Will it prevent unitary applications coming forward only from the three counties he has mentioned, or will it prevent any applications at all?

[Mr Pickles]

I am sure the right hon. Gentleman is an assiduous reader of the specialist press. I recall seeing an article in the Municipal Journal that said that I had in the top left-hand drawer of my office a pearl-handled revolver with which to shoot the first person to suggest a restructuring of local government. The last time I checked, the revolver was fully loaded and waiting for such a person.

[Mr Bradshaw]

The Secretary of State has not answered my question on the impact of the Bill.

[Mr Pickles]

I am sorry if levity got in the way of my answer, but I shall give the same basic answer now. The Bill finishes the process I outlined. It would be theoretically possible to start the process again, were someone brave enough to come through my door to suggest that we throw £40 million of council tax payers’ money away. The Bill stops the process in respect of the counties I mentioned, but it kills only one zombie—it does not mean that another zombie will not turn up in due course.

We want to make local authorities genuine leaders of their local communities, with a real say in the issues that matter to local people, such as housing, planning and the local economy, and even the NHS. Instead of making councils turn themselves inside out in response to the whims of a Secretary of State, we are giving them the freedom, the power and the responsibility to decide for themselves what they need to do.

Of course, it is only common sense that through closer collaboration and more joint working, councils can not only save money, but improve the services on offer to local people. They do not have to become unitary to do that, or to spend £40 million getting there, or to embark on a lengthy, expensive and disruptive centrally imposed process. Most councils are ready to come together and already do so by sharing chief executives, pooling back-office functions or even departments such as planning, and conducting joint procurement. I welcome that, and we know that it will make a huge difference. The Local Government Association has said that joining up services could save around £5 billion a year.

Councils are working to eliminate every trace of waste and re-examining how they work and the way in which every service is delivered. They are concentrating on becoming more effective and more productive than ever before, but they are doing so without the Secretary of State breathing down their necks, telling them exactly what to do, when to do it, and most corrosively of all, how to do it. They know that there are more effective ways to go about that than putting themselves through the lengthy and expensive rigmarole of restructuring. People want to see their councils saving money by concentrating on what really matters to them. I do not think there are many council tax payers who would put restructuring at the top of their wish list.

The proposals for local government restructuring were nothing but a wasteful and unnecessary distraction in these straitened times. The £40 million that the process would have cost is the equivalent of the entire residential care budget in Devon for a year. The money, time and effort that might have been invested in shuffling the deckchairs can now be invested in facing up to the challenges of the future. I commend the Bill to the House.

12:38

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

I am looking forward to a number of exchanges with the Secretary of State across the Dispatch Box in the months—but, hopefully, not too many years—ahead. Just for the record, the right hon. Gentleman and I did attend a conference in Paris, but I am pleased to say that Mrs Pickles was there, as was my husband.

Characteristically, the Secretary of State made an attempt at an entertaining speech, but in doing so, he completely ignored the views of people in Exeter and Norwich and their desire for true localism in their communities. He exercised a typically liberal relationship with some of the facts. Following yesterday’s announcement of devastating cuts to local councils, the future of local Government is on all our minds. As we highlighted during Question Time, the cuts are much worse than those faced across the board in Whitehall Departments and far deeper than is necessary to deal with the deficit—and they are cuts of his choosing, not of necessity.

Let me make it clear at the outset that Labour believes in the benefits of unitary authorities, and we support the aspirations of Norwich and Exeter to achieve unitary status. Each application must be considered on its merits and on a case-by-case basis, but in principle we believe that strong local leadership and clear accountability are harder to achieve where local government has a two-tier structure. The Conservatives used to believe that too. The last time that they were in power they created 100 new unitary authorities.

The Liberal Democrats used to believe it as well, but—like their pledge not to increase VAT and their six-point plan to scrap tuition fees—their commitment to unitary authorities in Norwich and Exeter has been thrown on to the scrap heap of abandoned promises. Their policy paper, approved at Liberal Democrat party conference, states:

“Having several tiers of government can not only lead to confusion over which tier is responsible for what, but can also mean that some councils seem very remote from the communities they serve. The Liberal Democrats therefore believe that there should be a single tier of local government.”

Let me deal with a few of the arguments advanced by the Secretary of State. He says that the decision to set up unitary authorities in Norwich and Exeter does not represent value for money. He says that it will cost £40 million. That is simply not true. What he fails to mention is that the very same document from which he got those figures—the impact assessment, produced by his Department—also shows that in the same period savings of £39.4 million would be made; and in the years after that, annual savings of £6.5 million would be made. Now, if the Secretary of State does not understand the difference between up-front costs and ongoing savings, I fear that we really are in trouble in the stormy waters ahead. As his Minister in the other place, Baroness Hanham, was forced to admit, if Norwich and Exeter were given unitary status

“there ultimately would be savings”.

That is the reality.

Granting Norwich and Exeter unitary status would save the taxpayer money. The Government’s position is voluntarily to forgo the opportunity for Norwich and Exeter to save the taxpayer £6.5 million a year. The Secretary of State is within his rights to reject the application—that is his prerogative—but let him at least do it on the basis of the facts.

As for the letter of instruction from the permanent secretary, let me say this. In the end, officials are there to advise. They do not take decisions and are not accountable to Parliament. Ministers must make decisions and I believe that the previous Secretary of State was right to take the decision that he did. What the permanent secretary said was that creating unitary authorities to include the entire counties of Devon and Norfolk would create greater savings. The only problem with the proposal, however, was that it was never a viable option. The only people who appear to have supported the proposal were the permanent secretary and the Boundary Commission. It had no local support whatever, either from the cities of Norwich and Exeter or indeed from the counties of Norfolk and Devon, and it would not have met the criteria laid out by the Secretary of State.

What the permanent secretary did not say, as the Secretary of State suggested, was that the existing arrangements offered better value for money than creating unitary authorities in Norwich and Exeter. How could the right hon. Gentleman say that? As we have seen, the impact assessment produced by the Department shows clearly that after the initial up-front costs—amounting to £600,000—there would be year-on-year savings of £6.5 million. The worst value-for-money option—the most expensive option—is the current arrangement, but that is the one for which the Secretary of State has opted. So much for value for money.

Let me also deal with the points made in the High Court ruling. Of course, we accept the judgment. However, this is a political issue and it is right that it should be hammered out and determined by Parliament. The provisions relating to Exeter and Norwich were not imposed by anyone. They were debated in Parliament for more than seven hours, voted on, and approved in both Houses of Parliament. In this House and in the other place, a clear majority supported creating unitary authorities in Norwich and Exeter.

Let me remind the House that Mr Justice Ouseley made no criticism whatever on the merits of creating unitary authorities in Norwich and Exeter. He was absolutely clear that the Secretary of State was entitled to make a decision on the matter, and that it was perfectly reasonable for him to take the prevailing economic circumstances into account. He simply said that the consultation process was not adequate. The Secretary of State was not able to consult more fully than he did because of the length of time that it took for the proposals to reach him. Owing to a series of judicial reviews and legal challenges, the proposals were twice postponed and took a year longer than expected to reach the Secretary of State, which substantially reduced his ability to consult more extensively.

Mr Justice Ouseley was at pains to emphasise that his ruling in no way prevented the Secretary of State from bringing forward the proposals again after a short period of consultation, but this Secretary of State has chosen not to do so. He has chosen to deny the people of Norwich and Exeter the chance to run their own cities. The fundamental point here is what is right for Norwich and Exeter.

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

Can the right hon. Lady remind me who set up the rules and regulations under which this process made its way to the judicial review, and can she remind me of the outcome of that review in terms of the process followed by the previous Government?

[Caroline Flint]

The criteria were set up by the Labour Government as guidelines to inform the Secretary of State when making decisions about this case. Every proposal, as I have said, has to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the circumstances when the applications are made and reaching the point of final decision.

[George Hollingbery]

rose—

[Caroline Flint]

I wish to make some progress and I hope to deal further with some of the points that the hon. Gentleman has raised. I will be happy to give way to him again later.

The Government’s assessment of the original bids in respect of Exeter and Norwich found that they satisfied all the criteria except for the payback period for the transition costs, which was estimated to be six years rather than five. However, given the small transition costs owing to the year-on-year savings—and given the economic circumstances at the time and the overriding priority of supporting economic growth and creating jobs—we believed that there were compelling reasons to create unitary authorities in Norwich and Exeter.

[Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady has mentioned what she called the small cost of the transition and the savings of £6.5 million to be made. However, those savings are for 2015-16 onwards. Was it the previous Government’s view that the massive upheaval and uncertainty for those counties and what is actually a large sum of money—even if she called it a small amount—was worth it in the hope that, in five years’ time, those savings would be delivered? Given how much the economy has changed in the past five years, the chances of seeing those savings seem slim.

[Caroline Flint]

As I have outlined, and as is clear from the impact assessment provided by the Department, the most expensive option is the status quo. I am sure that my hon. Friends will make the point that in both Exeter and Norwich the local authorities are the driving engine for jobs and economic progress in their regions—[Interruption.] Yes they are, and therefore the opportunity to enhance Norwich and Exeter as cities of importance and expand their already good track record—as the people and businesses in the areas wanted—has been lost, because the Secretary of State does not recognise the truth of the situation.

The criteria exist to help the Secretary of State decide on the merits of an application. No set of criteria, however exhaustive, can make a decision—a judgment always has to be made. The point that this Secretary of State does not seem able to grasp is that, in essence, what we are debating is what is right for the people of Norwich and Exeter, what will deliver the best services for them, and what they want for their cities. Time and again, the Secretary of State has said that the proposals were not supported by local people. As he well knows, that is simply not true. He talks as if the proposals were somehow imposed by the Labour Government, for political purposes, against the wishes of local people. Nothing could be further from the truth, and if the Secretary of State does not believe me, he should go to Norwich and Exeter for himself. The people there will tell him what they think. Indeed, they already have. The fact that Labour made gains and the Tories suffered losses in both Norwich and Exeter in what were, essentially, single-issue by-elections will surely not have escaped his notice. In fact, the original move to become a unitary authority in Norwich was made by a Liberal Democrat—the Secretary of State’s coalition partners—not by the Labour party. The proposal enjoys cross-party support on the council and in the city. Opinion poll after opinion poll has shown that local people support the principle of single-tier local government in the city by a margin of two to one.

I pay tribute to the work of my former right hon. Friend, Charles Clarke, and the noble Baroness Hollis for the tremendous leadership that they have shown for the people of Norwich. The hon. Member for Norwich South (Simon Wright), who follows in my former right hon. Friend’s footsteps and sits on the same Benches as the Secretary of State, also supports unitary status, as does his wife, a city councillor in Norwich. A few days before the election, he said:

“It is very much a positive step…I broadly welcome a unitary Norwich. I think it is a good thing in terms of the democratic voice for the people of Norwich.”

We wait to see whether that is still his view today, or whether what he said has gone the way of so many other Liberal Democrat promises.

We all know what a thing the Secretary of State has about council-funded newspapers, so I know that he will be keen to hear the views of the independent Norwich Evening News on the matter. Its editorial after the decision was announced was clear:

“Unitary decision is a wonderful opportunity”.

The same is true in Exeter, where the move to unitary status is supported by all four parties on the city council, including the Conservatives. In a vote in December 2009, the city council overwhelmingly agreed, by a margin of 31 votes to two, to support the city’s bid for unitary status, but the Secretary of State, sitting at his desk in Whitehall, thinks that he knows better than the people of Exeter.

The Secretary of State would be well advised to pay close attention to my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) when he speaks, because he has been a champion for his constituents on this and many other issues, and he knows what the people of Exeter want. Failing that, the Secretary of State should at least listen to his own party members and councillors in Exeter, because they support a unitary authority too. Let me remind the House of the words of Councillor Yolanda Henson, the leader of the Conservatives on Exeter city council. She said:

“We have always backed the Exeter unitary bid and said we would like to control our own destiny. We represent the people of Exeter and, of course, my colleagues are going against what we are going to get and they are going to lose.”

I think that she was talking about the Secretary of State.

What people in Norwich and Exeter will remember is that it was a Tory Government, in 1974, who abolished their unitary councils, after hundreds of years of self-government. They will not forget that it is a Tory Government, with Liberal Democrat cheerleaders, who have prevented them from running their own cities again. Norwich and Exeter are great, proud cities, with long histories of self-government and a desire to manage their own affairs. What this Bill really exposes is the gaping hole at the heart of the coalition’s plans to give greater powers to local authorities and local communities. The Conservatives say that they want to devolve power to local government and local people. The Secretary of State said:

“If you want to restore faith in politics…if you want people to feel connected to their communities, proud of their communities, then you give people a real say over what happens in their communities”.

He also said that he wants to

“put town halls back in charge of local affairs”—

just not in Norwich or Exeter. He says that he wants localism, but he is not happy for the people of Norwich to decide for themselves what time they turn their street lighting off, how they fund their schools, or which children’s centres should be spared the devastating cuts that the Government have imposed on them. That is his form of localism.

What does all this say about the Government’s policy on unitary authorities? The last time the Conservatives were in power, they set up nearly 100 unitary authorities across the country. Now we learn that they just do not believe in them any more. In the other place, the noble Baroness Hanham confirmed their policy, saying that

“the Government have no plans to issue further invitations for unitary authorities”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 June 2010; Vol. 719, c. 1832.]

So there we have it: the Government believe that two-tier systems are more efficient, more accountable, and better value for money than single-tier unitary authorities—with counties disposing of waste and districts collecting it; districts dealing with town planning and counties dealing with transport planning; districts cleaning the pavements and cutting the grass, and counties keeping the roads clear; and with all the separate back-room functions that that entails. So much for simplification, reducing duplication and cutting bureaucracy.

Like on so many things, the Secretary of State appears to be all talk and no trousers. This is a petty, vindictive and, frankly, pointless Bill. It cannot change the situation in Norwich or Exeter, as the High Court has already quashed the orders setting up unitary authorities there; nor does it reform the process for setting up unitary authorities, as part 1 of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 remains unchanged. The one thing that the Bill does effect is unnecessary, because unless the Secretary of State needs protecting from himself—which is not an entirely unreasonable suggestion—he does not need legislation to prevent himself from creating unitary authorities in Norwich and Exeter. All he has to do is not lay the orders. It is as simple as that.

At a time when local authorities are losing almost a third of their funding and communities are being denied the vital front-lines services that they rely on, creating unitary authorities in Norwich and Exeter could have saved those councils money—money that they could have used to try to mitigate the devastating cuts that this Government have imposed. Creating unitary authorities was supported by the people of those cities. The proposal would have helped to deliver more efficient and accountable services to local people, and would have spurred economic growth and created jobs when we need them most, benefiting not only those cities themselves, but the surrounding counties. Instead, the Secretary of State, who likes to vaunt his localist credentials, but so badly failed to stand up for local councils in the comprehensive spending review, has left Norwich and Exeter, like so many town halls up and down the country, high, dry and hard-up.

12:55

[Mr Keith Simpson (Broadland) (Con)]

Let me begin by saying that I warmly support the proposal made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. Let me also remind colleagues on both sides of the House that the announcements made yesterday and their effect on local government were brought about entirely by the incompetence of the last Labour Government. The cuts are due entirely to those Members who are now on the Opposition Benches, and we are going to hang that round their necks. People in Norwich and Norfolk know that only too well.

My right hon. Friend began by saying that the whole issue was like something straight out of Dickens’ Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. It has been going on for four years, and at the outset—my constituency was then called Mid-Norfolk; it is now called Broadland—I was in favour of the status quo, although I was prepared to hear the arguments. The problem that the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) has, and which Opposition Members generally have, particularly the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), is that when we look at the sorry trail of order, counter-order and disorder over the past four years—the different instructions given to the boundary committee, the contradictory instructions given by successive Secretaries of State, the amounts of money that have been wasted, and, perhaps most importantly, the original riding instructions given to the boundary committee—we see that the views of local people were specifically excluded. There was no democracy at all. Indeed, the very few opinion polls that have ever been conducted in Norwich and Norfolk—we cannot look at the unitary issue without considering the whole county—showed no advantage at all to those who wanted a unitary authority.

The irony is that, to begin with, pressure was brought to bear on the boundary committee to consider expanding the boundaries of Norwich to include its outer areas, but not one individual wanted to join a unitary Norwich, as became obvious in the local government elections and from the letters and e-mails I received from the surrounding villages that would have become part of a greater Norwich. Why did they not want to enter a unitary Norwich? It was not a question of ideology or principle; unfortunately for the right Member for Don Valley, it was because Norwich city council has been incompetently run under Labour for decades. Norwich city council has had high council tax, has been unable to achieve high scores for any local government criteria, and has had a housing scandal in only the past two years. It has been an absolute disgrace, and as somebody who was born in Norwich I think it a great shame that such a fine city has had to put up with such total and utter incompetence. I suggest that the Institute for Government use the track record of the past four years as a model for how not to carry out reform in government. However, what has happened is well documented, so I will not go into it again.

There is no overall public support for the proposal. The right hon. Lady pointed out the financial consequences, but having seen different sets of figures produced by the Department for Communities and Local Government over the past four years, even the former Member for Norwich North, Dr Ian Gibson—who was deselected by the Labour party and resigned, after which there was a by-election, which was won by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), who was re-elected in the general election—could not see the advantages. The disadvantages would be felt not just by the people of Norwich, but by the people of Norfolk. The population of Norwich is approximately 130,000, but these proposals would have affected the population of Norfolk, which is nearly 800,000. What would have been the advantage of having two directors of libraries, two police forces and two of virtually everything else? There would have been no advantage whatever.

This sorry saga has incurred a vast cost to taxpayers living in my constituency and in Norwich. I would be interested to put in a freedom of information request to see what letters, e-mails and conversations Ministers’ private secretaries received from members of the Labour party over the past four years. It has been obvious to people living in Norfolk that this has been a ramp by the Labour party intended to secure a Labour party advantage. The great irony is that, as a consequence, there are no Labour MPs left in Norfolk at all. The people of Norwich and Norfolk have recognised how incompetent this process has been and how much it has cost. The attempts by the noble Baroness Hollis to seek all kinds of judicial reviews to string things out have been regarded as a joke in Norwich—and the same could be said of Exeter.

I come back to my first point. The right hon. Member for Don Valley laid great emphasis on democratic representation and criticised my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for not letting local communities decide. Local communities did decide. They made that quite clear in a by-election and a general election, which saw Labour lose two Norwich seats and the election of my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis). The people of Norwich and Norfolk have spoken. I support the measure proposed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

13:02

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

For a Government who claim to want to give more power to local communities and to devolve decision making downwards, this is a most astonishing Bill to force through Parliament as a priority today. The Secretary of State said on 8 June this year:

“I want to give an indication of my three most important priorities. These are: localism, localism and localism.”

The Conservative manifesto referred to

“Making politics more local… we want to pass power down to people”,

while the coalition agreement spoke of a

“radical devolution of power to local government and community groups”.

Someone called the “decentralisation Minister” told the local government conference on 8 July that he would

“put town halls back in charge of local affairs”.

How hollow those promises sound today, as this Government seek to drive through a Bill that will achieve exactly the opposite, depriving the people of Exeter and Norwich of their localism and their historic unitary status. They have fought for nearly four decades to regain the right to run their own affairs. The Government are not handing power down, but up to the bigger, more remote and much less accountable Devon and Norfolk county councils.

We have already heard that today’s debate involves unfinished business not of the last four years, but of the last 36 years. Before 1974, Exeter and Norwich had both enjoyed their own local government for hundreds of years—long before county councils were even thought about.

We do not need to rehearse the arguments for unitary government, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) has already expounded them. Suffice it to say that unitary government used to have all-party support for the obvious reason that it is more efficient, more transparent and more accountable. Indeed, the last Conservative Government recognised that and acknowledged the mistakes they had made in 1974, as they created a further 46 new unitary authorities after 1974, including the only other two sizeable urban areas in Devon—Plymouth and Torbay. That reorganisation under the last Conservative Government left Exeter and Norwich as the biggest cities in England without control over their own affairs. That lack of democratic accountability is felt even more acutely in those great provincial cities that are in the middle of large rural counties, where most of the services continue to be delivered and the decisions continue to be taken by rural-dominated county councils.

That is the situation that the Labour Government inherited. We quite rightly recognised the role of cities such as Norwich and Exeter as economic growth points, and the desirability of unitary government as less wasteful and more accountable. In 2006, we invited bids from anyone interested to come forward with suggestions for unitary government. Like a number of other towns and cities across England, Exeter responded enthusiastically.

Exeter’s bid enjoyed all-party support. We have already heard one quote from the leader of the Conservative group, Councillor Yolonda Henson. She wrote to my local newspaper, the Express & Echo on 10 March this year:

“In one of the greatest political statements ever spoken, Abraham Lincoln praised the virtues of a government of the people, by the people and for the people. That is precisely what the restoration of unitary local government is promising for the people of Exeter.”

I could not have put it better than the Conservative group leader on Exeter city council. I would like to pay tribute to Councillor Henson and her fellow Conservative councillors for withstanding the constant bullying and pressure from their party at the national level and from Conservative councillors at County hall. It was not only all the political parties on Exeter city council that supported our unitary bid, as every single significant stakeholder in the city supported it: Exeter university, Exeter chamber of commerce and the voluntary sector. Every single opinion poll carried out in Exeter showed that the overwhelming majority of people in the city wanted their own self-rule.

At this point, I note the comments of Lord Burnett during consideration of this Bill in the other place. He claimed that the recent general election result in Exeter was evidence of opposition to unitary status. I have to inform Lord Burnett that in Exeter Labour secured the second-lowest swing against it anywhere in the south-west. The poor Conservative candidate, caught between her local party and central office, sat so firmly on the fence on the issue that I wondered how she did not split in half. She did much worse than the Conservatives had expected, given the tens of thousands of pounds of Ashcroft money they poured into Exeter. The poor Liberal Democrat candidate, who defied his own local party and came out against unitary status, was the only Liberal Democrat in the whole of the south-west whose vote went down. As with so much of what else Lord Burnett has said on this matter, he is grossly ill informed and the facts are quite the opposite of what he claimed.

Exeter’s original bid had all-party, all-stakeholder and public support. We should not forget that it would have been perfectly possible at that time for counter bids to be made by Devon county council or Norfolk county council, but that did not happen. The then Labour Government regarded Exeter’s bid as one of the strongest, but, as we have already heard, it narrowly failed to come through on one of the criteria—the affordability criterion, as it would have taken a long time to pay back the costs.

[Brandon Lewis]

The right hon. Gentleman refers to the failure of alternative bids—for example, from Norfolk. There was advice from the Department about what should have been considered. Surely the right hon. Gentleman would accept that this happened in Norfolk because Norfolk county council wanted the status quo and did not want to be messed about by the Government in the first place.

[Mr Bradshaw]

That might well be the case, but my point is that it would have been perfectly open to either Norfolk or Devon to make counter-unitary bids, but there was no support. I accept that there was no support in Devon or Norfolk for those initiatives and I shall come on to explain why. That is exactly why the Labour Secretary of State came to the conclusions he did.

Exeter’s bid was considered one of the strongest, but it narrowly failed on one of the criteria because there were no corresponding unitary bids from the rest of Devon. There were weaker bids at that time: there was a bid from Bedford and a bid from Chester that went through because there were corresponding unitary solutions covering the rest of those counties. That being the case, I think the Government were absolutely right to ask the boundary committee to look at possible unitary solutions covering the whole of Devon—and the same for Norfolk and Suffolk.

I have to say that describing the boundary committee process as unsatisfactory would be the understatement of the century. It took two years and it had a flawed consultation, which had to be started again. It was plagued by a series of self-serving judicial reviews from some of the district authorities that were worried about being abolished. There was a strong—and, I believe, justified—suspicion in both Exeter and Norwich that the boundary committee and Department for Communities and Local Government officials were not balanced in their approach, favouring the more powerful counties against the cities.

[Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)]

I should like to refer the right hon. Gentleman to the bids in 2006, when Burnley and Pendle put in a bid for a unitary authority following a visit by the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband), to Lancashire county council, who declared it a basket case under the rule of the Labour party. Burnley and Pendle put in that bid, and it was declared to be excellent, yet the then Minister, the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Mr Woolas), turned it down. Can the right hon. Gentleman explain the reasons for that, in the light of what he is now saying about Norwich and Exeter?

[Mr Bradshaw]

You will have to forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I am not an expert on the local situation in Burnley and Pendle. Perhaps one of my Front-Bench colleagues will be able to address that point when they respond to the debate later.

I was talking about the concerns that Exeter and Norwich expressed about the fairness and balance of the process. Professor Ron Johnston, the local government expert on the boundary committee and one of its more experienced members, resigned from the committee in July 2009 because he felt that its approach had been unfair to Exeter and Norwich. He wrote to the then Secretary of State in January this year, saying that

“the position of Exeter concerned me greatly throughout the 15 months of discussions...Exeter is a major economic growth point, and in my view, such an important urban area should have its own separate local government (democratically accountable to its residents) with control over economic and spatial planning”.

Following the illustration of the flawed nature of the boundary committee’s work, it ended up recommending a unitary single Devon and a unitary single Norfolk, which has already been criticised by Conservative Members. Neither solution was supported by anyone. Devon county council did not want a unitary Devon, and it was that suggestion that provoked the most opposition during the consultation process. It was certainly totally unacceptable to Exeter, just as it would have been for Norwich. There was no precedent for a city of that size or significance being subsumed into a unitary county in modern times, and it would have been totally unacceptable.

The Secretary of State therefore had a problem. It was open to him or her to accept, reject or vary the boundary committee’s recommendation. Given the strong opposition to a unitary county, the strong support in Exeter for a unitary Exeter, and the opposition around Exeter to a unitary greater Exeter—which had been one of the options early in the process—my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) reverted to Exeter’s original bid, and he was absolutely right to do so. Given the length of time and the uncertainty involved, he was absolutely right to recognise Exeter’s right to self-determination.

Much has been made today of the affordability criterion. Indeed, that was the main plank of the Secretary of State’s reasoning. However, Professor Ron Johnston wrote in his resignation letter that

“this criterion made the creation of a viable urban authority based on Exeter and its immediate surrounding area extremely difficult, if not impossible.”

In other words, the criterion was flawed. Even if it had not been, the increased importance of Exeter as a driver for growth—it had the third highest level of growth anywhere in England between 1998 and 2006—had rendered the criterion redundant. Indeed, that was recognised by the then Secretary of State when he said that he was justified in departing from the presumption that unitary proposals that do not meet all five criteria were not to be implemented.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley has reminded the House that in the long run, far from costing money, the unitary solutions for Exeter and Norwich would have saved money. I have here a letter from Baroness Hanham, dated 22 July 2010, which states that the

“net costs of creating a unitary Exeter during the transition period to 2014-15”

would be £2.5 million. The annual savings after that would be £2.6 million a year. In the case of Norwich, the projected savings are even greater. The net cost of creating a unitary Norwich up to 2014-15 would be £1.9 million, with annual savings thereafter of £3.9 million. It is simply wrong for the Secretary of State to say that this process would have cost money in the long run. It is also wrong of him not to recognise that the most expensive option is the status quo.

In the Bill, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government are treating the people of Exeter and Norwich, two of our great historic English cities, with complete contempt. The Government claim to support local democracy and the devolution of power down to local communities, but in their first local government Bill since the election they are doing exactly the opposite. In an act of pure political vindictiveness, they are taking away the local autonomy that Exeter and Norwich had at last regained, after nearly 40 years of waiting.

The people of Exeter and Norwich will not forget this shabby treatment by the coalition. Indeed, they have already had the opportunity to make their views plain. Thanks to the outrageous and dictatorial way in which this Government have handled the whole process, Exeter and Norwich were forced to hold unwanted local elections last month. In Exeter, the Conservatives lost three seats to Labour, and the Liberal Democrat vote did not just go down, it collapsed. The immediate result of this Government’s shabby treatment of my city is that Labour has regained control of the council, because of the anger felt by Exeter people towards the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. We are unlikely to persuade this Government of the justice of Exeter and Norwich’s claim for self rule, but those two great cities will not give up. They were proud, self-governing cities for hundreds of years before county councils were even thought of, and I am confident that, when we again have a Labour Government who are committed to localism in deeds and not just in words, their long march to recover their lost freedom will be won.

13:16

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) for his contribution. I hear what he is saying, but he and I have rather different memories of what happened at that time. He has implied that the county of Devon was in favour of the unitary proposal for Exeter, but that is certainly not my recollection. Indeed, the people of Devon were not at all in favour of such a unitary authority for a number of reasons, and that is why I rise to support the Bill.

Newton Abbot is part of Devon, and we are served by Devon county council. My hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) made a good point earlier when he said that we need to consider the impact on those we leave behind, as well as those we put into a unitary authority. What would happen to the rest of Devon if we were to carve out Exeter? Exeter has a large population, and a unitary authority would attract a lot of funding. What would happen to the remaining rump? Devon has one of the largest geographical areas in the country. Parts of it are also in the lowest quartile of economic resilience. Across the county, 20% comprises rural villages and hamlets, and it has already been noted that Torbay and Plymouth—two other large centres of population—have already been carved out of it. The remainder of Devon is a large swathe of small villages.

Devon faces challenges not only of rurality but of an above-average number of older people, as a consequence of people liking to go there to retire. Why does that matter? It matters because of the way in which public funding formulae work. For the most part, rurality and the age of the population are not taken into account. The consequence for education in Devon can be seen in the league tables for the country; Devon is now 148th out of 151. That means that our children are getting £300 less per head spent on them, which adds up to a substantial amount for a sizeable secondary school. In health, we are also below average. It is true that statistics show a figure of only 1.1%, which seems like a very small number. That completely misrepresents the position, however, because of the number of ageing people in the county. If Exeter had become a unitary authority, my constituents and those in other parts of rural Devon would have been significantly worse off.

[Mr Bradshaw]

The hon. Lady seems to be making my point for me, which is that Exeter and Norwich have been the milch cows for rural Devon and Norfolk. That was denied by Devon county council all the way through the process, but she is making the point extremely well today.

[Anne Marie Morris]

I do not accept that. They have not been milch cows. I do not deny that Exeter is an important part of the Devon community, but I believe that we need wealth to be generated throughout Devon. We cannot look only at Exeter. I do not think that that detracts from my point that the rest of Devon would simply become worse off if Exeter became a unitary authority.

There are a number of things on which my constituents and, I suspect, other Devon constituents would prefer £40 million to be spent. A challenge is presented by our railway along the coast: we need funds to make it viable, and it is crucial to the viability of tourism in my constituency. I think that my constituents would like the bypass—the A380—to be finally completed, after 50 years of battling. They would also like the flood problem to be sorted out. In Teignmouth, I am currently battling to try to ensure that the flood prevention scheme proceeds. Notwithstanding what was said about flooding earlier, Opposition Members may recall that the Labour party proposed capital cuts of 50%, but the cuts that we have proposed are considerably smaller, and I am therefore hopeful that my friends in Teignmouth will get their scheme. Our water bills are 25% higher than water bills anywhere else in the country, and some of this money could be usefully spent on rectifying an injustice that has existed for many years.

I do not think that unitary status will be in the interests of Devon or of the country as a whole, but as the money simply is not there, the question becomes inappropriate in any event. I therefore support the Bill.

13:21

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

This is a rather strange debate. We are discussing a Bill with which it appears to be unnecessary to proceed, and which is being defended on grounds that seem far from anything relating to the reality of what occurred with the applications for unitary status. Indeed, it is being defended by the Secretary of State on the basis of what was, in fact, a series of spurious claims about costs and various other elements. It provides for the retention on the statute book of the 1997 legislation enabling unitary status applications to be received by the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State said, in typically colourful language—clearly it was a metaphor, or he would have been arrested—that there was a pistol in his desk which he would take to anyone who dared to suggest to him that the democratic structures of local authorities might be changed in favour of local people’s wishes.

Even stranger is the Secretary of State’s argument about value for money. He suggested that one conclusion of a consultant’s analysis of local government in general might be that one of the impediments to really good value for money was the number of councillors making decisions, holding meetings and incurring expenses as a result. He implied that local government would become much more efficient in terms of value for money—if that is the sole criterion—if local councillors were abolished, along with any local concerns about their election, and councils were replaced by a series of local authorities run by commissars. I do not think that any Member present would be particularly happy with that outcome—I imagine that they would want local councillors to run local authorities—but as soon as it is decided that local councillors should run local authorities, the question arises: what kind of authorities should those be?

To say that in the light of those value-for-money considerations, the whole question of who wants what kind of local government to act in their interests in particular areas is irrelevant, is fundamentally to miss the point of what local government is about. It certainly misses the point in terms of the Conservative party’s claim that it is now the party of localism. That would be so even if the arguments about the financing of the authorities that we are discussing were not as finely balanced as they have been.

The Secretary of State’s claim that unitary status would cost £40 million ought to be withdrawn by the end of the afternoon. It is grossly misleading, and a shameful defence of the Government’s proposals. Almost all the money would be recouped within five years, and there would be savings thereafter. Even if there were a financial argument, however, it would be trumped by arguments about local accountability, and about the purpose of councillors and local democracy.

[Mr Keith Simpson]

This is not the hon. Gentleman’s fault, but I do not think that he participated in any of the earlier debates on this subject. Many of them were held in Westminster Hall. I suggest that he read the evidence presented by my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon), a senior member of the Public Accounts Committee, who said that all the arguments about the savings that would be made had invariably been substantially wrong.

[Dr Whitehead]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but my figures are from the explanatory memorandums to two statutory instruments that were presented to the House—and indeed have been confirmed by figures from the Government. I am at a loss to understand why more weight should be given to certain views on what costs might be than to cost figures that have been deposited in the House for Members to examine. I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman’s point was very telling, but even if it had been a little more telling, I do not think that it would have undermined the real question before us, which is how local government can work in the best interests of the people who elect councillors and want them to run services on their behalf.

Again using colourful language, the Secretary of State snuffed out the ambitions of Norwich, Exeter, and by implication Ipswich, to become unitary authorities in the future. That suggests—I am reminded again of the pistol analogy—an overall and enduring hostility on the part of the Secretary of State and others to the very idea of unitary authorities in the future, although the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 still provides for the possibility.

The position could have been different if that deep prejudice had not lain behind the decisions that were made. Even the judicial review was clearly based on narrow parts of the overall tests and consultation. The judge concluded that, essentially, the issue was fixable. He said

“this does not prevent them”—

the proposals—

“being put forward for approval after what need only be a short period of consultation.”

His judgment was based not on the grounds that the proposals were irrational, but on narrow grounds relating to the tests before the consultation, and anticipated that the proposals might be presented again. It has been made clear today that they will not be presented again, because of what the Secretary of State and the Government have decided is their view—not the people’s view, not the local authorities’ view, not councillors’ view, but the Government’s view—of how local government should be conducted in the future.

Another strange aspect of the debate is the suggestion that the proposals result from the revolutionary ideas of local authorities that are attempting to break free from counties and move into unknown territory on their own, to the detriment of those counties. In fact the whole history of local government, not just in Norwich and Exeter, but across the country shows that the opposite is the case.

It is interesting to reflect on the history of county boroughs. As has been mentioned, both Norwich and Exeter have a long history of independent self-governance as local authorities. The 1889 legislation that created the modern local government system introduced the idea of county boroughs; the large number of county boroughs reflected the wishes of people in those cities. The framers of that legislation specifically said that it would be impractical for towns and cities whose local government had previously been independent to be incorporated into counties, which was why the county boroughs were introduced. That was done to ensure that that tradition and that system continued, and residents of cities and towns could exercise unitary self-government within the cradle of the county around them. This is not a new idea that was just dreamed up by the Labour Government; it is historically the way in which local government outside metropolitan areas has been conducted.

What has happened in local government in relatively recent years is that with the overwhelming approbation of the people living in these towns and cities, there has been a move back towards what is, in essence, a local government structure of county boroughs across the country. Some 85 of the 87 unitary authorities introduced between 1889 and 1965 survived until that date; three of them then became London boroughs. In 1974, 37 of those county boroughs became metropolitan boroughs, and subsequently, particularly in the early 1990s under a Conservative Government, a large number of those became unitary authorities again. Some 24 of the 45 remaining county boroughs became unitary authorities, but 21 did not, and two of the five largest of those are Exeter and Norwich. It was largely a matter of chance that they did not become unitary authorities as a result of that process.

People with a reasonable memory of local government will recall the hanging commissions that went around the country in 1992 to determine the future of local government, county by county, across England. Commissioners were sent out within those county frameworks to produce independent reports about what the future local government structure would be, and the then Government implemented them. Those reports advanced a variety of different approaches, depending on the view of the commissioner involved.

Some commissioners produced reports saying, “The county borough is so important to the county that we cannot possibly have it excised from the county, so there must be two-tier local government.” On other occasions, the same commissioners sent out to perform the same exercise in the same county said, “The county borough is so important in the county that it must be excised from the county and given back unitary status, because that is logically the right thing to do.” In one part of the country a particular commissioner was so enthusiastic about unitary government that he abolished the whole county, and six unitary authorities were produced instead. That commissioner is familiar to many of us in a different guise—as the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). A variety of conclusions were reached at that time, which meant, among other things, that Exeter and Norwich did not become unitary authorities because of the accident of who went out to do the report.

We have heard this afternoon that the people of Norwich and Exeter overwhelmingly support the idea that the long tradition of unitary government in those towns should be restored.

[Mr Simpson]

Can the hon. Gentleman give the House the factual evidence for that view? What polling has been done? Has a local referendum been held?

[Dr Whitehead]

The hon. Gentleman will recall hearing earlier this afternoon about the results of various polls conducted in those local areas, the results of consultations with councillors and the information that came from various bodies within the local authorities, all of which pointed to the idea that the people in those areas strongly supported the idea that their authority should become unitary.

[Mr Bradshaw]

rose—

[Brandon Lewis]

rose—

[Dr Whitehead]

I shall give way to my right hon. Friend first.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Perhaps I can help my hon. Friend here. The city council in Exeter commissioned an independent MORI poll—the only scientific poll conducted during this process—and it was overwhelming in favour of unitary status. I would be very surprised if a local newspaper that has its ear as close to the ground as the Norwich Evening News would have misjudged the mood of the people of Norwich by giving such strong support to Norwich’s unitary bid.

[Dr Whitehead]

I shall now give way to the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis).

[Brandon Lewis]

I defer to the right hon. Gentleman’s expertise on the polling in Exeter, but the comments made by the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) and others about Norwich did not give evidence of any polls; they just referred to the feeling of the people. As far as I am aware—I would be happy for the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) to show me otherwise—no clear polling was done in Norwich, other than the work done by the Local Government Boundary Commission, which showed that 85% of the people wanted the status quo, 10% wanted a county unitary authority and only 3% wanted a Norwich answer. Yet that is what the Labour Government opted for.

[Dr Whitehead]

The hon. Gentleman has neglected to listen carefully to the points made so far in this debate, and to the idea of a variety of consultation devices to find out what people want in various areas. As has been said this afternoon, the councillors of all parties in Norwich overwhelmingly supported the aim of Norwich having unitary status. The idea that there was little or no support for this in either area is not sustainable.

However, it is true, as has been emphasised, that some members in county areas do not welcome the idea of unitary authorities in cities and towns within their county area. I cannot say that I am particularly surprised at that notion. Indeed, one issue that arose during those local government reorganisation consultations and discussions in the early 1990s was that counties, by and large, did not want those cities and towns to be removed from their overall county structure, and made strong representations to that effect. To say that some people in county areas might say that it would be nice to have their county council running a particular city or town is not surprising. That does not in any way undermine the central concern, which was reflected as long ago as 1889, that those towns and cities should have unitary status because of their particular position within those county areas, and the importance on a regional and sub-regional basis of many of those local authorities.

I speak as a former leader of a large city council when it was not a unitary authority, and I have been the MP representing that same city when it has had a unitary authority. I can say that the differences are enormous—for example, in terms of those cities having responsibility for their own services and their own arrangements and being able, among other things, to put to the people that simple arrangement that appears to have been missed in this afternoon’s debate. The Secretary of State has stated on this occasion and on other occasions that people do not particularly want to concern themselves with the structure of local government, but just want services to be provided. In a unitary authority, that is palpably the case. One authority is providing the services, looking after the city or town, and it is close to the people in that respect and accountable to the people as a result of what it does.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Does my hon. Friend also accept that the fact that Southampton’s unitary status was restored in no way impacted negatively on the performance of Hampshire? In fact, Hampshire is one of the highest performing county councils in England. We could say the same for Swindon and Wiltshire. The myth perpetrated by the Government and by the opponents of unitary status for cities—that somehow the counties suffer—is not supported by the evidence. On the contrary, they tend to do better.

[Dr Whitehead]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. Indeed, the counties do better in many ways, because the concerns of a particular city, freestanding within a far less urban environment, are focused on that city, and the concerns of the less urban environment are focused in the county council. It is certainly true that after some slight ill feeling, and attempts to foist less up-to-date computers on the unitary authority when the equipment was divided up, the arrangements between Hampshire and Southampton have been very good. They have worked very well, and as my right hon. Friend correctly points out, the county has prospered in its way, and the city has prospered in its way, as a result of unitary status.

I know that the Secretary of State will have his way this afternoon. He ought to hang his head in shame because of the fundamental contradiction between what he says about localism and what he is proposing to do this afternoon, but he will undoubtedly have his way. My concern, among others, is that we should not, as a result of this vindictive and spiteful early legislation, lose the idea that unitary local government—particularly in cities and towns outside metropolitan areas—is palpably a good thing for those cities and towns, and ought to be pursued.

It is interesting, in terms of the historical full circle that we might come in the end, that the mechanism in the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 is essentially the same as the one introduced in the local government legislation of 1889. If a local authority wanted to make the case that it should become a unitary authority, that could be done without a huge upheaval, with the whole of local government being reorganised and commissioners going up and down the country.

Indeed, between 1889 and the present a number of local authorities became county boroughs over the years, without a crisis in local government or a series of legislative measures going through this House on local government as a whole. That was a method of securing the way in which people in those areas wished to be self-governed. That is at the heart of this subject, and that is what is being denied this afternoon. I hope that as a result of some of the corrections of the myths put forward in this afternoon’s debates, we can concentrate our attention on what is best for local government, not on what is best for particular people’s opinions on particular days about how they would like to see local government run.

13:43

[Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)]

I fully support the Secretary of State’s comments when he referred to this whole debacle as a horror story. It was interesting to listen to Opposition Members, particularly the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). Whereas the Secretary of State described a horror story, their description of what happened with the unitary authorities until the formation of the coalition Government was a romantic story. Looking back at what has happened, it almost seems like a farce to me.

Over the entire period, going back to 2006—I will focus on Norfolk in particular—this has been more than a case of Norwich having a fantastic offer that everybody wanted, with this coalition Government being the first to stand in the way of that. In all that time, I have never heard a single resident, surprisingly enough—and I have knocked on doors in Great Yarmouth and in Norwich, when I was there with my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith)—ever say, “Please, will you give us a unitary authority? Will you please have local government reorganisation in Norfolk?” In fact, there was huge frustration.

The argument was not simply whether we should have a Norwich unitary authority. It started back in 2006, with people looking at different options. That created confusion in Norfolk, with people considering whether Great Yarmouth, my constituency, should be linked in with Waveney, creating Yartoft, with an east-west divide in Norfolk, or whether there should be a full unitary option. There was complete chaos, and the finance never added up.

What concerned me from the beginning, quite apart from the clunking top-down approach of, “This is what will happen; there will be unitary,” which was the clear message that authorities were being given, was the expense. One chief executive in Norfolk said to me that their estimate in 2008 was that their senior officers were spending 40% of their time talking to other officers in other authorities about plans for unitary and about all the various different plans. We should consider that in light of the number of senior officers there are across Norfolk, and consider whether they were spending anywhere near the time estimated by that chief executive.

Officer time and money are not included in the figures. Money has already been wasted over the past three or four years because it has been spent on looking at plans and organisation rather than delivering front-line services. I dread to think what the cost comes to, let alone the financial chaos that will no doubt be delivered on the people of Norwich, who have to pick up the tab for Norwich city council’s amazing decision to spend about £90,000, as advertised, on an implementation officer before it even got the go-ahead for the change. I was horrified to find out when I was on a BBC show with the leader of Norwich city council that the leader was getting an allowance of £12,000 to £15,000 on top of his leader’s allowance to chair an implementation group. I do not know what the other members of the group were getting or what that was costing, but it seems to me that an amazing amount of money has already been wasted.

To say that that would have been a good decision based on the savings of £6.5 million from 2015 onwards sums up, to me, the problems that we now have, looking at the figures and the implementation costs referred to by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), which are about £40 million. The savings would have started, had they been delivered, in 2015-16. We all know that the previous Government spent a lot of time spending money now in the hope that it would come later, and we have seen the economic mess that that got us into, with the deficit that we, and local government in particular, are now having to deal with because of the mess that the old Government left behind. We now have to pick up the pieces economically.

It is a clear sign of what the Labour party thinks of Norfolk that it seems to want to focus only on Norwich. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) rightly says, the reality is that a decision made for Norwich has an impact on the whole of Norfolk, and the whole of Norfolk had a view on this. The people of Norfolk were asked about unitary status and, as I said to the hon. Gentleman, 85% wanted the status quo, 10% wanted a county council in Norfolk and only 3% wanted a Norwich unitary authority. In my experience, people on the streets did not want a unitary authority. When the Boundary Commission referred back to it, it did not want a Norwich unitary authority. The House of Lords had concerns about it and the permanent secretary at the Department had concerns about it, yet the Secretary of State in the Labour Government at the time went ahead with it anyway. That seems to me a clear example of ignoring local views.

The view that the Labour party has of Norfolk, saying that the only thing that matters is Norwich, is probably a clear example of why there are no Labour Members left in Norfolk. Constituents and businesses in Great Yarmouth have the opportunity for economic growth because of measures in the Budget, with the outer harbour and renewable energy. I am sure that businesses throughout Norwich, in places such as Hethel, which is not in Norwich, and King’s Lynn, would take the view that they have a great economic offer to make to Norfolk.

It seems, from beginning to end, that this has already been a costly exercise, but it would be interesting to know just how much money local government has lost in Norfolk on spending time researching this matter. Quite apart from the money that has been wasted on implementation committees and officers, it does not seem appropriate to focus on Norwich, where we have a local authority that has made some dubious and questionable decisions recently about its services with Connaught, with Greyhound Opening and with housing. That does not seem to me to be a fit authority to be used as an example of what could be a perfect unitary authority. In fact, it seems the antithesis of that. The best thing that can happen to Norfolk is for this sorry saga—this horror tale of horror tales—to be put to an end once and for all. I fully support the Bill.

13:49

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

In cases such as this one, it is important that we come back to first principles, and those first principles strike me as being quite straightforward: do the people of Norwich and Exeter want this, is it rational that they should want it, and is it appropriate for unitary status to be conferred?

Norwich is the closest city to me of those that are under discussion. Does it want this? Yes, it does. Norwich city council currently has 34 Labour, Green and Lib Dem members, and they were in favour. Only the Tories, with five seats, were against. Earlier, the hon. Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) claimed that the two seats of Norwich South and Norwich North changed hands at the election because the Labour Government had been pushing to try unitary status there. He should have more faith in his colleagues who represent those constituencies. They represent the new generation of MPs, and I am sure they would attribute their success to much broader reasons to do with their appeal.

[Mr Keith Simpson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give me an example, either orally or in written evidence, in this place of the former MP for Norwich North, Dr Ian Gibson, coming out in favour of the unitary proposal?

[Gavin Shuker]

Dr Gibson is no longer a Member of this House so I do not see the relevance of the question. I can, however, assure the hon. Gentleman that when I was campaigning in the elections that were forced as a result of the Secretary of State’s decision, many of the people to whom I spoke were very much in favour of the proposal.

[Mr Bradshaw]

It may help if it is explained to Members that the Norwich North constituency straddles both Norwich city and Broadland district councils, so it is not surprising that the Member for that constituency has divided loyalties. The Norwich South constituency is wholly within the city boundary, and its MPs—both the Liberal Democrat Member whom we are looking forward to hearing from shortly, and certainly the former Member—have always supported unitary status, as, of course, have the vast majority of the democratically elected councils. As they supported this, why does the Conservative party, which often extols the virtues of local democracy and representation, not trust them?

[Gavin Shuker]

I completely agree.

[Mr Keith Simpson]

Let me explain the flaw in these arguments. What I am about to say does not necessarily apply to Exeter, but the only way in which Norwich could get unitary status and also fulfil all the economic criteria—one problem is that Secretaries of State have changed their minds about that—is to enlarge Norwich and bring in all the outer suburbs, including large parts of my constituency. They did not try to do that for the simple reason that the majority of the people there were totally against it, and they were totally against it because of the complete and utter incompetence of Labour-led Norwich city council. Therefore, even their economic criteria did not add up.

[Gavin Shuker]

Much as I am enjoying this conversation with the hon. Gentleman, I should point out again that he claimed the only reason why the two Members were elected to the House was because of the supposed opposition to the Labour Government’s strategy for introducing unitary status. If he wants to talk about election results we should talk about those of last month: in Norwich, the Lib Dems were down one and the Tories were down one, while both the Greens and Labour were up one. If we want to draw lessons from the electorate, we could begin with those results.

[Brandon Lewis]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gavin Shuker]

May I first explain that my point is that if we want to draw conclusions from election results, there is contradictory evidence, which is why I want to return to first principles?

[Brandon Lewis]

That last comment is interesting, but I wanted to say that I was actually out on the streets in Norwich during a recent by-election there—[Interruption.] Yes, I was in Norfolk, out on the streets, and when I talked to people on the doorsteps I found a complete lack of interest in the elections. That was because they were frustrated about what the last Government had put them through, and pleased that that was over and done with. That was probably part of the reason for the low turnouts. We are talking about what people want, and we therefore have to refer to the only figures that have been published, which show that 85% of people want the status quo and only 3% want Norwich city to have a unitary authority.

[Gavin Shuker]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will say what area was covered by that poll?

[Brandon Lewis]

As I said, it was the area that is entirely affected by the topic of this debate—Norfolk—which also includes authorities that are democratically elected.

[Gavin Shuker]

There is, of course, a variety of opinion in the area that will be affected by the changes. The Secretary of State’s role in this respect is to decide which of the various different criteria are met and to make a judgment.

[Brandon Lewis]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way again?

[Gavin Shuker]

Of course; I am feeling very polite.

[Brandon Lewis]

I will leave the hon. Gentleman alone after this intervention, if I possibly can. He makes the point that it is for the Secretary of State to make a judgment and I entirely agree. Surely, therefore, the Secretary of State should take notice of the opinions of the people who said no, the local authorities who all—bar one, surprisingly—said no, the House of Lords, which showed concern, the permanent secretary, who also showed concern, and the Boundary Commission, which said no. After he has taken note, the Secretary of State should then also say no.

[Gavin Shuker]

I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the comments of both the former and the current Norwich South MP, both of whom were in favour of the change. If we agree about local decision making and local representatives knowing their community best, we need to start with their comments. Indeed, I am looking forward to hearing the comments of the hon. Member for Norwich South (Simon Wright). I hope there will not be the screeching noise of a U-turn. I do not know what the whipping operation is like for Government Members, and I have no desire to find out, but I could imagine that, possibly, on a long train trip up to their constituencies the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith) might have put a friendly arm around the hon. Member for Norwich South and talked about this issue.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

Steady on!

[Gavin Shuker]

Well, we are in the era of the new politics. I am genuinely looking forward to hearing the comments of the hon. Member for Norwich South, however, for whom I have a huge amount of respect.

On a national level, we need to ask this question: why would these people want this change? Government Members were at one time very much in favour of unitary status. Lib Dem councillors in Norwich wanted this, of course, and initiated the beginnings of the change, and the Tory party initiated getting on for 100 unitary authorities in their last spell in government. We can have an argument about whether the people want this but it certainly seems that the evidence on that is not clear, yet it is clear that the elected representatives in Norwich do want it.

The second question is: is it rational? The Department’s own impact assessment showed that the most expensive option for Norwich was the status quo. Let us consider some comments made in another place—a fine place, I have heard, and one that I quite enjoy dropping into every now and again. Lord McKenzie of Luton noted that the High Court judgment had concluded that

“the Secretary of State was entitled to reach the view he did on the merits of the proposal and that it was not irrational.”

He also said:

“in an arrogant, dictatorial and brutal way”

the judgment of the Secretary of State

“shut out Exeter and Norwich from the opportunity to become unitary councils—an outcome for which there is genuine local appetite”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 June 2010; Vol. 719, c. 1802-05.]

We might also look at the judicial review that was initiated. We can see that the appropriate orders were quashed, but the judge said that

“this does not prevent them being put forward for approval after what need only be a short period of consultation.”

There was no wide-ranging set of criteria under which the orders were thrown out. The judge clearly considered that aspects were rational, but he chose to highlight the short period of consultation needed. As a result, the orders were quashed—but they need not be by the Secretary of State.

Should a place such as Norwich be allowed to become a unitary authority? I speak for the nearest bastion of red in the east of England, although admittedly it is about two and a half hours away, which I feel acutely when I travel throughout East Anglia—the lovely place I am from. However, Luton became a unitary authority in 1997, which is a decision from which we have clearly benefited. It is important that Luton’s people are able to elect local representatives who will stand up and speak for the areas they choose to represent, and who understand the local needs. There is a vast disparity in the Luton area between the types of areas, houses and villages, and between the feelings that people have about their area.

That is the point. Unitary authorities that are small enough to respond to the needs and views of its people will be best able and best placed to make the decisions that respond to the needs of the residents. If a place such as Luton is allowed to have that right—a right, coincidentally, that was bestowed on it under the previous Tory Government—I do not see why Norwich and Exeter should not also have the right to make their own decisions in their own ways. Norwich has a population of about 135,000; Luton is slightly larger, with about 200,000 people, but we are a mere borough. I love Luton borough council as much as the next man, but I do not understand why the great cities of Norwich and Exeter, with their shining beacon status as cities, should not be allowed to take responsibility for their own affairs. I look forward to hearing the arguments put by Government Members for why they should not.

We in Luton would, of course, like to become a city—indeed, we have a city status bid in the file—and we would like all cities to have the opportunity to put forward their cases, as they did under the previous Government, but that right has been quashed under this Secretary of State. Why can these places not have their freedoms? Why can the voices of the local people not be heard? Why can the spirit of the judicial review not be followed through? I believe that the Secretary of State is a roadblock to reform, and I stand with the people of Norwich and Exeter.

14:02

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

I represent a constituency in the west midlands, which is some distance from my hon. Friends in Norwich, Members might wonder why I want to contribute to this debate. I intend to be brief—although I hope not in the spirit of the brevity of the Bill itself.

This Bill deals with some important principles. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), who is no longer in his place, said that he found the debate “strange”. I find it extraordinary that Opposition Members are trying to argue that they are the defenders of localism, given that their whole time in government was predicated on one of the largest centralisations of power in Whitehall and away from local government; on an obsession with regional government and structures, and with the re-organisation of local government; and on the imposition of structures. We need to get away from that if we are truly to move towards a localist future.

The restructuring that the Bill, which I support, is trying to prevent was typical of the approach of the previous Government. They were obsessed with top-down reorganisations. I think it was the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband) who kicked off this whole debate—as if we needed to have these top-down reorganisations. The requirement that parliamentary approval be sought for the restructurings was introduced during the death throes of the last Parliament in a way that was aggressive and an imposition, and these claims about potential cost savings are entirely spurious.

Rather than trying to impose top-down reorganisations on local government, which were such a feature of the previous Government, we need to embrace the diversity of local government—where county, district, town and parish councils all have a vital role to play. We need to encourage collaboration across different areas and at different levels of local government in the delivery of effective services. We need to do that because we need to achieve back-office efficiencies to reduce costs in local government; to reduce bureaucracy at the heart of local government; to re-engineer some of the processes; to share management costs so that we do not have so much duplication across local government; and to encourage local authorities to work in partnership in order to deliver services at the appropriate level. But we do not need to be obsessed with top-down reorganisations arranged from the centre.

The whole thrust of the last Government’s approach to local government policy was to be obsessed with these top-down solutions, so I welcome the Secretary of State’s introduction of this Bill. We need a completely different approach. We need a bottom-up approach that, as I said, encourages local authorities at all different levels to play an active and vital role in their local communities, because they are close to the concerns of local people. There are principles at stake here. The previous Government tried to introduce this top-down reorganisation for directly political reasons—in order to divide different areas of local government.

We need to bring an end to costly restructuring, so I welcome the introduction of the Bill; we need to focus on collaboration to achieve great efficiencies and cost-savings in local government, which are vital when we are having to make cuts in local government expenditure as a result of the previous Government’s mismanagement of the public finances; and we need to move towards much more effective and democratically accountable delivery at a local level. That is why I support the Second Reading of the Bill.

14:07

[Simon Wright (Norwich South) (LD)]

It seems that my contribution to this debate has been widely trailed by Opposition Members. I thank them for the build-up. The organisation of local government is an important debate to my constituents in Norwich. As a supporter of the principle of unitary councils, both in general terms and specifically for Norwich, I am sorry that we are where we are. I take the view that unitary government is clearer and more accountable to the public than two-tier local government, and that, in Norwich’s case, it could have enhanced localism by giving people more of a say over the services currently delivered by Norfolk county council.

The right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) quoted me as saying that I am a promoter of the democratic benefits of unitary councils. That is true. However—let me be clear about this, so that there is no mistake—the reason why we are where we are is that the process embarked on by the previous Government turned into a complete and utter shambles. While supporting unitary Norwich, I have always stated that I had concerns throughout the process. It was a process plagued throughout by legal challenges. It saw councils engage in pitched battles against one another, and sums of public money poured into public relations campaigns on all sides of the debate. It was a process that failed to engaged with the public.

Most people seemed either oblivious or apathetic to what was going on, or to the consequences of reorganisation—it was hardly localism in action. The debate was confined largely to politicians. We have heard a lot today about what the people in Norwich allegedly think, but they have never actually been formally involved in the process. The idea that people cast their vote for candidates on the basis of their views on local government reorganisation is perhaps the biggest red herring that I have heard today. However, it was a process that even the boundary committee seemed confused about.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Does the hon. Gentleman think that he would have won his seat if he had opposed Norwich’s unitary status?

[Simon Wright]

It would have made absolutely no difference, because during the election campaign not a single person raised the issue with me.

[Mr Bradshaw]

In which case, why did the hon. Gentleman support unitary status? Was he reflecting the views of his constituents, contrary to what the hon. Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) has suggested?

[Simon Wright]

I expressed my views because, when one gets a call from the local newspaper, it is a good idea to answer. Of course I was going to offer my support for the principle of a unitary Norwich.

None the less, as I began to say, the boundary committee seemed confused about the process, too, and that led to legal challenges over its failure to produce more than one alternative scheme in its original proposals.

In 2006, the previous Government invited councils to apply for unitary status, and Lib-Dem-controlled Norwich submitted a bid, sensing an opportunity for the city to have a greater say over its own destiny. The bid was deemed at the end of 2007 to require advice from the boundary committee, which reported back in 2008, but following a series of legal challenges by district councils and the county council in a complex chronology of events, the boundary committee finally advised in December that a single unitary council for the whole of Norfolk plus Lowestoft would deliver the outcomes specified by the Government’s criteria for reorganisation, and that the original proposal of a unitary Norwich city should not be implemented.

In February of this year, Communities and Local Government Ministers announced that they felt the boundary committee’s recommendations did not in fact meet the necessary criteria and, furthermore, that they would be going back to the original proposal of a unitary Norwich. So, with a general election coming up, the Labour Government performed a complete U-turn on its previous assessment of Norwich’s bid. That was the death-bed conversion of a dying Government. Despite being a supporter of a unitary Norwich, I feared at the time that it was a convenient political fix to satisfy Norwich’s pro-unitary Labour council in the run-up to a general election.

A quick fix is certainly not what Norwich needs for the long term. We have to be 100% convinced that a model for unitary government in Norwich not only provides the benefits of localism, but is sustainable for the city and the rest of Norfolk. The previous Government’s quick-fix solution in February would have left Norwich with its existing city council boundaries, yet evidence from the Audit Commission suggests that the most effective unitary bodies are larger in size and have more widely drawn boundaries. The Government’s models did not address the boundary issue.

Norwich city council’s bid showed evidence of efficiencies, but another problem with the process was the volume of conflicting evidence that led to different conclusions. Although some efficiency savings can be made by going unitary, their extent is questionable, as is whether many savings can be made through improved joint working and shared services under two-tier and cross-district working. Progress on the latter has perhaps suffered locally in Norfolk, because councils were so unsure of their own futures until very recently. Efficiency savings, while an important consideration, have never been the most compelling argument for unitary government.

The orders laid in February by the previous Government to implement a unitary Norwich also included a provision to delay the scheduled elections in May for Norwich city council by extending councillors’ terms of office, thereby affecting 13 council seats in the city. As we have heard, Norfolk county council issued judicial review proceedings challenging the Government’s decision, and on 5 July this year the High Court quashed the orders in their entirety, including the extension of the terms of office for councillors. Thirteen councillors, many of whom had served with great distinction and for many years in public office, were simply stripped of their positions with immediate effect through no fault of their own. They did not deserve that, and some chose not to re-stand in the subsequent by-elections—a real loss to the city of Norwich of some fine public servants.

I am sorry that Norwich will not have unitary government this time. I hope that we will be able to look again at the issue and learn from the mistakes that were made. The process that the previous Government embarked on led to divisions and disappointments, and I feel a sense of deep regret, as well as anger, at the ill-thought-out process, which involved so much money and effort, promised so much in return, but delivered so little. After so much acrimony, it is time to move on. We will put the matter on hold for now, but I hope that we can return to it.

14:14

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

Our very clear view is that the Bill is misguided and should never have come before the House. We heard the Secretary of State, in his customary pejorative fashion, criticise the measures to create unitary authorities in Norwich and Exeter as a “worthless legacy”. “The public want the council to get on with more important matters,” he said, and he referred to “zombie orders”, but the fact is that the Secretary of State himself, with the massive cuts that he has endorsed, is creating zombie councils. He has singularly failed to stand up for local authorities and for the people who, throughout the length and breadth of the country, rely on the services that councils provide.

The Secretary of State talked about giving councillors the power to decide matters for themselves, and we support that, but the unitary proposal had cross-party support in Norwich and Exeter, so if he genuinely believes that councillors should be given the power to decide for themselves, why on earth has he brought this Bill before the House?

[Brandon Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman refers to cross-party support in Norwich, but for clarification I must note that he cannot be referring to the Conservative party, because Conservative members of the council were very much against the unitary proposal from the very beginning.

[Chris Williamson]

The members from the hon. Gentleman’s party in Norwich were pretty irrelevant, actually, to—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] They were irrelevant to the extent that they represent—[Interruption]—if the Secretary of State will allow me—a rump in that authority. Let us be clear about that.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

If the hon. Gentleman regards the issue of party support and the views of councillors as the sole determining factor, can he explain why his right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), when she was Secretary of State, rejected exactly the proposal with which we are concerned because it did not meet the required criteria?

[Chris Williamson]

The hon. Gentleman is not listening to me. I did not say that that was the sole determining factor at all, and he should listen a little more carefully. I know that this is one of my first appearances at the Dispatch Box, but if he listened more carefully he might learn a thing or two.

Labour Members very much support the benefits of unitary status for local authorities.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Perhaps the Conservative councillors in Norwich, who after all represent only the fourth party on the city council, did not support unitary status because, unlike the brave Conservative councillors in Exeter, they succumbed to the bullying from Conservative central office and from the Conservative county council?

[Chris Williamson]

In my experience, and from the anecdotal information that I have heard from Conservative colleagues, Conservative central office certainly does have a reputation for bullying, and I suspect that my right hon. Friend makes a very significant and relevant point.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), the shadow Secretary of State, set out our support for unitary authorities. We believe in the benefits of unitary councils, but so did the Conservative party, as my right hon. Friend said. The Liberal Democrats believed in them, too, so what has changed? Why the Damascene conversion? In the 1990s it was perfectly acceptable for the Conservative Government of the day to create numerous unitary authorities, yet now the Secretary of State says that there will be no more unitary councils or local government reorganisation, in spite of its ineffective elements whereby, as a result of the two-tier system, people often do not understand which local authority is responsible for what. It is a very inefficient way of delivering services.

Indeed, as in the case of Norwich and Exeter and, I suspect, other parts of the country, too, local people, councillors and businesses want a unitary authority providing the services with all the efficiency that goes with that status. Such local authorities have the ability to shape the place that they represent, to bring new inward investment and to create jobs and prosperity for the people in their area. The Secretary of State is riding roughshod over the wishes of not only the general public, but his own party’s councillors in Exeter. They have made their views very clear, but in an example of the bullying typical of the Conservative party when its members step out of line, their wishes have been disregarded, and those in other parts of the country have been sat on to keep quiet.

[Mr Pickles]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Williamson]

I am conscious of the time available, but I give way.

[Mr Pickles]

I think we have a little bit of time, with your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was wondering about Ian Gibson, a very distinguished Member of this House, who was deselected. Was that not bullying because the leadership did not like what he had to say?

[Chris Williamson]

The Secretary of State is really scraping the barrel. If that is the best he can come up with, it demonstrates the paucity of his argument.

The hon. Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) talked about democracy and said that there would be “no advantage”—I think those were his words—to local people of a unitary council. I wonder what planet he is living on, because clearly there is a significant benefit to local people from a unitary local authority, and it is clear that the people in Exeter and in Norwich want a unitary authority. There is a streak of gerrymandering running all the way through the Conservative party: it wants to gerrymander constituencies across the country and to gerrymander in local government. The views of local people—

[Brandon Lewis]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Williamson]

I have taken a few interventions. I want to make some progress.

The other important fact that the Government are ignoring is that Exeter and Norwich are significant economic drivers—the economic powerhouses of their local areas. If they were freed and allowed to speak up for the people they represent, they would be in a far, far better position not only to improve the services they deliver, but to bring in new inward investment to create the jobs that will be desperately required as a result of the horrendous cuts that the Secretary of State has sanctioned, which we heard about only yesterday.

[Mr Keith Simpson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Williamson]

I want to make a little more progress and deal with another point that the hon. Gentleman made. I will give way in a moment.

The hon. Member for Broadland betrayed a lack of understanding of local government when he said that the creation of unitary authorities in Norwich and Exeter would result in two police forces in each area. Clearly, that is utter nonsense. Let us get that on the record. He said that the move was supported by the former Secretary of State because it would generate some political advantage for the Labour party. Again, that is utter nonsense. It seems to me that, in making that remark, the hon. Gentleman is being economical with the truth. If someone is economical with the truth often enough, sometimes people start to believe it.

[Brandon Lewis]

rose—

[Mr Simpson]

rose—

[Chris Williamson]

The hon. Member for Broadland wanted to intervene and I give way to him.

[Mr Simpson]

I am thoroughly enjoying listening to the hon. Gentleman’s speech and looking at the expression on the face of his Whip. He talks about gerrymandering and various other matters. The main reason the then Secretary of State turned down Norwich’s original bid was that, with its current boundaries, it did not meet all the economic and regeneration criteria, yet, four years later, it was accepted. Can he explain why an argument that had been knocked down was accepted by a new Secretary of State four years later?

[Chris Williamson]

The hon. Gentleman wants to fight the battles of yesteryear. A number of changes occurred, not the least of which was that a better case was made by the authorities in question. In addition, there was a significant change in the economic conditions facing the country and, as I have pointed out, the cities are excellent economic drivers.

[Brandon Lewis]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Williamson]

I do not want to give way to too many more Members, because I am conscious of the time. I will be told off by the Whips if I go over my time and it would not be fair to take all the time left.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) made an excellent speech in which he set out the case extremely well. He referred to the Secretary of State saying that he supported “localism, localism, localism”. Of course, in reality, the right hon. Gentleman’s commitment to localism is sadly lacking. If this is not about localism, I do not know what is. How on earth can the Secretary of State make such statements and claim that he is the tribune of the people and supports localism, and then deny the wishes of local people and their elected representatives? That is the very antithesis of localism. It is clear to me that, far from supporting democratic localism, the Secretary of State supports a more autocratic, top-down approach to local government.

[Brandon Lewis]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman just referred to the amount of time he has left. Will you clarify how much time he has left to take interventions on the statements he is making?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

This debate would have to finish at 6 pm, but it is always up to each and every individual Member whether they take interventions.

[Chris Williamson]

I am sure that the House would love to listen to me speak for the next four hours, but I will not carry on that long.

The hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) let the cat out of the bag when she said that the cities are in a better position to attract grants—additional funding streams. It is clear from that statement that the current system of local government in those areas means that cities are able to bring in grants—often because they have a larger proportion of disadvantaged people living in their boundaries—but that that money is being siphoned off into other parts of the county and is not going to those who need it the most. That lets the cat out of the bag and I am sure that the Secretary of State had his head in his hands when the hon. Lady made that comment.

The hon. Lady said that she wanted the county structure to stay in place because she wanted to get funding for the A380. I do not know whether she was in the House yesterday or whether she listened to the Chancellor’s statement, but the chances of getting funding for any new road schemes are pretty minimal to say the least.

[Brandon Lewis]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way.

[Chris Williamson]

No I will not give way; I am sorry, but I want to make some progress. [Interruption.] Will hon. Members calm down and listen for a moment?

My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) absolutely demolished the Government’s arguments about value for money, because this is about no such thing. Unitary councils provide far better value for money because the unitary system avoids duplication, means that local people understand far better the provision of services and, as I have said, brings in new inward investment and is a good economic driver for the community.

The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) spent about five minutes denying the self-evident facts about the benefits of unitary authorities—they are easier to understand, cost less and provide a better governance model.

[Brandon Lewis]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Williamson]

No; I am going to carry on. [Interruption.] Hon. Members should calm down for a moment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) has first-hand experience of the benefits of the unitary council that was created by a Conservative Government back in 1997. During the recent by-election, he had the opportunity to speak to local people in Norwich and it is clear from what he said that those people had no truck with the Government’s proposals to deny their right to self-determination.

The hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) tried, in spite of the evidence, to portray the Conservatives as the defenders of localism, but that could not be further from the truth. He suggested that Labour has no business trying to claim that title, but we have demonstrated, through our period in government and our commitment to local government, that we are the party that genuinely deserves the crown when it comes to supporting localism. We have supported democratic localism: a Labour Government initiated the whole neighbourhood working and neighbourhood regeneration approach and supported local government with significant funding streams. The hon. Gentleman has the temerity to lecture us about top-down reorganisation when he is supporting the biggest ever top-down reorganisation of the national health service since it was created by the Labour party more than 60 years ago!

Finally, let me address the comments of the hon. Member for Norwich South (Simon Wright), who wants to have his cake and eat it. He said that he was sorry that we are where we are but went on to extol the virtues of unitary councils. He supports the unitary council in Norwich but he has clearly been leaned on by his Conservative masters to dance to the Tory tune—as the Liberal Democrats have done ever since they signed up to the coalition agreement. The Bill belies an underlying authoritarian streak in the Secretary of State: it is not so much localism, localism, localism as diktat, diktat, diktat.

14:33

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

Perhaps I should start by congratulating my opposite number, the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson), on having achieved the remarkable feat, in his first speech at the Dispatch Box in a debate of this kind—although we have addressed some previous business on a less contentious matter—of having managed to string together more clichés than I have ever heard in a single speech. He did so without any visible trace of irony whatever; that is what I find really impressive. I can see now that the route to advancement on the Opposition Front Bench is to adopt that well-known school of advocacy, “If in doubt bluster, keep your head down, bluster a bit more and wave your arms around a bit.” That is not so easy to achieve at my height, but if Members see something happening behind the Dispatch Box they will know that I have adopted it.

This has been a rather short sharp, debate, in more ways than one. I suppose it can be said that it has proved that it is possible for a dead cat bounce to have life. [Hon. Members: “Cliché!”] It takes one to know one; I am just checking that hon. Members are still awake. I agree with the hon. Member for Derby North about one thing: in some ways, it is regrettable that we need to have this debate at all. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I love coming to the Chamber, but we might have found matters to occupy our time other than having to introduce this Bill and keep hon. Members here.

It is worth looking at the history, so let me go back, as best I can, to the beginning. It was not all that long ago, although it may have seemed so to hon. Members at some points in the debate. The Bill is necessary to deal with the consequences of a nakedly political and questionable act by the Labour Government in their dying days, in ramming through a measure that they themselves had previously rejected—something that might be regarded as gerrymandering, according to any normal definition, and certainly as one of their ultimate U-turns.

Back in 2006 local authorities were invited to put forward proposals for unitary authorities. Some of those have been dealt with and have gone through the process. The purpose of the Bill is to deal with those left outstanding at the end of that process. Let me explain why they are outstanding. Exeter and Norwich submitted unitary bids on the basis of their existing boundaries. In July 2007 the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears)—she still sits on the Opposition Benches, as far as I remember—judged that there was a risk of their bids not being achieved. Indeed, she concluded that Norwich city council’s proposal was such that there was “not a reasonable likelihood” of its achieving the outcome specified by the five objective criteria that she had set, particularly the affordability criteria. She then asked for some further advice from the boundary committee.

The right hon. Lady asked Exeter city council for extra information, which arrived in December, and concluded that its proposal, if implemented, was also unlikely to meet the affordability criteria. Confronted with what might have been a vaguely partisan dilemma, she thought that she would ask the boundary committee to explore the idea of unitaries across the rest of the county, but that did not work either.

[Brandon Lewis]

The hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) said that the public wanted those unitaries. I can speak only for Norfolk and Norwich, where in the only printed consultation the public said no. I still have not heard any Labour Member refer to clear polling other than the published polling, which showed that 85% wanted the status quo, 10% wanted a unitary Norfolk and only 3% wanted a unitary Norwich, which the then Secretary of State took forward anyway. The people said no, and the local councils, except one, said no. The House of Lords had concerns, as did the Joint Committee. The Secretary of State then went ahead. That is exactly the opposite of what the hon. Gentleman claimed: it is top-down gerrymandering, whereas this Government are moving forward with true localism and letting the people have their say.

[Robert Neill]

As I hope I can demonstrate to my hon. Friend in a moment, what caused the previous Government’s plans to go awry was the fact that, not liking the results that they were getting, they decided to shift the goalposts at the very last moment—

[Stephen Pound]

Cliché!

[Robert Neill]

It was pretty much in extra time, with the referee about to blow the whistle. Then there came the next stage earlier this year, when the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles had bravely walked into the outer darkness—I believe that the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) did so at much the same time, but she has returned to bask in the sunlight of the Opposition Front Bench, so clearly does not share her right hon. Friend’s opinion now. The then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham), decided that his assessment of the Exeter and Norwich proposals was the same as his predecessor’s. However, he decided to do the opposite, concluding that there were compelling reasons, which had never previously been articulated anywhere, to depart from the presumption that a proposal had to meet all five criteria. That decision was ultimately struck down by the courts. That attempt to ram through a change and shift the goalposts in the dying days of a Government is why we are in the present mess.

The hon. Member for Norwich South (Simon Wright) is right to say that we need not go into the legitimate debates that we could have about the efficacy or otherwise of unitary authorities, because we have here a classic example of how not to go about a local government reorganisation. That is why we need the Bill—to sort out that mess and put an end to the proposals that, having been struck down by the court, would otherwise have been left hanging in the air at the end of the process.

I shall say a word about two of the arguments that have been deployed this afternoon, the first of which is the need for local councils to be master in their own house and restore power to what I accept are ancient and proud cities. There is a serious flaw in that argument, which runs through all the Opposition’s arguments: the fact that they confuse structures with power. That underlines and sums up the error in their approach to local government. They believe that we should give local authorities power by changing structures, reorganising and calling an authority unitary. On the contrary, we seek to give real power back to local authorities by removing the ring-fencing of centralised grants, providing them with the power of general competence, enabling them to work together collaboratively and removing restrictions on their right and ability to represent their constituents. That difference is a classic demonstration of the Opposition’s idea that power is all about tinkering, whereas we think it is actually about giving communities real choices rather than worrying about structures.

[Brandon Lewis]

I thank my hon. Friend for being gracious enough to find time to give way, unlike the Opposition Front Bencher.

Does my hon. Friend agree that although we have heard an awful lot of figures for savings that can be made from a change to unitary status, the real savings come from not spending money on any reorganisation at all, and instead letting local councils share services, without the on-costs that unitary status brings?

[Robert Neill]

That is precisely right. I have known the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) for a long time, and I admire his record in local government. He is no longer in his place, but I hope he would not take it ill if I said that despite his historical reference back to the times of the county borough changes, things have moved on. The argument now is not about restoring county boroughs but about shared services, collaboration, joint working and driving out costs from the corporate core. Creating small unitaries, as Labour proposed, would not have achieved any of that. My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and he brings me neatly on to the next point that I wished to make.

There seems to be a misapprehension about the whole issue of value for money and costs. We have always recognised that some savings can be made through restructuring, but the information that the councils supplied in their bids—it is in the impact assessment—showed that there would be set-up costs of £40 million, and that the transition could bring savings of some £39.4 million. However, Labour Members ignore the point that we have repeatedly made, which is set out in the first paragraph of the impact assessment: there is no reason for not making the savings through joint working and shared services—they are well developed in Norfolk, where there is a good shared services agreement, and there are good collaborative arrangements in Exeter—without having to incur the up-front costs of the reorganisation. That is why it is manifestly cheaper not to go down the unitary route. Labour Members conveniently ignored that.

With all due respect to the right hon. Member for Don Valley, she fell into the fallacy of thinking that structure was the same as power. She did not seem to grasp the fact that one her of predecessors on the Front Bench caused the mess that we are tackling.

[Chris Williamson]

If structures are so bad, were the Conservative Government wrong to create so many unitary authorities in the 1990s?

[Robert Neill]

From listening to the hon. Gentleman, I got the impression that unitaries would have become compulsory under a Labour Government. We accept diversity. We believe that if a unitary would cover a small urban area, its impact on the surrounding counties must be taken into account. That aspect is left out of Labour Members’ analysis, although several of my hon. Friends raised it, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) and for Broadland (Mr Simpson), who effectively shredded the arguments of the right hon. Member for Don Valley.

[Chris Williamson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Robert Neill]

Of course; we have all the time in the world.

[Chris Williamson]

I know we have. I wanted to give the Minister another chance to answer the question. Were the Conservative Government wrong to create so many unitary councils in the 1990s, particularly when many were formed in the teeth of opposition from the county councils—[Interruption.] I can hear the Secretary of State saying, “Don’t bother, don’t answer,” but I would be grateful for a response. The Minister appears to believe that it was wrong for us to try to create unitary authorities in Exeter and Norwich, so were the Conservative Government wrong to create so many in the 1990s? It is a simple question—yes or no?

[Robert Neill]

I do not think that they were wrong, but although I am always interested in history, I am not a prisoner of it. Since the 1990s local government has developed mature and sophisticated means, which were much less well recognised then, of working jointly across boundaries. It is also worth remembering that several issues, which must be tackled—interestingly, they arise in the case that we are considering—require cross-boundary working. For example, the ambitions for economic growth and development in both Exeter and Norwich involve developing important sites outside the city boundaries. I have been to both cities; I have not simply telephoned. Many of the development sites, which in Exeter stretch towards the airport, involve collaboration with the district councils, which will be the planning authorities, and with the county councils, which will be the highways authorities, in those areas.

Ernest Newman described extracts from Wagner operas as bleeding chunks, removed from “Tannhäuser” or “Parsifal” to be used at a concert. Taking a city out is extracting a bleeding chunk, disconnecting it from its hinterland. The proposals that Labour Members advocate would be the worst thing for the welfare of the citizens of both cities and counties.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Why, then, did all the business organisations in Exeter, which also reach outside Exeter, support the city’s unitary bid?

[Robert Neill]

Because they had not realised the extent to which an incoming Conservative Government would encourage and facilitate joint working through creating local enterprise partnerships rather than remote economic development associations, and grant the power and general competence to enable local authorities to set up special purpose vehicles. We can answer the arguments very well, without incurring the costs of reorganisation, which is a distraction at a difficult time.

I shall skim briefly through the other contributions out of courtesy. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), like several other of my hon. Friends, forcefully made the point about the need to recognise links. To remove considerable elements of the tax base from the two counties and leave sparsely populated areas with a lower tax base but with, as is generally accepted, the higher costs of delivering the full range of services across rural populations, would significantly undermine their ability to deliver quality services in their areas. That is why the views of residents of the surrounding county areas must be taken into account just as much as those of the residents of the cities. The Opposition have been conveniently silent on that subject.

[Mr Keith Simpson]

On a very important point, I failed to catch the eye of the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson), but he gave the impression that there was a sharp distinction between the poverty-stricken urban deprivation of Norwich and the wealthy rest of Norfolk. I do not think that he has ever been there. That, of course, is the problem. Labour has no MPs in the area: the nearest one is in Luton. The people of King’s Lynn, Great Yarmouth and Thetford would be amazed at such a caricature.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend, who has lived in and around the county pretty much all his life, makes a very well-founded point. I know from when I used to practise as a lawyer in parts of East Anglia that there is real deprivation and difficulty in some of those villages—a fact that seems to be ignored.

That brings me neatly to thanking the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) for his contribution. It was much appreciated, particularly by Government Members. He confirmed that as a Luton MP, he was the nearest Labour MP to Norwich—a mere two and half hours away—which was a wonderful and graphic illustration of the abyss into which the Labour party has fallen. Next time, so that he can strengthen his arguments about Norwich rather than rely on a telephone canvass, we will all club together and get him a day-return fare. He can go there in person, which I hope will help.

[Gavin Shuker]

If the Government were not increasing rail fares by the retail prices index plus 3%, I would be delighted to go to Norwich.

[Robert Neill]

There is sometimes an argument for quitting while in front, but the truth is that the hon. Gentleman demonstrates the complete lack of touch that the Opposition have with people in that part of England, which is why they did not understand the point about rural deprivation that my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) just made.

We would rather not have brought the Bill to the House, but it is necessary to undo a mess that was created by our predecessors for reasons of the grossest party venality. That must be put right. They pursued that process for no reason other than to pay off some party debts and settle some party scores. It lacked objectivity and intellectual coherence, so now perhaps the kindest thing to do is to lay it gently to rest.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT BILL [LORDS] (PROGRAMME)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Local Government Bill [Lords]:

Committal

1. The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.

Proceedings in Public Bill Committee

2. Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 4 November 2010.

3. The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

Consideration and Third Reading

4. Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.

5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.

6. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.

Other proceedings

7. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of any message from the Lords) may be programmed.—(Robert Neill.)

Question agreed to.

Health Services (North-east London)

Thursday 21st October 2010 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mr Dunne.)

14:53

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

It is a great pleasure to begin the Adjournment debate so early in the day. I rushed back to get here in time, and I am delighted that my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott) is here, because the future of the NHS in outer north-east London is vital to both of us as constituency MPs, and to residents not only of the London borough of Redbridge, but residents of Barking and Dagenham, who all use the facilities at King George hospital, Ilford, which is in my constituency.

Those who follow Hansard closely may have a feeling that this is a case of déjà vu yet again. I introduced a debate in Westminster Hall in December 2006 on the future of King George hospital and a debate in the Chamber in November 2009 on the same subject, and I am here again today. Why is that? We had a consultation process—the misnamed Fit for the Future proposals—launched in 2006, with supposed options that would have led to the scrapping of the accident and emergency department and all elective work at King George hospital. Then we had an independent review by Professor George Alberti that said that the proposals would be clinically unsound. The people behind the proposals, including Heather O’Meara, the then chief executive of the Redbridge primary care trust, were forced to go back to the drawing board, and we thought that we had seen those proposals off. But in 2008-09, they came back. In autumn 2009, we discovered that the new proposals would lead to the loss not—this time—of all the elective work, but of the accident and emergency department, all children’s surgery and all births at King George hospital.

The consultation on the original proposals was launched at a board meeting of the outer London primary care trusts held at Upton Park football ground—as a West Ham United season ticket holder, I feel very uncomfortable about this—in November 2009. Many glossy documents were published, and the whole exercise cost £800,000. One of those documents was called “Health for North-East London: Delivering high quality hospital health service for the people of north-east London”. It said that it was a consultation document launched in November 2009 until—or so we were originally told—15 March 2010. That was subsequently extended to 22 March.

The document gave people all kinds of boxes to tick and options for the future. However, in the summary, on page 39 it had a list of improvements or reductions in services, with only two red crosses, which meant a reduction in services. One was

“A & E, acute inpatient care for adults and children, complex planned surgery.”

There will be a reduction in services because it is proposed to get rid of the services at King George hospital in the London borough of Redbridge. The other was maternity and birthing services. It was proposed that women could have their antenatal care in Ilford and their postnatal care in Ilford, but they could not actually give birth there.

I had some doubts about the whole consultation exercise, including the questions being asked and the selection of the subjects, and I refer hon. Members to the debate that I introduced in November 2009 for the details.

We went through the consultation exercise—I still believe, as I said at the time, that it was as free and fair as a rigged Afghan election—and people sent back their responses. I worked closely with my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) and my friend, the hon. Member for Ilford North, on a cross-party basis, and we went to see the then Health Minister, Mike O’Brien. He was an excellent Minister and is a sad loss to this House. He agreed to come and visit King George hospital with us at the end of the consultation. He said that he understood the deep concern and recognised that tens of thousands of people had signed petitions against these proposals because they had serious concerns about the implications for the future. He agreed to refer the matter to the independent reconfiguration panel of the NHS. Over the next few weeks, the panel looked into the matter, but decided that it was not appropriate for it to intervene. The panel said that the consultation conclusions should be reported and that the process should continue.

Fair enough, but in July the results of the consultation were revealed to us at a meeting, again at the West Ham United football ground. There were a number of different documents, one of which was a great big analysis by Ipsos MORI of all the boxes that had been ticked, all the replies that had been received and all the different statements that had been sent in by clinicians, individuals, local authorities, LINks—local involvement networks—and various other organisations. In summary, despite the rigged nature of the consultation and the fact that those responsible did not take into account the petitions that I and others had organised—they simply said that petitions had been received, but did not add the figures into the equation—the proposals for maternity and accident and emergency were rejected by the public, by a two-to-one majority among all the respondents in all the boroughs concerned. Indeed, if we add the petitions, the figure is 90% against the proposals.

I went along to the meeting, I sat there, and I had my say, eventually. We were told that no decisions would be taken at that meeting, that people would go away over the summer and work up proposals, and that there would be further consultation with “stakeholders”—obviously we are not talking about vegetarians, but I do not quite know about the term “stakeholders”.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

It is a new Labour term.

[Mike Gapes]

It may be a new Labour term, but it is still being used by the current Government, so if the Minister can do something to stop that, I would be grateful.

There was a report back to “stakeholders” in September. I shall come to that in a moment, but let me first give a flavour of the responses that were received as a result of the whole exercise. For instance, the responses from the local authorities have been listed. The London borough of Redbridge sent in a clear response, which was a resolution adopted unanimously by the council that said:

“having taken account of the need to provide a wide range of health services in Redbridge which are able to meet the needs of our growing and diverse population, we express our strong opposition to the Health for North East London ONEL proposals to downgrade services at King George Hospital which would include (a) closure of the Accident and Emergency department (b) the ending of critical care support and acute surgical and medical treatment; (c) the ending of Children’s surgery and (d) the ending of maternity delivery in the Borough”.

That was the unanimous Redbridge position, supported by all parties and councillors among the 63 members of Redbridge council.

Barking and Dagenham council took a similar position, writing in its covering letter that it was “concerned about the proposals”. In particular, it was concerned that Queen’s hospital in Romford, which is the larger of the two hospitals in the Barking, Havering and Redbridge trust, would not be able to cope with the increased pressures, including the increased pressures on A and E, and maternity services. Interestingly, Waltham Forest council, which, in a previous incarnation in 2006, had come out in favour of the Fit for the Future proposals, said in 2010 that it would not comment on the A and E position. However, the council was critical that concerns about mental health had been neglected, saying that alternative services were needed. Waltham Forest council also said that Health for North East London needed to

“spell out what will be involved in reducing the number of A & Es from six to five especially in terms of impact on the remaining A & E departments”,

adding that the proposals were not clear. Newham council said that it was not convinced by the proposals either:

“We also note the significant changes to service provision at King George’s hospital. It will be necessary to closely monitor any resulting impact on our local Newham Hospital… Our expectation is that any increase in activity will be matched by appropriate resource levels.”

That was a conditional position. Tower Hamlets did not want to comment on the proposal either. Among the borough councils—these are representative bodies, the people who represent the community—there was either a clear opposition or at least indifference or ambivalence.

What about other organisations? I have already mentioned the Newham trust. It said something very important in its documents:

“experience with the Gateway Surgical centre supports the model of locating elective care in a separate building but on the same site as acute provision, allowing easier access for staff.”

The whole thrust of the proposals is to separate the two out, whereby the elective and the acute are in different places, yet this has been questioned even by one of the hospitals that could benefit by receiving the transferred patients.

The position adopted by other organisations is also significant. The Ipsos MORI documents make it clear that very strong views were expressed. The essence of my debate is captured by an important sentence, which states:

“The views opposing the reduction… from six to five hospitals providing accident and emergency, critical care and maternity services…came from organisations representing the public (elected local authorities and patient representative groups such as LINks)”.

It continues:

“It should also be noted that some opposition was also expressed from representative groups associated with NHS staff, notably some Local Medical Committees.”

Who, then, is in favour of these proposals? Not a lot of people, it seems. Within the local community in Redbridge, it is very hard to find anybody in favour of the proposals. Perhaps some people in other boroughs might be found, but it is certainly true that in Redbridge it is very hard to find anybody of any authority or any representative political role who is prepared to speak out.

[Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)]

Does my constituency neighbour agree that of the people who seem to be in favour of this proposal, none have actually lived in the area? Indeed, if I am not mistaken, some of the doctors involved in it were from Newham.

[Mike Gapes]

The clinical director behind these proposals is Dr Mike Gill, who is based at the Newham General hospital, and the general practitioners involved come from Waltham Forest. I think we can safely draw the conclusion that they have other interests in these matters.

On the proposals to end maternity services, I remind the House that we have had a maternity hospital in Ilford since 1926 and there are presently about 3,000 births a year at King George hospital. The Ipsos MORI summary of the conclusions states:

“On maternity services specifically, there were detailed submissions that made specific comments”,

some of which are cited. It notes that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists—a not insignificant organisation—had

“changed its view of maternity service provision”

and cites the royal college as saying:

“The trend towards a rising birth rate in this area over the next decade cannot be ignored, which will have a direct bearing on the capacity of a large unit at Queen’s Hospital.”

It made the following recommendation:

“Both units (King George V Hospital and Queen’s Hospital Romford) should be developed and sustained as fully-fledged maternity units.”

Those, it said, should be accompanied by “midwife-led units”. That was directly contrary to the position taken by Heather O’Meara and the outer north-east London organisation.

The document quoted the Royal College of Midwives as saying that the proposal for King George V Hospital and Queen’s raised concerns about

“the ability to deliver the configuration of services in such a way as to not result in a high volume of births at Queen’s Hospital.”

It also said that there were

“challenges in relation to…capital investment and workforce planning…in achieving the recommendations.”

The team of midwives from Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, who work at the two hospitals, said:

“Geographically, there will be no obstetric unit in Redbridge to serve the women of this area. Residents of Barking will need to travel further for obstetric led care… Although women will have greater choice for low risk birth there will only be one option for hospital birth in three boroughs.”

I could produce more quotations. There are so many in the document. But what has been the outcome? A meeting was organised on 30 September, of which neither the hon. Member for Ilford North nor I was given notice. I only received the information about it because one of my local councillors managed to get hold of the slide presentation. It was advertised as a “stakeholder discussion event”, and was held not at West Ham football ground but at the Holiday Inn, Newbury Park, in the constituency of my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Ilford North.

The “stakeholder discussion event” document is very interesting. Anyone reading it might assume that the recommendation was done and dusted. It contain presentations by Heather O’Meara, who is now the chief executive of all the outer north-east London primary care trusts; by Helen Brown, who works for NHS London; and by leading figures in the process. They spoke of “proposals”.

There has been a consultation, which has revealed serious concern among professional organisations in the area, and strong opposition from the local authorities. It might be assumed by anyone believing that consultation and public involvement really matter that something would have changed. On Friday morning, my neighbour and I had a meeting with Heather O’Meara, who described the outcome of the consultation as “some caveats”. She also said that the stakeholder discussion event had been based on clinical working groups where the ideas had been tested, and that there had been consultation with GPs and a huge number of public events. I had not noticed those huge events. Perhaps they happened in big places.

[Mr Scott]

Is it not fascinating that neither of the two local Members of Parliament most closely affected by the proposals was informed about the events and consultation that were allegedly happening, or was invited to take part? Is that not slightly strange? It might give us a complex: we might imagine that they did not want us there.

[Mike Gapes]

Why on earth could that be? I do not know.

On Friday morning, we discovered that the stakeholder discussion document and other proposals would be put before a meeting on 15 December of the joint committee of primary care trusts for outer north-east London. We asked questions. We asked what the process is before then. We asked whether there will be a role for the health overview and scrutiny committees of the local councils—we were told that there would not be. We asked what would happen to the role of the London region NHS and we were told that the meeting on 15 December will make the decision. So we asked who is to be consulted about these proposals before that meeting. That is when the statements that have been made and the positions of the Minister were quoted to us; what we were told is in line with the guidance from the Government since the election.

The Minister wrote to me on 12 October about a complaint I had received from a constituent. He stated:

“In May, the Secretary of State for Health announced a review of all service change proposals. He has outlined new, strengthened criteria that he expects decisions on NHS service changes to meet…proposals must have support from GP commissioners; arrangements for public and patient engagement, including local authorities, must be further strengthened; there must be greater clarity about the clinical evidence base underpinning proposals; and proposals must take into account the need to develop and support patient choice.”

Let us leave aside the last two of those. We have been given a clear view from our local authorities about the original proposals and we have been given a clear view of the public attitude to those proposals. What we have now been given is a slight tweaking of the consultation document. Three or four minor modifications have been made to the proposals and, as a result, those involved now intend to go ahead with the essence of the original proposals.

To confirm what I am saying, I wish to quote from a document produced by Helen Brown as part of the stakeholder consultation. On page 48 of the stakeholder presentation, under the title “Activity and capacity”, is a table describing the

“Proposed shift of activity to hospital sites”.

The figure for the row headed “Non-elective”, which relates to people admitted to the accident and emergency department for King George hospital, is minus 25,937 or minus 100%. That hospital’s figure for “A&E” is minus 59,565, or 100%, and its figure for births is minus 2,910, or minus 100%. Its elective activity is increasing, with some 18,000 being transferred from the Queen’s hospital, so that is a partial shift. Originally this was to be limited, but now some facilities are being moved in. However, the essence of the proposals—to get rid of the A and E department, the children’s surgery and births at the King George hospital site—remains.

So what does this mean? It means that the consultation that has been engaged in at great cost—the public stakeholder engagement—is a sham, a charade and a waste of money. The people behind the proposals, who tried and failed in 2006, and who tried in 2009 only to have this dragged out for longer, are now absolutely determined. This is a juggernaut being driven by unelected people in the NHS bureaucracy. They are disregarding the views of the local community and disregarding the Members of Parliament and the local councillors, and they are not going to be stopped because as far as they are concerned they are right.

My neighbour, the hon. Member for Ilford North, will doubtless wish to comment on the fact that on Friday morning we got into the essence of the issue, when we heard the argument that clinicians know best. In which case, what is the point of pretending that a public consultation is being carried out? What happens if the consultation comes up with a conclusion that these people do not like? I recall the old quote of Bertolt Brecht, “The electorate has made the wrong decision, so change the electorate.” Joseph Stalin’s 1936 constitution was adopted and the result was announced the day before the referendum was held in the Soviet Union. Are we moving that way with certain people in the professions believing that they know best, disregarding the wishes of the community?

King George hospital is not perfect. We have a lot of problems, but we also have a lot of problems with the other hospital in the trust, Queen’s hospital. The two together have a big ongoing deficit that they have had for five years and, despite promises to get rid of it, they have not done so. There is a real difficulty and I believe that an element of this is financially driven. As I pointed out in 2009, getting rid of the A and E at Newham general hospital would save £28 million a year, whereas getting rid of the A and E at King George hospital—according to the figures provided by those behind the proposals, not mine—would save only £19 million. Nevertheless, the decision has been made to go ahead with getting rid of the A and E at King George.

We are facing a very important time. We need a decision that is in the interests of the people, not in the interests of the people who run the bureaucracy of the national health service. There are strong arguments, but I want to finish with a quotation of the Prime Minister. In answer to a question yesterday from my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), the Prime Minister said:

“The whole point of the reform of the NHS is to put power in the hands of patients and doctors, so decisions about hospitals will be made on the basis of what local people want”.—[Official Report, 20 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 947.]

Interestingly, last Friday morning we asked, “How will the doctors be consulted?” We were told, “We will take soundings,” so we asked, “How do you take soundings? Is there a ballot? Do the GPs vote on whether they agree to the proposals?” We were told, “No, we will take soundings of health practices.” So we asked, “What is a health practice?” My GP is part of a health centre and there are eight or nine GPs. We were told that each practice would have one vote. So a single-handed GP could be equivalent to eight or 10 GPs in a group practice or health centre. That is a very strange way to find something out. It is perhaps like the Hong Kong Legislative Council or the estates in pre-revolutionary France, but if we are talking—as the Prime Minister said—about decisions made on the basis of what local people want, we need to be clearer about who is making those decisions.

I fear that at the meeting on 15 December these proposals will be pushed through regardless, and the running down of the accident and emergency—which is already beginning, with salami-slicing—and of the maternity services will start, so that in future no one will be born in Ilford except in the back of a car or taxi rushing them to the Queen’s hospital in Romford. People who need to go to the local hospital will not have that hospital facility, because they will have to go several miles away.

These matters are so important to my community and my constituents that I hope that I will not have to come back to this House for a fourth time with a debate on the future of my hospital—but if necessary I will do so. I hope that when the Minister responds he will reassure me that this process will not be allowed to be driven in the interests of people who are disregarding the wishes of the local community and their elected representatives.

15:24

[Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)]

I congratulate my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), on securing the debate. We must both be feeling déjà vu, because we have found ourselves on many previous occasions debating and saying exactly the same things about this issue. However, the situation now is totally different.

I will try not to repeat anything that the hon. Gentleman has said, although the events of last Friday were a little surreal, to say the least. We sat down and were told about all the consultation that had been taking place, which was surprising news to us. I had received an invitation that was posted the day after the meeting had taken place—so my hosts were obviously desperate for me to be there! I realise that they might have been unhappy with me because of my views about Redbridge NHS, but not inviting me to the meeting until after it has happened was, perhaps, a step too far. The hon. Gentleman has compared that to a rigged Afghani election, but I think that is being unkind to rigged Afghani elections; it was far worse than that.

This House has been presented with a petition of about 9,000 signatures from my constituents in Ilford North and another from the hon. Gentleman that brings the total of signatures to about 27,000. Our local paper, the Ilford Recorder, has also presented petitions to Downing street, of a further 16,000 signatures. In my past five and half years as Member of Parliament for Ilford North, not once has anyone e-mailed, phoned, come to my surgery or written to me to say, “We think it would be a wonderful idea to carry out these proposals,” and all these thousands of people are opposed to it.

I shall now turn to the process. Two weeks ago I received a phone call from the Ilford Recorder asking what I thought of these proposals, which, as the hon. Gentleman said, are virtually identical to proposals we have previously seen on various occasions over the past number of years. I said that these proposals could not be proposals because they had not undergone any independent review, which we had clearly said would take place if we became the party of government and which was clearly stated during the last days of the previous Government. Miraculously, by the time the press phoned Redbridge NHS back, they were no longer proposals; they were now just a possibility or an option—although, funnily enough, I did not see too many other options in the document. Like the hon. Gentleman, I found that my copy of the document turned up three weeks after the meeting—which I admit was not held at West Ham United football ground. It turned up in my office late—after the meeting—so I could not possibly have commented on any of its contents as I had not known about them at the time of the meeting.

It seems to me that the previous leader of Redbridge NHS, who is now in a much more exalted position, had decided that, come rain or shine, she wanted to push through the proposals. In the past, both the hon. Gentleman and I as the local Members of Parliament were called in for a meeting or a briefing separately, not together. I should say here that even though we clearly disagree on a number of political matters, it is not possible to put a cigarette paper between us on this matter; we are in total agreement on it. Those at Redbridge NHS have, without any question, tried to change that by briefing us separately. The people briefing us have come from Newham and a practice that is serviced by Waltham Forest, so would obviously not be affected by any changes at King George hospital. They would say what a wonderful idea it was, yet in all the conversations and meetings I have had, not one GP has said that; they have all said that they are concerned about its impact .

If, God forbid, someone were to be involved in an accident or have a heart attack in my constituency, they could die before they got to Queen’s hospital accident and emergency unit. I am not over-dramatising; that would sometimes happen, and that is why there has been such an outcry against this plan from the whole of Redbridge—not from one part of it or from one political party, but from the whole of Redbridge.

I go back to one freezing cold day last year when I, the hon. Member for Ilford South and hundreds of others marched through sleet to protest against proposed closures to the accident and emergency, maternity and other services at King George hospital. We did the same again—admittedly in much more clement weather—this year. The message was loud and clear: the results of this lack of consultation that are going forward to the meetings on 15 December are absolutely null and void and do not meet any of the criteria, because there was no proper consultation.

I and the hon. Member for Ilford South have held meetings in our respective constituencies and invited members from Redbridge NHS. I want to state clearly that in no shape or form were they political meetings, because they were open to the general public and I have no idea of the allegiances of those who attended them. None the less, the message was loud and clear: we need to maintain our accident and emergency and maternity services at King George hospital. They cannot be closed by stealth. They cannot be salami-sliced and closed. They must remain.

I would like to thank my hon. Friends the Members for Hornchurch and Upminster (Angela Watkinson) and for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) for their help and support. Their areas are serviced by Queen’s hospital. People might not think, because that hospital is not under threat, that the proposals would affect my hon. Friends’ areas, but of course it would, because the pressure of 250,000 extra people using Queen’s hospital will have a knock-on effect for their constituents.

I do not intend to detain the House further. However, like the hon. Member for Ilford South, I tell the Minister that this consultation is wrong. If those concerned try to railroad through the suggested closures on December 15, we will resist.

15:31

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) on securing this debate. I know from previous debates he has secured on this subject how strongly he feels about it—and rightly so—as a constituency Member of Parliament. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott) on his contribution. He has worked for a long time with the hon. Member for Ilford South in representing the interests of their constituents. I know that the quality of service provided by the local NHS is very important to both hon. Members and their constituents, and I assure them that I share their commitment to achieving the best possible health care for the people of north-east London. I also praise the hard work and dedication shown by NHS staff in north-east London. Their jobs are not always easy, but they always strive to provide the best possible care for patients.

Today, the NHS has some of the best people and facilities in the world, but when it comes to what is really important—outcomes for patients—we lag behind many other countries. The Government’s ambition is clear: for health outcomes in this country to be among the best in the world. Just over three months ago, we published the White Paper “Liberating the NHS”, showing how we will achieve the real gains. We will liberate clinicians from top-down targets and endless micro-management by politicians and civil servants. It is an ambitious plan for reform focused on three key aims: the first is to put patients first. Patients should feel that no decision is made about them without them. Secondly, we want to focus on outcomes, not inputs or processes, and to build a culture of evidence and evaluation, to ensure that health care uses innovation and evidence to provide quality care and is accountable for improving outcomes. Thirdly, to deliver the best care, we must empower NHS staff, whose responsibility it is to give that care. Decision making must take place close to patients, so that clinical decision making can be better combined with the use of resources. GPs already influence the commissioning of decisions by the way in which they manage and refer patients, and by deciding which medicines to prescribe and which treatments. They decide what is best for their patients based on the options available and on their clinical judgment of what would be best for them.

We are asking GPs to take the next natural step by giving the responsibility for designing, commissioning and paying for local services to groups of GP practices. This will ensure that decisions are clinically led, involving all other health care professionals, hospital consultants, nurses and social care workers in order to design services that put patients first and are focused on improving clinical outcomes.

GP commissioning also opens up the potential for working closely with local authorities to commission services jointly—even for the pooling of budgets to tackle local priorities jointly. For example, by working closely with local authority and social care providers, far more can be done to help older people or those with a disability to live independently, reducing their reliance on the NHS by avoiding things such as hospital admissions.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) recently opened the Macmillan information and support centre at Whipps Cross hospital in north-east London. The centre is available free to anyone affected by cancer and offers confidential advice and support. Such partnerships between the NHS and the third sector take exactly the kind of innovative and exciting approach to health care that we are actively encouraging.

Before addressing the specific concerns of the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend, I should set out the wider context of local health care reform. Thanks to the NHS, most of us will enjoy better health and longer lives than our parents and our grandparents. That is a tremendous achievement, as I am sure both hon. Members recognise, but, as the NHS effects great change on the health of this country, so the changing nature of the population must transform the NHS.

An ageing population is just one of the many challenges to which the NHS must adapt over time. Every day, new medicines and treatments are developed to meet our changing lifestyles and expectations. We know that change can sometimes be unsettling, but we also understand that the NHS needs to evolve—to move with the times. All we ask is for the NHS to make collective, informed and local decisions that improve outcomes for patients.

On 15 December a joint committee of primary care trusts will make some important decisions about the future of King George hospital and about health services in north-east London more generally. I am confident that those decisions will be made by those best qualified to make them, based on a solid foundation of clinical evidence and local engagement.

[Mike Gapes]

rose—

[Mr Burns]

I thought that the hon. Gentleman might want to intervene at this point.

[Mike Gapes]

How are the views of elected local authorities, of elected Members of Parliament and of the community, as expressed even in that dubious consultation exercise, to be taken fully into consideration against an NHS management bureaucracy who seem determined to carry on regardless? Is 15 December the date of the final decision? Is there no other way in which we the public can have our say?

[Mr Burns]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, because I fully understand how strongly he feels about the issue—what he recognises, from his constituents’ point of view, as a potential problem—and how important it is to get the matter right. I shall not duck the question, but will the hon. Gentleman bear with me a little so that I can put it in context? I shall then respond to his intervention and answer his specific question about whether 15 December is the end of the road, or whether any other avenues might be open to him and to my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North.

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will describe how we reached this point. Back in February 2009, as he mentioned, the NHS in north-east London began to think about how it could better use its resources to provide safe, modern health care. The NHS in north-east London as a whole faces considerable challenges. Health outcomes and key health indicators are poor: people in the area have lower than average life expectancy and higher rates of infant death. The NHS recognised that it needed to improve services to meet those challenges head-on. For example, it found that long-term conditions could be managed better: instead of being admitted unnecessarily to hospital, patients could be treated in the community, closer to their homes.

One of the solutions suggested was to turn two of the existing hospital sites—the Royal London and Queen’s—into major acute hospitals and for them to become centres of excellence. Doctors can achieve that level of quality only if they see high numbers of complex cases, and patients can receive the best care only when surrounded by expert clinicians. To reach that critical mass of doctors and patients, specialist services would be consolidated into the two major acute hospitals, not spread thinly across each hospital in the region. The Royal London and Queen’s would be supported by three local hospitals, all with accident and emergency departments. The final site—King George hospital, which has been the main focus of this debate—would also play a vital role, taking a lead in providing primary, community and urgent care.

King George hospital would receive enhanced children’s services. An urgent care centre at the hospital would operate around the clock, the task being to manage as many patients as possible outside A and E services. Access and continuity of care for minor injuries and illnesses would be significantly improved. I know that there has been concern about rumours that the local NHS is planning to close King George hospital. I can categorically reassure the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend that that rumour is not true. Among the substantial number of services proposed to stay or to be moved to King George hospital was a recommendation that the hospital become a centre of excellence for planned surgery.

Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust has proposed the transfer of all breast surgery from Queen’s to King George. That will mean that some women who currently have treatment at King George but then have to be transferred to Queen’s for surgery will have the whole procedure carried out under one roof, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend will agree is an infinitely preferable and superior sequence of treatment to the present one. Those women will not have to go through the trauma and inconvenience of having to be moved to another hospital site for their surgery. In addition, local clinicians have identified a further 20,000 procedures a year that they believe would benefit from being provided solely at King George hospital.

Of the proposals made in north-east London, I know the hon. Member for Ilford South is most concerned about the potential loss of maternity and A and E services from King George hospital. I hope to be able to reassure him that, whatever the outcome of the meeting in December, nationally this Government remain committed to maternity and A and E services. When somebody walks through the doors of an A and E department, an urgent care centre or a walk-in centre, what sorts of service should they expect? To which facility should they go in the first place for the most appropriate care for the condition from which they are suffering? Part of the anger that we often see when the local NHS suggests replacing A and E with other, more appropriate services is due to a certain degree of confusion about what those services provide. The Government are committed to clarifying that, and work is already under way to standardise which services can be expected in various facilities. As well as improving A and E services, we want to improve urgent care radically. We are committed to providing universal access to high-quality urgent care 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Whatever the need, place or time, patients should be able to find the care they need. That is what part of our reforms in A and E will achieve.

The Government are also determined to drive forward improvements in maternity and newborn services so that women and their partners have access to local services and so that children have the best start in life. The safety of mother and baby is paramount. It is fundamental to safe, high-quality maternity care that a full range of services must be available to all women, whatever their medical and social circumstances. Services must be as near to home as possible, depending on the complexity of needs, with facilities and expertise available to provide optimum care.

[Mike Gapes]

I know that the Government are committed to improving the quality of care, as the previous Government were, but I have a large number of young families in my constituency and they will be forced to go several miles for the births of their children at Queen’s hospital rather than going to a hospital in the community where they live, as people in Ilford have done for 80-odd years. Is there a national policy that births can be allowed only at sites with a coterminous accident and emergency department, or could the proposals be reconsidered? One of the arguments in the relevant documents is that maternity services have to be moved because the A and E is being moved. Is that national policy?

[Mr Burns]

It is not national policy that if there is an A and E department there automatically has to be a maternity facility by its side. If one strips out the whole area of safety and quality of care, which is vital, one realises that the guiding rule is that maternity services are provided where they are relevant to the local community’s needs. It is about having the best siting relevant to the community’s needs. Clearly, however, there cannot, for a variety of reasons, be a maternity ward in every hospital in the country. Where they are sited will be determined by need and by the wishes of local communities. Once the reforms are in place, it will also be up to commissioners to decide where to site maternity units.

[Mike Gapes]

The Minister has heard me quote the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which takes the strong view that there should be maternity facilities and births at both the Queen’s and King George hospitals. I feel very strongly about this. There is clearly a difference of opinion between the people in NHS London, who are driving the change, and the people who deal with obstetrics and gynaecology—the experts—about what is necessary. Leaving aside the democratic arguments, the views of the people in the specialist royal college have not been taken into account.

[Mr Burns]

As with any proposals for reconfiguration anywhere, a range of views will be fed in, including those of the relevant royal colleges, GPs, clinicians, members of the public and other interested parties, and will be considered as part of the consultation process before a decision is made. I am going to come to the whole issue of consultations, on which the hon. Gentleman rightly has strong views, because I want to clarify the situation and, as I said earlier, I want to give him some answers about the options that might be open to him after 15 December.

In pursuit of true local backing for the proposals in the hon. Gentleman’s area, the local NHS has already started a debate about them. To date, it has talked through the issues with GPs, councillors, medical committees, national bodies and local patient representatives. I was going to say that perhaps he will recognise this from his own experience, as I am assured that the NHS has made every effort to keep him informed and to listen to his concerns. However, having listened to what he and my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North said, it would seem that that is partly the case and there may have been certain slip-ups: for example, posting a letter the day after a meeting was held. I cannot confirm or deny that because I am not party to the information, but my hon. Friend has put it on the record, and if it did indeed happen that is somewhat unfortunate.

The hon. Member for Ilford South submitted a petition on behalf of his constituents, and the local NHS has confirmed that that will be taken into account. However, it asks different questions from those in the official consultation, which slightly skews the point that he made about it. I understand that one of the questions was: “Do you support the closing of King George hospital?” I suspect that in the case of the vast majority of people signing it, the answer would be no, they do not support it. The trouble is that there is not, never has been and will not be a proposal to close the hospital. I hope that he therefore understands that the question is not relevant to the consultation on the reconfiguration of services.

[Mike Gapes]

I do not know what advice the Minister has had from his officials. I do not want to get into a long textual discussion, but he should get the full wording of the petition that I submitted. I have to admit that there were several petitions from different organisations and individuals, but mine referred specifically to A and E, maternity and children’s services. It may have been headed “Save King George hospital”, “I support Mike Gapes’s campaign”, or whatever, but the wording specifically referred to those issues.

[Mr Burns]

I agree that we do not need to get into to-ing and fro-ing about what exactly was written. My point was that some of the questions—I am not saying all of them—on some of the petitions were not directly relevant to what was being consulted on. Having said that, it has been recognised that they will be considered as part of the consultation process.

[Mr Scott]

My own petition did not say anything like “Lee Scott’s petition”; it talked purely about the proposals to close A and E and maternity services, and made no reference to anything else. I therefore trust that those 8,000 names will also be taken into account.

[Mr Burns]

I have no doubt that they will, as part of the ongoing consultation and evaluation of responses to the consultation process.

Before 15 December, the London strategic health authority will assess north-east London’s readiness against the four tests that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State introduced in May this year to ensure more local engagement in the proposed reconfigurations of services throughout the country. In certain previous consultations, there was a long-held view that although lip service was paid to local people and medical practitioners—clinicians and GPs—the views of the local community did not matter because, in effect, a decision had been taken at the launch and things would end up in exactly the same state at the end of the process.

To give greater credence and importance to local views, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced his changes to the criteria that had to be conformed with for reconfigurations to take place, to empower people to take part in the discussions and to ensure that their views would be fully considered before decisions were taken. To achieve that, he has said that reconfigurations and consultation processes that are already in progress will have to be checked against the revised and strengthened criteria to ensure that they have been carried out under the new format. I can assure the hon. Member for Ilford South that that will happen prior to the meeting on 15 December.

[Mike Gapes]

Will the Minister clarify who will do that? Will it be the person in the London NHS who is behind the proposals, or will it be somebody independent of the proposals?

[Mr Burns]

It will be done by the national health service in London. People could be tempted to shout “Foul” if they do not agree with the decision, but that does not mean to say that it necessarily is a foul. In the case of a straightforward matter such as checking whether the consultation process has taken place under the new guidelines, we have to accept the professionalism of the people carrying out the job, and trust that they will do it properly. If it emerged that the guidelines had not been abided by in any way—I hasten to add that I make this point illustratively, and I am not saying that it will—the hon. Gentleman would be extremely happy. If it were found that they had been abided by, he would need to have an open mind, and not automatically say that things had not been done properly.

While the discussion in north-east London continues, the clinical working groups have already made changes to their previous recommendations. If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will give him some examples. From talking to parents it was obvious that many were anxious about the prospect of travelling long distances to get treatment for their children. Clinicians needed to find a way to reduce the chance of that happening, and now it is proposed that only children needing specialist or high-dependency care will be transported to specialist centres. That means that more children will be treated locally than was originally anticipated, but they will still have access to specialist care when they need it.

Women told the NHS that they wanted more midwife-led care. As a direct result, a study has been commissioned, working with local mothers and mothers-to-be, to find out what choice really means to them. Clinicians are working up plans for midwifery-led units across the region as we speak.

Some residents expressed concern about having no A and E at King George hospital. Doctors are still convinced that clinically, any small increases in travel time will be more than compensated for by having better, safer, faster care, but they have recommended changes to the original proposals for urgent care at the hospital. Now, as well as the 24/7 urgent care centre originally proposed, a 24/7 short stay assessment unit is being recommended. It would be staffed by a team of skilled clinicians with expertise in assessment and treatment as well as in emergency medicine. The service would offer facilities for longer periods of observation, assessment and treatment, including access to a range of tests not currently available in primary care and specialist advice from hospital clinicians. Staff would work closely with community health and social care services, including mental health services, so that as many patients as possible could be cared for in the community without recourse to a hospital admission.

The NHS in north-east London is also working closely with Transport for London to ensure a good bus service between Queen’s hospital and King George hospital. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees that that is vital to help many of his constituents who may need to use such a service.

I believe that discussions with the local community have already made a positive impact. The local NHS is now truly listening to GPs and consequently changing its plans. That reflects the improvements that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State introduced to engage local communities with reconfigurations.

[Mike Gapes]

Will the Minister address my point about consulting GPs? How will their views be taken into consideration?

[Mr Burns]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of that. My understanding is that the “health for north east London” programme team is prioritising engagement with GP practices whose patients would be most affected by the reconfiguration proposals, and GPs who are currently likely to be leaders in the commissioning consortiums that will flow from the NHS reforms.

[Mike Gapes]

rose—

[Mr Burns]

I will give way for the last time.

[Mike Gapes]

We are considering an important point. The letter from the Minister, the May proposals and the Prime Minister’s remarks yesterday place great emphasis on GPs’ views and wishes. Yet what we were told on Friday has made me very worried. Which GPs are we talking about—the lead person in a commissioning consortium, single-handed practitioners joining together and outvoting a group of GPs in a health centre, or what? There is no provision for a ballot. What is the process? People can get whatever result they want if they skew the process. My fear is that the process will be discredited unless it is seen to have democratic legitimacy. I suspect that we will have a big problem, because the views of certain GPs will be taken into account and those of others will not.

[Mr Burns]

I will confirm what I said before the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. The consultation will prioritise engagement with GP practices whose patients would be most affected by the reconfiguration. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that there should be a ballot of GPs, I do not agree. There should be engagement, discussion and GPs contributing to any reconfiguration proposals by meeting people who undertake the consultation process to make known their views and their preferences—the pros and cons that they envisage—but I do not think that a ballot is either feasible or necessary. To take his idea to its logical conclusion, why restrict a ballot to GPs? Why not have a ballot of social workers or community nurses? That sort of engagement is unnecessary when there are other perfectly satisfactory forms of engaging.

If the hon. Gentleman supported what was happening, he would be happy with the procedures.

[Mike Gapes]

No.

[Mr Burns]

I think that he would. Let me point out gently and tactfully that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State expressly introduced criteria for the engagement of GPs, clinicians and other interested parties because of their concern that they did not have enough ownership of consultation processes. I have to say that until 6 May, for 13 years, we were not the Government—and that it was we who looked at the position afresh and recognised the concerns throughout the country about reconfigurations. By introducing his criteria, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State responded to the concerns of local communities that their views were not being properly considered. This Government, in a very short time—within two and a half weeks, I think—took decisive action to give greater power and ownership to those groups to contribute to consultation processes.

On local scrutiny, which featured significantly in the hon. Gentleman’s speech, I fully recognise that there are considerable public concerns about the proposals for north-east London. In the light of those, the Redbridge overview and scrutiny committee referred the case to the previous Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), in January 2010. He asked the independent reconfiguration panel for advice. In its response, the panel concluded that a full review was unnecessary. In July 2010 my right hon. Friend the current Health Secretary accepted the panel’s recommendation that due process by way of public consultation and formal engagement should be allowed to continue—a process that has not yet come to an end, as the hon. Gentleman knows.

However, as I said, we are determined that local voices will be properly heard, and we expect any concerns to be taken extremely seriously. I shall lay out again for the hon. Gentleman the critical tests that have been applied in the consultation process in the past two or three months, and that will be applied until the consultation’s conclusion. First, the proposals should have the support of GP commissioners; secondly, arrangements for public-patient engagement, including local authorities, should be further strengthened; thirdly, there should be greater clarity about clinical evidence underpinning any proposals; and fourthly, any proposals should take into account the need to develop and support patient choice.

Given the complexity and scale of the challenge in London, the Secretary of State, as the hon. Gentleman knows, called a halt to existing clinical strategies and asked the NHS to look at its plans afresh. That means that north-east London now has an opportunity—it has had one for some time—to have a frank and open discussion with GPs, clinicians, councils and patients on how their health services can change for the better. I believe that if that process is managed well, any changes made will lead to better health care for people across north-east London, including the hon. Gentleman’s constituents.

As was said in the debate, the question of whether those four criteria are fully met will be considered prior to the meeting on 15 December. Providing it is seen that those criteria have been met, the meeting will go ahead, and a decision will be taken. What happens if the decision is not popular with a number of people? I suspect, from what the hon. Gentleman said, that it will not be. Unless I misheard him, he said that the overview and scrutiny committee would have no opportunity to look at the proposal, reach a decision on it and write to the Health Secretary if necessary. I am not quite sure why he said that.

[Mike Gapes]

My understanding of what we were told at the meeting on Friday is that the decision on 15 December will be the final decision, subject only to the Secretary of State, and that there was no intermediate process. If that is inaccurate, I would be delighted, but that was my impression from what we were told on Friday. The hon. Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott) will confirm that.

[Mr Burns]

I am interested to hear what the hon. Gentleman was told on Friday, and I hope that I will be able to delight him. My understanding is that after the meeting on 15 December, the OSC can look at the decision that has been made. If it is not convinced that it is the right decision, it can contact the Secretary of State. That is a step forward from what the hon. Gentleman was told at his meeting on Friday. We cannot anticipate the decision to be taken on 15 December, because that would be irresponsible, but I have confirmed that he will have some further opportunity—if warranted by the OSC’s decision, because we cannot prejudge that either—to have the decision revisited.

As I have said, we must not prejudge the outcome of the meeting of the joint PCTs on 15 December, when local NHS leaders will gather to make a decision that will dictate the future of health services in north-east London. I believe—even if I do not altogether carry the hon. Gentleman with me—that that decision will, rightly, be made locally. I understand that these issues arouse strong feelings: they involve difficult decisions about how resources should be used to achieve the best care for patients, which must always be the priority for, and guiding force behind, any reconfiguration or provision of health care.

Similarly, the NHS must continue to develop its plans for the future, and it must do so by giving local people and GPs a far greater say. Obviously, we will have to wait to hear the judgment on how the consultation has been carried out in relation to the four criteria laid down by the Secretary of State, but we need to create an NHS run by empowered professionals free of the shackles of central Government. The NHS has received massive investment, but it is drowning in bureaucracy. We will cut the red tape and sweep it away, letting NHS professionals organise themselves locally. It is a measure of the importance that we afford the NHS and the future health of this nation that its budget will be protected, as was confirmed in the announcement of the comprehensive spending review by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor yesterday.

The hon. Gentleman must await the decision on 15 December. I am convinced that what will be done throughout the health service, especially in the case of difficult reconfigurations, will have as its guiding priority the desire to get the highest-quality health care for all our constituents.

Question put and agreed to.

16:13

House adjourned.

Westminster Hall

Thursday 21st October 2010 Westminster Hall

Thursday 21 October 2010

[Anne Main in the Chair]

Cutting Crime (Justice Reinvestment)

Thursday 21st October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Relevant documents: First Report from the Justice Committee, Session 2009-10, HC 94-I, and the Government response, Cm 7819.]

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—(Mr Crispin Blunt.)

14:30

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

I am pleased, Mrs Main, to serve under your chairmanship, and to have the opportunity of debating this report, which has been around for some time. It is from the 2009-10 Session, and represents the culmination of an extensive inquiry that took place over two years. It was a unanimous report, and I pay tribute to the members of the Select Committee who took part in it. I particularly single out the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael), who is here this afternoon and looking ready to take part in our proceedings. He has a lot of experience in this area, and made a major contribution to our deliberations, as did many then members of the Committee.

I also pay tribute to the Committee’s staff, who gave us such excellent support in producing the report, and to the many organisations and individuals who were witnesses in person, who submitted memorandums, or who took part in e-consultation. We received a lot of evidence, and we gave it a great deal of attention. The report was extremely well received by many organisations working in the field.

I shall remind hon. Members of the context. The previous Government had announced that their solution to prison overcrowding, likely further demand, and the use of police cells was to increase capacity to 96,000 prison places by 2014. The Committee was worried that a predict-and-provide approach to the problems was not sustainable in the long term. That was the approach that Lord Carter had recommended in his December 2007 review of the use of custody, but we thought it was short-sighted and could not be maintained.

We wanted to consider whether committing further resources to prison building represented the best possible way to improve public safety, and to reduce reoffending in the context of a fall in recorded crime rates and under-resourced probation services. Interestingly, there has been another fall in the recorded crime rate today—an 8% fall and a 4% fall in the British crime survey figure. I am not claiming that that is success for the coalition Government, any more than I supported the claims that the previous Government sometimes made about the fall in crime. Movements in crime statistics respond to all sorts of things, and have a curious way of being similar throughout neighbouring countries, and indeed throughout much of Europe. We are sometimes in danger of exaggerating our impact on total crime figures, although the system, through the good work of good people, is having a significant impact on the lives of many people who become involved in crime. I pay tribute to those who work in the criminal justice system and whose efforts have turned people away from crime, thereby saving other people from becoming victims of crime.

The fundamental issue is that the first duty of the state is to protect its citizens and keep them safe. We spend well over £5 billion on the criminal justice system in England and Wales, and billions more on policing and the social, health and business costs of crime. We owe it to taxpayers to calculate whether we are spending all that money in the way most likely to prevent them from suffering the effects of crime, but the reoffending rate of ex-prisoners is so high—two thirds of prisoners go on to reoffend—that it seems that we are not. Some offenders are so dangerous that they must be kept in prison or in secure mental institutions for very long periods, but for many, custody is an expensive way of not solving the problems that they present.

A number of things have happened since we produced our report. The previous Government published their response, which accepted much of our analysis, but did not accept or were rather lukewarm about the route that we had identified to deal with the problems. That might be attributed in part to the pre-election atmosphere, but it also reflected the strongly held views of the previous Lord Chancellor.

The situation has changed dramatically for several reasons. First, we have a different Government with a Lord Chancellor who holds different views from those of his predecessor, and is never slow to express them. Secondly, there is a very serious financial crisis which both Government parties and the Opposition recognise requires substantial cuts in public spending. They may disagree about precisely how much and precisely where, but there is common ground between the parties. That has caused the coalition Government to shelve plans that the Committee criticised for a 1,500-place prison, and to make deep cuts in the departmental budget of the Ministry of Justice, which will affect spending on probation and other services that provide alternatives to custody.

The Committee was not unaware of the difficult financial situation. In the report’s summary—we are talking about December 2009—we said:

“Public expenditure generally is under pressure in all areas in the worst economic climate since the Second World War. The Ministry of Justice is no exception, being tasked with finding £1.3 billion worth of cost savings over the next three years.”

The situation was bad then, and cuts had to be made, but it is recognised that the position is worse now and even more demanding. There are two differences: the change of Government and an even more serious financial situation. The third is that the Government are developing ideas such as payment by results and social impact bonds, which we did not examine and which were not part of our report. They are new elements in the discussion.

In our report, we concluded that after the election the Government would face a choice of risks: to muddle through with the previous plans to build more prisons in the hope that commitments made under the predict-and-provide model would prove to be affordable and not merely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy; or to make more radical decisions and investments, putting the system on a sustainable footing in the longer term by shifting resources away from incarceration towards rehabilitation and measures that prevent people from becoming criminals in the first place. It is far better to spend our taxes on preventing suffering from crime than on housing and feeding more and more people who have committed crimes and caused great suffering and distress in the process.

The report highlighted the fact that, although the prison population has increased as a direct result of the introduction of longer sentences and better enforcement, rather than an increase in crime, there were other contributory factors. They include the press, perceived public opinion and political rhetoric. Paragraph 36 states:

“Wider factors, such as the media, public opinion and political rhetoric, contribute to risk averse court, probation and parole decisions and hence play a role in unnecessary system expansion. … A good deal of media comment assumes that sentencing is below the level that the public expect, whereas the evidence suggests that the public—when asked to make a judgment—set out expectations that are close to the levels that are actually being set by the courts… The Government should lead a public debate on the aims of criminal justice policy, and seek to influence, as well as to be influenced by, the public response…In basing arguments for reform on the best use of taxpayers’ money, the political argument could be shifted away from notions about which party is ‘harder’ or ‘softer’ on crime and criminals to questions about the most effective use of scarce resources…It is time for an objective consideration of what is in the best interests of society”.

I welcome the fact that the Lord Chancellor has recognised the importance of rational political debate and has tried to stimulate it. That is precisely what he did in his speech at King's college at the end of June, and I hope that we will see a move away from the numbers game that he said characterised the penal policy of the past 25 years. The key messages in the Committee’s report were reflected in the Lord Chancellor’s inaugural speech and those of other Ministry of Justice and Home Office Ministers. They have moved on from the previous assumption that a high and rising prison population is inevitable.

Even without a deliberate policy shift, yesterday’s spending review made it clear that the financial situation made change unavoidable. In its report, the Committee drew attention to clear precedents that proved that it was possible to reduce the prison population and public spending without compromising public safety.

Finland successfully reduced its prison population over two periods in recent history when it decided that it could not afford to build more prisons. When we were in Finland some time ago, we questioned officials on why and how they had embarked on a substantial reduction in the number of prison places and people in custody. We expected a deep philosophical answer from the thoughtful Finns, but they said, “Well, the Ministry of Finance told us that we couldn’t have any more money for prisons.” It is remarkable how economic circumstances can sometimes create policy changes. Those changes did not result in any increase in crime in Finland, as some in this country might fear such a policy.

Some American states have become more sophisticated than England and Wales in their thinking about whether prison represents the most appropriate use of taxpayers’ money, and they recognise that the expansion of imprisonment can come at the expense of new hospitals and schools. Those states faced the same choices as we do now against a background of historically high rates of incarceration.

Several US states have adopted “justice reinvestment” approaches. That term refers to criminal justice policy reforms that are designed to reduce prison spending by redirecting resources from inside and outside the criminal justice system towards more productive, locally-based initiatives to tackle the underlying problems that give rise to certain kinds of criminal behaviour. Hon. Members know the sorts of problems involved, such as unemployment, mental ill health or drug and alcohol dependency. Such initiatives are targeted at the populations that are most at risk of offending and reoffending.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the work that he has undertaken over a number of years. The report on justice reinvestment has been long in the making and it is good to bring it to light. I know that there are a number of cricket supporters in the room, so early in his innings, I would like to bowl my right hon. Friend a full toss to whack away to the boundary. Does he agree that it was disappointing that the Government sought to compartmentalise their response by suggesting that the Committee overestimated the benefits that could accrue from moving towards a justice reinvestment approach, by distinguishing between less serious and more serious offenders when looking at the impact of early intervention and prevention? Plainly, early intervention will have an effect on whether a person ends up as a more serious or less serious offender. If we can get there early, we will save taxpayers and victims a lot of damage.

[Sir Alan Beith]

It must be remembered that that was the response of the previous Government. I found that part disappointing because it got into a circular situation. If we simply look at the present prison population, we are looking at the failures of the past. If we do not change the policy, the situation will continue. I will return to that theme later in my remarks. Catching people early is of vital importance. The people who initially commit relatively minor offences sometimes go on to become those who, through drug dependency or something else, get into more serious offences and become subject to repeat custodial sentences because of the ever more serious or frequent crimes that they commit.

In 2007, the Texas state legislature rejected plans to spend $0.5 billion on new prisons in favour of a justice reinvestment approach. Half that money was spent on expanding the capacity of residential and out-patient treatment for substance misuse and mental health, community-based sanctions for offenders and post-release support to prisoners. Parole revocations were reduced, and the increase in the prison population was 90% smaller than had been predicted. Significant savings were made within two years, because the costs of increasing the capacity of treatment and residential facilities were significantly less than the cost of increasing prison capacity.

The Committee gave a great deal of detailed consideration to how justice reinvestment approaches could be applied to the system in England and Wales. We believe that the system as a whole should be revisited through a lens that looks at crime as a problem to be managed in a cost-effective way. A longer-term rational approach must be taken to policy and the diversion of resources. That would enable prisons that are currently stretched to deal more effectively with those for whom incarceration is necessary for public protection, and prevent the need for continued expansion in the number of prison places. Few hon. Members in the Chamber will not have visited prisons and seen the pressures under which prison officers work. Such officers desire more time and opportunity to devote to rehabilitative work. Ideally, they would work with smaller numbers of prisoners who need that kind of support, and they are anxious to provide it to them by using the skills that they have built up over the years.

We also suggest that probation services should be able to pay greater attention to those offenders who represent the greatest risk to the public. Lurking at the back of that is a problem to which I will refer later. We must find a way other than imprisonment to signify society’s disapproval of crime. For some, community sentences can be more demanding than prison. The week before last, we took evidence from four ex-offenders during our work on the probation service. Two of those offenders said that they had committed offences in order to get back inside, because that was easier than the community sentence on which they were engaged. In one case, the sentence did not seem to work well, because the daily supervision requirement prevented the person from taking a job. In both cases, people had committed offences that they knew would put them back in prison, which was the easier option. That is not often recognised by the public, who see prison as the only way of saying that society will not put up with crime. We must demonstrate that community sentences can fulfil that function, as well as reduce the risk of reoffending.

A priority for the Government is to find a mechanism to overcome the fact that we treat prison in the system as a “free good.” If the sentencer—judge or magistrate—has an offender before them, they may consider whether some form of rehabilitative treatment such as intensive supervision or a course of drug treatment, residential or otherwise, would be the right thing. Inquiries must then be made into whether that is available. If the sentencer says “prison”, the van pulls up outside the door and takes the person away. The prison system and the National Offender Management Service recognise that it is their obligation to take whoever the court sends. However, there is an imbalance between the automatic availability of prison, and the uncertain availability of an alternative, which might be much better in a given case.

We thought that the most promising way to deal with that issue was probably the devolution to local agencies and communities of resources that are spent on corrections. The first step would be to look at how money is currently spent on offenders across the system in Government Departments and statutory agencies. We felt that a business case could be made to move resources from a significant part of the prison building programme, if the numbers entering or re-entering the system could be reduced by a sufficient margin before contracts were signed for new prisons.

The Washington State Institute for Public Policy looked at the cost of imprisonment to the state, and developed an alternative model of investment that primarily involved investing in rehabilitation programmes that would break even over five years and yield considerable savings thereafter. It is therefore possible to reap significant rewards by adopting justice reinvestment approaches over a 10-year period.

Fundamental change in the pattern of public expenditure is entirely appropriate during times of economic difficulty. When is it more necessary to look at how we are spending money than when we realise that we have not got as much as we would like? That requires the Government to recognise that change must be facilitated by some movement of money and spending in other areas. When changes cut across departmental boundaries and involve transfers between central and local government budgets, it is rarely an easy process. We are looking not only for justice disinvestment but for justice reinvestment.

In order to release resources in the medium term by halting the prison building programme, investment is required in the shorter term. We must identify where resources are currently being wasted or duplicated, and where quick wins could be achieved by reducing the prison population if that money were reinvested. The amount required for reinvestment is relatively small when compared with the resources that would have been committed to building and running 96,000 prison places.

The Committee’s proposals are in line with what the previous Government sought to do—and significantly achieved—in diverting women away from crime. That explicitly linked the reduction of expenditure on women’s prison places with the funding of new initiatives to improve community provision. For two years, £7.8 million per year was committed to provide additional services in the community for women offenders who were not a danger to the public. That was an attempt to reduce the female prison population by 400 by 2012, as recommended by Baroness Corston in her 2007 report. Those initiatives have already borne fruit in reducing the number of women in prison. The investment required was a tiny sum in the context of spending on prisons.

The previous Government had some similar success in reducing custody for young offenders. We may no longer need a free-standing Youth Justice Board, and it is going, but we should recognise that it helped to achieve a sharp reduction in custody as a way of dealing with young offenders.

In both cases, the significant element was that there was a commissioning process, which created the opportunity to change the mix of custody and alternatives to custody that were available to sentencers. We argue that similar approaches should be adopted to deal more effectively with other groups of offenders, including low-level but persistent offenders, who frequently have problems with drugs, alcohol or mental health, or some combination of those things. The severely mentally ill could be dealt with more appropriately in the health care system.

Local services such as housing, drug agencies and mental health trusts, which could help to prevent people from reoffending when they are no longer in contact with the criminal justice system, are often under-resourced. Targeted investment in the areas where offenders and victims are known to live could ensure that services were more readily available, without having explicitly to prioritise access to offenders, whom the public would regard as a not particularly deserving target in themselves.

The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth brought to the Select Committee his knowledge of what was happening in Cardiff and the work done by an accident and emergency consultant there. I hope that he will find an opportunity to refer to that in the course of this afternoon’s proceedings.

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is just possible.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I am giving the right hon. Gentleman a prompt, but I am sure that he does not need it.

Short-sentenced prisoners frequently end up in custody after repeated community sentences. There is a need to examine why community sentences are breached and why some offenders continue to offend. We concluded that that was partly because the sentences are under-resourced. There are waiting lists for offender behaviour programmes and assessments for mental health and treatment. Probation officers typically have extremely large case loads, and often we are talking about people with completely disorganised lives who just do not get up in the morning. What they need is not a very short prison sentence but someone to bang on the door and get them out doing the community programme that they are supposed to be carrying out. They need someone to exercise some authority.

In the course of the inquiry on probation, we have spoken to ex-offenders, and what they said was very illuminating. They made it clear that they needed probation officers to challenge them, not simply to offer friendship and a cup of coffee, however desirable it is to establish a relationship. They needed probation officers to challenge them because, as they openly admitted, their behaviour needed challenging. Their unwillingness to do some of the things that they needed to do to turn their lives around needed someone with authority to challenge it.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The right hon. Gentleman will recall that a fortnight or three weeks ago, we visited the Lambeth project—the so-called Sapphire project. In that project, if a person did not turn up for the unpaid work part of the probation order, he was visited by a police officer to get him out of bed. That is not a bad idea, in the circumstances.

[Sir Alan Beith]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to focus on what we saw in practice. The Committee has tried to make it its business to get out and look at what happens in practice and what works. I commend the reports of our public evidence sessions and our future report on probation, which I hope will be as valuable in its own way as I think the report is that we are considering today.

Of course, we know what happens in the United States. When the federal Government want to do things, they offer money to states to do them. They do not have the power to make them, so they offer them money. They can use the grants system under the Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act 2009 to support or persuade state and local governments to analyse criminal justice trends to find out what is driving the growth in their local jail and prison populations; to develop tailored policy options to reduce corrections expenditure and increase the effectiveness of current programmes to make communities safer; and to measure the impact of those changes and develop accountability measures.

We found evidence of the potential for geographically targeted local initiatives to reduce expenditure if such partnerships and the agencies that make them up, including probation trusts, are free to use resources more flexibly. That is in line with the Government’s emphasis on localism and the withdrawal of ring-fencing from local government. The first reaction of some people involved in the services is horror that a ring-fenced grant might now be used by the local authority for some purpose other than that for which it was originally introduced, but unless we give agencies, including local government, some freedom to move money around between different projects, innovative policies will not be developed. In this area, if agencies can work together and move money around a bit to where it is most effectively used, we can make progress.

We talked about needing to get in early. The Government made announcements yesterday in relation to school funding and pre-school education for disadvantaged children. That is a crucial area. Not just the criminal justice system but many other parts of our system are crucial in determining whether some youngsters get involved in crime. Giving youngsters a better start is a key way of reducing the likelihood of their being drawn into criminality. The concept of justice reinvestment includes the concept of early intervention. The child who has to be excluded from school has stepped on to the escalator that can lead to repeat offending and regular imprisonment in the future, so such initiatives are very relevant to justice reinvestment.

However, there is a risk that the financial climate will threaten existing initiatives that are proving promising. There is the Diamond initiative. I am trying to remember whether Sapphire and Diamond are the same scheme or two different ones, but obviously jewels are thought a good way of illustrating the fact that these are very valuable initiatives.

[Mr Llwyd]

I am advised that it is actually the Diamond initiative.

[Sir Alan Beith]

So we are talking about the same one. The Diamond initiative is delivered jointly by the Metropolitan police, local authorities and the London Probation Trust. Built on the principle of justice reinvestment, it has reoffending rates of 28% within six months of release from custody. That compares favourably with the 43% figure for those who have not received that intensive support and monitoring.

However, under the previous Government, there was a decline in crime reduction funding through local area agreements to local community safety partnerships. Those intensive options require partnership commitment and resources, which may be less readily available following yesterday’s comprehensive spending review. I am anxious to hear what the Minister can say by way of reassurance on that. Until the Green Paper is published, it is unclear how the new Government will enable those partnerships to fulfil their statutory responsibility to reduce reoffending under the Policing and Crime Act 2009.

We proposed that if the Government could identify moneys that could be used to create a national justice reinvestment fund, there would be an incentive for local partnerships to think creatively about ways of reducing crime and the use of imprisonment, pooling resources at local level and spending money in geographically targeted areas using the results of justice mapping. That technique, which was pioneered in the US and has been tried out quite a lot in Gateshead, for example, measures local needs and the existing flow of resources to particular communities.

The Government’s aspiration to introduce payment by results draws on the experience of Kansas in implementing justice reinvestment approaches. It is not clear whether the Government will go about it in the same way, but some of the options that the Committee has been suggesting could be accommodated in the sort of programme that the Government are talking about. The national investment fund could be part of the big society bank, for example.

If the Government are to place greater emphasis on evidence-based, targeted approaches, determined at local level, means need to be found to provide practical support to local areas in analysing trends, devising new policies and programmes and measuring their impact. A cross-disciplinary centre of excellence, like the Social Care Institute for Excellence, could provide robust economic modelling of what is effective in reducing crime and inform the development of a national justice reinvestment plan. I hope that the Government consider that cross-departmental approach.

All of this has implications for sentences. There remains a great deal of geographical disparity in the consistency of sentencing, to which the Lord Chancellor drew attention in his King’s college speech. Youth courts in some parts of the country are up to 10 times more likely to impose custodial sentences for certain crimes than their counterparts elsewhere. That cannot be explained by social and demographic factors alone.

It is often said by the judiciary that the sentencing of individual offenders should not be driven by the availability or otherwise of resources. In practice, of course, it is, but that is usually because of the scarcity of suitable alternatives to custody in a given area. Prison is always there; alternatives are not always there. It is nevertheless necessary to find a way in which recognition of scarce resources is built into the sentencing process.

We are concerned that sentencing policy, and the Sentencing Council, does not address the need for sentencers to have regard to the available resources and the relative costs of their sentencing decisions. There are few other public servants who are not required to be accountable to the taxpayer in relation to the value delivered for the money that they spend. In order to have such regard, however, sentencers need data on the cost-effectiveness of their decisions and on the outcome of sentences. We have been surprised at how little information comes back to the judiciary about the overall impact of the sentences that they pass.

I spoke earlier about the media and about the public debate on sentencing. The public rightly see prison as a necessary means of dealing with extremely dangerous people who would be a threat to public safety were they not in custody but, in many cases, public safety is not the major issue. A custodial sentence and its length seem to have become the only means that the public and the media feel they have of asserting the seriousness of the offence. That is why we see so many headlines in the press saying, “Yobs only got six months,” or “Con man got less than a motoring offender.” The relative significance of crimes is measured by the sentence length. When the community or victims want to assert that they will not tolerate a crime, they look for a way of expressing that abhorrence, and a longer custodial sentence seems to serve that purpose, even if it is of little or no use in ensuring that the offender does not commit further crimes.

For offenders who do not need to be in custody, we need strong community sentences to be recognised as a punishment—not as a soft option. For some offenders they already are, but there is a media obsession with custody that is not justified by custody’s record in reducing reoffending. We are in a new situation, and there is a real chance to change things in a way that could reduce reoffending and make people safer from crime, at less cost.

In conclusion, we need to know three key things from the Minister. First, are Ministers ready to continue what the Lord Chancellor has started, by openly taking on the “prison works” argument and demonstrating that for many offenders custody is too costly and too ineffective to contribute as much to public safety as well-planned alternatives can? Secondly, how will a shift from the use of custody in appropriate cases be achieved, given that changes in sentencing principles will not work unless alternatives are widely available and the judges and the public are confident in them? Finally, and most important, how will Ministers prevent cuts in the Ministry of Justice budget from putting a roadblock in the way of the reforms that the Committee has advocated and to which the Government are now committed? What will be the impact of yesterday’s announcements on the ability of Ministers to deliver the policy shift that they have signalled? I hope that the Committee, in its work, has provided an underpinning of substance and intellectual coherence for what I see as a radical policy shift of real potential value to the safety of the people of this country. I am very interested to know whether the Government will be able to continue that initiative.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

I have letters from seven people who are hoping to catch my eye during this debate, and I also want to give the Minister and the Front-Bench speakers plenty of time for considered response. I hope, therefore, that everyone will keep that timing in mind.

15:03

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to sit under your supervision today, Mrs Main, and I hope that I do not strain your patience too far.

I join the Chairman of the Committee, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), in paying tribute to all our colleagues across the four parties who were members of the Committee. I say four parties as an MP for the Co-operative party, which is the fourth-largest party in Parliament. We do have to remind everyone that we are here, some of the time. The partnership we are in is an open and honest pre-election one, which has lasted for many decades, and so it is worth drawing it to the attention of the House. I also join the right hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the staff of the Committee—Fergus Reid and his team—and particularly to Gemma Buckland who gave enormous good service to the Committee by being good not only at producing evidence and thoughtful contributions, but at challenging members when we got a bit carried away, as we did on occasion.

I thoroughly enjoyed—if that is the right word—my three years on the Committee, and I pay tribute to the consensual way in which the Chairman sought to tackle some major issues. I have now gone on to try different pastures on the Home Affairs Committee, but the complementary nature of the agendas of those two Committees is something that we overlook at our peril. I am certain that the Justice Committee is safe in the hands of the right hon. Gentleman.

The point about justice reinvestment is that it is not an academic concept but a deeply practical one. It is not about being soft on crime—I underline the Committee Chairman’s comments in that regard—but about being effective. It was interesting to discover the clinical approach in the USA, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, which rather goes against the general image of how justice is dispensed on that continent.

There are two exemplary initiatives that the previous Government pursued—not without some challenges—and the right hon. Gentleman referred to them both. One was the previous Government’s success in reducing youth offending at the same time as reducing youth custody, and the second was dealing with women in the criminal justice system. The numbers involved in those two groups are lower than the overall prison population, but we should take very much to heart the lessons about what worked.

In his conclusion, the right hon. Gentleman offered three challenges to Ministers, including whether Ministers are ready openly to take on the “prison works” agenda. We could ask a wider question: is Parliament ready to take on the “prison works” agenda? To my mind, it is only if the consensus on the way forward that developed in the Select Committee is reflected across the Chamber that Ministers will have the authority to do that. I hope that we will provide that sort of supportive opposition in the coming years. Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman was certainly right to say that there is a big challenge to ensure that the alternatives are available, and I shall come back to that in a moment. Thirdly, the really big challenge is ensuring that the cuts do not put a roadblock in the way of applying common sense to how we deal with criminal activity.

I want to focus on a small number of points. The first is the use of methodology in analysing crime, to find ways to prevent it. Crime mapping and the methodology of analysing crime has not been applied with the consistency that we might desire. Crime reduction partnerships have been a success, but the methodology has not been driven consistently at every level. The right hon. Gentleman referred to Jonathan Shepherd, who made the point that

“more imaginative use could be made of existing local data without extra cost, if it is collated by the partner agency electronically, anonymised”—

as has happened with health information in Cardiff—

“and passed on to someone with the capacity to analyse it.”

Since that was stated in the report, an appointment has been made jointly by the police and the health authority, so that data could be analysed properly and productively, without having to be transferred. It is striking that not only did the initial work of analysing data lead to steps that helped to reduce crime, but progressively it has been possible to drive crime down further and further.

The implication of some of the evidence that we received was that the skills of mapping and analysing crime are bedded in within the police, but not within other agencies. I rather suspect that there is a difference in methodology, in that local authorities are probably better at doing the longer-term mapping and projections and the police are rather better at taking the incident and asking, “What does this tell us that we ought to be doing today or tomorrow?” Ideally, the combination of that immediacy and that longer-term mapping ought to be a virtuous one, but I rather suspect that some of the time they rub up against each other and that that is one reason why the approach is not as effective as it should be. The approaches should complement each other, and it seems that they do in places such as Manchester and Liverpool. Where the partnership works it is immensely powerful, as the Home Affairs Committee heard from representatives speaking on behalf of the Local Government Association on Tuesday, primarily in relation to Liverpool and Merseyside.

The right hon. Gentleman rightly suggested that I might refer to Jonathan Shepherd’s work, and I want to say why I think that that work is so important. Professor Shepherd came to see me at a surgery about 15 years ago. He said that, as a surgeon, he had discovered that he had, in effect, two in-trays. One was for those who had been injured in car accidents and the other was for those who had been injured in violent offences. He was struck by the fact that the in-tray for car accidents was getting smaller year on year, while the in-tray for incidents of violence was getting bigger, and he wondered why that was. Could it be that science and engineering skills are being applied to understanding motoring injuries, leading to developments such as air bags, seat belts and improved tyres and brakes, but that we are not applying the same skills of analysis to crimes of violence and driving policy forward logically?

The answer came when Cardiff’s new crime reduction partnership tried an experiment. Professor Shepherd supplied a nurse scientist, the local authority supplied a victim support worker and the police supplied a police officer. All the incidents that resulted in people going into hospital were properly analysed. Two things came out of that. First, we thought that the statistics would be pushed up, because many offences were not being reported. In fact, that did not happen. The gain was fairly immediate. Secondly, we thought that the experiment would confirm what we already knew, which was that offending was by and large random across the city centre, but it did not. Instead, it proved that a couple of small locations and one large one accounted for a totally disproportionate number of the injuries that led to people putting a burden of cost, time and effort on the national health service. The benefits of the partnership’s work were enormous in terms of reducing victimisation and the number of people who needed to be taken to court, with the consequences that that has for prison numbers.

We need to return to the methodology put in place in the crime reduction partnerships in the first instance. If that methodology is applied consistently, with requirements being centrally driven, but actions and decision making being local, we will have the best of both worlds. The methodology involved analysing crime and disorder; including the public’s view, as well as police statistics, in analysis; setting priorities; developing a joint strategy that is clinically precise in targeting identified problems—there are a few words there that need unpacking fairly carefully if we are to understand their true significance; setting targets that are jointly measured; undertaking annual evaluation and recalibration; and returning after three years to renew the audit and the strategy so that the link between the facts, the community and the strategy is renewed.

The benefits are local targets and clear understanding. In that way, we have success at a local level driving national success, instead of targets being set under a more top-down system. Generally, the approach that I have described has been a success story, but immense benefits could be gained if the methodology were emphasised more clinically.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

As a new member of the Justice Committee, may I say what an absolute pleasure it is to listen to former members, who did so much incredibly good work in the report, revisiting these issues and making an impassioned case for similar pieces of analysis to be carried out in the future? I wholeheartedly support that view. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree, however, that the one piece missing from the list of valuable items that he gave us is accountability? Before the election, I was lucky enough to be involved in work on the Conservative party policy on the rehabilitation revolution. One thing that really struck me—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. May I ask the hon. Lady to keep her intervention brief?

[Claire Perry]

Yes, I am coming to my point. One thing that really struck me was the lack of accountability in the system and the fact that one person should be responsible. I would be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman commented on that.

[Alun Michael]

It is not an individual who needs to be accountable, but the system. The way to ensure that that happens is to have the facts out in the open. It is tragic that, 12 years on, I still cannot get proper local analysis and information on trends in wards in my constituency. I know that the police are analysing the information they get and using it to inform their activity, and I know that the local authority and the police are working in partnership and sharing information, but it is not out there for individual members of the community. This is not about one individual—it does not matter whether they are an elected mayor, the chief executive of a local authority, a chief constable or whatever. Anything that depends on just one individual is doomed to failure; indeed, if I may say so, anything that depends even on one Minister is of limited value. It is a question of having transparency so that there can be proper accountability. To that extent, I agree with the hon. Lady. I am very much describing a system that allows proper accountability and transparency.

I referred to the work of Professor Shepherd in Cardiff because many lessons have been learned from it, but the real lessons—about applying a proper methodology and having transparency—have not been learned adequately or transferred to other bodies. Targeted policing has reduced licensed premises and street violence, as well as reducing violence-related A and E attendance in Cardiff by 40% since 2002. That is a 40% reduction in the number of people going over the A and E threshold for treatment. That is a much more effective measure than any of the general police or criminal justice measurements. That endorses some of the evidence from the British crime survey.

There is a second big point that I want to make. One reason why there is a muddle is that we are still not totally clear about the purpose of the criminal justice system. We need to be much clearer that it has a single purpose, which is consistent with what the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice said in recent evidence to the Home Affairs Committee and with what Sir Robert Peel said when he gave his reasons for establishing the police service: the criminal justice system is meant to prevent offending and reoffending. If every agency focused on its contribution to that objective, rather than intermediate objectives, we would reach the point we all want to reach, with fewer people becoming victims.

I mention victims because we keep talking about their interests, and it is right to do so, but let us be clear about what we mean by that. I have been enormously struck by the clarity that has been offered on more than one occasion by Victim Support, which has said that what victims want, other than not to become victims of an offence in the first place, is to know that they will not become victims again. They want to know that something has been done about the activity that led to their becoming victims so that such things are less likely to happen in future.

One positive development in recent months has been the establishment of the Sentencing Council, which I welcome. I sat on the Committee that dealt with the legislation that introduced it. We should go a stage further by being much more precise about the council’s purpose, and I tabled amendments at the time that I would have liked to make to the legislation. The council’s purpose should be to analyse what works so that when sentencers take their decisions, they are fully cognisant of the likely impact on lessening the likelihood of further offences.

The report specifically refers to these issues. The Committee says:

“We believe that the role of the Sentencing Council should be to ensure that sentencing practice succeeds in reducing offending and re-offending.”

We talk about the need for the council to be

“well-resourced to enable it to perform its research function.”

We mention the time that it has taken for data to be adequate to inform decision making. We ask for the council to be told to

“consider how sentencers can be given a better understanding of what works in terms of reducing offending and re-offending”.

Ensuring that judges and magistrates understand the implications and likely effects of their sentences would help the whole criminal justice system and be very much in Ministers’ interests. I could develop that point, but it is fairly clear and simple, and the report’s recommendations are clearly set out.

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

The right hon. Gentleman is right about the paucity of information that is available for sentencers. It is worrying that we rely on the public spiritedness, intelligence and inquisitiveness of judges and magistrates to determine the problems in their localities and reflect them in local sentencing, but there is no system to give them access to proper objective evidence and information. I am grateful that the right hon. Gentleman has highlighted that point.

[Alun Michael]

We went through a period when sentencers were almost discouraged from going to see what was happening. In my time on the bench, which was quite a long time ago, I used to spend time, particularly with respect to youth justice, going to see where we were sending people. That included community as well as custodial disposals. It was invaluable. Under the previous Government, we moved back to encouraging sentencers to engage in an understanding of the places where people were to go. However, it is clear from work done by charities that more could be done, and that not enough is known, particularly by judges, who have a disproportionate influence, through the training programme, on the decisions of magistrates. They set the tone. A lot needs to be done in that area.

Incidentally, the issue of purpose arose elsewhere. The Committee also undertook an inquiry into the role of the prison officer, which overlapped with the later stages of the justice reinvestment work, and I want to draw attention to one of our conclusions:

“The aim of imprisonment should be to reduce re-offending, while treating prisoners with humanity and keeping them appropriately secure.”

That clarity of purpose should be reflected in the aims and objectives of the prison service, and in the way in which its activities are measured. If lots of other things are used as measures they get in the way of that overall objective.

It is important for us to mainstream the objective of reducing crime and reoffending. In the report on justice reinvestment we said:

“We are concerned that there has been low take-up of crime-related indicators in local areas and we believe that local strategic partnerships should better reflect the priority given to crime as a matter of public concern both nationally and locally.”

That is something that local MPs and councillors have, in my experience, always considered important, because it is important to their constituents. Therefore it is not impossible, if the information and data are adequate, to achieve coherence. There is a need for coherence across several Departments—we refer in the report to the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and others—to ensure the most appropriate allocation of resources to reduce crime. The report states:

“A considerable amount of management information about offenders is held locally by prisons, probation areas and other providers which, if captured centrally, would provide a wealth of material to support the case for cross-departmental reform.”

The idea that reform should be cross-departmental is important, because most of the resources that affect offending, for good or ill—the resources that, if applied in the right way, lead to a reduction in reoffending, or, if not properly applied, lead to a likely increase—lie outside the criminal justice system. That, too, is highlighted in the report.

One of the things that worries me most at present is the decision made in rather too much of a rush by the incoming Government to cut the support for, and the pledge to, unemployed young people. I do not say that just to be oppositional. I came into national politics because I worked with unemployed young people and saw their hopelessness. It was what led me to decide we needed to change things nationally. That is going back to the 1980s. I believe that the end of the pledge was foolish and short-sighted, but, more to the point, in relation to the criminal justice system, it may turn out to be a very expensive step. It was meant to save money, but I believe it will prove expensive. The drivers of offending and reoffending, or the things that can reduce them, are education or the lack of qualifications, basic skills and employment-related skills; drug rehabilitation or its inadequacy; mental health—we know that mental health problems are the trigger for the activities of many people who end up in prison; and housing. Those are the four drivers of the apocalypse of reoffending, so to speak. There is a need somehow to connect those four areas of provision and efforts to reduce reoffending.

If I were to include a fifth element it would be relationships. We underestimate the extent to which relationships or their lack, or failure, drive offending and reoffending. There is a connection between those things and the other four drivers. I suggest that, for instance—and this came out in the report on prisons—trying to turn prisons into learning establishments where prison officers and prisoners share the sense of the importance of learning opportunities would make an enormous difference. I heard on the “Today” programme a couple of weeks ago a reference to a protest in America, where local people objected to the fact that prisoners were being given greater educational opportunities than prison officers. The result was that educational provision for the prisoners was reduced. The obvious thing would have been to increase the educational opportunity for prison officers and turn that into a shared preoccupation. I have certainly come across prison officers with a passion for education and a wish for learning, who care about what they are doing. I suggest that that approach would make a great difference.

My other particular concern at present is last week’s announcement of the ending of the Youth Justice Board. The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed said that he hoped its work would continue elsewhere. He acknowledged that the work of the youth offending teams, bringing the different professions together in tackling youth offending, has been quite successful. My worry is about the fact that the expertise on youth offending and what can work in tackling it does not lie in Departments. It is not the sort of thing that civil servants do well. They are good on policy development, and so on, but from ministerial experience, I would say they do not have the professional expertise that the Youth Justice Board provided in support of the youth offending teams. We need that expertise somehow to be reinstituted, or the Minister may find that the effectiveness of work with young offenders starts to move backwards.

Justice reinvestment is not about massively increasing the resources that we put into the criminal justice system. Indeed, it is potentially about reducing them by using the available resources in a much more targeted and effective way. It is therefore an approach that should be attractive to the Government, just as it provoked a positive response from the previous Government. Does that mean that we have a boring consensus across party lines? No, I think that we had a very exciting convergence of views in the Select Committee, driven by the evidence rather than by the media. That is in the public interest, for three reasons: first, it is in the interest of good administration and governance; secondly, it makes the best use of available resources and stops demand for them getting out of hand—and we have seen how great the risk is, under successive Governments, of the demand for prison resources in particular getting out of hand; and thirdly, it delivers on the victim-centred agenda of reducing the likelihood that people will become victims a second or third time.

The Justice Committee’s report is the product of remarkable consensus among Members of Parliament in the four main parties. The members of the Committee put in a considerable amount of time. That was true not only of the Chairman but also, on the Conservative side, the new Chairman of the Treasury Committee—there should be an ally there—the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), and on the Labour Benches myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead). When we came to the writing of the report we expected we would be up against it. We expected a degree of cross-party controversy. However, perhaps it says something about the quality of the evidence and about the considerable investment of time in the inquiry over two years, as the Chairman of the Committee said, that we found ourselves in passionate agreement at the end.

I revert to comments by Professor Jonathan Shepherd, cited in paragraph 309 of the report, who

“advocated offender management schools and institutes in research intensive universities, similar to the police school model, and argued that such institutions can be cost-neutral.”

In analysing crime—what causes crime and what can drive it down—methodology is absolutely crucial. That is central, as well as a proper understanding of the actual experience of crime at a local level. The way forward is to put correct methodology at the centre, then trusting people to apply it locally, understanding the needs of their community and communicating those needs and the methods with which they are approaching them. That is precisely the approach to transparency and accountability that the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) asked me to underline. The justice reinvestment report offers an agenda that it would be wise for Government and Opposition to support in the coming months and years.

15:31

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

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this timely debate, bearing in mind not only yesterday’s announcement but the ongoing nature of the debate on an important area of public policy.

The judiciary have had strong views about this area of public policy for a number of months, if not years. It is no secret that for some time prison governors had expressed their concerns about what they regarded as the overuse of short-term prison sentences, namely those of 12 months or less, because they are ineffective in managing offenders in the prison estate and at dealing with the all-important statistic of reoffending within six months of release from sentence. That is where the public interest lies, which is what I was delighted to hear other speakers, such as the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), Chair of the Committee on which I now serve, emphasising. The public rightly demand protection, certainty and reassurance that the system is doing everything that it can to manage out reoffending.

We are moving away from talking about targets and more towards talking about outcomes, but no matter which word is used, the reoffending figures are where it is at. The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) got it almost right with his reference to the Diamond project—he was with me at an interesting session a couple of weeks ago. The preliminary evidence from the Diamond project is dramatic—“preliminary” was stressed, because the work is ongoing, with the pilot due to end in March next year. Figures of 28% reoffending are extraordinary, bearing in mind the depressing litany of statistics with which we all are familiar. We owe a great debt of gratitude to the Lord Chancellor for having brought into the full glare of publicity the concerns of the judiciary, prison governors and everyone—such as me until my election—who is heavily involved in the criminal justice system.

The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth is absolutely right: there needs to be a consensus, even at the risk of that being dull. I would go further than him and say that the old debates about toughness and softness, which have plagued the issue since about the mid-1990s, have really had their day. Instead we should be talking about whether we are being smart on crime or stupid—dumb, if preferred—on crime. That is where the debate should be, where the battle lines should be drawn and what we need to be focusing on.

I was not a member of the previous Committee, which produced the report, but I have read its recommendations and the Government response carefully. The Government response, although I accept that the current Minister is not responsible for those utterances—I am sure he is glad that I remind the Chamber of that—represented a missed opportunity. The report was from a Committee of the House that included senior Members and former Ministers, such as the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, who could use not only their experience in office but their experience of many years in the House and in their constituencies.

However, I am delighted that Cardiff was mentioned, because I practised for many years as a member of the Bar in that city, in the Crown court, and know intimately the problems and challenges facing the constituents of the right hon. Gentleman and others.

I was disappointed that, instead of a frank owning up to some of the deficiencies in the system, we had an over-defensive approach in the Government response.

[Claire Perry]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend, whose constituency of South Swindon is next door to mine, for giving way.

There is so much evidence of interesting, innovative programmes, which we have discussed in Committee. Is my hon. Friend aware of the Vision Housing project in London, which aims to house ex-offenders and which is delivering the most extraordinary reduction in reoffending by providing one of the very things mentioned by the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael)—stable housing upon release for ex-offenders? What is the opinion of my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon as to why, with all this evidence for and cross-party commitment to making changes in the system, we still seem to be stuck in an old model with the National Offender Management Service and the Prison Service? We are not prepared to embrace the innovation that we all see out there every day.

[Mr Buckland]

My hon. Friend hit on an important point about NOMS. While we welcome the dedicated and hard work of members of NOMS, some of us wonder whether the synthesis between dealing with offenders in the prison estate and offenders in the community was ever achieved by NOMS. That was one of its purposes. It was to look in an overarching way at the whole system, and to provide some synthesis which, frankly, has not happened.

Tempting as it is to lament the rise and fall of various quangos—some speakers referred to this but, with respect to them, that misses the point—their best point, which the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth mentioned, is that we must not lose the expertise and knowledge of the people who worked so hard within those bodies. The Minister, I am sure, has taken that point very much on board in the case of the Youth Justice Board.

I make the point now, I hope clearly, that we must remember that youth justice ought to be treated in a discrete, separate way. It is not appropriate to meld the system of youth justice in with that of adult justice. They are two different beasts, which require two different approaches, and we must not forget that. At the same time, the issue of transition between the youth justice system and the adult system can be difficult—practically, for sentences, in terms of the gymnastics that they have to go through in remembering which particular regime fits what. My point is that the public interest is best served, when it comes to young offenders, by the sort of focused, early-intervention approach that I know everyone in the Chamber and in the wider community supports.

My point is about the public interest and how it is best served. I have talked about reoffending rates, but will now look in some detail at the part of the report that dealt with confidence in community sentences. That has been the issue about which politicians have danced for many years. They have worried about weak community sentences being poorly monitored and implemented, resulting in higher rates of reoffending.

The question of confidence is key here, but how do we achieve that? We have already been shown several important pointers, such as the Diamond project. The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed referred to the issue, but it is important that we reiterate it. Community sentences will fail if they are not properly policed, and they will be ineffective if they are not adequately monitored. There are some good examples of community sentences that work. For example, the drug rehabilitation requirement sentence, which is a high-intensity sentence, involves a regular review—it can be monthly or it can be held at less frequent intervals—by a Crown court judge or magistrate. Under such regimes, judges will see defendants on a regular basis and open up a dialogue with them. They will challenge the defendant if the requirement is not being met and assist them if a particular issue needs to be addressed, such as non-compliance because of work restrictions or requirements or problems with a methadone prescription if the defendant has been convicted of possessing or supplying a controlled drug. Such sentences are having a really positive impact on not only the individuals themselves but the communities in which they live.

The power to review sentences regularly already exists in section 178 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The Government, in their response to the Committee, referred to their piloting of the use of section 178 in a range of different orders. I am interested to know—I will forgive the Minister if he does not have an answer today—the results of that pilot. I want to know the extent of it and the different types of orders that were used. It seems that if we give judges more involvement in the policing of community sentences, it will have a greater impact on the offender and go a long way towards promoting confidence in our sentencing regime.

The Diamond project used a range of mechanisms to enforce compliance with the order. Police officers or community support officers regularly knock on the doors of the homes of offenders to ensure that they attend the community project. We were looking at unpaid work in Lambeth the other day. We discussed how the scheme worked and we met offenders and former offenders who were working in the project. The input of former offenders—the euphemism nowadays is service users, which is relevant in this context—was vital, because they had gone through the system, come out successfully and were not reoffending. They were, I suppose, setting an example to those on the current order who, at times, were having difficulties or issues. It was wonderful to see people of experience assisting those who were on the order.

We spoke to some of those on the unpaid work scheme. Most of them understood the purpose of the order. They knew that it was not just about them and their rehabilitation but about their punishment. One gentleman I spoke to—I will not quote him out of court—did not quite get that point. It is important to hold such conversations because it helps us to understand the nature of punishment in our society.

For many years, the role of punishment in the criminal justice system has been hotly debated. Many protagonists say that punishment has no role in the criminal justice system, but, with respect, they entirely misunderstand where we are with punishment now. Their view of punishment comes from the 19th century, and we have moved on a long way since then. Punishment encapsulates not just custody and loss of liberty but a range of approaches that can be taken within the community. The example I would give is the one alluded to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed when he mentioned one of the witnesses who gave evidence before the Justice Select Committee last week. The witness talked about her wish to be challenged by probation officers. Challenging people’s behaviour and facing up to them is a modern form of punishment. I am talking not about having a cuddly cup of tea but about saying, “Look, what you are doing is wrong. The way you are behaving is inappropriate. What are you going to do about it?” That is challenging the individual to face up to what they have done, to understand why they did it and to move on to be a better citizen.

It is wholly artificial to divide punishment from rehabilitation and public protection. The truth is that they all elide to. In many ways, getting the punishment right will ensure that the offender is rehabilitated and the public are protected.

I come back now to the point that I made at the beginning of my address, which is that the public interest is best served by a system that results in a lower rate of reoffending. That is why justice reinvestment is common sense. It not only saves the Exchequer massive amounts of revenue and protects the public but makes better citizens of those people who end up in the system.

The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth made a vital point about access to information about local rates of offending, where the hotspots are and what the problems are. It is vital that sentencers—the judiciary and lay magistracy—have full access to the hard facts, because it will help them reflect local sentencing priorities. I am not saying that Cardiff has a particular problem. In fact, it is very well managed by Jonathan Shepherd, the University Hospital of Wales and the local police. There are other parts of the world in which crimes of violence are still a huge problem. The public of those particular towns or cities demand, quite rightly, that sentences be passed to reflect those problems.

[Alun Michael]

Although I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says, there is another side to the coin. If people see the correct trends—what is actually happening—that can inspire more confidence, too. For example, St Mellons had very high burglary levels at one period. Much was done and there was a massive drop. If we hear that there has been a slight incremental rise in the area, and we look at it against a 10 or 15-year perspective, we see that it is only a slight ripple rather than a major increase. It is just as important to give the good news to local communities as it is to identify hotspots.

[Mr Buckland]

Absolutely. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for putting the matter in context. I have been talking about the end result—clearing up the spilled milk—but a lot of the targeting work is all about intervention to manage out the problem. That is a very important point here. A lot of the work that the Committee did was about not just looking at the end result of sentencing but intervening at an earlier stage to get it right and to avoid having to rely on a criminal justice system that does not always deal with problems appropriately, particularly when it comes to young offenders. The restorative justice concept is a prime example of the alternative approach.

I will end by reminding the Minister of the meeting that we had some weeks ago in Birmingham with key players in mental health. It was a very productive round-table discussion, hosted by the National Centre for Mental Health. We were lucky to be joined by senior consultant forensic psychiatrists and the mother of a young man who, as a result of serious drug problems, ended up with a mental health problem and was treated inappropriately by the criminal justice system.

I make this plea—I hope that the Minister will forgive me for making it because he has heard it from me before, but I make no apology for that—that we must get the diversionary therapies and methods absolutely right when it comes to mental health, not only in the Crown court and the magistrates court, in terms of making it easier for sentencers to pass mental health treatment conditions as part of a community order, but at the police station too. That means ensuring that if a desk sergeant or even a duty solicitor or any person who comes into contact with an arrested person, an accused person or a suspect is able to have recourse to community psychiatric nursing help—[Interruption.] I do not know if the person who is in charge of the amplification system wanted me to make that point more clearly. [Laughter.] However, I am happy that it has been amplified and made more clearly.

The intervention of community psychiatric nursing at that level and the professional input of mental health services will go a long way to ensuring that people who have genuine mental health problems end up being treated appropriately rather than in a criminal justice system that far too often fails them, resulting in inappropriate prison sentences being imposed and in the alarming statistics that we are all depressingly familiar with regarding the number of people in our prisons who have mental health conditions.

At the top end of the scale, I would argue that the Mental Health Act provides very important and valuable services for those people with acute mental health problems. However, it is more towards the middle and the bottom end of the scale that the system is, I am afraid, quite simply deficient.

It is very much a question of commissioning. The Minister will agree with me that collaborative work with the Department of Health is essential if we are to get the mental health services that we need. So I urge him to do all he can as a member of the new Government to ensure that, by the time we get to the new commissioning regime next year, mental health services are at the top of the list when it comes to new provision.

On that note, I conclude my remarks, Mrs Main, and I am very grateful to you.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I want to say that we are having the sound issues tackled. I also want to say that I will call the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson at 4.50 pm, followed by the Minister. Can those Members who wish to speak before then be mindful of that?

15:52

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) who, like me, is a new member of the Justice Committee. I was not a member of the Committee that produced this very important report and I congratulate everyone involved in it, including the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) who, as well as being the Chairman of the present Committee, was the Chairman of the Committee that produced the report.

The report is a very thought-provoking piece of work and a very useful contribution to the discussions about criminal justice that we inevitably have in this place—and obviously we should be having those debates. [Interruption.]

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. I am suspending the sitting for a few minutes to give the technicians time to sort out the sound problems, because it is impossible to continue.

15:53

Sitting suspended.

15:29

On resuming—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

We are sorry for the technical interruption. We are not allowed to add extra time, but Mr Alan Beith has kindly accepted a reduction in his response time. I shall now call the Front-Bench spokesmen at approximately 4.57 pm.

[Mr Llwyd]

According to a Ministry of Justice letter leaked last Friday, 14,000 MOJ jobs will be lost, 11,000 of them from the front line. If we are to believe the letter, 60% of those reductions must be made within the next two years. The cost of the redundancy drive will reportedly reach £230 million. Although 85% of that reduction is estimated to be voluntary, it will no doubt be as voluntary as walking the plank.

Meanwhile, 50% of the redundancies are expected to be achieved through natural wastage. Where exactly do we expect those workers to go? The National Offender Management Service will lose 9,940 jobs: 760 from its headquarters and the rest, presumably, from the prison and probation services. Delivery of restorative justice seems like pie in the sky when we consider the bleak road ahead. By March 2014, the justice budget will be cut by 23%, which seems to undermine once again the opportunity for justice reinvestment.

We hear that in the face of those cuts, the Ministry of Justice also wants to cut prison places. The Ministry’s aim is to reduce receptions into custody by 18,000 a year by 2014—indeed, the package of cuts is predicated on a reduction in the number of prisoners—but how can that be achieved? I am afraid that it is more likely that the cuts will lead to an increase in the number of prisoners, especially when slashes in staff numbers are combined with cuts to courts, prosecutors and clerks. The same number of prisoners will be held on remand, but probably for longer.

The premise of the cuts is therefore flawed, and the cuts may well undermine the worthy and proper notion of justice reinvestment. Equally, there are logistical problems with the time scale, as the cuts are expected to come into play by 2014. I spoke yesterday to Mr Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers; I see a wry smile on the Minister’s face. I have no doubt that the Ministry of Justice expects that the new infrastructure will be put in place by 2014, but NAPO’s opinion is that it will take at least five years to be anywhere near ready. However, that is a matter of debate. The time scale for the cuts is not practicable and risks undermining and damaging our justice system.

We also hear that a large proportion of rehabilitation work will be outsourced to voluntary and private organisations on the basis of payment by results. Where exactly are those volunteers meant to come from? Magistrates courts committees have complained that court orders cannot be made out to private companies. I think that that is true. What would happen in the event of conflicts of interest? On Tuesday, I met Mr John Thornhill and other representatives of the Magistrates Association. If short-term prison sentences are to be avoided, they are concerned that personnel will not be found to oversee defendants.

Although I agree that the Lord Chancellor is right to attempt to avoid the overuse of short prison sentences, that cannot be done without a substantial direct investment in the probation service. When I first qualified as a lawyer in the early 1970s, the local town of Dolgellau had three probation officers. We now have one for half the county. Need I say more? Furthermore, as I said to the Lord Chancellor in a recent sitting of the Justice Committee, the private concerns that receive payment by results will inevitably be profit-driven. They will not want the awkward recidivist cases, that is for sure. That is where I believe probation officers’ skills should come into play.

I understand that many departmental settlements were finalised only a few hours before the announcement of the spending review yesterday. How can we discuss justice reinvestment properly, even in theory, when community reinvestment is being cut? We are expected to set up a private system that we do not agree with, which will take years, while cutting back on probation staff. I am afraid that those drastic cuts have not been properly thought through. As was said earlier, this might be an opportunity missed.

In its report, the Justice Committee presented the case for various essential reforms, which now seem further away than ever. The report tasked the Government with committing to a significant reduction in the prison population by 2015. That is the reduction on which the cuts are predicated, yet ironically, the cuts render such a reduction less practicable. Following on from the Corston report in 2007, the Committee report also tasked the Government with implementing Baroness Corston’s recommendations on reducing the number of female prisoners. A reduction in the number of prisoners whose crimes were driven by mental illness is also overdue. The CSR mentioned those goals, notably in pledging to introduce proposals to invest in mental health liaison services at police stations and courts in order to intervene at an early stage and divert those suffering from a mental illness into treatment. That is welcome, but will the Minister expand on it? Will related pledges to target the causes of female incarceration be honoured?

The Committee report warned that spending more on rehabilitation will not work while the prison estate is overcrowded. How timely that warning now seems. We cannot expect the criminal justice system simply to work out its problems by itself. Time and investment are needed to reform how the sector functions. As I have said, we cannot merely expect the number of prisoners to decrease as if by magic while cutting staff numbers across the piece.

The report noted that a coherent strategy must be developed by the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and other Departments to target the allocation of resources and reduce crime. I agree, of course. Targeting the causes of crime is essential to reducing the number of people in prison. We must build on and improve the community sentencing structures already in place and seek the advice of probation staff who know the area thoroughly and professionally.

For too long, probation officers have been undermined and marginalised in the NOMS set-up. Instead of making cuts and outsourcing to voluntary organisations, we should focus on improving the probation service that we know and respect by reducing the paperwork that probation officers must do and increasing the time that they spend with offenders. Currently, probation officers spend an average of eight minutes a week speaking to people under their orders. That is ridiculous. What can be done in eight minutes a week? I have no idea.

I have a suggestion. It might be radical, but I have seen it in practice. A few weeks ago, I went to Buffalo, New York, which has a veterans court. Veterans who have offended are referred to the court and come under the watchful eye of Judge Russell. Typically, they have committed high-grade misdemeanours or low-grade felonies and are facing perhaps 18 months in prison. They are given the opportunity to attend the veterans court. If they take it, they are assigned a probation officer and, crucially, an ex-service mentor. For 18 months or less—it is sometimes 15 months or in very rare cases 12 months—they are expected to go to court every three weeks to explain how they are getting on. They are drug tested every fortnight and if they are clean and sober—to use the words they use in the States—at the completion of the course, they graduate. They are given a glowing character reference and any reference to the offences is scrapped. If they are not already in work, they are given work, and they are treated with respect for how they have handled themselves during those months.

I was absolutely struck by the whole thing. I went to the States thinking, as a lawyer, that everyone should be equal before the law and questioning why veterans should have a different course of action—although I have been campaigning for them and will continue to do so for those veterans who unfortunately are in prison, often for reasons beyond their control. The scheme is predicated on having a volunteer mentor who is an ex-serviceperson and a probation officer—or the American version of that—who can put in the necessary time to deal with the offender.

I have just mentioned the result of that scheme to hon. Members. May I tell them what the reoffending rate is? Courts at the federal level are looking at that district court because of its success. For the past three years, the reoffending rate has been 0%. If that is not something to consider, I do not know what is. I submit that the scheme could be adapted to what we are talking about today. It does not have to be a veterans court; it could be any other form of court. The scheme is labour intensive, but if we weigh up the savings to society, the taxpayer and everyone—and indeed to the individual who has his or her life turned around and is back in the mainstream—it is remarkable and worthy of study.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

Is the hon. Gentleman familiar with the work of Alan Lilly of the Cheshire probation service? I saw him last week in Cheshire—he is a friend of mine and we served together—as I am interested in the work he is doing there on a veterans scheme. I am particularly interested in the hon. Gentleman’s comments about the American experience. We will try to draw those two experiences together.

[Mr Llwyd]

I am grateful to the Minister for that very positive response. I shall send him a booklet—if one exists—about the scheme. I know Mr Lilly; I serve on a committee with him. Indeed, under the auspices of the Howard League for Penal Reform, I went to the States as a member of a panel and am due to report to the Government. I am happy to send the evidence to the Minister, because it is remarkable and worthy of thorough investigation.

[Mr Blunt]

I would be grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s reflections as a lawyer on treating people differently in the criminal justice system. If he has any suggestions about how one might address that issue, I would be grateful to hear them.

[Mr Llwyd]

As I said, I went to the States with a preconception that I would not approve of the veterans court. However, other courts refer to that court as a means of disposal. Other courts deal with ex-service people who have committed such offences, and if they think that the person concerned would benefit from Judge Russell’s assistance, they are referred for disposal to the veterans court. In effect, it is not a twin-track system for any class of society, but it is a different disposal. The scheme is well worthy of examination.

[Alun Michael]

The problem cited by the Minister is a lawyer’s problem, rather than a practical problem. There should not be too strict an adherence to the tariff as anything other than a starting point for sentencing. The tariff should be calibrated according to what will work in the particular set of circumstances, as well as according to the nature of the offences. That is a much more intelligent way of approaching these matters.

[Mr Llwyd]

I realise that the right hon. Gentleman has a great deal of experience in the field of sentencing and I take on board what he says. I commend the set-up I have mentioned to everybody here today, because it is well worthy of examination and it could be adapted for use in England and Wales.

We also need to change the way in which we approach punishment, particularly in respect of less serious offences. The Committee wisely said:

“We are concerned that an unthinking acceptance has evolved of punishment—for its own sake—as the paramount purpose of sentencing, and as the only way of registering the seriousness with which society regards a crime.”

In my view, there is a one-eyed approach to the matter, which may be a product of tabloid mania over the issue. It is very difficult to have a reasonable and reasoned debate about the issue without being drowned out and dictated to by the unwelcome drum beat of the tabloid press. The key elements of sentencing have always been and still are: punishment, deterrence and rehabilitation. All three are vital to a humane and purposeful sentencing strategy. Sadly, at the moment, scant time is paid to rehabilitation, which is key if we are going to get away from the revolving door scenario, which plagues society, the taxpayer and all of us.

If we take a different line regarding justice, we must consider the proposals in the report, which suggests shifting resources towards rehabilitation services, not cutting them. It also suggests investing in what it calls “prehabilitation”—in other words, preventing more crimes from taking place. That would mean pouring extra resources into areas outside the criminal justice system. Social exclusion, low educational engagement, substance misuse, mental health problems, unemployment, the lack of social housing and other issues must all be tackled.

People who fall into the criminal justice system are often caught in a vicious cycle, particularly those incarcerated on short-term sentences. Evidence shows that people serving short-term sentences are far more likely to reoffend and that they do not learn anything from their experience in prison. A vicious cycle can be interrupted and can become a virtuous cycle. Improving preventive measures, such as effective investment in housing, employment and alcohol and drug services would reduce the burden on the Ministry of Justice’s purse. Such an approach would also involve local and central agencies proving that we can work together in a big society—or whatever the term might be.

Evidently, the impact of the spending review on these plans will be fundamental and possibly uncompromising. Reinvestment is simply not possible if there is no money to reinvest. How can we know where the money will be after 2014? Considering the negative swing we will see as an effect of the cuts to probation, clerks, court clerks and court services, the burden on the prison estate will only become greater by 2014. I hope that I am wrong, but the cuts have been rushed. They have not been properly thought through and the position has possibly been compromised because other Departments have been given preference—although I do not know whether that is the case. Such an approach is simply not going to work. I desperately hope I am wrong, because we all know that justice is essential to the well-being of our communities.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I remind everybody that there is approximately 40 minutes left for three speakers. I call Mr Tony Baldry.

16:18

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): I have the fifteenth largest constituency in the country. It has approximately 85,000 adults, which is equivalent to the number of people who will be banged up tonight as part of the English and Welsh prison population—85,000 people is equivalent to the whole of one very large UK constituency. Such a situation is costing us a fortune. Half of all adults and almost three quarters of young people are reconvicted within one year of being released, and the National Audit Office estimates that reoffending by all recent ex-prisoners costs the taxpayer up to £13 billion a year. That is a huge amount. We ought to see the change in Government spending as an opportunity to get to grips with viewing the deprivation of liberty as a punishment and the purpose of prison as an opportunity for ensuring that people do not reoffend.

I want to make a couple of points. I am conscious that the more Poujadist elements in the press often attack the Secretary of State when he talks about a rehabilitation revolution, but he has made it clear that, unlike previous Governments, he will not release prisoners early by executive decision. Instead, we must ensure that our prison population shrinks through reduced reoffending.

Some in the media characterise my right hon. and learned Friend as being a soft touch, but someone who is certainly not a soft touch in that respect is my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. I commend to Members the report, “Locked Up Potential”, produced by the Centre for Social Justice’s prison reform working group; I do not have time to quote from it at length, but it can be found at the centre’s website, www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk. My right hon. Friend states in that report that the fact that a well-developed country like the UK should be satisfied that two of every three released prisoners are returned to prison within two years is an indictment of public policy. The purpose of prison, he argues, should not just be incarceration, but ultimately reform. Sadly, that is something that the Prison Service does not do. Everyone pays as a result, through higher taxes, more crime and wasted opportunities to mend broken lives.

It is absolutely right that those who commit offences that deserve a prison sentence go to prison, but some work is needed on sentencing. For example, I recently appeared in the Court of Appeal to represent some men who had been convicted for an offence of riot and who certainly deserved to go to prison, but prison sentences are determined according to tariffs, and they received a sentence of six years. I cannot for the life of me see how society is better served by those men serving six years, rather than four. We have had to calibrate the seriousness of crime in years, so we have got into a situation in which the length of the prison term is often the only way in which the court can indicate the seriousness of an offence. If the Justice Secretary is to deal with the reform of sentencing, he must give some thought to the question of tariffs.

Whenever I visit Bullingdon prison in my constituency, I am struck by the fact that huge numbers of those serving sentences are functionally illiterate and/or suffering from drug or alcohol substance abuse. There seem to be two things that we desperately need to get to grips with in prison if we are to reduce reoffending. One is prisoners’ education. I commend to Members the submission by the Prisoners Education Trust to the all-party group on penal affairs, in which some sensible points are made. The submission states that

“many prisoners do want to learn, and…education in prison gives prisoners not just real achievements in terms of qualifications, but a hunger for learning that may be even more valuable in an economic climate in which jobs can no longer be guaranteed.”

The more prisoners who acquire skills and qualifications in prison, the better. That will require a complete rethinking of what happens in prison. Instead of being banged up for 22 or 23 hours a day, it would be far better if prisoners were in the classroom, learning skills and gaining qualifications. In the days of distance learning and IT, and with the ability to communicate and acquire qualifications over a period of time, that must surely be possible. It will mean that we will have to have a prison regime in which prisoners are not moved frequently, because it is frustrating when a prisoner must discontinue a course they have started because they are moved to another prison, and it is frustrating for governors and prison staff that prisons are overcrowded, because that makes it much more difficult to ensure that out-of-cell activity can take place. I say to the Minister that the whole test of whether we can successfully reduce reoffending is directly related to our ability to encourage projects such as the Toe by Toe literacy scheme, the Open University’s activities in prison, the ability of the Prisoners Education Trust to continue to deliver training in different subjects and at different levels and access to a range of specific courses at varying levels.

Also important to the acquisition of skills and qualifications in prisons is the opportunity for prisoners to work. Those of us in the House who are pretty gnarled know that it is rare for Ministers to receive any praise at all, so I was encouraged to read a letter from Frances Crook, director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, rightly commending the Secretary of State for Justice and colleagues in the Ministry for his announcement that prisoners will be turned into taxpayers and enabled to work. Frances Crook observes that that

“will be a huge challenge to prisons that are currently offering only a handful of hours out of cell.”

She observes that the Government’s announcement that real work will be brought into prisons is one of the most important reforms in two centuries. Everyone will gain from prisoners being given work to do, and it will enable them to contribute to their families. For example, a birthday card for a son or daughter can cost £2, and until now prisoners have been unable to buy them with their meagre allowances. For the first time, prisoners will be able to support their families, which will help to keep families together and could even reduce the benefits bill for the taxpayer. Prisoners will contribute to the common good, which could have a phenomenal impact on reducing reoffending.

That proposal is commendable, and the more we can do to ensure that prisoners have the opportunity to work, the better. As the Howard League for Penal Reform observes, that would not necessarily undercut external employers, as one of the ways it could be done is to bring back operations that are currently outsourced overseas to the UK and carry them out in prisons.

There is considerable cross-party support for efforts to reduce reoffending, as the Committee report demonstrates and today’s debate makes clear. Ironically, the comprehensive spending review may now provide the catalyst to enable the Secretary of State to introduce the rehabilitation revolution that the prison system needs. I understand that he has today indicated that he hopes to reduce the daily prison population by 3,000 over the next four years. I suggest that that is a rather modest objective. I hope that, by reducing reoffending rates year on year, we can reduce the overall prison population more substantially and, in so doing, reduce the overall cost to taxpayers. Probation and community sentences will of course have a role in that, but a key part will be reducing reoffending by those already in prison. That will depend largely on giving them the skills, qualifications and incentives to work, getting them off drugs and making sure they are free of alcohol abuse. It will depend on supporting them when they leave prison and trying to ensure that they can lead decent lives thereafter. If that can happen, we can have a rehabilitation revolution.

16:29

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) for securing the debate and allowing me, as a new member of the Justice Committee, an opportunity to speak.

The report talks about a crisis of sustainability. The previous Government expected the criminal justice system to find £1.3 billion of savings over three years. The report argues that such cuts would put the criminal justice system under increased pressure, a sentiment with which I am bound to agree. I am extremely concerned that the savings expected under the coalition Government are double that figure. The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced yesterday that the Justice Department will have to shoulder the largest burden of the cuts: 6% over 5 years, which equates to £2.5 billion in the existing budget of £9.5 billion. The Lord Chancellor will have to make 14,000 of his staff redundant, including 10,000 prison and probation workers. A Ministry of Justice memo made it clear that

“the front line will bear the brunt”.

Such deep and savage cuts are not inevitable. The Labour Government accepted that efficiency savings had to be made, and cuts would have come.

This Department seems to be taking the brunt. A number of cuts had already been made, and many of my former colleagues in the legal profession believe that the system has been pushed too far. A Labour Government would have squeezed the system hard to make savings but they would never have taken the huge gamble with the justice system that this Government are about to take.

The Chancellor spoke yesterday about bringing the economy back from the brink. I believe that cuts of 30% to the Department will push some aspects of the system over the edge. Expecting volunteers to take up the slack and replace trained, accountable professionals such as probation officers is a gamble, and he is gambling with the safety of our communities. I am extremely concerned that the chairman of the Prison Officers Association has stated that as a result of the situation there will be

“dangerous people on the streets”.

However, we are where we are, and it is down to the Lord Chancellor, his colleagues and his team to wield the axe in the Department. I urge him to focus resources and to reinvest in key areas of the criminal justice system to deal with offending and reoffending, and to concentrate on the principle that prevention is better than cure. The Labour Government were initially tough on crime and the causes of crime but did not get everything right. They may have lost focus on tackling the causes of crime.

The report comments on many areas of reinvestment in the criminal justice system. The areas that I want to concentrate on did not feature heavily in the report, but I believe that they are key areas for reinvestment. Community-based services must be funded to prevent offenders from reoffending and returning to the criminal justice system. Unless services are properly funded, the prison population will continue to rise. We must focus on women in the prison system and those whose criminality is driven by mental illness and substance addiction. Local community projects and trained rehabilitation professionals must be given backing and the initial investment necessary to achieve success. Such initiatives will result in a reduction of the prison population and achieve long-term savings across the Department.

Women’s offending is different from men’s offending. In general, they pose less of a risk to the public. Only 36% of women in prison committed violent offences, compared with 55% of men, and female prisoners are more likely to have mental health problems. Many of those women need help in overcoming abuse, alcohol or drug problems, and many of them have dependent children. The impact on families and, therefore, communities if a mother goes to prison can be catastrophic. Prison damages the lives of vulnerable women, who are often incarcerated miles from their home and family. They lose their home, and their relationship with their children is damaged for ever. Prison should be reserved for the most violent offenders; for non-violent offenders, there are better options. By tackling the root cause of women’s offending behaviour, we will be better able to rehabilitate them.

Under the previous Labour Government, implementation of Baroness Corston’s report, which was championed by my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), had begun to have an impact on reducing the number of women in prisons. The Corston review recommended a substantial reduction in the number of women in custody, and the creation of small custodial units to replace the existing women’s prison estate for those women who need to be in custody, alongside improved support services in the community for women offenders and women at risk of reoffending.

Investment in that part of the judicial system has come a long way since the Corston report, but we must not lose momentum or focus. We must build on the excellent work that has been done and continue to invest in community-based projects. Rehabilitating vulnerable women and keeping them away from a life of crime means that they can return to our communities and make a positive contribution to society. The previous Government made that a priority and appointed a Minister who was specifically responsible for it. It concerns me that this Government have not done so.

A high proportion of people in the criminal justice system—up to 90%—have some form of mental health problem. Most have common conditions, but one in 10 have a more severe condition such as psychosis, and about two thirds have a personality disorder. Lord Bradley suggested many ways to improve the treatment of people with mental health problems in the criminal justice system and to tackle their over-representation in prison. His report stated that offenders are rarely required to attend mental health treatment as part of a community sentence, and confirmed the need for a greater use of diversion, which is a process to ensure that people with mental health problems who enter the criminal justice system are identified and provided with appropriate mental health services, treatment and any other support that they need.

The focus should remain on diverting people with mental health problems from the criminal justice system to more appropriate services in the community. The process of diversion ensures that people with mental health problems who enter the criminal justice system are identified and, where appropriate, diverted away from the criminal justice system. Custody can exacerbate mental ill health, heighten vulnerability and increase the risk of self-harm and suicide. Although I recognise that diversion has been a priority for previous Governments, it has always lacked a nationally guided strategy. As a result, there are inconsistencies in the system. Given that the health service budget has been largely protected, I urge people in the Justice Department to speak to their colleagues in the Department of Health to ensure that adequate funding is streamlined specifically for this service so that people with mental health problems who enter the judicial system can leave it.

I recognise the vital role for volunteers in our society—they play a crucial part—but they cannot take up the slack if the Department’s budget will be cut, as it seems clear it will be. I would ask the Lord Chancellor to direct reinvestment to full implementation of the Bradley report.

Substance addiction is extremely common among offenders, with more than a half of people entering prisons being problematic drug users. The evidence suggests that drug and alcohol treatment is effective in reducing and cutting offending and reoffending. However, while there is some excellent work going on in many prisons, the criminal justice system is still failing fully to rehabilitate offenders with drug and alcohol addictions. The Labour Government invested in that area and recognised the need for treatment. However, there is still a great deal to be done. There remains a shortage of appropriate and effective drug treatments. Short prison sentences and transfers for drug users make structured drug treatment programmes difficult, and short sentences tend to add to problems linked to drug and alcohol dependency such as mental health issues and homelessness.

Links between treatment in custody and continued treatment in the community are already difficult to maintain. I am worried that reductions to the probation service will exacerbate the situation—75% of prisoners who say that they had a drug problem before custody go on to reoffend within a year of their release. Alcohol treatment in the criminal justice system is also limited and can be ineffective. There is no dedicated funding available in the system. Despite the cuts, the Ministry should invest. Investment in drug and alcohol services will save money across Government. The NHS report, “Review of the effectiveness of treatment for alcohol problems”, found that treatment is effective and saves money in the longer term. For every £1 spent, £5 is saved on costs to health, social and criminal justice services. I accept that evidence supporting the cost effectiveness of drug treatment programmes is unclear, but the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse argues that for every £1 spent on treatment there is a saving to society of more than £9.

The Lord Chancellor will now have to wield the axe internally in his Department. If fewer prisons are to be built in the next Parliament and he believes that shorter sentences do not work—I agree with him to some extent—he must reinvest savings made from these policies in prevention policies, not cure policies, reducing the number of women in prison and ensuring that offenders with mental illnesses are identified at the earliest opportunity and diverted to the appropriate services.

Funding community-based projects is vital to reduce the number of people in prison. Although volunteers play a role in such projects, it would be a mistake to expect them to fill the black hole in public funding that was created yesterday. If we do not fund prisons, police and the probation service, there is a real risk that we will have criminals on the streets.

16:41

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

It is a great privilege to participate in this debate and to follow so many right hon. and hon. Members who are experts on this issue. I am grateful that, although the report was published almost a year ago, the House has delayed the debate until now, giving me a chance, having been elected, to put congratulations to the Justice Committee on the record.

One can tell, just by looking at it, that this report is an excellent, thorough piece of work. It confirms many of the views that Liberal Democrats have long held on justice policy. I am sure that that is in no small measure due to the Committee’s excellent chairmanship.

I also pay tribute once again—not for the last time, I am sure—to the excellent work of my predecessor, David Howarth, who was a distinguished shadow Justice Secretary and one of the witnesses who gave evidence to the Committee. David would applaud, as I do, the comments of the Secretary of State for Justice, who mentioned the “astonishing” number of people in our prisons. Liberal Democrats believe that once a criminal has been caught, the punishment that they are given should be aimed at helping them turn away from crime. As Winston Churchill had it, the first real principle that should guide anyone trying to establish a good system of prisons is to prevent as many people as possible from getting there at all. That might seem a pretty uncontroversial principle and some might even call it common sense, but for so long Government policy has run counter to that.

We were told that prison works. Successive Governments competed to build more and bigger prisons and to please the Daily Mail. Now, under a radical coalition Government, we are beginning to see a change towards rational, evidence-based solutions to this costly problem. Those solutions were set out in the Justice Committee’s report. I want to focus on just a few of them today.

We have been talking about the comprehensive spending review, which was published yesterday, in which the Chancellor calls for better value for money from the justice system. The state of the public finances means that times are hard for every Department, and the Ministry of Justice is no exception. But as the Chancellor said in his statement yesterday, we must not allow that to stop us from reforming our public services. I share the Justice Committee’s concern that an assumption has been created that punishment is the paramount purpose of sentencing. By pandering to that assumption, the previous Government showed not only weakness but a lack of rationality.

By contrast, the assumption at the heart of justice reinvestment is that all people, even convicted people, are part of a family and a community. Far from the polarising rhetoric that demonises all criminals and siphons money away from impoverished communities, justice reinvestment argues that society would benefit from a shift away from negative expenditure—processing and punishing people—to positive expenditure, investing in facilities for people and communities. The question is how we can achieve that radical switch away from prison numbers that spiral upwards towards a local, stable and community-led justice system.

The Government have signalled that they want significant reform in the justice system. The Justice Committee recommended that the prison population could be safely capped at its current level and then reduced by a third. We are awaiting proposals for sentencing reform, which will give a stronger focus to rehabilitation. As a Liberal Democrat, I am encouraged by the report’s references to community penalties. All the evidence suggests that short-term prison sentences do not work. Hon. Members will have heard the figures bandied around: some 60% of those on short-term sentences reoffend within a year of release. I welcome the noises made by the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary on this subject and encourage them to produce evidence-based and cost-effective proposals. I also urge them to consider and review the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974—I have already spoken to the Lord Chancellor about it—which continues to punish people long after their sentence is over and contains so many anomalies, including cautions and absolute discharges never being spent. That is not right. That Act should be reformed as soon as possible.

I have long been interested in restorative justice. One benefit of some community sentences is that they bring criminals face to face with the people they have abused, creating a direct link between criminal and victim. The previous Government’s failure to go far enough fast enough on such schemes was shameful. We Lib Dems have long advocated innovative ideas such as neighbourhood justice panels, bringing victims and offenders together to foster dialogue, shared decision making and shared understanding.

Neighbourhood justice panels have had tremendous results in reintegrating criminals, restoring relationships and reducing reoffending. One such panel in Somerset has had a 95% success rate. Surely it is time that the Government developed a national strategy for introducing such panels across the country. The Justice Committee called for precisely such a strategy in its report. That would reduce the burden on our courts, contribute to a decrease in prison numbers and bind communities together.

I refer the Government and the Committee to the evidence on this subject, particularly work by Larry Sherman, professor of criminology at the university of Cambridge, who has done extensive studies on restorative justice showing that it is cheaper and reduces reoffending more than jail, and that it is preferred by victims. I urge hon. and right hon. Members who have not contacted him to do so. He would make an excellent witness in future sessions.

I want to say a little bit about young offenders, because we need to pay more attention to them. The report makes this point strongly:

“It does not make financial sense to continue to ignore the needs of young adult offenders.”

If we are to prevent young people from becoming the recidivists of tomorrow, we must look closely at locally-based teams designed specifically to deal with 18-25 year olds. We should also consider a multi-agency approach, bringing in expertise from the criminal justice system and local authorities. Investment in community facilities also has its part to play. Positive investment—giving young people places to go and things to do—is the best way to safeguard public safety. That was demonstrated in my constituency, in the ward that I used to represent, where the construction of a new community centre had a significant effect on the criminality in the area. Young people are often the most affected when they are confronted with the damage they have caused to others. That is another compelling reason for the introduction of neighbourhood justice panels.

Many other recommendations in this report are well worth looking at. Ironically, I have not done the justice report justice. But I hope that hon. Members from all parties will agree that the previous Government’s response was unacceptable: they were not sufficiently supportive of the needs that are highlighted in the report.

We face an uncertain time. We know the extent of the cuts faced by the Ministry of Justice, for example, but the case for many of the report’s recommendations is overwhelming. These proposals are evidence-based, will save the Ministry of Justice money and will improve our communities and our public safety. The time for tough talk is over. The time for a sensible, rational, liberal approach has arrived. I urge the Secretary of State for Justice and his Ministers to seize the day.

16:49

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Main.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to welcome the Justice Committee’s report. I congratulate Committee members on producing what all hon. and right hon. Members have agreed is a thoughtful, considered study. In the 19th century, the Quakers were in the lead on penal reform, but it seems that the Methodists are in the lead in the 21st century.

The criminal justice system has several distinct objectives: to protect the public, to deter crime, to punish offenders, and to reform and rehabilitate them. All those objectives must be taken into account in the criminal justice system. At times they may be supportive, and at other times, they may seem to conflict, but I do not believe that any should be pursued to the exclusion of others. That is what makes the task of running the criminal justice system so complex and difficult.

The Committee’s report concentrates on the importance of diverting people from entering the judicial system, and improving support and guidance offered to those who commit custodial offences to prevent reoffending. The report argues that two key challenges—prehabilitation and rehabilitation—need greater attention, and it is clear that greater success in those areas would have a major impact on cutting crime and improving our judicial system.

I welcome the report’s emphasis on providing community-based solutions and improving the interconnections between local services. I agree that, wherever possible, prisoners should be detained in and remain in prisons near their family and local community, because clearly that can help offenders after release.

I am glad that the report emphasises the need to reduce young adult offending, and to divert more young people from the prison system. I first worked on that issue about 10 years ago when I was at the Children’s Society, and I am particularly pleased that the Committee took evidence from the society in its project with young people.

I also believe that justice mapping is an approach with great potential, because when thinking about how different parts of the criminal justice system inter-relate, it is important to remember that some communities, notably poorer communities, tend to suffer most from crime and its consequences. The criminal justice system must work in those communities, which must have confidence in it.

Before I comment further on the report’s specific recommendations, I want briefly to address the wider issue of prison numbers, which has received considerable attention this afternoon, and in recent days and weeks. Everyone would like there to be fewer crimes, fewer criminals in our communities, and fewer people residing at Her Majesty’s pleasure and at taxpayers’ expense, but it would be wrong to set an arbitrary ceiling on prison numbers, or to identify an optimal size for the prison population. Yet that is precisely what the report does by suggesting that the prison population should be capped, and then reduced to two thirds of its current size.

The comprehensive spending review statement yesterday made it clear that the Government are planning to cut the prison population by 3,000 over the next four years. Given that that includes offenders on short sentences, will the Minister tell us how many people will not now go to prison who otherwise might have done? Is the figure about 6,000 a year, or is it higher? Plans to put back the prison-building programme will result in 10,000 fewer places in the estate than under previous plans. That suggests an even greater reduction in numbers. I have several questions, and if the Minister cannot answer them this afternoon, I shall be pleased if he will write to me and other Committee members.

The plans reveal that what may seem to some Committee members to be a small reduction would in fact have a radical influence on how the criminal justice system is run. How will the reduction be achieved? The Times today seems to be considerably better informed than Parliament was yesterday, and listed the following options: those pleading guilty early on, those on indefinite sentences, some remand prisoners, a lower level of recall, drug addicts and foreign prisoners. Can the Minister disaggregate reductions into those categories? Perhaps most important, does he believe that the reduction in the prison population will take place against a background of rising or falling crime rates? Given that, is he confident that he can guarantee public safety?

[Sir Alan Beith]

The context is of falling crime rates with an 8% fall in recorded crime and a 4% reduction according to the British crime survey. That is the current decline in crime rates.

[Helen Goodman]

Of course. I shall come to that in a moment.

The overriding point is that we are not convinced that it is for politicians, civil servants or committees—even the Justice Committee—to decide what the prison population should be. It is for the Government of the day to provide prison places in line with need because the justice system is at heart a process. If justice is to be done and seen to be done, people must be confident that it is not subject to artificial constraints. I am worried that setting a target for prison numbers and then adjusting sentencing policy and conviction rates accordingly is putting the cart before the horse, and may do nothing for public confidence in the judicial system,

[Dr Huppert]

There seems to be an implicit assumption in what the hon. Lady is saying that sending people to jail is a good way of reducing crime. I am worried about that. She is also talking about setting conviction rates to suit, and I do not where she got that from. I am not aware of any suggestions that people would be found guilty or not guilty based on prison availability.

[Helen Goodman]

My overriding point is about a target for the prison population irrespective of what is happening to crime rates. I agree that crime rates have fallen, and they did so in large measure because of the Labour Government’s excellent policies over the past 13 years. The hon. Gentleman is laughing, but the truth of the matter is that if policy has an impact on behaviour, that is as true of the policies that have been pursued over the past 12 years as it is of any that may be in his mind.

[Alun Michael]

We are in danger of losing track of the key point because of the slightly partisan approach. Surely, as my hon. Friend says, setting arbitrary numbers is not what will bring success in reducing offending or prison numbers. Doing the right things will reduce offending and reoffending. I suggest that that is the key point of the report.

[Helen Goodman]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I am grateful to him for digging me out of that hole.

What is really valuable in the report is the clear emphasis on reducing reoffending, improving rehabilitation services for people with drug and alcohol problems and mental illnesses, and the demonstration that alternatives to custody can be cost effective. Without lower reoffending rates, it will be difficult to make progress in reducing prison numbers, and I would like to echo the Committee's contention that it should be a guiding principle of the judicial system that each offender should be less likely to reoffend after they complete their sentence than they were before. There is likely to be strong agreement on that point on both sides of the House, and I am pleased that polling shows that 72% of the public also believe that more should be done to rehabilitate offenders. Providing appropriate training and education and alcohol, drug and mental health support are all absolutely central to cutting reoffending rates. Although one would not know it from the crude depiction by the Justice Secretary and other hon. Members of the prison system under the previous Government, Labour made real progress, and the report acknowledges that.

I remind hon. Members that today’s crime statistics show an 8% fall over the past year, as well as rising confidence in the criminal justice system. Reoffending rates have fallen by 16% since 2000, and overall crime fell by more than one third over the lifetime of the Labour Government. During that time, funding for drug treatment programmes saw a fifteenfold increase, and there was a 26% rise in the number of offenders who successfully completed rehabilitation courses. We trebled spending on prisoner education programmes, and our response to the Bradley and Corston reports showed our commitment to improving mental health treatment for prisoners and the position of women offenders.

Given yesterday’s statement by the Chancellor and the savage cuts to the Department’s budget, will the Minister assure us that funding for those programmes will not now be cut? I echo the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) and the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd). If cuts are to be made, will that not undo our good work and make serious problems even worse?

We know that the number of front-line staff will be cut by 11,000. That will mean 15% fewer prison staff and probation officers, although the number of prisoners is projected to fall by 4%. Will it be possible to do more work with offenders and cut reoffending rates? The documents published yesterday said that people with mental health problems will be diverted at an earlier stage, and many hon. Members said that that would be a positive development. It will be a positive development if people in the Ministry of Justice have agreed it with their colleagues, and if the NHS has made provision for the additional resources needed. That is another point on which I would like to hear what the Minister has to say, either today or later in writing.

The report also warns that the Government should not move away from contracting probation and rehabilitation services to small organisations with a strong track record. Will the coalition’s plans for payment by results not have precisely that impact, with larger groups with good cash flows being better positioned to win contracts and squeeze out smaller competitors? The Government will not be able to make a success of their policy to reduce numbers in prison if they do not redirect resources into tackling the social exclusion that lies at the root of much criminal activity. They must provide the rehabilitative services that offenders need, particularly at a time when we can expect unemployment, and consequently acquisitive crime, to rise.

Much of that spend is outside the Ministry of Justice, but cuts to housing and youth services are likely to be a particular problem. Ministers are clearly using the well-intentioned and prudent proposal to reorientate spending as a smokescreen for cuts in spending on prison places, while failing to invest in the support services that are desperately needed if a more community-orientated approach is to prove effective.

The policy outlined by the Government of cutting spending on probation, rehabilitation and preventive services at the same time as there are significant funding cuts for prison places, is not coherent. As the Committee warns in its report, front-line spending cuts for prisons and probation would

“undermine the progress in performance of both services.”

In short, it would simply exacerbate the problems that the report seeks to remedy.

We need coherent, joined-up responses to the proposals that will allocate resources for our prison population and support the investment in prehabilitation and rehabilitation services that we need in order to reduce long-term offending and reoffending rates.

17:04

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) who is sitting opposite me. We have followed a similar path from our respective Whips Offices to Front-Bench responsibility, and I congratulate her on becoming a shadow Justice Minister. I notice that she did not spend an enormous amount of time defending the record of the previous Administration, which was probably wise.

In recounting the record, she commented on the number of courses that people have completed, and the expenditure on programmes. I want to draw attention to one way in which things are changing by saying that those are inputs. We are not going to measure inputs; we are going to measure outputs and what is achieved by the system. We will give those who operate the criminal justice system and in whose charge offenders are placed, as much professional freedom as we can to enable them to exercise their best professional judgment and effect the rehabilitation revolution that we so badly need.

[Alun Michael]

The Minister makes an interesting point by suggesting that he will measure things by outcomes. That is a sensible way to proceed but he must tell us how he will manage it without the inputs.

[Mr Blunt]

I would like to draw the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to a passage in his contribution where he talked about methodology. I was trying to write his remarks down, but he went through that part of his speech rather too quickly. He said words such as “the requirement of that methodology”, “centrally driven”, “clinically measured”, “setting targets” and “evaluated annually.” I recommend that he go back and look at such passages in his speech, and imagine what that language is like for someone who is on the receiving end of the methodology and targets that flow from it. That is the system we have inherited.

I have talked to professionals in the field, particularly the youth offending teams who are overseen by the Youth Justice Board. The leaders of the youth offending teams spend far too much of their time looking upwards to respond to the oversight that they receive from the Youth Justice Board, rather than looking downwards to deliver their services. If the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, that is an example of where we have got the balance wrong and where changes are needed. It is the same for the probation service and the performance measurements and targets that are imposed on it. We must move to a system that gives professionals more freedom to exercise their judgment in the best interests of the people in their care.

[Alun Michael]

rose—

[Mr Blunt]

I will give way for the last time, otherwise I will not get a chance to reply to the debate.

[Alun Michael]

I am grateful to the Minister for generously admitting that he was not keeping up with my explanation. It had nothing to do with the work of the Youth Justice Board; I was pointing out that the simple methodology of partnership working by local people in a local area who work together to identify the problems and produce solutions, has worked through the crime and disorder reduction partnerships over the past 12 or 13 years. The problem with the youth offending teams is not that of looking upwards or at centrally-set targets. The issue is about whether the professionalism exists in the Minister’s Department and the Home Office to support that sort of work. I suggest that it does not.

[Mr Blunt]

Elements of the functions of the Youth Justice Board will be brought into the Ministry of Justice. It is not as though all the people who work for the Youth Justice Board will suddenly disappear in their entirety and we will do without them altogether. That is a highly incorrect caricature of the position. I do not want to get drawn into that argument; in introducing my reply to the debate, I was making a general point about the approach that will differentiate this Administration from their predecessor. Evidence will be used to pursue policies that will focus on what is achieved and what outputs are delivered, rather than a policy that mandates inputs and targets and oversees professionals in the way that we have seen over the past 13 years. In the end, that has enervated people’s professionalism and detracted from the important task that we give them in offender management.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland asked about prison places. She seemed to be under the impression that we had announced the construction of 10,000 fewer prison places. That is not the case. The only announcement that we made was the deferring of the first of the prisons in the new prisons programme, which was to produce a net increase of only about 2,000 places. It is a new-for-old programme. It would have created five 1,500 place prisons—that is 7,500 places—and would have seen the removal from the estate of 5,500 of the older and less efficient places elsewhere in the system, so the figure is not 10,000; it is 2,000. That decision has simply been deferred, and in any event those prison places would have been highly unlikely to come on-stream during this spending review period. As they were proper privately financed schemes, they will continue to be assessed and there may well continue to be an economic case for them. However, given the other changes that we shall now have to examine in prison capacity, we are looking at closures of other prisons to arrive at a position whereby we can accommodate, in our estimate, about 82,000 prisoners at the end of this Parliament.

We need to remember that we inherited in May a position in which it was anticipated that there would be 96,000 prisoners by the end of the Parliament. There have been some changes to the number of people now being sent to prison. We are trying to identify why the trend has not been rising as steeply as one would have expected through the summer and autumn months. That may have something to do with the change of climate that has come with the end of the political arms race on this issue.

At this point, I should like to draw attention to the Select Committee’s report, which stated:

“If we are to avoid a continuation of the ‘arms race’ on being ‘tough on crime’, which dates back to the early 1990s, means must be found for encouraging and informing sensible, thoughtful and rational public debate and policy development on the appropriate balance and focus of resources.”

I think that we would accept that the Lord Chancellor has led that change of view, and both he and I now enjoy the warm appreciation of certain sections of the media for having done so, but what is welcome is that the bipartisanship between the two coalition parties now seems to have extended to the principal Opposition party with the election of the new Leader of the Opposition, who specifically endorsed the criminal justice policies of the new Administration in dissing the inheritance of his own period in government as implicitly the wrong approach.

[Alun Michael]

That is enough spin.

[Mr Blunt]

Well, I am grateful to receive support, wherever it comes from. I welcome the repentance of the Leader of the Opposition.

[Sir Alan Beith]

Now that we are having a more rational political debate about criminal justice policy, I hope that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues will do what they can—we will certainly do what we can—to encourage a more rational debate in some sections of the media. We found when we talked to people in other countries, including Germany and Finland, that the media in those countries did not present the arguments about crime in the way in which they are presented in some sections of the media here, where the argument is always that the sentence should have been longer. In other countries, the issue is debated much more responsibly.

[Mr Blunt]

If my right hon. Friend can find a way of pulling off that piece of alchemy, it would be extremely welcome. It would certainly be a very welcome development in intelligent policy making. As the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) said, this is a question not just of the Government changing the rhetoric but of Parliament addressing the issue, and now we are in a position to do so because in essence all three main parties are in the same place on going for evidence-based policy making. That is a welcome change from policy-based evidence making.

[Tony Baldry]

One of the glories of the coalition is that some of our colleagues are wondrously optimistic. The reality is that certain sections of the press never report this issue fairly. Will my hon. Friend acknowledge that what we collectively have to do is to accept that as a given and press on regardless? The proof will come at the end of the day when we have reduced reoffending rates and, as a consequence, reduced the amount of money that we have to spend on prisons. However, the idea that the Poujadist press will suddenly wake up and see that that is good news is away with the fairies.

[Mr Blunt]

That realism probably reflects my own assessment of the situation. We have to do what my hon. Friend describes. It is our responsibility and duty as parliamentarians to say and do what is right.

[Alun Michael]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Blunt]

Will the right hon. Gentleman forgive me if I do not? Otherwise, I simply will not get through my remarks.

[Alun Michael]

I will be brief.

[Mr Blunt]

Well, if the right hon. Gentleman accepts that I will not finish my remarks, I will give way to him.

[Alun Michael]

I counsel the Minister that now is the time, when there is still something of a honeymoon going on, for him to build bridges across the Chamber as well. Contributions that are a little less partisan and some recognition of the considerable achievements of the last Government would help to create the consensus across the Chamber that will be very important for Ministers in future, as well as for good practice in Parliament.

[Mr Blunt]

I can well understand, given the quality of the inheritance that we received, why the right hon. Gentleman would be anxious for me to pursue that line.

Let me comment on some of the other contributions to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) made the point that we can be either smart or stupid about our attitude to crime. He spoke about the need for confidence in community sentences, to which I want to return.

The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) was kind enough to take interventions from me in relation to his experience of a veterans court in the United States. I re-emphasise that I shall want to consider the evidence that he provides to me in that area. I just caution him to be slightly careful, in terms of commenting on leaks, numbers of job losses and everything else, about taking the opinion of some trade unions in this area too directly. Their record of accuracy is not highly precise. The National Association of Probation Officers over-estimated the number of veterans in the justice system by about a factor of three.

[Mr Llwyd]

No.

[Mr Blunt]

Yes.

[Mr Llwyd]

With respect, I can answer that straight away. NAPO estimated that about 8,500 service veterans—9%—were in prison. The Government scoping exercise excluded those under 21, reservists, of whom there are many in Afghanistan as we speak, women and those who served in Northern Ireland. If we process them back in, the figure is 9%.

[Mr Blunt]

I fear not. A very careful study by the Defence Analytical Services Agency assessed the number at 3.5%, but let us not be diverted by that. I was making a wider point about the reliability of the people whom the hon. Gentleman was adducing in evidence. I think that as the position becomes clear with regard to the consequences of the spending review, the probation service will realise that the Lord Chancellor has batted for it in a particularly effective way. If we are to address issues and change the balance in relation to short sentences—we do not expect any savings in terms of the prison system if there are changes in patterns and fewer people being given short sentences—the first thing to say is that we will not end the capacity of the magistracy and the judiciary to use short prison sentences if they feel that that is necessary, but we would obviously hope that their use would be reduced. That means either community sentences or longer sentences. Those are the two alternatives that arise from it, so it would be unwise to assume any reduction in the overall number of prison places required, as a result of a change in policy in that area, because some of the changes will involve people going to prison for longer so that they can be effectively rehabilitated within the safety of custody.

The other point that I want to make to the hon. Gentleman is that the public sector is not the only source of money. I commend to him the social investment model that has begun at Peterborough; it is a model that we will wish to widen. If we can get external investors to invest, so that savings can be made—that is much at the centre of the principle of the justice reinvestment report—it frankly does not matter where that extra capacity comes from.

In the end, this is not about just money; there is an enormous capacity in the community. In the voluntary sector, the charitable community and the private sector there are people who want to give their services, in whatever form, to the Ministry of Justice and to the state, to help us with the task of rehabilitating offenders. At the moment, our system is not very good at making it easy for those people to give their services, or to sell them to us, on a not-for-profit or indeed a for-profit basis, to grow this country’s capacity to deliver rehabilitation. The responsibility that sits on me now, in terms of designing the policies—on rehabilitation in particular—that we will present in the Green Paper, is to create a system that will make it that much easier for us to draw on the capacity that is sitting out there in the country; to ensure that in co-ordination with the existing state services, in probation and elsewhere, we can deliver a much more effective rehabilitation package than we do today. This is not about replacing those services but about adding to them.

The other half of that process is to ensure that all the existing state services, particularly those delivered at a local level, are co-ordinated that much more effectively, to deliver the interventions that are needed to address the multifaceted problems that normally afflict most people who are on a cycle of reoffending and who need particular help to break free from that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) referred to our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and to the very good report that he oversaw as chairman of the Commission for Social Justice. Early intervention is not about just the criminal justice system but about what I have described as the entire life cycle of the offender and the potential offender, and that is why I have a place on the Social Justice Cabinet Committee, which is chaired by my right hon. Friend, precisely to start making interventions earlier and earlier in the process. It is about trying to keep children out of care. It is about looking at the whole business of family intervention programmes for when the indicators start arriving, such as when children are excluded from school and are sent to pupil referral units. Good work was done by the previous Administration, and I happily acknowledge that, but we have to encourage a culture in which we invest early to prevent problems later. At the same time, we are of course left with the responsibility of dealing with the problems that we have now, which is why it is essential to create extra capacity, in whatever form we can.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), who I think will make a welcome contribution to the work of the Justice Committee, acknowledged that the previous Administration were perhaps not as tough on the causes of crime as they might have been. When the then Leader of the Opposition coined the slogan, “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime,” that slogan was empty, as is now clear in his own diaries and in his account. The policies to deliver on that had not been developed when the slogan was coined in 1994, and that is one of the dangers of dealing in rhetoric without there being the reality underlying it and—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth is chuntering. The policies began to be developed from that point on, but at that point they did not exist. One has to be careful about the catchphrase that sounds great but does not have the policies—

[Alun Michael]

That is very petty; that is not true.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. I ask the right hon. Gentleman not to intervene from a sedentary position.

[Mr Blunt]

There is, however, much in the Committee’s impressive report that resonates with this Government’s plans for overhauling our approach to the rehabilitation of offenders. We share the concern that the size of the prison population is not just a numbers game, and we want to target investment where it is most needed. Most important, we know that we need to place successful rehabilitation at the heart of the criminal justice system, so that we can prevent people from becoming the victims of tomorrow. The forthcoming Green Paper on rehabilitation and sentencing will set out our plans for bringing about real and enduring changes in our approach to reducing reoffending. It will also bring much-needed clarity to the sentencing framework. I hope that members of the new Justice Committee and the right hon. and hon. Members here this afternoon will find much in the Green Paper that reflects and addresses the concerns raised in this debate.

We face huge challenges, and we will clearly work closely with other Departments. I have been asked on more than one occasion about our relationship with the Department of Health on the issues of mental health and addiction, and I am very pleased to be able to report that the Ministry of Justice is getting great commitment and interest from the Ministers and the senior officials in the Department. I am extremely hopeful that we will be able to build significantly on the position that we inherit.

The excellent report that we have debated this afternoon has already informed the thinking of the new Administration, and I suppose that that is hardly surprising. The report is consistent with the direction of travel in criminal justice, and we will present our views in the Green Paper. But again, it is a Green Paper, and we look forward to my right hon. Friend and the members of his Committee making a contribution in response. There is no monopoly on wisdom in this area, and we are open to listening to evidence as it comes in and to trying to find ways of ensuring that successful approaches to widening rehabilitation can be adopted by the whole criminal justice system. If the new Justice Committee is as well informed and authoritative as the report of the previous Committee, I am quite sure that it will do a signal service to our country during this Parliament.

17:28

[Sir Alan Beith]

I can assure my hon. Friend that the new membership of the Committee is every bit as compelling as the old in its determination to work hard on these issues, and it has a great range of experience and ability. We have had a very good debate today and I want to thank right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part, bringing considerable experience to our discussions. Speaking as a Back Bencher leading a Back-Bench Committee, I want to say to the Front Benchers, “Come and join us in the consensus,” because I think that the consensus is there. We all have our points of partisan disagreement, which the Front Benchers perhaps tend to emphasise, but the basis for consensus is there.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on taking up her new responsibility. I know her well and am sure that she will do a very good job. She has an opportunity, I think, to develop policy, and there is a need to do so, because if we stick with the predict-and-provide approach there will continue to be a weighting in the system in favour of custody, and alternatives will be neglected. Although numerical targets are not the answer to the problem, I really believe that if we do not set ourselves some objectives and remain with the predict-and-provide approach, we will not be able to make the kind of developments that are necessary. I welcome the Government’s willingness to do that, but we will be watching very carefully to see whether in a very difficult financial climate the Government and the Ministry of Justice are able to put in place the means to achieve what I think we now agree needs to be done.

Question put and agreed to.

17:29

Sitting adjourned.

Written Ministerial Statements

Thursday 21st October 2010 Written Statements

Thursday 21 October 2010

Education (Student Support) Regulations 2009 (Amendment) Regulations 2010

Thursday 21st October 2010 Written Statements

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

I am today confirming the student finance package for higher education students undertaking a course of study in the academic year beginning September 2011.

For all new and continuing full-time students in 2011-12 the package of maintenance support will be maintained at existing levels.

The maximum tuition fees for full-time courses in 2011-12 will be uprated in line with inflation to £3,375 a year. The amount of tuition fee loan will also be increased to match this amount.

For those students undertaking part-time courses the maximum fee and course grants will also be maintained at 2010-11 levels.

To implement the 2011-12 increase in fee support, and make some minor policy and technical amendments to student support regulations, I have today laid the Education (Student Support) Regulations 2009 (Amendment) Regulations 2010 before both Houses.

Bank Levy (Draft Legislation)

Thursday 21st October 2010 Written Statements

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)]

The Government have published draft legislation on the bank levy announced as part of the Budget in June.

The Government believe that banks should make a full and fair contribution in respect of the potential risks they pose to the UK financial system and wider economy. The Chancellor therefore announced as part of the June Budget that the Government will introduce a levy based on banks’ balance sheets to take effect from 1 January 2011. Following on from this announcement, and consistent with the Government’s approach to tax policy making, the Government published a consultation document in July. Following the conclusion of the consultation on 5 October, the Government are now taking forward the policy process by publishing the relevant draft legislation.

The levy has been designed to encourage less risky funding and complements the wider agenda to improve regulatory standards and enhance financial stability. It will apply to the global balance sheets of UK banks, and the UK operations of banks from other countries. Once fully in place, the levy is expected to generate around £2.5 billion of annual revenues.

The consultation sought views on a number of technical aspects of the design and implementation of the levy. The Government have considered carefully the responses from all interested parties. The draft legislation sets out the Government’s policy decisions on aspects of the design, including:

the £20 billion threshold is replaced by an allowance;

a principles based approach for the netting of derivatives and other assets and liabilities;

a deduction for high-quality liquid assets; and

uninsured customer deposits (except for those from financial institutions) will be subject to the half rate.

The draft legislation is accompanied by explanatory notes and a consultation response summarising the Government’s policy decisions. Final draft legislation will be published towards the end of the year, alongside final confirmation of the rate of the levy, as part of consolidated draft clauses planned for the Finance Bill 2011.

Copies of the draft legislation, explanatory notes and consultation response are available in the Vote Office and have been deposited in the Libraries of both Houses. Copies of these documents are also available via the HM Treasury and HM Revenue and Customs websites.

Council Tax

Thursday 21st October 2010 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)]

I am pleased to inform the House that the spending review has allocated a £650 million fund to help local authorities to implement a council tax freeze in England in 2011-12. Council tax has more than doubled since 1997 and the freeze will offer real help to hard-working families and those on fixed incomes such as pensioners. It will help save local taxpayers in England up to £70 living in an average band D home in England.

Alongside this, the Government continue to provide more flexibility for councils to protect front-line services like rubbish collections and care for the elderly. They intend to stop the council tax revaluation which would have led to greater tax bills over the lifetime of this Parliament for many families. The Government also intend to give local residents a new power to veto excessive council tax rises in the future, both to protect the interests of local communities and strengthen local democracy.

My Department has written to local authorities today with full details of how the scheme will operate. For the benefit of the House, the key elements are as follows:

(a) The scheme will be voluntary; and will apply separately to each billing and major precepting authority in England (including police and fire and rescue authorities) rather than to each council tax bill issued. Local precepting authorities, such as town and parish councils, will not be included in the scheme.

(b) Where an authority does not increase its basic amount of council tax in 2011-12 compared with 2010-11, it will be eligible to receive a grant equivalent to a 2.5% increase in its 2010-11 band D figure multiplied by the latest available tax base figure. Slightly different arrangements—still based upon a 2.5% grant—will apply for the Greater London authority and for those authorities which restructured in 2009, to reflect their unique circumstances.

(c) The police authorities of Greater Manchester and Nottinghamshire that are subject to capping in advance for 2011-12, will be able to take part in the scheme.

(d) The spending review has concluded that funding can only be provided to support a council tax freeze for 2011-12. However, the Government intend to provide supplementary funding to local authorities in subsequent years of the spending review to compensate them for the council tax income forgone during the period of the freeze.

The Government are delivering on their promise to deliver a freeze, which is good news for council tax payers in England. The Government expect all local, fire and police authorities to sign up to the freeze and can see no reason why they might choose to do otherwise. Nevertheless, we will not allow these authorities to set an excessive council tax increase and are prepared to use capping powers where necessary. I also urge town and parish councils to exercise restraint and make sure no council tax payer faces an increased bill.

Spending Review Statement

Thursday 21st October 2010 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

By 2014-15, the end of this spending review period, DCMS’s combined capital and resource budget will be 25% lower than in 2010-11.

The purpose of this statement is to explain in more detail what this means for those working in our sectors.

The Government recognise that these are difficult cuts. However, it has had no choice, given the pressing need to reduce the deficit.

In looking to make savings my strategy has been based on four principles:

Cutting waste and inefficiency and stopping lower priority projects. As part of this settlement I am reducing administration costs in my own Department by 50% and I am demanding similar reductions from all of the major bodies we fund. This is in addition to our previously announced decision to abolish a number of public bodies including the UK Film Council and the Museums Libraries and Archives Council.

Protecting the front line as much as possible. By taking tough action elsewhere, we are managing to protect the National Museums and the British Library, the renaissance in the regions programme, regularly funded arts organisations. Whole sport plans for national governing bodies, the public lending right and the British Film Industry (BFI). Funding for these will fall by no more than 15% in real terms over the spending review period, requiring tough but manageable efficiencies.

Delivering a safe and successful Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012. As part of this settlement we are maintaining the planned £9.3 billion Olympic funding package. This ensures that the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) is fully funded through to the completion of the programme and that we retain adequate contingency to deal with key risks. However, we will continue to bear down on these costs, and have announced a number of savings, including the stadium “wrap”.

Contributing to Economic Growth. As part of this settlement we are boosting tourism by protecting Visit Britain’s £50 million marketing budget and challenging industry to match it. We are retaining support for film and the tax credit, and are also investing £230 million in broadband infrastructure, including a number of superfast broadband pilot projects.

In addition the BBC will contribute an additional £150 million per year for broadband in the four years between 2013-14 and 2016-17. This is part of a wider agreement with the BBC that will freeze the licence fee at £145.50 until April 2017. As part of this deal the BBC has agreed to take on a suite of additional spending requirements, including the BBC World Service, a significant contribution to S4C and support for local television.

Finally with great regret I have also taken the decision to withdraw funding from the Commission for Architecture and Built Environment (CABE).

The action I have taken will ensure that our sectors will get through the coming years without long-term damage. They will also benefit from our decision to restore the lottery to its original good causes, which will mean that the arts, sports and heritage sectors will each get £50 million a year extra funding from 2012.

More detail on our resource settlement is provided below and in the accompanying tables which set out DCMS’s budgets by sector and by funded bodies and programmes.

I am also providing an outline of my capital investment plan for the spending review period. This includes support for projects of major significance such as redevelopments of the British Museum and the Tate Modern, as well as continued support for sports facilities through Sport England.

In line with the Government’s commitment to transparency, I will publish all of the allocation letters I am sending to our funded bodies so that the public can see how their money is being spent and what we expect in return.

While we have had to make a number of very difficult decisions, we have acted in a decisive way that maximises the resources going to the front line. Our priority now is to get on with delivering the services the public want over the period of this Parliament and beyond.

Delivering a Safe and Successful Olympic and Paralympic Games

The top priority for my Department remains the delivery of a safe and successful Olympic and Paralympic Games. London 2012 will be a defining moment for our nation, when the eyes of the world will be upon us.

The public sector funding package available for the games will remain at £9.3 billion. Government funding for the programme, excluding security, will be held by my Department. The Greater London Authority (GLA) and Olympic Lottery Distributor will continue to contribute as per the 2007 spending review agreement. Security funding will be provided primarily by the Home Office, based on the principle that costs will lie where they fall.

This settlement ensures that the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) is fully funded through to the completion of the programme. We have reduced the ODA’s forecast completion cost by £20 million, in part by no longer delivering the external “Wrap” around the Olympic stadium, subject to planning conditions, and unless alternative sources of funding can be found.

In recognition of the changing focus of the programme from construction to the operational delivery of the games, the spending review settlement makes provision totalling around £0.5 billion for specific operational requirements.

As noted in the national security strategy, we must not underestimate the security challenge. The spending review settlement makes provision to ensure that all Olympic and Paralympic sporting and non-sporting venues, totalling over 100, are secure throughout the preparatory phase and six weeks of Olympic and Paralympic competition. This is over and above the funding for Olympic policing and wider security, but both are contained within the £9.3 billion funding package. As set out in the bid, venue security is a shared responsibility of the event organiser—the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG)—and the Government. LOCOG will lead the delivery of securing venues in collaboration with the police and other security agencies.

The settlement will also provide for specific extra responsibilities, for host local authorities where the burden imposed for specific games-time operations is of such a scale that it should not be borne solely by local council tax payers, and for shared responsibilities for the safety of spectators and visitors between transport hubs and sporting venues where existing budgets cannot cover the additional requirement.

The remainder of the funding package—around £0.5 billion—will be held as an Olympic contingency for cross-programme issues including a material change in security circumstances. Contingency will be strictly controlled and will only be released to meet costs that are essential for the delivery of the games, where they cannot reasonably be met from existing budgets. The contingency will be held partly by DCMS and partly within HM Treasury’s general reserve.

The Government remain committed to the public sector funding half of the incremental cost of the Paralympic Games. This is included within the £9.3 billion funding package. Separately, and outside of the £9.3 billion funding package, all Government Departments are clear as to their operational responsibilities and will fund them as required. This is recognised in their settlements.

The capital and resource allocations for the DCMS element of the Olympic and Paralympic programme are set out in the table which accompanies this statement. Further details of the spending review outcome for the Olympic programme will be provided in the next quarterly economic report on the games, due to be published on 9 November.

Supporting Elite, Community and Youth Sport

The Government remain committed to elite, community and youth sport in the run up to hosting the London 2012 games, and is confident it can deliver a real and lasting legacy.

We have made clear to UK Sport that their first priority must continue to be world class funding for Olympic and Paralympic sport in order to deliver medal success on the world stage. As part of this settlement, they will maintain the agreed funding for Olympic and Paralympic sports up to 2012, subject to the usual performance related decisions, as well as seeking to maximise performance in Glasgow 2014 and at the next Winter Olympics and Paralympics. After 2012 there will be reductions to the direct budget for Olympic and Paralympic sports but we are confident that these can be limited to 15% in real terms and we have made clear we want UK Sport to look hard for additional private sector sponsorship to make up for this.

We have also secured a good settlement for sport’s national governing bodies as part of the overall settlement with Sport England. In our discussions with them, we have been clear that resource funding for Whole Sport Plans (WSPs) is to be protected and subject to a cut of no more than 15% in real terms over the period of this spending review. The resource budget for these plans will be in addition to continued lottery funding and capital funding.

Protecting the front line in this way will mean some tough choices and I have been clear with both UK Sport and Sport England that their spending on administration needs to be reduced by 50% by the end of the spending review period. While we are planning for the organisations to merge after the Olympics, we expect them to start finding administrative savings through closer working before then.

Alongside continued funding for these two organisations, we will continue to support UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) and the Football Licensing Authority (FLA). Given their important work both these organisations will receive below average reductions in funding. We expect them to find this from administration and efficiency rather than reduced services.

Protecting Arts, Museums And Libraries

This country has some of the finest cultural institutions in the world and we are determined to protect them so they can be enjoyed by everybody both now and in the future. Our starting point has been to look for large savings to the amount of public money spent on bureaucracy. We have previously announced that we are abolishing the Museums Libraries and Archives Council, and as part of this settlement we are asking Arts Council England to reduce their administration budget by 50% as well as cutting back sharply on discretionary, non essential, spend.

By taking these tough decisions we are able to limit any damage to the front line. We have been clear with the Arts Council that it needs to protect the grants it makes to regularly funded arts organisations,—the backbone of this country’s artistic life. Individual decisions about which organisations to fund are for the Arts Council to make, but we have been clear that the total funding for arts organisations is to be reduced by no more than 15% in real terms over the spending review period.

We are providing similar protection to the British Library and the National and non- National Museums which my Department sponsors. By limiting reductions to their resource funding to 15% in real terms over the period, we are ensuring they are able to continue with the successful policy of free entry.

I am also giving these organisations the freedom to access up to £143 million of their historic reserves over the next four years. This is an important step towards delivering on the coalition commitment to providing greater freedoms for national museums and will encourage them to work towards attracting further philanthropic donations.

Another area I am able to protect is the successful renaissance in the regions programme which has done so much to improve the quality of museums in all parts of the country. While we are abolishing the MLA, this programme will transfer to another body from 2012 with cuts to its budget limited to 15% in real terms.

We have also agreed to transfer the administration of the public lending right (PLR), the fund which compensates authors for the loans of their books in public libraries. While the total funding for the PLR will be reduced over the spending review period, this will also be limited to 15% in real terms and the fund will continue to be ring fenced. Given the need to find savings, we have decided at this stage not to extend the fund to cover audio and e-books.

Safeguarding our Heritage

We also remain wholly committed to safeguarding our heritage for future generations.

As part of this settlement, English Heritage and the other grant giving bodies will remain as separate and effective funders for the sector. We are, however, demanding significant efficiencies and as with other major bodies we are insisting that English Heritage reduces its administration budgets by 50% over the spending review period and cuts back on non-essential services.

We want English Heritage to prioritise core activities such as planning advice, grants for heritage at risk and the conservation and maintenance of sites in its care. We also want them to strengthen their fundraising capacity and increase self-generated income.

The settlement also allows us to continue with funding some of our smaller but vitally important heritage organisations. While they too will be expected to find savings on their running costs, we will continue to support the likes of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust and the Churches Conservation Trust to carry on their important work with better than average settlements. Grants to the Royal Household for the occupied Royal Palaces will also be protected, with reductions in funding of less than 13% in real terms.

We have also awarded a fixed sum every year to continue the listed places of worship scheme, which has already helped over 9,000 local communities up and down the country. In line with previous announcements, from January 2011 we will be returning this scheme to its original scope of eligibility and these restrictions will also apply for the next spending review period.

Protecting these services has meant taking some tough decisions. One of these is to reduce funding for the royal parks. Another is our decision to withdraw our funding for the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CASE). While I recognise the part that CABE has played in promoting well designed buildings and public spaces, I have judged that the most pressing need is to protect and maintain other parts of our culture and heritage.

Tourism

One of the reasons why we are protecting our cultural institutions is that they play a key role in promoting tourism, an important industry which we are committed to developing.

As part of this settlement we have agreed that VisitBritain and VisitEngland will continue to play a crucial role in this area but like all our other major bodies they will have to find administrative savings of 50% over the next four years.

We also want their remaining spending to be more focused, targeted and effective. In the case of VisitBritain, this means concentrating on international marketing and PR activity in the top and emerging international markets. Over the course of this spending review period we are asking them to create a powerful £100 million partnership marketing fund, with matching funds from the industry and Government to promote the UK as a tourist destination before, during and after the Olympic games.

At the same time we want VisitEngland to focus more on investment in and support for destination management organisations and the local businesses, local authorities and enterprise partnerships involved in tourism up and down the country.

More information on all of this will be provided as part of our tourism strategy, to be published later this year, which will set out a detailed vision for boosting UK tourism and capitalising on hosting the Olympics in 2012.

Media

Through this spending review settlement we will continue to champion our creative industries and the contribution that they make to economic growth.

One of the ways we will do this is by establishing one of the fastest broadband networks in Europe. Over the next four years we will invest £230 million in broadband. In addition, the BBC will contribute an additional £150 million per year for broadband in the four years between 2013-14 and 2016-17.

We are committed to supporting an independent BBC but are also keen to drive efficiencies and ensure better value for money for the licence fee payer. To that end, we have agreed the licence fee settlement for the remainder of the charter period. The level of the licence fee will be frozen at £145.50 until April 2017 and as part of this deal the BBC has agreed to take on a suite of additional spending requirements, including the BBC World Service, a significant contribution to S4C and support for local television.

We are committed to the future of Welsh language broadcasting and as part of the BBC licence fee deal we have secured S4C’s funding for four years. Subject to the current rules around the RPI link being changed as part of the Public Bodies Bill which will be introduced later this year, S4C’s budget will be reduced from its current levels by 24.4% over the spending review period and a partnership arrangement with the BBC will start by 2013-14. While the Government will provide the majority of funding to S4C over the SR period, the BBC will become the primary funder of S4C from 2013-14. This will happen under a new a partnership between S4C and the BBC which will retain S4Cs unique identity and editorial independence.

We are also committed to supporting our film industry. As with other areas we are determined to eradicate waste and bureaucracy and we have previously announced our decision to abolish the UK Film Council by 1 April 2012.

While we are still discussing how best to support the industry going forward we are committed to seeking to protect funding for a number of important areas over the next four years. This includes support for the film industry in the nations and in the regions, the media desk which helps secure and administer European funding, support for inward investment and work to carry out certification as part of the system of tax relief for British films.

It also includes support for the BFI which we will fund directly to maintain its important work, not least caring for one of the world’s richest and most significant collections of film archives. As with other front line services, such as museums and RFOs, we are committed to limiting reductions in their funding to no more than 15% in real terms over the course of the spending review period.

Capital and resource allocations for the DCMS element of the Olympic and Paralympic programme.

Immigration and Asylum Appeals (Fees)

Thursday 21st October 2010 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

This Government believe strongly in the values of responsibility, freedom and fairness. It is these values which inform all our judgments as we face up to the exceptionally tough fiscal situation we have inherited, and it is with these values in mind that I am launching a consultation on the mechanisms for introducing fees to the immigration and asylum appeals system.

I believe that it is reasonable to ask non-UK citizens appealing against some categories of immigration and asylum decisions to contribute to the costs of the administration of that appeal, where they are able to. This is particularly the case given that some two thirds of appeal cases are declined each year.

The current situation is that the Tribunals Service Immigration and Asylum system (TSIA) demands no appeal fee. Costs are met by the Ministry of Justice through funds provided by the UK taxpayer and in part from fees levied on visa applicants by UKBA.

For this reason I am today launching a public consultation on the mechanisms for introducing fee charges as I have outlined here. The consultation will be available from today on the Ministry of Justice’s website and will run for 12 weeks, concluding on 21 January 2011.

I welcome feedback from all interested parties.

This Department is currently undertaking an internal review of legal aid and will be seeking views on reform shortly. If the proposals taken forward in the future, as a result of that consultation, affect the availability of legal aid in immigration appeals and consequently our assumptions about the impact of charging appeal fees to appellants of limited means, we will consult again as necessary on an alternative remissions and exemptions policy in respect of the fees to ensure that access to justice in immigration appeals is appropriately maintained.

Copies of the consultation paper will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses, the Vote Office and the Printed Paper Office.

Court Fees (Public Law Family Proceedings)

Thursday 21st October 2010 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

Following the recommendation by Francis Plowden in his “Review of Court Fees in Child Care Proceedings” on 15 March 2010, Jack Straw, the former Secretary of State for Justice, announced that the court fees charged to local authorities for care and supervision proceedings would be abolished from April 2011. I have carefully considered the decision of the former Secretary of State and believe that there is no justification that these fees should be abolished and as such they will remain.

Protecting vulnerable children is paramount and I do not believe that continuing to charge these court fees will place vulnerable children at risk. Local authorities have a statutory duty to investigate instances when they suspect a child is suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm and it would be unlawful for local authorities to consider financial considerations when deciding whether to do so. There is little, if any, empirical evidence to suggest that fees are a deterrent to local authorities commencing care and supervision proceedings. Indeed, since 2008 current figures show a general rise in applications being issued.

Francis Plowden’s review found that resource issues could play a part in determining whether proceedings were initiated, however, he only believed this occurred “at the margins”. He confirmed that this conclusion was based on anecdotal evidence alone and also stated that it was unlikely that children have been knowingly left at unavoidable risk by local authorities.

The fundamental principles in setting court fees at levels that reflect the cost of the service being provided are now more important than ever in the drive to ensure all Departments are transparent and accountable for the money spent on public services. Specifically, fee charging:

improves decision-making and accountability by providing greater transparency of the true cost and benefits of the services provided by both charging and paying authority.

promotes the efficient allocation of resources enabling authorities to identify particular pressures. Local authorities can then ensure sufficient funding is made available from their overall resources to pay court fees and other necessary expenditure in pursuant of their statutory obligations.

The cost of keeping these fees has been considered and built in as appropriate to the spending review settlements 2010 for those Departments affected—the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Welsh Assembly Government.

Furthermore, in light of the work currently being undertaken by the Family Justice Review Panel it would be premature to remove the fees for care and supervision proceedings. The review panel is looking at options for reform in both public law and private law cases. The review is due to publish its final report in autumn 2011 and I will review the fees for care and supervision proceedings following these findings and any proposals that seek to change the way in which these cases are dealt with by the courts.

National Assembly for Wales (Referendum on Law-making Powers)

Thursday 21st October 2010 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Wales (Mrs Cheryl Gillan)]

The National Assembly for Wales passed a resolution on 9 February 2010 calling for a referendum under the terms of the Government of Wales Act 2006. The First Minister notified my predecessor of this resolution on 17 February 2010.

I am today laying copies of the National Assembly for Wales Referendum (Assembly Act Provisions) (Referendum Question, Date of Referendum Etc.) Order 2010, the National Assembly for Wales Referendum (Assembly Act Provisions) (Limit on Referendum Expenses Etc.) Order 2010, and the National Assembly for Wales (Legislative Competence) (Amendment of Schedule 7 to the Government of Wales Act 2006) Order 2010.

I have also placed in the Library of both Houses a copy of the Electoral Commission’s report of its views on the proposed question in the referendum on law-making powers of the National Assembly for Wales. This report was published on 2 September 2010, and the full report and a summary are available on the commission’s website at www.electoralcommission.org.uk.

The draft referendum order contains the bulk of the provision relating to the running of the referendum. It specifies the date of the referendum (article 3) and the referendum question and preceding statement (article 4).

I can confirm that the referendum will be held on 3 March 2011 subject to approval by Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and approval by Her Majesty the Queen in Council.

With regard to the referendum question which will appear in English and Welsh on the ballot paper, I had a statutory duty to consult the Electoral Commission on the question that is included in the draft referendum order. I referred a question proposed by the Wales Office Referendum Project Board to the Electoral Commission on 23 June 2010. The commission conducted a thorough assessment of the question and its preceding statement, including carrying out public opinion research, gathering views from interested parties and seeking advice from experts on plain language and accessibility in English and Welsh. Its findings and recommendations are contained in the report published on 2 September 2010, referred to above.

I have already welcomed the report which made clear that it is a far from easy matter to draft a question for this referendum. During the testing process, the commission discovered that two factors in particular contribute to making it a difficult task: the complexity of the subject matter of the referendum, and the generally low level of public awareness and understanding of issues and terminology relating to it.

However, with the benefit of the public opinion research and consultation that the Electoral Commission undertook to assess the intelligibility of the proposed question, they were able to suggest a question and preceding statement that would address, as far as possible, the issues they had discovered in terms of complexity and low levels of awareness. I discussed the commission’s report, its findings and recommendations with the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister and we agreed to accept the commission’s recommended revision of the question and its preamble which is as follows:

The National Assembly for Wales: what happens at the moment;

The Assembly has powers to make laws on 20 subject areas, such as:

agriculture

education

the environment

health

housing

local government

In each subject area, the Assembly can make laws on some matters, but not others. To make laws on any of these other matters, the Assembly must ask the UK Parliament for its agreement. The UK Parliament then decides each time whether or not the Assembly can make these laws.

The Assembly cannot make laws on subject areas such as defence, tax or welfare benefits, whatever the result of this vote.

Question;

Do you want the Assembly now to be able to make laws on all matters in the 20 subject areas it has powers for?

If most voters vote “yes”

The Assembly will be able to make laws on all matters in the 20 subject areas it has powers for, without needing the UK Parliament’s agreement.

If most voters vote “no”

What happens at the moment will continue.

Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru: yr hyn sy’n digwydd ar hyn o bryd;

Mae gan y Cynulliad bwerau i lunio deddfau mewn 20 maes pwnc, megis:

amaethyddiaeth

addysg

yr amgylchedd

iechyd

tai

llywodraeth leol

Mae’r Cynulliad yn gallu llunio deddfau ar rai materion ym mhob maes pwnc ond nid ar faterion eraill. Er mwyn llunio deddfau ar unrhywun o’r materion eraill hyn, mae’n rhaid i’r Cynulliad ofyn am gytundeb Senedd y DU. Yna, mae Senedd y DU yn penderfynu bob tro a gaiff y Cynulliad lunio’r deddfau hyn neu beidio.

Ni all y Cynulliad lunio deddfau mewn meysydd pwnc fel amddiffyn, trethi neu fudd-daliadau lles, beth bynnag fo canlyniad y bleidlais hon.

Cwestiwn;

A ydych yn dymuno i’r Cynulliad allu llunio deddfau ar bob mater yn yr 20 maes pwnc y mae ganddo bwerau ynddynt?

Os bydd y rhan fwyaf o bleidleiswyr yn pleidleisio “ydw”

Bydd y Cynulliad yn gallu llunio deddfau ar bob mater yn yr 20 maes pwnc y mae ganddo bwerau ynddynt, heb orfod cael cytundeb Senedd y DU.

Os bydd y rhan fwyaf o bleidleiswyr yn pleidleisio “nac ydw”

Bydd yr hyn sy’n digwydd ar hyn o bryd yn parhau.