Grand Committee
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Colwyn)
Good afternoon, my Lords. It has been agreed that, should any of the Questions for Short Debate not run for their allotted hour this afternoon, the Committee will adjourn during pleasure until the end of the allotted hour. Therefore, each of the Questions for Short Debate will start at half past the hour. If there is a Division in the House, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes and, if necessary, time can be added on to the time for the Question for Short Debate.
Iran
(14 years ago)
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Lord Corbett of Castle Vale
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what further measures they will take in respect of Iran over human rights, nuclear developments, and its role in neighbouring countries.
Lord Corbett of Castle Vale
My Lords, the fact that so many Members of your Lordships' House have put their names down to speak is testament to the importance of this topic. Iran's human rights record is among the worst in the world. It has been condemned 57 times by the United Nations. It is among the worst, and is worsening. Foreign Secretary Hague noted in June last year, on the anniversary of the stolen presidential election that he was,
“gravely disturbed by the deterioration in the human rights situation in Iran”,
since the presidential election, adding:
“The Government of Iran has further restricted freedom of expression and assembly, and protesters, journalists, students and human rights activists routinely face harassment and intimidation”,
with protesters denied due process in their trials.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, whose rulers pervert the true meaning and message of Islam, hangs more men, women and children than the rest of the world put together, bar China—savagery on an industrial scale. Women are stoned to death, amputations are carried out without anaesthetics and eyes are gouged out. This is a regime that is almost literally at war with its citizens. While the economy stagnates, millions of young well-educated Iranians are denied employment. The mullahs use the money from oil on missiles, on nuclear weapons development and on sponsoring terrorism abroad rather than on investing in the future of their citizens.
Our Government and others know that Iran supplies weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan and finances Hamas and Hezbollah. It has supplied and smuggled roadside bombs to Iraq—and paid the people who did it—which has killed seven out of 10 of all UK, US and coalition troops who have been killed. It has plenty of money for mischief and murder; little to meet the needs of one of the best-educated populations in the region. The people of Iran deserve and demand better. They demand the right to protest and to enjoy human rights and free elections. That is why millions cry freedom, despite the brutality of the regime's response.
Iran’s meddling is at its height in Iraq. It pressures the compliant and fledgling al-Maliki Government to lay siege to 3,400 Iranian dissidents at Camp Ashraf, 60 miles north-east of Baghdad. These are members of the dissident PMOI. They were individually interviewed by US security agencies in 2004, renounced participation in or support for terrorism, rejected violence and undertook to obey the laws of Iraq and relevant UN mandates. In return, they were given indefinite protected persons status—I have here a photostat of the identity card given to one of the residents, which I shall leave with the Minister after this discussion—under the fourth Geneva convention, on behalf of the Multi-National Force—Iraq, by Major General Geoffrey Miller, its deputy-commander.
International law experts argue that that protection remains in operation all the while coalition forces are in Iraq, although I acknowledge that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office disputes that. What is unarguable is that the UK, like every other United Nations member, has a continuing responsibility to ensure that Iraq carries out its duties under international humanitarian law.
The US handed responsibility for the safety and security of Ashraf residents to Iraq last year after Iraq gave written undertakings to continue these protections. Not only has it not done so, but the Prime Minister set up a committee for the suppression of Ashraf in his office to meet agreements that he made with Iran to close Ashraf and remove its residents. In July last year, Iraqi security forces—some, strangely, speaking Farsi—attacked the unarmed residents, killing nine and wounding hundreds. Video shows troops using hand-held chains, wooden staves embedded with nails and scaffolding tubes in the attack, as well as a Humvee to run down protestors. The so-called Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights has still not released its report into these events, despite requests from the United Kingdom that it should do so. I hope that, when he comes to reply, the Minister will be able to say what the latest position is on this.
Since Iraq took over responsibility for the safety and security at Ashraf, there have been 70 recorded cases of harassment of residents by Iraqi forces, with 29 injured. Medical and other supplies are regularly refused entry to Ashraf, as are relatives and residents’ lawyers wishing to visit. Ashraf is under menacing siege in breach of international humanitarian law, let alone the fourth Geneva convention protections. However, that is not all. The latest pressure is to deny residents with terminal cancer access to the medical treatment that they need in Baghdad and elsewhere. I have a dossier here listing some of the cases and, again, I shall leave it for the Minister and his officials to study after this debate. Dozens of terminally ill cancer patients are refused the services of specialist doctors, and now, night and day, people using 120 loudspeakers around the perimeter of the camp chant threats to kill residents and destroy Camp Ashraf. This is psychological torture, in clear breach of international humanitarian law.
On 25 November, the European Parliament adopted a written declaration condemning Iraq’s failure to ensure the safety and security of Ashraf residents. It condemned the siege imposed upon the camp and urged the UN to provide urgent protection to Ashraf. For good measure, it urged the United States to follow the UK and EU lead in reviewing the continued naming of the PMOI among organisations concerned with terrorism. As your Lordships will remember, we did that in a court action in this country some years ago, and that was followed by the EU doing exactly the same.
Why is Ashraf important? It is important because its residents are a symbol of hope and inspiration to the millions across the border in their homeland who cry freedom. I believe we need to signal that we stand with those millions in their struggle for freedom against the undemocratic fundamentalists now ruling in Tehran. However, I make it immediately clear, not least in the light of WikiLeaks, that this does not imply or mean a call for military intervention. It does not. It is for the people of Iran to find their own way to freedom, and the PMOI offers a secular republic, respect for human rights and democracy, and an ending of the current nuclear weapons programme. That is what it wants to offer in free elections and it has undertaken to stand by the results of those elections, win or lose.
There is a growing and grave urgency surrounding the siege at Ashraf and words are no longer enough. Since the Americans handed over responsibility for safety and security, we know from experience that the Iraqis are not going to fulfil the undertakings which they gave the American forces or which they have given under international law. When the Minister responds to this debate, perhaps he will be kind enough to answer three questions.
As Iraq has demonstrated that its word cannot be relied upon, will he now ask British embassy staff in Baghdad to visit Ashraf and speak to terminally ill patients denied medical treatment in order better to assess the position at first hand? Secondly, will the UK encourage the UN, perhaps using US forces and help from the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, to ensure the proper protection of Ashraf residents by maintaining a continued presence around the perimeter of the camp and ending the siege and psychological torture brought about by loudspeakers and interference with essential supplies? Thirdly, will he facilitate a visit by an all-party group of Peers and MPs to Camp Ashraf so that they can talk to residents there, get a first-hand picture and report on the present position when they return?
The situation at Ashraf is headed for a humanitarian catastrophe. We cannot and must not stand by and wait for this to happen and then start to condemn it. The response last July was slow and bad enough, which the then Ministers were good enough subsequently to acknowledge. We do not want that to happen again. It must be made crystal clear to the Iraqis that the international community will not tolerate breaches of international humanitarian law at Camp Ashraf. I look to the Government to say that they support that position.
Lord Waddington
In view of the limited time available, I shall come straight to the subject of Camp Ashraf. When my noble friend the Minister answered a Question on 25 October, he said that pressure had to be brought to bear on Iraq to see that it behaved properly towards the people of Ashraf. We can surely take it from that that Her Majesty's Government are less than happy about the situation there. My noble friend says that officials from the British embassy have visited the camp. Can we take it that they saw the 120 or so loudspeakers outside the camp? Did they hear them being used to blare out threats of murder to the people inside? Can we take it that our embassy had some contact with the United Nations Assistance Mission when it was still at Ashraf and knows of the catalogue of complaints to the mission about dozens of desperately ill people being prevented from going to Baghdad for treatment? I can hardly believe that our embassy was closing its eyes to what the Iraqi prime ministerial committee for the suppression of Ashraf was up to. I hope that my noble friend will state clearly today that what Iraqi forces at Ashraf have been up to is quite unacceptable.
There is little doubt that the Iraqis are dancing to the mullahs’ tune, and it would be very surprising if the mullahs were not bent on getting rid of Ashraf and the people there for the very reason that was stated by the noble Lord, Lord Corbett: namely, that it is a beacon of hope for people in Iran.
Iraq is a sovereign country, but we are where we are as a result of the US/UK invasion in 2003. That surely means that if Iraq does not behave in a civilised fashion and breaches international law, we cannot wash our hands of the matter. Surely Iraq is now in breach of international law. At the very least, it is in breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which it is a party when it denies the people of Ashraf freedom of movement.
The people of Ashraf are entitled to be protected from harassment and attack. How can their safety be secured without the US retaking responsibility for the protection of the residents and the UN establishing a permanent monitoring team at Ashraf? That surely is what Her Majesty’s Government should be urging.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, for this opportunity. I shall talk about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its relationship with its neighbours, given the limited time. Our interests in the UK are engaged with Iran on numerous fronts. It is a neighbour of Afghanistan and Iraq, countries in which UK forces are deployed, and to Pakistan, where we have ongoing security interests.
Iran’s attempts to acquire a nuclear capability have been an ongoing concern for many years now, and rightly engage the international community. Until the present time, we have pursued a twin-track strategy; successive increases of sanctions against Iran have continued alongside the E3+3 talks. There have been ebbs and flows; there was a positive atmosphere in 2003, when Iran suspended its nuclear programme, but on the whole these days the optimism is gone and we know from successive IAEA inspections and public statements from the regime that Iran’s technological know-how is moving ahead towards highly enriched uranium. Whether that leads towards nuclear weapons capability is probably undisputed; the question remains as to how long that will take.
The question that remains for us is what we are to do. Many of us suspected that Israel was being restrained from launching an attack against Iran’s nuclear sites by the US, but we now hear from reports that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have been actively seeking a military strike against Iran in order, supposedly, to destroy her nuclear capability. I hope the Minister can impress on Israel that this would be a most unhelpful course of action, if that is what she seeks to do. Iranian rhetoric indeed threatens Israel, and President Ahmadinejad’s recurrent statements are deeply provocative. Iran’s support for Hezbollah must be deeply worrying, not least when amply demonstrated through President Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to Lebanon. But airstrikes will not do away with any of that; indeed, they will aggravate tensions throughout the Middle East.
If we in the international community think that we can sanction strikes against Iran and expect no retaliation, we are naive at best. The Straits of Hormuz would be closed overnight, with worldwide oil prices spiking to unprecedented levels. A hard-won stability in Iraq would be immediately endangered and Iran’s significant influence in Afghanistan would be far from benign. Airstrikes would almost certainly not eradicate Iran’s programme, which is dispersed and well protected, as we understand from intelligence.
I turn to the threat that Iran supposedly poses to its neighbours in the wider Middle East. The 2010 report of the US Director of National Intelligence describes Iran foreign policy in his annual threat assessment, finding that:
“Iranian leaders undoubtedly consider Iran’s security, prestige and influence, as well as the international political and security environment, when making decisions about its nuclear program”.
That is not an unusual set of priorities for any sovereign Government.
In conclusion, while we abhor these actions, I hope the Minister will reassure us that we will continue to keep our eye on the prize of peace through dialogue and sanctions, rather than allowing the use of force, even if it is by proxy.
Baroness Afshar
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Corbett, for putting this debate on the agenda, and I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, for the very sane statement that she made. In my three minutes, I shall make three points. First, you have to think what it feels like if you are Iranian and surrounded by nuclear powers, and in particular if your enemy is Israel, which has a proven track record of attacking Palestine, Lebanon and elsewhere. Iran from the 20th century onwards has a relatively clean record on attacks; it seems to be more sinned against than sinning.
I should like noble Lords to think about why Iran is influential in the neighbourhood. It was dead against the Taliban and co-operated in the West to allow the Taliban to be arrested and sent over, so why the volte face? Iran tried very hard to have amicable negotiations with the West and failed. When you find that there is no jaw-jaw, you go for war-war, which actually helps the Government. If the Government were under threat, Iranians across the board would help them. What is more, we need to think of how the Iranians treated the flood of refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan who came to Iran. They were well treated, housed in open camps and afforded education. It so happens that I know, for example, that one of the very few women MPs in Afghanistan was educated in Iran. It is hardly surprising that Iran is influential. As a matter of fact, I might tell your Lordships that Iran is working with both sides. It is helping the Taliban, just in case it wins; it is also helping the Government. We have to ask: what would Britain do in such a circumstance?
I conclude on the question of human rights. I absolutely support the 65th resolution of the General Assembly abhorring the human rights situation in Iran. If there were a statement in the name of human rights, your Lordships would have international Iranian support. On the other hand, the Mujahedin-e Khalq did not have a presence among all those who were killed and died for the cause of democracy in Iran, while Camp Ashraf was used by the mujaheddin to torture its own people. There is a long tradition of suffering there, and it has nothing to do with Iran.
Lord Parekh
My Lords, I, too, begin by thanking my noble friend Lord Corbett of Castle Vale for securing and introducing this debate. I am sure he will forgive me if I disagree with many of the things that he said. The Iranian regime has been guilty of violating human rights but it is not the only one in the neighbourhood or in the world. It has been guilty of ignoring basic democratic norms but, again, it is not the only one in the area or in the world. It has been interfering in the affairs of other countries; well, we have a long record of doing that for the past 70 years, so we are in no position to point the finger at the Iranians. We obviously have a duty to criticise and bring pressure to bear on Iran, but we should not engage in any kind of precipitate action that aborts its natural evolution into a secular, democratic society in the years to come.
Nuclear weapons are certainly a serious matter, but I am not sure how serious Iran’s interest is in developing those weapons. It could be a game of bluff or a negotiating counter, but let us assume that it is serious and embarks upon the programme of developing nuclear weapons. Why would it want to do that and what would it do with those nuclear weapons? It would annihilate Israel. It knows that is suicide because Israel has developed perhaps 200 nuclear warheads. It also knows that Israel would be supported by the United States. Is it a fear of its neighbours? It knows that if it were to embark upon nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia would do the same thing, followed in due course by Egypt and eventually by Turkey. By turning to nuclear weapons for its own national security, it would be defeated by its own actions.
There are two basic concerns with Iran wanting to develop nuclear weapons. There is a sense of national pride. For all kinds of reasons, having nuclear weapons has become a badge of having arrived on the international scene and being taken seriously. In part, there is also the fear that the United States will interfere, as it has during the past 50-odd years, in the internal affairs of Iran. Therefore, we need to ask ourselves how we can normalise relations with Iran and allow its own internal dynamics to develop in a healthy direction when any kind of external pressure or interference will simply abort the process and create more problems for us.
We ought to reassure the Iranians that no one is going to interfere in their internal affairs, apply diplomatic pressure, and provide a carrot in the form of giving it a greater regional and global role and drawing it into global deliberations on a new kind of world order. More importantly, we ought to put pressure on its neighbours because we have been concentrating too much on Iran. We ought to make it clear to them that they ought to engage in establishing cordial relations with Iran, rather than turning to Uncle Sam every time there is trouble—in the hope that Uncle Sam will come down heavily on the Iranians—when no good relations are going to be created that way.
My final point is that Iran is going through a deep internal crisis: economic, political and cultural. If we allow that process to be uninterrupted by external pressure or internal panic, we might be able to create a more sensible order than we ended up creating in Iraq.
Lord Dholakia
My Lords, Iran has secured constant headlines over the past few years because it has a dismal record on human rights, the capacity to produce nuclear weapons and a fragile democracy. These are matters of serious concern to the free world. This debate gives us the opportunity to probe the coalition Government’s stance on issues identified so far by many noble Lords. It is tempting to cite some revelations that emerged from WikiLeaks. I do not condone the unauthorised release of classified information. Governments cannot operate effectively if confidentiality in matters of security is leaked, but this is not the case with Iran, and diplomats ought to exercise care in the way in which information is communicated. Let me give the Committee an example. We are shocked that it took years of legal battles in this country and in Europe to formalise the status of the PMOI. Some of the information used by the Foreign Office at that time could not stand the scrutiny of the courts. It is here that our system of justice is supreme, and the PMOI has now been removed from the list of proscribed organisations.
Why are we afraid of organisations fighting for democracy and the civilised rule of law in Iran? The civilised world cannot accept the death penalty for more than 135 child offenders now on death row in Iran. In many cases, dissent against the regime is followed by systematic public hangings; 120,000 political prisoners have been executed since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Amputation, lashing and stoning seem to be the norm. Mobile communications, particularly mobile phones, have made it possible for the world to know how fragile the state of democracy is and how power seems to fluctuate between the politicians and the mullahs.
The nervousness of neighbouring Arab states is easy to understand. So far, tact and diplomacy have not yielded positive outcomes, and the process of uranium enrichment continues. We need to know more about what role the regime is playing in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, but the priority at this stage is to protect the life and liberty of those who are in Camp Ashraf, a point well made by the noble Lord, Lord Corbett. The world cannot stand by and allow the constant persecution of the residents there. The shift of power after the Iraq war between the Sunnis and the Shias has opened up a new front in which Iran exercises considerable influence in that region. It is no surprise that the unremitting violence against Camp Ashraf residents is the direct result of Iran's influence.
There are a number of questions that I need to put, but I shall stick with two. Will the Minister ensure that Mrs Maryam Rajavi is given a visa to travel to the United Kingdom so that we can learn how best to promote democratic changes in Iran, and will he facilitate a cross-party delegation of parliamentarians to visit Camp Ashraf?
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Corbett, for initiating today's debate. It comes at an opportune time, but also at a time of great danger and hardship for the people of Iran. Over the past 18 months, they have been protesting with increasing fervour inside Iran as they demand freedom and democracy from the mullahs’ regime. The Iranian regime responds to these protests through arrest, torture and execution. It targets individuals with links to Iran's largest opposition group, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran. It is now time that the PMOI leader, Mrs Rajavi, is welcomed to the United Kingdom and that the US accepts the legitimacy of the PMOI, as ruled by its own Supreme Court. I ask the Minister to address that specific issue when he replies.
The most obvious evidence of the mullahs' corrupting influence has been the persecution of the 3,400 members of the PMOI in Camp Ashraf in Iraq. The Iranian regime has demanded that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki destroy the camp and disperse the residents so that they can more easily be eliminated.
The European Parliament recently adopted a declaration calling on the EU’s foreign affairs chief, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, to urge the UN to provide urgent protection for Ashraf residents. It was mentioned in the declaration that relatives of Ashraf residents had been sentenced to death by the Iranian regime after returning from visits to their families in Ashraf. Will the Minister condemn those death sentences in the strongest terms? If fact, he should do more. The Government should seek to send a delegation from this House to visit Camp Ashraf—the Minister can immediately put me down for the 54-inch body armour that the MoD could not supply when I wanted to go to Afghanistan.
Last summer Iraqi security forces killed 11 residents in an attack on the camp. More recently, and at the Iranian regime’s request, their tactics have been to create unbearable living conditions, as has already been explained. A disgraceful and inhuman example of that persecution was when, on 10 November, Iraq prevented 44 year-old Ms Elham Fardipour from travelling to a Baghdad hospital to undergo treatment for thyroid cancer. How can we possibly justify the suffering and the sacrifice of our nation’s sons and daughters in bringing freedom to Iraq when the end result has been the installation of Nouri al-Maliki who, at the request of Iran’s theocratic dictatorship, denies refugees suffering from cancer the right to travel to hospital? Was that what we envisioned for Iraq?
I conclude by saying that we in the United Kingdom and our allies should be isolating the regime with comprehensive sanctions over both its unlawful nuclear weapons projects and its appalling human rights abuses. We should accept that millions in Iran—a majority in democratic terms—want an end to the mullahs’ regime. Only then will Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and the rest of the Iranian regime become nothing more than a dark stain on the proud history of the Iranian people.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick
I draw noble Lords’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests in that I am chairman of the British-Iranian Chamber of Commerce and director of a company with interests in Iran. I join the noble Lord, Lord Corbett, in utterly condemning human rights abuses in Iran, particularly after the elections, such as the show trials, the beatings by the Basij, the shootings of young people in the street and the mass rapes, as revealed by the cleric and presidential candidate, Mehdi Karroubi. As the late Ayatollah Montazeri said before his death, the Islamic republic is becoming neither Islamic nor a republic.
The Iranian regime at the moment is weak domestically but strong regionally. Regionally it is strong because of its militant opposition to Israel compared with the so-called moderate Arab regimes, but also because of its alliance with its proxies: Hezbollah, Hamas and the Medhi army. These alliances give Iran an asymmetric defence in depth if attacked. All the military hardware of the United States and Israel will be irrelevant compared with that lethal potential response.
I recently read the opinion of Peter Jenkins, our former ambassador to the IAEA, who somewhat unusually doubted whether Iran was developing nuclear weapons as opposed to reaching the technological capability that gave it the option of developing them further. He argued that Iran was not in breach of its legal obligations but that we could do nothing to stop it reaching the threshold. I am not saying that he was right on the former, but he might be right on the latter. I hope that sanctions will change Iran’s attitude, but we must recognise that there will be a greater source of illegal trade and more income for the military security conglomerate of the revolutionary guards. Sanctions are also an opportunity for the regime to blame its own economic failings on the enemy abroad. Lastly, sanctions provide the Government with a perfect alibi to crack down on opposition within the country.
There are obviously some out there who do not believe that sanctions will work. I refer to those behind the targeted assassination of Iranian scientists working on the nuclear programme. The day before yesterday, one scientist was murdered in Tehran and another wounded in car bomb attacks. Earlier this year, another nuclear scientist was murdered. I do not expect the Minister to comment on this, but I do not believe that these attacks are inspired by either of the two King Abdullahs. They are completely counterproductive and will not encourage Iranian public opinion to support a flexible approach.
The present carrot and stick approach has been tried many times before and I doubt that it will succeed again. There are three things that might put pressure on Iran and encourage it to stop trying to reach a nuclear threshold. First, as has already been mentioned, Iran has its own nuclear concerns. Regional nuclear disarmament, beginning with Israel, is important. Secondly, there is a need to settle the Palestinian issue and create a state that is acceptable to the Palestinians. This will undermine Iran’s regional position. I also believe that the BBC Persian service, Murdoch’s new Farsi channel, Facebook and Radio Liberty are very important in encouraging change in Iran. There is a rising tide of discontent within the country. Demography and the cosmopolitanism of the young people of Iran make it impossible for the present political framework to survive in the long run. We must make sure that our actions support rather than delay change.
Lord Mitchell
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Corbett for initiating this debate. I do not suppose that any of us are wildly happy about the WikiLeak revelations, but in some ways they throw into sharp relief the true views of the Arab states on Iran. Like many other noble Lords, I have always been surprised by what I have heard Arab diplomats and politicians say in private behind closed doors compared with what they say in public. When talking about the dangers to their countries, they look to the threat from the East—in other words, Iran—rather than to that from the West—that is, Israel. They have one language for the street and another for diplomacy. On Iran, the leaks quote the King of Saudi Arabia as saying that the head must be cut off the snake; the King of Bahrain as saying:
“The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it”;
and about Ahmadinejad that he is “unbalanced, even crazy”.
The Iranians, of course, deny that they are building a nuclear weapons capability; they say that they are building nuclear power plants. Iran is a poor country. Could someone please explain to me why, as one of the world’s largest producers of gas and oil, it should need to build nuclear generators? It is laughable. I see the Iranian situation as a car crash waiting to happen, and it is all in tortuous slow motion. For years, we have known that the Iranian regime is wholly bad. Ever since the revolution, it has been a force for evil in this world. It destabilises Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is our soldiers who pay the price. It set up a state within a state in southern Lebanon, such that Hezbollah today is a major threat to Israel, armed to the teeth with more rocketry than it had in 2006, despite the United Nations trying to prevent it. It finances and arms many organisations that we deem to be terrorists and which are threats to our security. Now it is in bed with the North Koreans, who it seems are to supply it with medium-range missiles capable of hitting western Europe: talk about a marriage made in hell.
I am a firm supporter of the state of Israel. To Israelis, a nuclear-armed Iran is an existential threat. It sees Tel Aviv as target number one. Ahmadinejad has stated on many occasions—and who are we to disbelieve him?—that the Holocaust never happened and that Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth. So the man both denies the Holocaust and, at the same time, plans for the next one. He plays for time, stringing us all along while he zigzags from side to side. We threaten him but we always back off. We indulge him, hoping that he and his state will change their tune, but they do not. We apply sanctions, which are soft and meaningless, but he ignores them. All the time, the centrifuges keep spinning—at least, they would were it not for the Stuxnet virus.
My conclusion is that nothing will stop Iran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons, except crippling sanctions, and these should be implemented before it is too late.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, I hope that next week’s Geneva meeting will cover Iran’s refusal to co-operate with the UN’s official human rights mechanisms and its rejection of the specific recommendations under Iran’s UPR, to which attention was drawn by a consortium of NGOs led by Human Rights Watch, as well as by the UN Secretary-General in his September report to the General Assembly. In turn, it expressed deep concern at,
“serious ongoing and recurring human rights violations”,
including torture, the persecution of human rights defenders,
“pervasive gender inequality and violence against women”,
discrimination against minorities and a dramatic increase in executions. Many were in public, ignoring international standards, still used stoning and suspension strangulation, and included victims under 18. The human rights high commissioner added her voice to the chorus last week, concentrating on the vicious treatment of the human rights defender, Nasrin Sotoudeh, and everyone associated with Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi’s centre for human rights.
The NGO consortium under Human Rights Watch wants the UN’s thematic special procedures, such as the rapporteur on executions, to report periodically to the UN Human Rights Council on matters that fall within its mandate. Iran has escaped detailed scrutiny by the SPs simply by ignoring requests for an invitation. Philip Alston, the retiring executions rapporteur, merely records that a request to visit remains outstanding, without even saying when it was originally made. Again, that has been the practice for all the SPs.
Iran holds the world record, as has been said, for the number of communications on executions. During the year under review, Mr Alston sent 63 letters to Iran, which failed to respond to 37 of them. He suggests that when a country has persistently poor levels of co-operation or engagement with the communications process, the Human Rights Council should demand an explanation. I hope that the Government support that. Otherwise, he suggests, the procedure, despite its significant cost, is not being taken seriously as a means of responding to violations.
I shall return to the other proposals made by the special rapporteur in Thursday’s human rights debate, when I shall also comment on the Secretary-General’s comments on Iran’s treatment of its Baha’i, Sufi, Baluch and Kurdish communities. For today, what ideas do the Government have for improving the means of dealing with the particular case of Iran at the United Nations? Does he agree that at least the rapporteur should produce country reports on the most egregious human rights violators without waiting for an invitation to visit, as has been the practice hereto?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Corbett of Castle Vale for initiating this debate. Like so many of your Lordships, I begin by saying something about human rights in Iran.
The punishments of political prisoners and those found guilty of criminal offences are truly appalling, from the 74 lashes received only a couple of weeks ago by a political prisoner in Gohardasht prison to the amputation of the hand of a 32 year-old man in front of other prisoners in the central city of Yazd. But what has outraged public opinion more than these harsh and terrible punishments is the treatment of child offenders and women. Amnesty International’s report of August this year says that 135 children are on death row in Iran. The country has signed the treaty on the rights of the child, which explicitly prohibits the execution of children under the age of 18, but I am sure that many of us have read the sickening accounts of the hanging of girls under the age of 18 for alleged sexual crimes and the attempts at public execution of underage boys.
The outcry about the 99 lashes received by a woman convicted of adultery, together with the initial sentence of death by stoning—now death by hanging—has outraged all parts of the world. Unabashed by this outcry of horror which those sentences have stirred up, the supreme court in Iran has now ordered a verdict of death by stoning of two further women in the past two months. Punishments of that nature are simply not acceptable, not in any country at any time or for any crime. What do Her Majesty’s Government say about the 135 young people on death row in Iran at the moment and what action are they taking to talk to the Iranians about the hanging or stoning sentences imposed on women for adultery?
On Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the possibility of its having some ability to produce a nuclear weapon through enriched uranium, and the warheads that it is believed to be developing, we have heard from WikiLeaks, which has already been referred to, that Israel believes that Iran will be equipped with a nuclear weapon within one to two years. Do the Government believe that that is a realistic assessment? If they do not, what can the Minister do about any timelines that he may be aware of?
Over the past 10 to 12 years, I have been sent on a number of visits to the Middle East for various purposes and for very confidential discussions. I must say that although the language of some of the leaks that we have been reading in the past couple of days is florid and undiplomatic, the content of the exchanges came as no surprise; nor do I believe that it came as any surprise to anyone who is acquainted with the region. The countries of the Gulf and the wider Middle East are genuinely concerned—more than concerned—about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. They and we need to think through the consequences of the use of these weapons in the region and the sheer enormity of what would follow. I do not expect the Minister to tell us in detail about the Government’s thinking on this—indeed, I hope he will not do so—but I would like an assurance from the Government that our allies within Europe, NATO and the Middle East and further afield in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere are all thinking about this issue, are planning and are doing everything possible to ensure that our friends and allies have a clear and well understood strategy to deal with this unimaginable catastrophe, were it to happen in the region.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, in the brief time left after this series of brilliant vignettes and short speeches about the situation in Iran, it will not be open to me to do full justice to all the questions, and I shall try to contact noble Lords whose questions I do not answer adequately.
I shall begin at the end because the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, spoke with great strength about matters about which we all feel: the gross abuse of human rights in Iran and its appalling practices. She mentioned, in particular, the practice of executing juvenile offenders, which revolts the entire world, and I can tell her that the European Union continues to raise this again and again, with other death penalties, and my honourable friend Alistair Burt, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, discussed this with the Iranian ambassador when they met a few weeks ago, but those are words and our disgust must be expressed in much stronger words than that, and will continue to be.
The challenges posed to the international community by Iran’s behaviour in all its aspects are stark. I commend particularly the opening comments by the noble Lord, Lord Corbett, who not only feels strongly but conveys the strength of his feeling about the behaviour of this grim regime. We have no doubt at all that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a disaster for the Middle East region and deeply damaging to the integrity of the international system for preventing nuclear proliferation. Several noble Lords referred to that, and I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, about the dangers and about how the habit of extending existential threats to other nations merely reinforces the whole atmosphere and makes the danger all the greater.
Iran’s treatment of its own people, its appalling record, to which I referred, and its support for terrorist groups in the Middle East demonstrate the true nature of the Iranian state. We have no doubt about that. It is confirmed by everything that has been said and there is, indeed, the malign shadow of Iran over the Middle East and over prospects for peace. Those prospects would be enhanced if Iran were no longer able to use, for instance, the Israeli-Palestine argument, debate, quarrel, differences and conflict somehow to champion every kind of hostile and difficult element in the region.
The international community has demonstrated unity and resolve. We have adopted a twin-track approach to Iran, referred to by your Lordships, of pressure and engagement. The aim is peaceful pressure, through sanctions, designed to persuade Iran to come to the negotiating table. In the past six months, we have secured tough new sanctions at the UN and at the European Union. The noble Baroness rightly asked whether we were bringing the allies along. Sanctions must be comprehensive. If they are undermined or weakened by various loopholes, the entire process becomes more difficult to conduct. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, that the sanctions will be tough. We are in high-level discussions with China on the need for it to support them. If trade routes are being undermined and investment in Iran continues from other quarters, our sanctions, particularly financial, are weakened.
We are running those sanctions in parallel with serious efforts to talk. The noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, speaking on behalf of the E3+3, has offered talks for next week, at the beginning of December. That is the latest in a long series of good-faith offers to talk. We do not know how Iran will respond, but we hope that it will do so quickly—the location is yet to be finally settled.
Many noble Lords referred to human rights. Iran’s record poses a direct challenge to the international community. Last year, the world witnessed via TV and YouTube brutal state suppression of the post-election protests in June. That rightly caused international outrage, which we fully shared. We have lobbied the Government of Iran to improve their human rights record and continue to do so. My colleagues and our team of Ministers in other departments regularly raise cases and issues of concern directly with the Iranian authorities. We have regularly lobbied the Iranian Government on the case, for instance—I am not sure whether it was mentioned in our discussion—of Mohammadi Ashtiani since her case came to light in June 2010. We were all revolted by the proposed method of her execution; it was a hideous case.
We are working all the time to get stronger international condemnation of Iran’s very bad human rights record. Last week, 80 countries from every continent voted in favour of a UN resolution—I think that it was raised by one of your Lordships— condemning Iran’s human rights record and calling on its Government to take urgent action. The resolution passed with the largest positive vote for eight years, indicating the breadth of international concern.
We will continue to push for the full implementation of UN resolutions calling for the disarmament of all armed groups supported by Iran and to give our full support to the UN sanctions committees that are pursuing and investigating sanctions violations. I do not want any doubt to be left about that.
I turn to the crucial questions about Camp Ashraf that were raised with such telling conviction by the noble Lord, Lord Corbett, my noble friend Lord Waddington, and others. I am not sure that anything I say will meet their full concern, because I can understand their strength of feeling. However, I have to say to them that, although we must act with as much power as we can, there are bound to be some limits to what we can do. Officials have visited Camp Ashraf four times in the past year, most recently in August. Noble Lords will know that Camp Ashraf is in a sovereign and democratic Iraq. We stress the need for the Iraqi authorities to deal with the residents of the camp in a way that meets international standards, and we will do so again and again.
Several noble Lords asked about seeking to facilitate a visit by noble Lords and Members of Parliament to Camp Ashraf. We would certainly try to do that. Whether one can guarantee that the Iranian authorities will provide the necessary facilities is another matter, but I am quite happy to say here and now that we would consider that possibility and see whether it could make a positive contribution to the situation.
I want to say one or two other things about Camp Ashraf, because I know that the feeling is so very strong and I ought to answer it absolutely fully in the last two minutes I have available—I can see the red light in front of me. On October 25—that is, just a month ago—the chargé d'affaires at our embassy in Baghdad went once again to the Iraqi Human Rights Minister and raised the matters there. Our embassy officials regularly discuss the situation with the Camp Ashraf special adviser in the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, most recently on 21 October, and with EU colleagues and the Iraqi Government’s Ashraf committee. On 24 October, officials also spoke with the US about the latest developments at the camp. In addition, as I have already reiterated, officials have visited it four times in the past year. That is the situation now. It is not satisfactory. One’s heart as well as one’s head says that to see this continuing situation is a grim possibility that somehow must be headed off.
I have to conclude that Iran’s policies and behaviour towards the international community and its neighbours are matters of crucial concern. We will pursue honest engagement with Iran on the basis of offers we have made in good faith. Through sanctions, we will maintain pressure on the Iranian Government to engage over their nuclear programme. We will work closely with regional countries to combat Iran’s attempts to promote regional instability and continue to put pressure on the Iranian Government to treat their own people with dignity and respect, in line with international human obligations. There is much more to say but no time to say it. I am grateful once again to the noble Lord, Lord Corbett, for initiating this very important but short debate.
Lord Dholakia
My Lords, do we not still have two minutes, according to my clock in front of me? Would the Minister be able to say something about the visit of Mrs Rajavi to this country?
Lord Howell of Guildford
There is no time now. I must write to the noble Lord about that.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, I must congratulate all noble Lords on their immaculate timekeeping, and adjourn the Committee until 4.30 pm.
Central Asia and South Caucasus
(14 years ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Viscount Waverley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are their current priorities as they take forward their relationship with the individual countries of central Asia and south Caucasus.
Viscount Waverley
My Lords, long before the advent of oil as a prize, mystery and a heightened realisation of its impending post-independence importance first drew me to Asia and the south Caucasus. I now count with pleasure many friends from the region. I declare at this stage that I am the chairman of five central Asian APPGs, serve on the advisory council at Asia House of the Asia and South Caucasus Association, am vice-chair of the British-Azerbaijan interaction group and am associated with a global organisation that is active in infrastructure construction projects.
Central Asia and the south Caucasus have a mystical resonance in the British imagination, whether through the writings of the orientalists or the biographers of the Great Game. The colonial withdrawal and Soviet takeover of the region led to a steady decline in what was once a glorious tradition of scholarship and trade, as access to the region became restricted. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and liberalisation in China and Mongolia removed barriers to access to central and inner Asia, but the UK business and academic community is only now turning concerted effort to a region that we all once knew well, although there are already substantial British successes.
Thus, starting anew, I intend to draw attention to and elevate the profile of a region that has been substantially neglected in UK foreign policy in recent years but which has become greatly relevant both on the global political stage and to regional stability. The prospective importance of this area, politically, economically and strategically, can scarcely be over- estimated. We must work hard to secure interests such as counterterrorism, energy security, democratisation and the rule of law. No longer landlocked thanks to a new innovative pipeline grid, a new golden triangle of trans-Caspian oil and gas resources is emerging between Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan that could transform the regional economic potential for central Asia and the south Caucasus.
These countries are characterised by predominantly moderate and secular Governments who have proved to be reliable partners and rational actors on key issues. They remain favourably inclined towards the UK and recognise that we have a social, economic and political culture which they wish to partner. Indeed, these nations look to us as trusted brokers. We have the opportunity to act now to help secure their futures, as well as our national interests, amid the powerful spheres of influence exerted by adjacent nations.
The task is incumbent on us to listen intelligently to, to welcome and to benefit from these new voices at the table of nations. The need for a balanced foreign policy that accommodates a geopolitical approach cannot be overlooked. Afghanistan is part of the central Asian nexus and has natural affinities with that area to counterbalance external influences. Regional countries understand the culture of the ethnic groups in Afghanistan, and the essential economic development of Afghanistan will filter down from the north. I envisage the region becoming the rock around which an enduring peace can be built. The region possesses abundant agricultural, mineral and energy resources, including great potential for renewable energy, including hydropower and solar. It contains all the necessary ingredients for industrial growth, and has a widely educated workforce.
The scientific potential is also enormous. Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is shared with Russia, remains the world’s first and largest space launch facility, and services global commercial satellites and shuttles to the International Space Station. It bears witness to considerable technological sophistication. However, industry, such as the Soviet cotton monoculture, requires vision and assistance in the continued transition from a command economy to market mechanisms that create jobs, exports and opportunities for UK partnerships.
Although this year saw a period of economic stagnation, it is predicted that these countries will experience strong economic expansion in 2011, with real GDP growth of 5 to 9 per cent for a combined regional population of 77 million and a total GDP of $400 billion. Economic engines, such as Azerbaijan, which was third in global GDP growth last year, and Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, which have new Caspian oil and gas field production in the years ahead, position the region for solid growth, development and diversification. This will be fuelled by relatively high global commodity prices and stronger domestic demand.
The hydrocarbons sector is the backbone of the largest economies, but structural challenges undermine the full development of the natural resources sector. The lack of local technical skills and limited financial capacity to develop the energy sector make the search for foreign investors a priority, while corruption remains a disincentive to foreign investors. Regional interests should not fall into the trap of a single-commodity economy, however. There are real opportunities in the form of energy co-operation beyond hydrocarbons, and the potential for sustainable partnerships for western interests is immense.
Events of global relevance are also now coming from the region. Importantly, this year, Kazakhstan has been chairman of the OSCE. The priorities of Afghanistan and Nagorno-Karabakh, together with advancing dialogue on European security through the Corfu process, and the political, military and economic dimensions, go together with a theme of promoting interethnic and religious tolerance. I wish that country well in living up to the high expectations that it is anticipated will come from the upcoming summit in Astana.
Uzbekistan's presidency of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, comprising most of central Asia with China and Russia, has achieved considerable results in developing international contacts and the legal framework, as well as in implementing initiatives to strengthen security and stability and to combat terrorism, extremism and separatism. Importantly, President Karimov's speech to the Oliy Majlis on 12 November on the concept of the deepening of democratic reforms and the formation of civil society in Uzbekistan was a welcome milestone and should stimulate progress in the region. However, despite periods of continuing unrest in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyz Government recently held their first parliamentary elections, and both countries show signs of increased stability. The militant Fergana Valley tri-state region is, however, a concern.
The countries of the southern Caucasus, anchored by Baku and its management of key pipelines, serve as a gateway to central Asia and are evolving into a dynamic Eurasian artery of economic growth and development. Azerbaijan and Georgia, as well as Armenia, sit in a region that has vast potential. Transport corridors will not only link central Asian and south Caucasus countries with wider regional continental trade and transport networks, but will strengthen the sovereignty of the regional states and facilitate the opening of their political and economic systems.
Azerbaijan's strategic location and stability are vital to the West. The United Kingdom is the largest foreign direct investor in Azerbaijan's economy, and bilateral trade has doubled in the past year alone. Besides long-term energy co-operation, over the past few years bilateral ties have broadened into new areas such as finance, infrastructure projects, education and culture. For all these reasons and more, I believe it is essential for the UK to take a leading role in Europe to push forward relationships on political, economic and strategic fronts and to seek to balance the interests of Russia, the US and China in the multivector policies of the central Asian and south Caucasus states.
What ideas do we have for regional policy? The fragile nascent political systems should be encouraged to progress towards the growth of democratic and anti-authoritarian regimes. However, we will be more successful if we take a long-term view of reform. Our own democracy is an evolutionary process, and we should be seen as a partner, not a preacher. However, given the United Kingdom's professionalism and experience, I think we should mould a regional policy around strengthening the sovereignty of those states and facilitating the development of their political and economic systems. The democratisation of state power and governance, ensuring freedom of choice and the development of electoral legislation, reforming the judicial and legal systems and developing civil society are all areas in which we could usefully engage in the spirit of partnership and co-operation. This would strengthen the parallel-to-trade objectives in advocating the benefits of good governance, transparency and accountability, freedom of the press and human rights standards. In conclusion, engagement is essential. The central Asian and south Caucasus states have now completed their transition stage from independence. Twenty years on it is now a new game and a positive one in a region that should be one of our priority strategic areas. I thank the Minister and all those who are contributing today. In addition, through the Minister if he will allow me, I pay a special tribute to all the excellent London-based officials, together with his ambassadors in post.
Lord Sheikh
My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, for securing this debate. The fall of communism, and thus the Soviet Union, has provided opportunities for the former Soviet republics to gain access to the free market and to begin the journey towards becoming fully-fledged democracies. However, it has also left unresolved territorial disputes that have the potential to spread instability to the wider region. The central Asia and south Caucasus areas are vulnerable to a multitude of threats including terrorism, repression and separatist extremism. I register an interest as the vice-chairman of the All-Party Group on Central Asia.
The Asia House has launched a regional trade association to develop business interests, trade relations and cultural connections with countries in the central Asia and south Caucasus regions. The association was launched last week in the House of Lords, which I attended, and I commend my noble friend Lord Howell on his excellent speech at the launch. I am in favour of sending trade delegations to the region as there are a number of commercial opportunities for British companies. These delegations, however, need to be very high level, with captains of industry meeting their opposite numbers accompanied by senior politicians. As a freeman of the City of London, I am keen to promote investment from Britain to a diverse audience, including the emerging nations of central Asia and the southern Caucasus.
I feel that we need to do more to encourage and facilitate UK companies to transact business overseas and also encourage overseas countries to come to the United Kingdom. We have a structural deficit that we can rectify by applying cuts and increasing taxation. We need to create wealth and generate jobs by augmenting our trade not just with our European neighbours but with the wider world. There are many opportunities in the regions that we are discussing today for trade, financial services, advisory work, skills transfer, renewable energy sector development and other sectors, which we need to explore further. I also feel that our embassies and high commissions overseas should be more involved in helping us to trade, and we ought to engage business persons with the right acumen and experience at these missions.
I referred to this point when I spoke recently in your Lordships’ House on diplomacy. I visited Russia earlier this year where I spoke at a conference on Islamic finance in Kazan, the capital of the Russian Republic of Tatarstan. That may not appear to be an obvious destination for investment or Islamic finance, but it is important to look at all destinations where there are opportunities for successful trade and building new relationships. This year I also visited Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, Brussels and the United Arab Emirates, where I spoke at international conferences on boosting trade and achieving sustainable development. We should also look at opportunities for future trade and active dialogue with developing nations in central Asia and the southern Caucasus that are making great strides to reach their potential. Azerbaijan was one of the first newly independent Soviet nations to recognise the importance of building new relationships with the West and swiftly welcomed foreign investment after gaining independence. Azerbaijan is a member state of the Council of Europe and is an active member of NATO's Partnership for Peace programme.
I know the Azeri ambassador to Britain and would strongly welcome any plans by Her Majesty's Government to strengthen our diplomatic relations with relevant counterparts in the wider Caucasus. The United Kingdom is the largest investor in Azerbaijan, and more than 175 UK companies are involved in commercial activities in the country. There are already more than 5,000 expatriates working in the country, and it hosts one of BP's biggest facilities in the world. However, more can be done by us in business and commercial activities.
The Caspian region is reported to contain one of the largest reserves of petroleum in the world. Efforts to promote the economic potential of the Caspian basin will lead to greater prosperity for the communities that inhabit the area. I welcome the agreement on security co-operation between the Caspian littoral states. This agreement commits the nations to general co-operation in fighting terrorism, organised crime, poaching and closer dialogue in rescue operations. The Government of Turkmenistan have initiated efforts to create a trans-Caspian gas pipeline between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, which has the fifth largest gas reserves in the world but has a fractious relationship with its neighbours.
The Governments of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are also forging closer ties in these areas. Azerbaijan has cemented its strategic importance to the war on terror by opening its territory for NATO military equipment transfers to Afghanistan. The tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh threaten to jeopardise the safe transport of strategic mineral resources to western Europe. A lasting resolution to this dispute is in the best interests of Britain and our European allies. I hope that the Minister will be able to share any plans that Her Majesty's Government have, along with our European partners, to encourage dialogue between these two nations in reaching a peaceful settlement. There is potential for future conflict involving Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as these countries are all fighting for the same distribution of limited water resources. We in the United Kingdom should use our good offices through the EU, the United Nations Security Council and our diplomatic offices in resolving any difficulties relating to water. Its vast mineral wealth has made this region vulnerable to local and international terrorism.
Lord Dykes
My Lords, I am sure that we are all grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, for initiating this debate. In fact, I have been much impressed by the way in which over the years he has concentrated on this area and on the need for us in the United Kingdom to devote more time and energy to being involved in this way in the various different countries that he mentioned. There is a lot to be done; it is a complicated area for western powers. The remote history of the Great Game has no connection with modern-day events for the United Kingdom, which, despite rumours, is still an enthusiastic European country as well. That enlarges to the notion that the European Union as a collective body, and in its individual member states, should take a much greater interest in this area for good and the promotion of peace. For example, using the external action service in these zones would be a very good idea. It takes time to create those new structures, but a lot can be done.
I have to declare an interest. With all-party groups you have to be very careful; if your attention strays or you doze off—I am not criticising anyone who speaks—you are liable to wake up and hear that you have been made treasurer and vice-chairman. I am a vice-chairman of one of the clusters—or at least a sub-segment—of groups of the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, which I think is connected with Kyrgyzstan. I was appointed on the dubious proposition that I went there on an official IPU visit a couple of years ago led by Wayne David, who is now the opposition Europe spokesman in the House of Commons. That is why I am instantly dubbed an expert on Kyrgyzstan. Sadly I am not, but I had the pleasure of going to that fascinating country, which until only recently was a closed Soviet province. It has a lot of potential to offer, but it has a disgruntled youth who feel that the democratic weaknesses there are depriving them of the ability to be fully involved in civic and political life. The economic opportunities are scarce indeed, and that is a particularly serious problem in that country. My visit to Kyrgyzstan, which I think the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, also knows—at least, to some extent—took place before the recent very unpleasant political unrest. One only wishes the Kyrgyzstan population well in the future.
I am sure that Azerbaijan will be mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Laird, later in this debate, as he is an expert. He is basking in the glory of the recent launch of his book, not on that subject but on his background in Northern Ireland. I am half way through the book, so I thank the noble Lord.
I have a couple of points to make in this brief debate which I hope the Minister will have time to answer. Indeed, I shall deliberately emphasise one thing that he might find congenial because he mentions it frequently himself: that is, the Commonwealth. The subject of this debate is not an area immediately close to the Commonwealth, except for India, but there may be reasons for the Commonwealth as a body to take more interest in it, although it does not have the resources that other bodies have. NATO is gradually increasing its interest in the area, although it is really beyond it in terms of theatre. However, as we know, Kyrgyzstan has both a United States and a Russian military base—an interesting example of duality that is not repeated in many other places, but we will see how that develops.
As the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, said, this is a cluster of very interesting countries with 80 million people. Although the near East crisis of Israel and Palestine and the failure to achieve a settlement and create a Palestinian state is a long way, geographically speaking, from these countries, it is amazing how people in these Muslim states watch closely to see what will happen with the attempt to achieve a solution there. Mahmoud Abbas has already exceeded his democratically elected mandate by a year and a half, which is something that the British press does not seem to mention very much. The groups that are accused of being violent—Hezbollah and Hamas—somehow have to be involved in these matters as well, and there is still a huge question mark over the future of Gaza. Unless those things happen, Muslim countries will feel very uneasy and believe that the political settlement in those wider areas is fundamentally unjust. That situation must be dealt with by the western powers, led by the United States, rather than just offering 20 Stealth bombers to the first-third country. That is an amazing offer from an American President, unless the press got it wrong. I have never heard of such a proposition. I hope that the United States will think again about these matters and return to realistic negotiations, including on the West Bank.
I conclude by asking the Minister to refer to the animadversion of the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, to energy co-operation and the key pipelines. I hope very much that British companies will be more involved there in the future, as I do not think that we are involved enough. If the Minister has time, perhaps he could refer to the gradualist process of democratisation in a number of these countries. It would be interesting to hear how the UK Government regard these matters, although we would not wish to enter into indelicate criticism of countries that are emerging from difficult circumstances and are feeling their way forward.
I led a delegation on a visit to Turkey a couple of weeks ago. It is a very impressive country and is extremely interested in this whole area, as is India, which I also visited recently. Turkey is very interested in the development of all the “stans” and in the future of Afghanistan. It was very concerned to say to the West, “Don’t wag your finger or give us lectures. Just give us help and advice. We are developing ourselves. India particularly is a spectacularly successful democracy, despite the poverty. We will find our own solutions but we would welcome co-operation in the international field and far greater hands-on involvement from the United Nations”.
Lord Laird
I, too, congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, on getting this debate. It is an area in which he has taken a lot of interest, and we all appreciate that. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for his very kind reference to my book. It would be totally inappropriate to mention it here. It happens to be called A Struggle to be Heard, so I will not mention it here.
I declare my interest as chairman of the advisory board of the European Azerbaijan Society and a member of the All-Party Group on Azerbaijan. I have been to Azerbaijan a number of times and find it a fascinating and interesting country that compels people like me to take an interest in it. The United Kingdom has been a dominant player in the country since the fall of the Soviet Union and, as other noble Lords have pointed out, there is a lot of United Kingdom investment in Azerbaijan. The UK is already responsible for more than half the direct foreign investment.
However, I am interested in the Baku pipeline, which needs to be built if the West is to benefit fully from the vast oil and gas reserves in the Caspian area. Azerbaijan is important not just for energy security. I find that one of the good qualities that these areas have, particularly the young ones, is well educated, articulate, thoughtful people who are determined to make their voice heard in the modern world. I am of the opinion that we should always be on the lookout for ways to allow thinking from one of the great crossroads of the world—Baku and Azerbaijan—to be made available to us in the old West. We can add it to our thinking and perhaps solve some of the problems of today.
Azerbaijan is a strong partner of NATO and has sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. It also allows material for NATO’s ISAF to reach Afghanistan by road and permits overflights. However, as other noble Lords have pointed out, one of the big problems that besets that country is the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. This is the cause of much instability throughout the area. As a result of this dispute, Armenia missed out on the existing BTC pipeline and will miss out on the proposed Nabucco pipeline, which could also bypass Armenian territory. We have seen in Georgia what happens when a territorial dispute goes unresolved for too long; there can be full-scale conflict.
I join other noble Lords in asking Her Majesty’s Government to ensure that there is as much British investment in the country as possible, not just in energy but in financial services and civil engineering. I also ask Her Majesty’s Government to help to find a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute and, most importantly, to join the United Nations, NATO, the European Parliament and the European Commission in unequivocally supporting Azerbaijan’s right to reassert control over its sovereign territory. I look into the future and hope that there will be a not-too-distant day when we can welcome Azerbaijan into the European Union.
Baroness Stern
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, for initiating this debate and express my appreciation to the Minister for his stamina in tackling so many world problems in one day. I, too, am a vice-chair and one of the members of the All-Party Group on Central Asia, which takes responsibility for human rights, good governance and the rule of law. Next week, I shall go to Tajikistan in that capacity for meetings with parliamentarians and civil society on a visit organised by the British embassy and the OSCE.
I shall concentrate on good governance and the rule of law in the central Asian countries. I have been involved with some of the countries of central Asia since 1993, when I made the first of my many visits to Kazakhstan. That visit related to legal and prison reform—I declare an interest as a trustee of the International Centre for Prison Studies. The visit was the beginning of a long and productive relationship.
In deciding one’s priorities in central Asia, it is always helpful to remind oneself of the origins of its countries. On a hill outside Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, is a huge monument put up by the Kazakh Government that has engraved on it all the names of the labour camps that under the Soviet regime were located in Kazakhstan. Millions of people lived and died in them. The monument is a reminder of a not-very-distant past. It is important to remember, first, how recent the transformation of central Asia into independent states has been and, secondly, some of their enormous achievements.
The transformation of the gulag system in Kazakhstan into a prison system more consonant with human rights standards was a huge undertaking that required enormous dedication and commitment. At the same time, the public health system there broke down and prison authorities had to battle with an epidemic of tuberculosis, some of which was multi-drug resistant and deadly. Considerable law reform was undertaken, moving the country towards a system that humanised the penal code. It was an impressive achievement by some very impressive people. I also visited Kyrgyzstan in 1993, on the second anniversary of the country’s independence, as part of a Council of Europe delegation to discuss legal and penal reform. Much progress was made there, too.
We should also remember that the death penalty is either abolished or subject to a moratorium in all five central Asian states. I declare my interest as the chair of the All-Party Group for the Abolition of the Death Penalty. There is a wide range of civil society organisations in Kazakhstan. I declare one further interest as a member of the advisory board of the Legal Policy Research Centre in Kazakhstan. Both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have signed the optional protocol to the convention against torture. These are all substantial developments towards the rule of law. When we consider the current situation in the central Asian states today, it is perhaps helpful to do so against the background of developments in the recent past. Those developments make it clear, first, that the capacity exists among the people of those nations and, secondly, that ideas of human rights and the rule of law are widespread in the region.
However, it is undeniable that progress towards democracy and the rule of law has stalled. There is no need for a lengthy exposition of those problems as the Minister will be well aware of them. For those who, like me, have found so much to admire over the years, it is a great disappointment. It was disheartening to read reports earlier this month that prisoners in Kazakhstan are once again inflicting terrible mutilations on themselves to protest against their conditions and treatment, and to hear of the way in which the very moderate and responsible human rights worker, Yevgeny Zhovtis, has been treated. As other noble Lords have said, the developments in Kyrgyzstan have been tragic and a cause of great concern.
Yesterday, there ended in Astana a meeting of the parallel OSCE civil society conference, held prior to the summit. I have a draft of the declaration from that conference from which I shall quote briefly. It states:
“We recognize the unique role of the OSCE in Central Asia, as the only multi-lateral regional intergovernmental body in this region with a mandate to protect human security and promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, democracy and the rule of law. In light of this unique role, the alarming situation with respect to human rights in the region, and the fact that the 2010 Astana Summit is the first one to be held on Central Asian soil, special attention is merited for this region. A number of severe, alarming and persistent problems in human rights observance are relevant for many countries in the OSCE space but must be noted for the Central Asian region as a whole … severe human rights violations, including violations of rights of persons belonging to national minorities, have in many cases contributed to or been at the core of conflicts and instability”.
We should respond to those civil society voices.
I therefore ask the Minister what strategy the Government have in mind to confront those problems. Does he accept the view that while there is no democracy and no rule of law, stability will always be at risk, so perseverance and a long-term strategy are necessary? I ask him, in particular, how he sees the European Union’s central Asia strategy and whether he regards it as a useful way forward. If he does, what support are the Government giving to it? How does he view the role of the OSCE and its human dimension arm—the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights? Is its work effective and do the Government plan to make supporting it a priority? Finally, what other policies do the Government have in mind that might be effective in supporting the central Asian countries in moving forward on human rights and the rule of law?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, for initiating this debate today. Like the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, I commend him for the considerable time and energy that he has devoted to establishing a parliamentary group in support of the United Kingdom’s relationship with the central Asian states and the role that he has played and continues to play in furthering our relationship with the south Caucasus in our political and trading dialogue. I declare an interest as a member of the All-Party Group on Central Asia and as chairman of the British-Azerbaijan interaction group.
As has been clear from our exchanges this afternoon, this enormous region is now taking its own place on the world stage in foreign policy, economic influence and internal change. It borders Russia, the Middle East and Afghanistan, and it lives alongside Pakistan. Newly discovered mineral wealth, together with a strong sense of national identity, characterises the way in which many of these states are developing and increasing democracy. There is a conscious effort, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, demonstrated, to engage in human and civil rights and a powerful and growing sense of its ability as a centre for entrepreneurship.
A good example is Kazakhstan’s chairmanship of the OSCE, which has been well organised and is very effective, particularly in how it responded to the crisis in Kyrgyzstan in April. Kazakhstan has worked hard to increase the OSCE’s focus on the central Asian states and the south Caucasus, working closely not only with OSCE envoys but with the UN and the EU. In the run-up to the OSCE summit tomorrow and Thursday, Kazakhstan has facilitated an NGO forum on 26 November and a civil society parallel conference on 28 and 29 November. Those are both welcome initiatives, which demonstrate Kazakhstan’s willingness to engage with civil society in the way that has been demonstrated already.
The economies of the region vary enormously. Kazakhstan’s huge potential in the development of its oil and gas means that it is expected to be one of the top 10 oil producers by 2025, with exports of more than 3 million barrels a day. In addition, a quarter of the world’s uranium, as well as large reserves of gold, silver, zinc and copper, is thought to be in Kazakhstan. Moreover, it is the ninth largest country in the world and has vast potential in its arable and other forms of farming. Uzbekistan, too, has established national resources in its gas, oil, gold and silver, as well as being the world's third largest exporter of cotton. Turkmenistan is similarly rich in its long-term energy potential, with the world's fifth largest resources of natural gas. The development of the EU-led Nabucco pipeline project will lessen Turkmenistan’s reliance on Russia.
That is in stark contrast to the fate of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which are both among the poorest of the former Soviet states. Most Tajikistan manufacturing plants from the Soviet era were abandoned and have simply not been replaced by any forms of new production. In Kyrgyzstan, despite the backing of the western donors and the International Monetary Fund, the economy remains weak.
I stress those economic differences for an obvious reason. It is clear that international trade and investment will follow the natural resources: the oil and gas, uranium or gold and silver. However, in concentrating so much on the economic factors, it is very important to engage with the smaller economies of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, to help to diversify their economic base and grow their future, without which there is real potential for instability and security problems, which might affect their near neighbour, and indeed the rest of the region eventually.
What level of engagement do the United Kingdom Government propose to sustain on trade and investment dialogues not only with the mineral-rich countries of central Asia but with the less well-placed economies of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan? Meanwhile, I strongly support the noble Viscount in his initiative to engage at parliamentary level with all the central Asian states. I visited Turkmenistan last year as part of the initiative, and was hugely impressed by the level of interest and engagement from Ministers, parliamentarians and civil society. They were enthusiastic about setting up parliamentary dialogue, and the noble Viscount has rightly ensured that the smaller economies of central Asia are included as important partners in establishing that dialogue.
Human rights are an important factor in all this, as my noble friend Lady Stern pointed out. When most of us think about the issues of the south Caucasus, Nagorno-Karabakh, which many of your Lordships have already mentioned, comes to the fore. Will those issues be discussed at the forthcoming OSCE meeting? I understand that the Deputy Prime Minister will attend that meeting. Do the Government believe that the Minsk group is still the best vehicle to facilitate the long-standing intraregional conflict? The UK is not a member of the Minsk group, but we have a strong relationship, particularly with Azerbaijan, including through our increased trade. It has increased by a staggering 72 per cent over the past year alone. Along with our EU colleagues, we have long thought that any solution to Nagorno-Karabakh should be based on the sovereignty of Azerbaijan, with real autonomy for the people of the Nagorno-Karabakh. Does that remain the Government's view? Also, has there been any direct discussion on those issues with either Azerbaijan or the Armenian Government in recent months?
As the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, said, engagement with all those countries is important. Can the Minister tell us whether the FCO's global opportunity fund will continue to support the development of the Azerbaijan Parliament, and what the likely fate of the early transition initiative will be in the coming months?
Human rights were mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Stern. Can the Minister address the situation that arose in Uzbekistan? It was a matter of some worry and, as he will know, it was featured as what is described as a country of concern in the annual report on human rights which the Foreign Office produces. In my visits, I have found, as the noble Baroness said, that there is a great deal of willingness to engage on those issues. The countries of central Asia and the south Caucasus are not afraid of embracing a real dialogue with us on those issues. That is an important point for us to pursue.
I am conscious that I have asked a great number of questions on a wide range of countries. I appreciate that the Minister may not be able to answer them all, but I hope that, if he is not, he may be able to do so in writing.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate, and we all owe a debt to the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, for promoting it and for bringing to our attention—not merely in this debate but with the great vigour that he has shown in dealing with this region—the tremendous potential and importance of an area with which, I would say quite frankly, not many of us were too familiar a few years back. In fact, if I think back to my schoolboy days, I would have had difficulty when I opened the map in establishing exactly which part of the world we were dealing with. Now—and this is evidence of the new international landscape with which we are all dealing—power, wealth, interest and influence have all shifted. As a trading nation and as a nation that wishes to contribute to the stability and good governance of the planet, we are right now to concentrate very much on these nations.
We are looking at two sets here, as the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, knows: five central Asian nations and three in the Caucasus, all with unique qualities and some with problems, but all with a degree of dynamism. In a sense, on the biggest in the south Caucasus, we are much the biggest investor in Azerbaijan. At £85 billion, Azerbaijan has the biggest GNP in the south Caucasus. The noble Lord, Lord Laird, and many others spoke about Azerbaijan’s potential and the links; indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, has just mentioned that potential. I had some close connection with UK-Azerbaijan relations before I joined the Government and am very familiar with the dynamism of that place and its determination to move on from the distant, sovietised past and establish an entirely new and very welcome role for itself in the comity of nations and the world economy.
I shall take some of the comments made quite quickly; I then want to come to my own overview of how we should proceed. My noble friend Lord Sheikh, who is immensely familiar with this area, kindly mentioned the central Asian and south Caucasus association which has been formed. I had the privilege of sharing its launching occasion. It was a very dynamic occasion and Asia House has done an extremely good job in promoting and taking a lead on it. My noble friend also mentioned in particular Nagorno-Karabakh, which one obviously feels enormously involved in by visiting it. One only has to visit Azerbaijan to understand the centrality of the issue and the difficulties with its neighbour. We are concerned that this conflict goes on and on. It is, of course, a source of regional instability and the longer that it remains unresolved, the greater the deprivation and loss of life on the line of contact and the more difficult a settlement could become.
In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, the British Government support the OSCE’s Minsk Group peace process, and we encourage Azerbaijan and Armenia to accelerate efforts to achieve a negotiated settlement based on the principles of refraining from the threat of using force, territorial integrity and the people’s right to self-determination. We do not underestimate that this will involve some difficult decisions and necessary compromises on both sides, but compromises there must be. I have visited some of the displaced persons in the outskirts of Baku. They feel that they have lost their land, and I realise the intensity of feeling on both sides about this very difficult issue.
I owe a debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for his success in bringing the issue of the Commonwealth—dear to my heart—into a region where, frankly, the Commonwealth does not feature very visibly. He brought home the point that the Commonwealth is a network, as is the area we are looking at. We have to understand these countries not as top dogs and lower levels and so on. They are all countries which deserve a great deal of respect and to be part of the new network of the planet, of which the Commonwealth is certainly a part as well. He urged, as others have done, more involvement in the energy question, and I shall say a bit more about that in my final remarks.
I mentioned the noble Lord, Lord Laird, in relation to Azerbaijan. He also raised the question of the network of pipelines and the pipeline politics that are developing around the region, the most prominent physical feature of which at the moment is the Baku-Ceyhan oil line. There are many plans for further gas development and for getting gas out of the region, even possibly from Turkmenistan across the Caspian, although there are difficulties there. A great deal of the Turkmenistan gas may, in any case, go eastwards rather than westwards.
Then we came to the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, who is tireless in her work for human rights and against torture and other hideous practices. She asked particularly about the case of Evgeniy Zhovtis in Kazakhstan. We and our EU partners have raised this case with Kazakh authorities on a number of occasions. Our concerns centre on the reliability of the legal process. Those concerns are reinforced in a report by the International Commission of Jurists published in March, which concluded:
“There are strong indications that the proceedings against Evgeniy Zhovtis failed to meet international fair trial standards”.
Therefore, we continue to encourage the Kazakh authorities to address the systemic weaknesses in the judicial system which his case appears to highlight. The noble Baroness also raised broader questions of human rights to which I shall return in my closing remarks. However, she asked about the EU/central Asia strategy. We fully support the strategy, which provides an effective framework for relations between the regions. I shall come back to other concerns in a moment.
The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, rounded off the debate with her usual skill. She spoke about the human rights issue. That is central to our concerns and part of our strategy, to which I want to turn, but I shall just say a word about Uzbekistan, because that was raised specifically. We have a good, constructive and balanced relationship with Uzbekistan and there have been some good exchanges recently. The Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office visited Tashkent earlier this month. We are concerned about the overall level of respect for human rights in Uzbekistan, but there have been some positive steps; for example, the abolition of the death penalty, which we are all working for; the introduction of habeas corpus; the release of Sanjar Umarov; and enhanced co-operation with the EU and OSCE on issues such as criminal justice reform and police training. However, a lot more needs to be done. The UK and the EU stand ready to assist Uzbekistan in this respect.
Perhaps I may now sum up the excellent contributions to this debate, initiated by the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley. I want to put my thoughts under three themes: first, prosperity and economy; secondly, security; and, thirdly—although perhaps one should put this first because in a way it is the most important—human rights and good governance. Supporting our own nation’s prosperity is obviously the central theme in our foreign policy. We have to survive, perform and prosper in a very difficult new world. As I mentioned, we are very well placed in Azerbaijan, where we are the largest investor, and in Kazakhstan, where we are among the top five investors. The big names—Shell, BP, BG Group and others—are all taking forward huge and very important projects. Another country which is increasingly important is Turkmenistan, which, as I have already mentioned, is developing fast. In all these, energy is the big focus. Gas out of the Caspian, in particular, could be the vital contribution to pan-European energy security and could perhaps provide a better balance with the sometimes rather erratic domination of Gazprom from Russia.
At the same time, the general world gas situation, as noble Lords know, is becoming easier with the rise of Shell Gas. All of that is good for us because in the next few years, until we get fully into the renewable and green economy, we will have to see a growth in gas consumption. As the noble Lord, Lord Laird, reminded us, it is not just energy—there are financial services, law and education and all kinds of other exports of skills that we can contribute to this region. The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, mentioned Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, which we also think offer important opportunities, and there are UK companies already operating there. We welcome the recent increase in commercial activity in the whole of this region. The Minister of Trade, my honourable friend David Lidington, took a trade delegation down to Baku recently, and we have established a Turkmenistan-UK trade council and the Uzbek-British Trade and Industry Council. I have tried personally to contribute to these activities with various speeches and meetings.
Of course, there are barriers; there are problems of corruption and an absence of transparency, as well as other difficulties, but we think that we can crack these difficulties, and we intend to keep trying. On the security side, there is Afghanistan, with its vast frontier with Tajikistan, which is very relevant to our concern with the Caucasus generally. We need to look for alternative supply routes to our forces, and the central Asians in particular can help underpin the long-term security of the region. I have not got time to mention narcotics considerations, but they are also central to the area. I should add that my honourable friend the Minister of State and my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister are at this moment at the OSCE conference; they are obviously in a position to take up and pursue all the issues, including the Minsk process issue that we have discussed. That is very good and positive.
I end on what is, in a sense, the most important area of governance and human rights. We need to underpin this whole engagement with central Asia and the Caucasus with substantive political dialogue, and we intend to work closely with the region to support development of its democratic institutions in all aspects. We have serious concerns, as does the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, but it is not just a question of lecturing. That will not work. We need to share experience and work together and, when necessary, to remind our friends in this dynamic new area of their growing international commitments. That benefits all of us and helps the long-term stability of the whole area.
The thread linking our policy is common interest and mutual gain. We stand ready to support central Asia and the south Caucasus and the countries of that region, which have been through many difficulties but have acted with heroism, to help them to meet the challenges ahead.
Railways: Public Procurement
(14 years ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Greengross
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what public procurement lessons they have learnt from the railways.
Baroness Greengross
My Lords, it would seem that in the future more and more public services will be procured by local authorities contracting with the private or voluntary sectors actually to deliver those services. The object of this debate is not to discuss the rights or wrongs of such a policy; rather it is to try to make sure that if that is the way we are going, we should try to do this as well as we possibly can. To me that must mean not merely looking forward to what we want to achieve but, just as importantly, looking back to learn the lessons of past experience. At this point, I stress again as strongly as I can that this is not a debate about the rights and wrongs of public procurement, nor is it meant as a moment at which we revisit our views on the role of the state in our lives. Surely what we have learnt from all of this can and should guide us in future exercises.
Probably one of the biggest exercises in public procurement that we have had was the privatisation of the railways. With this in mind, a short while ago I set up a small group of experts to help me identify some of those lessons, and I would like to thank them for their enormous contribution. I also thank the International Longevity Centre-UK, which I am privileged to head, for its sponsorship of this work.
What, then, are the lessons that we draw? The first and perhaps the most overriding thing in any public procurement exercise is that the reasons and objectives of the exercise must be clearly laid out. It is essential that the Government are honest not merely with the public but with themselves. Only in this way can the delivery be monitored, success or failure assessed, and changes, if necessary, made.
Secondly, in negotiating the contract, experience has shown that it is essential that a realistic and workable alternative method of operation is in place first. A Government without a credible fallback situation are not in a strong position when negotiating the original contract or in its subsequent enforcement.
Third is the need for proper risk allocation. In any public procurement, the Government need to be absolutely clear about what risks they want to allocate to the operator and why and how they intend to do that. For example, while some risks that arise from changes in public policy relating to the contract should clearly not be taken by the contractor, if the operator wants the profits of public procurement, it must surely take the commercial risks. It does so in its dealings with the commercial world—some people would say the real world—so why not in its dealings with the Government? From rail privatisation, one will have seen too often such risk merely being transferred back to the Government.
Fourthly, the Government’s ability to enforce the contract properly is essential. All contracts should incorporate, for example, an adequately-sized bond, to be forfeited if the contractor or the franchisee walks away from the contract. That should be accompanied by pre-defined penalties, to be levied for non-delivery at the end of, or even—dare I suggest?—during, the contract.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, there is a Division in the House. Unfortunately, the Committee must adjourn for 10 minutes.
Baroness Greengross
My Lords, I have already spoken about the need for the Government to be clear and honest about their objectives in any procurement exercise, and I have stressed the need for a workable and realistic alternative to give strength to the Government’s hand. I cannot stress strongly enough the need for a proper risk allocation. Next is the Government’s ability to enforce the contract properly. It is essential that all contracts should incorporate an adequately sized bond, to be forfeited if the contractor or franchisee walks away from the contract. That should also be accompanied by predefined penalties to be levied for non-delivery at the end of, or dare I suggest during, the contract. If the contractor is a wholly-owned subsidiary, these should also be guaranteed by the parent company. Finally, whatever mechanisms are used, it is absolutely essential that they are made subject to independent and credible audit. Past arrangements have proved to be deficient in this respect and there is considerable scope for improvement.
These are just some of the lessons that this group of experts drew from the history of rail privatisation. For anyone who may be interested, I would be happy to arrange to send them a copy of the report. May I ask the Minister—this long preamble does not change the fact that this is a Question for Short Debate—what he has learnt from past privatisation? What lessons have the Government learnt? Above all, can we have an assurance that these lessons will be properly reflected in any future public procurements? I am sure the Minister will understand that this debate is not just about the railways and that he will answer with that in mind. I intend to broaden my work on procurement with the help of experts in their field to look at education, the Prison Service, healthcare and housing to see how we can all learn from these lessons and ensure better procurement in the future. I am grateful to your Lordships for hearing me this afternoon.
As someone who has spent most of my life working in the voluntary sector, often interacting with the private sector, it is not surprising that I have strong feelings about the procurement of services through these sectors. I know only too well how well, and sometimes sadly how badly, they can deliver services. The lunacy whereby we recently learnt that it would cost more money to cancel the building of two aircraft carriers than to have them completed must not be allowed to continue. It sometimes seems that the inmates have truly taken over the asylum. They say that hindsight gives 20:20 vision. Let us at the very least resolve to learn from the pains and tribulations of the past. I hope the Minister can assure me that Her Majesty’s Government will do just that in the future.
Lord Bradshaw
I have been a victim of privatisation in two industries. Your Lordships should reflect first on who benefits most from privatisation. We should perhaps do well to think about the vision. It was about small shareholders, employee shareholders and people taking part in the running of their companies, with the shares to be well spread. However, that was in the era of the carpetbagger, and the shares were disposed of by small shareholders and vacuumed up by big corporations. Moreover, the privatised companies, in particular water and electricity companies, geared up enormously. They had virtually no debt, because they had received money from the Government. They then went out and borrowed large sums of money and gave it to their shareholders, which was not what was intended. To crown it all, they then came back to the regulator and said, “We haven’t got enough money to repair what we’ve taken over. You must allow us more money”, so their prices went up to a level which I imagine would have been quite unacceptable had they remained in the state sector.
That is a bit of history. Let us turn to who benefited. I know very well that they were the professional money men, the merchant bankers, the lawyers and the consultants. It ended up with those people being paid salaries that were massively in advance of those of anyone who did the job on the floor of the business concerned, be they engineers, operators or the employees.
What do we want in future? When the Government privatise the Post Office, which seems to be next in line, and consider employee shareholding as a part of that—which is what the Prime Minister has said—how will they make sure that it remains a mutual? I believe that mutuality was one of the aims of the people who devised these systems, but the system just ran away with them. How can we privatise an organisation such as the Post Office in a way that engages its employees in the operation of their business?
The question goes much further. Once local government starts to privatise its services, how will we stop them being run by large foreign conglomerates in a way that is detrimental to the people in local government or to the customers of those organisations? We know that large American healthcare companies would be interested. Is responsibility for looking after people’s interests to be contractualised out of all recognition? It is essential to think carefully through any further privatisations or any contractual organisations that are set up.
I saw an article in the Times yesterday—I am sure that it was coat-trailed by another very expensive firm of consultants—suggesting that Network Rail should be split up into this and that. I should like the Minister, if he can, to deny that there is any truth in it. I am sure that the consultants who suggested that were not unmindful of the sort of work that it would create for them, their lawyer friends, their financier friends and their merchant banker friends, who are not really party to what Network Rail is doing. They would take money away from what Network Rail should be doing—and I have no particular brief for Network Rail.
I also ask the Minister to look very hard at the PFI schemes. Those have been, if I might say so, a financial disaster and, what is more, we are going to go on paying the bill for them for years and years. I experienced one of those in the police force, when we were made by the then Government to go out to a private finance initiative bid. It has cost a huge amount of money, not just for the new building but for the services that we were obliged to take as part of the deal. It has become a very expensive millstone around the neck of the authority.
Turning back to the railway, some railway franchises are well run, such as Chiltern Railways and Merseyrail, but I am very concerned about whether most of the people put the customer at the top of their list. I recommend that the Minister looks very hard at the survey work that is being done by Passenger Focus. It measures passenger satisfaction on many scales, which is very important in what we are doing.
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, I thank the Minister for indulging my short absence. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, for introducing this debate and for sharing with me the paper from her transport forum. It reminded me of a paper that I had written some seven years ago, after 12 years’ experience of procuring goods and services for the public. I was procuring at the rate of something like £0.5 billion worth a year and I set down in a paper—it was literally only 22 lines long, so it was not a great seller—what I thought I had learnt from those 12 years. I ended up with 22 tips for contracting. I have looked at where the two papers coincided.
I take my first two points:
“Know what your objectives are”,
and, “Understand your suppliers’ objectives”. The essence of making a good contract is to think first of why you are doing it. You are doing it not for the Government but for the citizens, either singly or in groups, so you must know what you want and what that service is. You must have mutually compatible objectives and you really need measurable objectives. You do not want indulgences such as, “Let’s have innovation”, or all those fancy words. Get your objectives right first and understand your suppliers’ objectives so that they know whether those are possible.
I come now to contracts, which were at 11 and 12 on my list. I wrote,
“Contracts beyond their foreseen limits become progressively valueless”,
and, at point 12, “You cannot subcontract responsibility”. Because of those two facts, the idea that you can take contracts, litigate them and bring the behaviour of your contractor into line is pretty thin. My experience is that once you have a contract so far out of line that you cannot do business with your contractor, it is useless to try and litigate it and that, because you cannot subcontract your responsibility to operate the service, you are forced into a deadly embrace with your contractor. Much better than depending on tight contracts with penalty clauses is to have win-win contracts. In a good win-win contract, when a contractor’s manager thinks about making a decision to maximise the profit for his employer, he should be thinking, “That same action will maximise the benefit to the citizen”. Contracts that have those win-win characteristics are the only ones that really work over time, so win-win contracts with good mutual alignment are best.
My points 15 and 16 were:
“Risk migrates to the party of substance”,
and,
“Risk transfer should be appropriate”.
This idea that you can somehow subcontract risk to the private sector is unreal. When things go wrong, the risk will come back to the state. The reason that the state provides this service in the first place is that it has to be provided and the state cannot back out. You can only transfer to your contractor the risks that he can manage. You should not try to transfer risks that he cannot manage because, if you do, your contractor will then be a gambler. If he is lucky, he will make a fortune but, if he is unlucky, you will pick up the pain. We should remember that the private sector is risk-averse.
Point 21 on my list is that the private sector is good at focus and continuous improvement. Therefore, I allowed the private sector an important role here. However, as I wrote carefully on my piece of paper as point 22, the private sector becomes increasingly dysfunctional in loss-making situations or, as I said in discussions with colleagues at the time, the private sector runs around like a headless chicken. If your supplier is not making profits, all the nice things that he said in the contract and during the negotiations—all the cuddly and furry bits round the edge of what he promised to do—will evaporate. Private sector companies cannot survive without making a profit, so it is in your interests to make sure that you think through how they are going to provide the service and make a profit.
The one area in the report which I missed out but which I think is very valid is transparency. I certainly believe that we have had too much talk of commercial confidentiality over the years and that far more openness and open-book policies in contracting would benefit both sides so that all parties, including citizens’ representatives and the citizens themselves, could see what was happening on their behalf. Therefore, I strongly support the idea of far more transparency, including during the contracting and bidding periods.
Returning to the question of the railway contracts, I ask the Minister, first, whether we have clear criteria by which future franchise renewals will be judged. Do we have criteria by which to create the invitation to tender? Are those criteria written down? If so, where are they and, if not, will they be written down?
Secondly, do the Government understand the importance of win-win contracts as the only contracts that really work over time? Finally, do the Minister and the Government understand the whole issue of risk transfer and how it must be appropriate so that the public and the state do not become the losers?
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I apologise for getting locked in the Division Lobby for a few minutes and therefore missing a little of the speech of my noble friend Lady Greengross. However, I have glanced at it and congratulate her very much on what she said and on initiating this debate.
The technicalities of railway systems are certainly not an area in which I have the slightest expertise or experience. However, as has been said, this debate is not about railways; its importance goes wider even than that issue. Indeed, the more I glanced through the report, the more I felt that most of its recommendations would be relevant to many other areas—not least when government departments are considering outsourcing social service contracts to the voluntary and other sectors, where many of your Lordships have considerable expertise and experience.
We know that the country is facing just such a situation, because the coalition Government wish to change and very much localise the big society—the way in which many, if not most, of our public services are provided in the future. If we take charities—the third sector—for example, we know that their main areas of concern and undoubted expertise are hardly likely to disappear. They were, after all, pioneers in what is now firmly accepted as state social service responsibilities. However, that does not mean that there will not be changes to be coped with in, to name but a few areas, population size, ageing, the effect of immigration, and medical advances, which mean that many more people live with quite severe handicaps, which again we provide for. Nor indeed does it mean that there will not be other challengers for these contracts from, as we have already heard, the business world claiming that they can provide an even better quality of service at a lower cost.
Larger charities have over recent years learnt to present their cases as required to fairly high commercial business standards and, with the help of organisations such as the NCVO, they are pretty well able to negotiate their own contracts, but smaller charities will certainly benefit from the report's emphasis on the need for greater transparency—I agree with what the noble Lord said—particularly when negotiating contracts. Clarity in the detail of what both sides are expected to deliver will be crucial. As the report states:
“a contract is the mechanism by which conflicts are resolved when things go wrong”.
This is one of the fundamental lessons which the report stresses should be learnt from the experiences of railway privatisation.
Two smaller but equally valuable lessons are what should constitute a sensible length for a contract and how risk should be allocated between the operator and the Government. One of the complaints that many third-sector operators have, apart from the main one that payments from the Government or the local authority are always late, is that the contract time, often only three years, is too short to achieve worthwhile results. The report's suggested sensible length of an initial contract is five years, a much more realistic timescale, which perhaps could be extended for the same period twice more if all the right boxes are ticked.
On risk, not least in the light of the ghastly situation that we are all facing, it should be realistically shared between the Government or the local authority and the operator or at least linked to something like the GDP, as is suggested. One crucial lesson when negotiating the contract is for the Government or the local authority to have a realistic and workable alternative method of operation in place before beginning negotiations, as my noble friend mentioned. There must be competition in the bidding process to get the best results. Another sensible suggestion is that an independent supervisory board can play a really effective role as a buffer between the day-to-day operators and the Government. Equally, there should be a representative on that board of those on the receiving end of such services.
The last element I want to stress is the need for there to be an independent audit of what is being achieved, not least to avoid the suggestion of inappropriate political influence. It is, of course, vital for the Government to be open and honest both with themselves and with the general public about what they are trying to achieve. Public procurement is not an us-and-them situation. A proper working relationship is essential if the contract is to be fully effective.
I shall end by underlining what my noble friend Lady Greengross said. The ideas and experience behind what the report is saying are important and contain lessons that need sober consideration by the many Ministers and government departments that will be involved in the massive amount of public procurement that is already under way. Can the Minister give the Committee his assurance that these lessons will have been carefully studied and learnt when future public procurements are made?
Lord Beecham
My Lords, like other speakers, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, on her ingenuity in managing to hang a debate about the wider issues of public procurement on the rather slender hook of railway privatisation. I am glad that she intends to look at further areas of service delivery where this might apply, because although some lessons, particularly in risk, might arise from the experience of rail privatisation, it does not seem a particularly good analogy for most of the services in which government or local government are engaged.
However, as a frequent user of the east coast express line, I am somewhat nostalgic for the days of British Rail, but that is one area that the report did not touch on. Clearly, the issue of risk is widely recognised in that report and by previous speakers as being somewhat unreal when it comes to the expectation of benefit to be derived from privatisation or outsourcing, given the importance of the services in question.
There is one area which Governments of any political colour might be tempted to advance as an argument for privatisation. First, you have to raise capital, which may be more difficult, and secondly, you have to keep it off the public sector borrowing requirement. That seems to be the only compelling justification for the private finance initiative. Even then, contracts were entered into that were far too long. Clearly, if things go wrong, as they have done, the Government have to step in. It is always open for a contractor to liquidate rather than continue and to be made to pay penalties.
The noble Baroness referred to the possibility of bonds and penalties, which is superficially attractive, but that would be priced into the contract in the first instance and, in any event, it might not suffice in the end to deal with problems that arise. It struck me that a more useful transport comparison might have been the bus industry, which was largely municipally owned—it still is, very successfully, in London. The competition that ensued—sometimes there were too many buses chasing each other down the high street—and the standards of service that followed might have made a better comparison. It is important to recognise that there is virtue in having a mixed economy of provision in which public and private providers, and those from the voluntary sector, all have a part to play.
That is valuable, and I would not want us to move in the direction that Nicholas Ridley once advocated of councils meeting once a year simply to let the contracts. Councils and other bodies should be both commissioners and providers of services. I say that in the light of experience in residential care in the 1980s and 1990s, which was largely privatised as a result of the then Government’s approach to paying for it. Previously, it was organised largely by local councils. Ultimately, most local authorities withdrew from the field—eventually, unfortunately, so did many of those who succeeded in obtaining contracts—and we were left with a very unsatisfactory situation.
The public sector needs to be involved as one of the providers. There also need to be safeguards. Clearly, there has to be a level playing field on terms and conditions for those competing in this arena. We saw in the National Health Service how outsourcing led to a significant reduction in the levels of remuneration of care staff, and we have seen the same thing happening to some degree in the outsourcing of domiciliary services, even when they are run by third-sector organisations. We clearly need accountability; I endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said about that. Some of that can take place in the realm of local authority scrutiny, which can be quite effective provided that it brings in the users of services as well as others. In all this, we have to bear in mind the need particularly to encourage the role of the third-sector providers, which means looking at the size of contracts. It is possible to achieve economies of scale by letting large contracts all the time with which smaller organisations cannot compete, so we need to ensure that there are smaller or local-scale contracts, which will enhance accountability and allow for the innovation that the third sector often brings.
Have the Government given thought to the requirements of the EU on tendering? There is an assumption that you can take a workforce and turn it into a mutual and it will get a contract, but I understand that that may not be the case. Everyone has to compete in the same way as any other contractor, and there is no automatic assumption that that will happen.
Finally, I turn to one developing area that will require very sensitive handling. We are now moving into an area in which commissioning will be not only for a service and by a large commissioning body, such as GP commissioners or a local authority, but by individuals using personal budgets. That is to be welcomed, but it has to be managed; people will have to be helped to navigate their way through a system, choosing the right suppliers of a service and the right kind of service. The market has to be managed, and there has to be considerable quality assurance. A new dimension is opening up, and I hope the noble Baroness will look at that as well as the current practice in the areas that she has identified. I congratulate her again on her ingenuity, which struck me as being worthy of a Wall Street banker or derivatives trader, but in this case with much more benign results.
The Earl of Mar and Kellie
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for introducing this Question for Short Debate. She has certainly hooked me on railways. I shall mention one or two points about railway procurement, starting off with vehicles and moving on to franchise procurement, along with one or two problems which I think are occurring at present in this context.
The first thing, which is surprising after what was expected in 1994, is the amount of control that the Department for Transport has of rolling stock and dealing with the cascades, the specifications and electrification. That may not be surprising, but I do not think that it was the original idea. The second point concerns the rolling stock companies, or roscos. This is the one point of railway privatisation that British Rail would have liked, but now it has been shown that, broadly speaking, they do not accept risk; they want guarantees that the vehicles that they own will be used for the whole of their life. I cannot say that I am against the idea of vehicles being used for the whole of their life—after all, railway vehicles have a life of at least 40 years. That means that decisions made now will last well into the future. Unfortunately, rail vehicle procurement is somewhat stymied and paralysed until the Government decide what is to happen next. The roscos are not bringing in new stock for fear that it might not be needed for the full 40 years. That paralysis leads to problems for the rail vehicle builders, which would love to have a continuous flow of work but clearly do not. One joy of our historic position in the railways is that we have a smaller loading gauge than anywhere else. Therefore, there are no foreign, off-the-peg vehicles to buy, although of course British rolling stock can be used on the continent—albeit it looks rather smaller.
Then there is, yet again, the delay with the intercity express programme—the IEP. That means that the lives of the high-speed trains, or HSTs, have to be extended. It strikes me that we will be using them on the main line for up to 40 years at the rate we are going. They are good trains but it will be interesting to see what they are like when they are 40 years old.
On a franchising rather than vehicle procurement issue, there is what I consider to be the clumsy handling of the Pendolino integration. I understand that Virgin asked for a franchise extension in exchange for integrating the new Pendolino carriages, extending them by an extra two carriages per train and bringing into service four new trains. I understand that it wanted a franchise extension but the DfT did not want to give it one. Although I am certain that there is right on both sides, it would be better if the existing franchisees—the people who have been handling those trains for the past few years—handled the integration of the new carriages rather than handing it to a new franchisee.
My sixth point on vehicle procurement—my noble friend will not be surprised to hear me mention this yet again—is the desirability of having trains that are suitable for tourist routes. I understand that they must be cascaded, but it is very important that on the scenic lines throughout the British mainland we get some straightforward window and seat alignment so that people can take advantage of the scenic potential of tourist and holiday railways.
My time is, unfortunately, coming to an end. On franchising, I should like to pick up the point about competition. There is rarely competition within franchise procurement. Usually, it is the allocation of regional or, in the case of Scotland, national fiefdoms. I am one of the few people who has competition, at least in theory, because, living equidistant between Edinburgh and Glasgow, I can come to your Lordships’ House with either Virgin or East Coast Trains—or, if I were being really pedantic, I could go down to Carlisle and then go from Carlisle to Leeds with Northern and then East Coast Trains, but even I want to get here.
The franchise context has changed. Initially it was all about entrepreneurialism; now it has become entrepreneurialism in the context of the death of the railways. The most important thing, which has really muddled the situation, is that people might want to travel by train. Railways are back on the up and the franchise context is now about management contracts rather than entrepreneurialism.
Finally, how happy are the Minister and his department with the way that the franchising process has been wandering about, accidentally arriving where it is now? Does he have a clear idea of where he would like franchising to go?
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, I, too, begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, not only on her introductory speech, which emphasised the value of the report of the Transport Forum, which she chaired and which did such valuable work, but on indicating that there are a few hares that may run well beyond the range of the railways issue for the Minister to consider. It is not often that I express sympathy for Ministers, and I will not make a habit of it, but I have a little sympathy for him today. I am sure that he has concentrated a great deal on the railways, and I want to reflect on the lessons that we need to learn in relation to them, but other Members of the Committee have taken the opportunity to identify areas which ought to be considered in the light of the report and its formative work on the issues of public services and public procurement.
I hope that the Minister has some response for the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, about the future of the Post Office and about where mutuals may play their part in the provision of services. The Minister will also have noted the experience of my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe in procurement and the way that contracts need to be drawn, pursued and followed through. On that, we derive insight from the railways, but not all those insights give us much comfort at present. Hence, a number of noble Lords have identified their areas of anxiety.
My noble friend Lord Beecham, with his vast experience of local government, brought up the issue of PFIs. The range of responsibilities and opportunities that may derive from them makes it important for the Government to learn lessons on procurement, given the range of issues to be covered. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, identified the voluntary sector, and the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, therefore has a great deal on his plate when responding on the lessons on which we want enlightenment. I look forward to his response.
My party has been very concerned about what we need to learn from the experience of railway service provision. We were on the brink of re-evaluating the way in which the present system of privatised railways works. That is why we produced an outline policy document on the key issues that we had learnt from years of operating the railways. It was quite clear that important lessons needed to be learnt, and they have been identified to a very large extent in this report. We were particularly concerned about how to encourage innovation and investment. The business process needs to be altered to put greater emphasis on that. We were also concerned about the changes required during the life of a franchise. It seemed to us that it is necessary to have elements of flexibility that enable you to come to terms with changed circumstances over a franchise. We were concerned about the specification and delivery. In particular, we thought that the TOCs needed to be contractually required to deliver services and other outputs important to the public. We need those contracts to be established in a clearer way than has, perhaps, been the case in the past. We are concerned about risk. I bear in mind the point made in the debate that the risk falls upon the public sector—either the local authority or the state—because that is where responsibility for the service lies. Nevertheless, that means better management of risk and incentivising operators.
I would ask the noble Earl to think about and respond on one little matter. He will be aware that the level of costs borne by fares was 57 per cent in 1992 and that it went down to 54 per cent by 2008. What is his estimate for 2014-15 in the light of the recent indication of the part that the rail passenger has to pay in increased fares? What will the fare burden be as a percentage of the costs of the railway four to five years from now? I am sure the noble Earl has quite enough to respond to.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, and her colleagues on developing an excellent and thought-provoking contribution to the public procurement debate. This debate has been fascinating to me and will be valuable to my officials. The noble Baroness asked me whether we will learn lessons. Yes, because it is extremely boring to make the same mistake twice.
Rail delivers an essential service with more than 1.2 billion passenger journeys and more than 19 billion freight tonne kilometres in 2009-10. Total government support to the rail network was £3.9 billion in 2009-10. Two initiatives are central to the Government’s plans for rail services and to provide better value for money. The rail value-for-money study, chaired by Sir Roy McNulty, will help us tackle the greater costs of rail in the UK compared with mainland Europe, while our consultation on reforming rail franchising will assist us in devising a new franchising policy.
The Government want a stronger focus on the quality of outcomes for passengers, giving operators freedom to decide the detail of how they run their businesses. We also intend to grant longer franchises to encourage private sector investment in enhancements to the railway and to make it easier for train operators to establish long-term relationships with Network Rail and others, but we have to make sure that contracts are demanding and that operators are held to account.
The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, talked about the penalties for poor performance. The department's policy has been to avoid renegotiation. National Express paid a large financial cost for its failure to deliver its commitments on the east coast. That sends a clear message to the bidding community. Sir Roy McNulty is not scheduled to present his final conclusions until next spring. The consultation on reforming rail franchising closed during October, and ministerial colleagues will shortly present our revised franchising policy and timetable.
I take this opportunity to thank everyone who took the time to respond to the reforming rail franchising consultation, including the helpful submission from the transport forum chaired by the noble Baroness. I will discuss some of the issues raised, without prejudging the outcome of the franchise reform review. One issue raised was the importance of negotiation and early engagement with shortlisted bidders. The responses provided broad support for the proposal in the consultation document that,
“bilateral discussions are held with each of the shortlisted bidders prior to the issue of the Invitation to Tender, enabling bidders to inform the specification and contract documentation”.
I expect this approach to be reflected in the new processes, ensuring that the department does not inadvertently prevent any bidder from proposing an innovative solution.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, talked about the need for transparency. The coalition has introduced new rules requiring the publication of all contracts and tender documents. This is an area where rail procurement can be held to have led the way. All selection processes, invitations to tender and successful contracts have been made available on the DfT website for many years under the previous Administration. The submission raises the important but complex issue of risk allocation. It correctly points out how important it will be for future franchises to make it clear which risks are to be borne by operators and which by the Government. The submission suggests that there might be merit in the Government bearing some of the risk of changes in the economic climate. We continue to develop policy in this area but are clear that risk transfer to the private sector may be costly.
The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, and the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, both talked about risk allocation. Rail contracts strive to define which risks are held by which party. However, as the noble Baroness noted, some risks have reverted to the Government—for instance, if a franchise fails, the Government are legally required to run the train services. We seek to limit that risk by bonds, which the franchisee pays in the event of failure, but also by parental guarantees, which ensure that a parent company is required to support the franchisee through temporary financial difficulty.
I have already touched on the issue of longer franchises, while the question of break points will need to be considered carefully. There is a danger that break points negate the advantages of a longer franchise if it is then perceived as merely a series of short franchises. We want to reform the franchising system as a whole, improving incentives to invest and to take account of passengers. However, although we are seeking to develop a new approach at policy level, the department has a good track record in the processes of procurement.
The strengths of the rail franchise procurement process were recognised by the NAO as good practice in its October 2008 report, Letting Rail Franchises 2005-2007. Likewise, the Office of Government Commerce, the OGC, in its initial procurement capability review carried out in late 2007, reported:
“Rail franchising is now a very impressive process, which has demonstrated innovation, good market involvement, transparent and robust processes, and successful financial outcomes”.
A report on the second procurement capability review in March 2010 also reflected:
“In a number of areas, DfT performance is leading edge in government procurement terms; for instance, the rail franchise process, the openness and transparency of communications with suppliers, and support for ‘policy through procurement’ initiatives are all exemplary”.
The procedures and techniques first applied in rail franchising have now been adopted across all major Department for Transport procurement activity. At the request of the OGC, the DfT has also provided advice and guidance to other departments.
The noble Baroness talked about performance bonds. An appropriate balance must be struck on this issue. If the bond is set too low, it may discourage a franchisee from handing back the keys at the first scent of trouble and it might be inadequate to cover the direct incremental cost to government of stepping in to deliver the train service and running an additional unscheduled franchise competition. However, if the bond is set too high, we may inadvertently exclude smaller operators from the franchise marketplace and we will pay a substantial cost for the performance bonds, the majority of which are never called upon. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, talked about some of these difficulties.
The rail value-for-money study, led by Sir Roy McNulty, is looking at why UK railways are so much more expensive than those in the rest of Europe. Focusing Network Rail on the regions and routes may have some benefits. Certainly no decision has been made to split up Network Rail, but all options are being considered in Sir Roy’s review.
The noble Baroness talked about the need to have a fallback in negotiations. During competitions, the fallback is clear: the contract may be awarded to a competitor. Mid-term negotiation is of course always more difficult, but contracts contain a provision for government to impose a “reasonable” settlement and, ultimately, the franchisee will lose the franchise if it is in default.
I was delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, put his name down to speak in this debate. Few noble Lords have as much experience as he does in public procurement for transport infrastructure. The noble Lord raised the advantages of win-win contracts. The alternative, of course, is a win-lose or a lose-lose situation. Train operators need to make a profit by attracting more passengers and increasing revenue. This revenue incentive helps to make contracts win-win, but we are reviewing how to improve incentives further.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, touched on the size of contractors and, I think, by implication, SMEs. SMEs are an engine of the economy, providing nearly 60 per cent of our jobs and 50 per cent of GDP, and it is only right that they should benefit from the Government’s substantial purchasing power. The public purse will benefit from the ability of small businesses to offer value for money, flexibility, responsiveness and innovation.
The noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, talked about the problems of interlinking rolling stock and electrification. He also talked about the IEP project. This is a very complex, long-term project and it is vital that we get the decision right. I hope that we will be able to announce our conclusions shortly.
The noble Earl talked about roscos wanting guarantees. The department seeks to avoid giving these guarantees, as they reduce flexibility. However, there have been cases where such guarantees have brought down the cost to the taxpayer. He also talked about the Pendolinos on the west coast franchise. There have been many positive aspects to Virgin’s management of the intercity west coast franchise and I look forward to seeing how it will develop and build on that as part of a competitive tendering process for the new franchise.
The noble Earl also talked about scenic railways. The layout of trains provides a scenic view from all seats but it is a matter for the operator, not something that the department should be micromanaging.
Lord Bradshaw
I wonder whether the noble Lord might reflect on the fact that it is the load factors which the department insists on that make the roscos move all the seats closer together, so that they meet the target set by the department.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I will certainly reflect upon that and have a chat with my officials afterwards.
The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, spoke of future studies in other areas of public procurement. We look forward to her results with interest and we will certainly take note of them. I am confident that the public procurement processes adopted for rail will continue to represent best practice and provide transparency and equal treatment for bidders. The rail franchise specifications which are procured will evolve and reflect the results of the consultation to provide an environment where operators have the freedom to provide improved value for money and the improvement that passengers want.
Economy: Manufacturing
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the value of manufacturing to the United Kingdom economy.
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein
My Lords, there is a general perception in the press and the public mind that we no longer manufacture things but depend almost exclusively on financial services for our well-being. No one disputes that financial services, as exemplified by the City of London, are a very valuable and significant part of our economy, but so also is manufacturing—perhaps even more so.
In introducing this short debate, I am indebted to the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the Food and Drink Federation, which have sent me briefs, and most particularly to the Institute for Manufacturing, part of the engineering faculty at Cambridge University. Here I must declare a purely honorary interest in that I am a past president of the Cambridge University Engineers’ Association and, some 60 years ago, was a graduate of the engineering department.
Let us now consider what we mean by manufacturing today. Of course, we no longer have the old smokestack industries; we have a much wider concept of engineering and manufacturing. This comprises the full cycle from understanding markets and technology, through product and process design to operations, construction, contracting and on to distribution and related services. Of course, the food and drink industries play a very important part in that. When you view manufacturing in this light, you begin to realise how vast is its output and how valuable it is to the economy, particularly in its huge contribution to employment and exports.
A further factor is the speed of change. For example, the first iPod was designed and built in less than one year. Shelf life is short, and new models emerge with ever-increasing speed. Traditionally, manufacturing has been associated with manual skills, and these certainly remain important and need to be fostered through apprenticeships. Increasingly, however, the value chain is enhanced by transforming ideas and opportunities into products and services. In other words, engineering and manufacturing are part of the knowledge economy, where brains matter.
My amateurish analysis of the information that I have received indicates that we are talking about an area of economic activity that contributes around £500 billion to GDP, generating more than 50 per cent of exports and employing huge numbers of people. I should be interested to know what the Government make of this figure and what their figure is.
The Government can help further by taking note of the areas of difficulty identified by the organisations which provided briefs. An obvious area is the need for simplification of the tax structure, with reference particularly to research and development and the creation of a favourable climate for small and medium enterprises, where much of what we are discussing takes place. I noticed that this was mentioned in the previous debate in connection with public procurement.
I have tried to set the scene. As I have no right of reply, I express my thanks in advance to the Minister who will answer this debate. I thank most profusely the very knowledgeable Peers who are joining in. I very much look forward to hearing what they and the Minister will say.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
My Lords, in a debate where, due to its popularity, Procrustes has reduced most of us to speeches of four minutes, I hope that I shall speak for everyone when I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, for his choice of subject and his introduction of it. My only hesitation is that the wording of the Question carries a mild ambiguity as to whether the answer expected is to be quantitative or qualitative.
I am, however, taking it as a given that, in our present parlous circumstances, it is a case of all hands to the pumps and that any enhanced contribution to the economy by the manufacturing sector is profoundly to be welcomed. Although, after leaving Harvard Business School, I made my living across the whole face of the economy and, within that, across a wide range of manufacturing, it is easier if I confine these remarks to a particular part. I shall dwell on engineering, not least because it has had a notable role in Britain’s industrial past, but also because Germany, now the premier European exporter, is still so powerful a force within it.
It is awesome even in this Ashes week to be batting immediately before the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, who has a personal cricketing reputation as well, and I risk being told that I am wholly out of date, but I am genuinely impressed, diminished though our engineering sector is, at the health of those British engineering companies which have survived the industry’s decline. I put it down to survivors surviving because of the quality of their products in market niches where product quality and utility are at a premium.
When in the 1960s and 1970s in the private sector I was assisting companies such as Rolls-Royce, we were wont to be told that Rolls-Royce’s American competitors enjoyed the advantage of a component manufacturing sector which could produce to the most precise of specifications in an industry where such were required, often in new materials, whereas Rolls-Royce had to design and manufacture its components itself. If there is anything in this hypothesis, even in a global market, then the growth that we are seeking beyond exports will be assisted by an expansion in self-sufficiency in components at home and by entrepreneurs who create new leads for them. I am also assuming that there are still market opportunities similar to those experienced in the United States in the application of electronics to what I shall call the rust belt industries.
An encouraging example that applies to both my hypotheses is the recent decision of the Department for Transport to fund 1,200 new trains on the Thameslink line, specifically with up-to-date and innovative signalling instrumentation, taking us away from the historical poverty of obsessively British-built signalling technology. One sad characteristic of British industry, not only at the time of the original Brookings Institute inquiry of 1968 but lasting to revisiting the issues in the 1980s, was the charge that we were short of engineers to an extent whereby we were using scientists to do the jobs of engineers, thus robbing the science base. The Division Bell is ringing. Do you want me to finish the speech or stop? I think that I have one more minute.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Harris of Richmond)
One more minute, and then we will have 10 more minutes.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
Thus we are robbing the science base of the scientists that it could otherwise have used in research. The institute attributed it to the low value that our economy put on the utility of engineers in the 1970s. It always disturbed me that the financial incentives of industry were so comparatively low. Although in those days, the accountants were more of a salary competitor than the totality of the financial sector, the explosive effect of the big bang compounded the problem thereafter, taking engineers straight into the City. In this respect, globalism has helped by introducing international salary arrangements into our marketplace.
Finally, in the four-year period when I was a Treasury Minister, I was the only one of the eight of us in that overall period who had never worked in the City. Shortly after I went there, Douglas Wass asked me what I was responsible for and categorised my answer as the housekeeping end of the Treasury. Of course, I understood then my colleagues’ views that the decline of manufacturing did not matter if the financial sector was growing as fast as it was, but happily—in some ways—we now know different, and the terms of economic trade are moving back to what we were always once good at.
Lord Bhattacharyya
I would like to thank the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, for securing this debate. Whenever the economy is in trouble, we turn to manufacturing for the answers. I remember Ministers talking about sunrise industries, the knowledge economy and high value-added manufacturing. Last year the soundbite was “industrial activism” and now the phrase is “the balanced economy”.
I am not sure that any of these phrases has made a blind bit of difference to our economy. It all sounds a little like gobbledegook to our industrial friends. For example, when the car industry was in trouble we had headlines about 3 billion in support. Most of us thought the 3 billion would be in sterling but it ended up being in peanuts. Most manufacturers got very little, but despite this, manufacturing is playing a big part in our economic recovery. Today, the manufacturing share of British GDP is 12 per cent. That is a touch less than France and within striking distance of the Americans. Not bad.
Much of our recent growth is due to exports in goods, which rose by 15 per cent in the last year, predominantly due to the fall in exchange rates. But any long-term success requires innovation, not devaluation. A car company that was in trouble two years ago because of not getting credit, Jaguar Land Rover is now one of the largest exporters in the country with £7 billion exports this year. It regards developing markets as a major growth area. Exports to China are up 70 per cent. How can we help companies like this to succeed? At the moment our share of exports to emerging markets is tiny. We have a 1 per cent share of Chinese imports. Businesses based in China, Brazil and India are developing the highest technology products—from the C919 aeroplane to domestic designed automobiles and the Embraer corporate jets of Brazil. If they do not have the technology they can get it at the click of a button, or they can just buy another company such as the recent purchase of Volvo by Geely.
We often talk in the UK about low-carbon, high value-added exports, but how many politicians know that China is the world's leader in solar cell technology? We have no privilege in the global economy; we have to earn our place. The major opportunity for our exporters is not merely competing with the emerging economy manufacturers but being partners with them in the global economy. I focus on two areas. First, we must encourage inward investment. We should not be concerned about who owns the companies. The latest figures from the ONS show that the British economy still suffers from low rates of capital investment, as it has for the past 50 years.
If small manufacturing enterprises are to be the seedbed of innovation, full exploitation of their ideas requires long-term investment from larger firms and banks. Today, we have too many barriers to inward investment. The corporate tax system is confusing. Measures such as tax credits are hard to access. Regional support is baffling, and immigration rules send the wrong signals to the inward investor.
Next, we need to understand that trade barriers will exist for a long time. For example, China's tariff on imports of upmarket saloon cars is more than 40 per cent. At the higher end, it is 90 per cent. That is an extremely high barrier to get over. Therefore, most companies will end up manufacturing in growing markets just to get a level playing field, and the countries will make sure that there is technology transfer. We must help them to find partners to get access. Today, we are a gateway to Europe—that is where our major exports are—but we need to be a partner to the world.
The Government have announced innovation centres, a regional growth fund and a green bank. I do not want to talk today about how many engineers are produced, the quality of engineers, how much they are paid, or of technicians or of what the Government have to do in this or that area. We must make whatever the Government have announced simple. Most important, we must make those initiatives happen, not just talk about them. We must not have another saga where we tell the world that we are ready to act but very little happens. I wish the Government good luck in that task.
Lord Cotter
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, for initiating this debate at this time. It is at a time of cutbacks. Emphasis is on the private sector to help our country to grow and to provide new jobs. How better than through manufacture? I was a managing director of a small manufacturing company before I got into Parliament. Not only does the UK remain the sixth largest global manufacturer, but the manufacturing sector produces 74 per cent of R&D in this country, which is praiseworthy. However, there is often misunderstanding of manufacturing in this country. It is still a very significant sector, but the perception that manufacturing is the poor relation of the financial sector and others—neat and tidy occupations, if you like—has to be corrected.
It is welcome that just this week, through the autumn forecast Statement, we heard the Government speak of increasing the incentives to innovate and develop new products in this country and to encourage high-tech businesses to invest in the UK. They will introduce a lower 10 per cent corporation tax to that effect on profits for newly commercialised patents, hopefully to be manufactured in this country.
That leads me to the future, and skills and training. In that connection, it is encouraging that both in the country as a whole and in the Government the need for hands-on training, vocational training, is being emphasised time and again. At a recent seminar promoted by the Edge Foundation, which is an education foundation dedicated to raising the stature of practical, vocational learning, it was said:
“Both George Osborne and Vince Cable make the case with force, coherence and intelligence that our economic recovery depends on a manufacturing renaissance … Given the devastation wrought on our economy by the events of the last three years, the need to drive private sector growth is urgent and overwhelming … And that depends on a reform of our education system which addresses our long term weakness in practical learning”—
from which we have suffered for many years.
It is good that there is to be an increase in apprenticeships of 75,000 by 2014-15 and that around £605 million will be invested in apprenticeships in 2011-12. It is also intended that hands-on training will be given increased status. So often, people have been encouraged—at school or wherever—to go to university, which is very praiseworthy. However, the intention of the Government is to give a qualification giving technician status when you do an apprenticeship, to give people status and represent the importance of that particular form of education.
It is good that the Government are aware of the need to improve careers advice as well, because for many years it has been said—truthfully, I think—that careers advice, in particular in schools, has not been good. For example, many instances have been put forward where careers advice at schools level has not included talk about apprenticeships at all, so the new initiative to raise the importance and efficiency of careers advice is very welcome. It must incorporate the important sectors of manufacturing that we are talking about today, but many other sectors have been neglected in the past. For a vibrant and effective manufacturing industry, we need the skills and the importance of trading to be given a top-level need. On that line, I close my remarks.
Lord Bilimoria
My Lords, there seems to be a widely held perception that Britain is now purely a services and financial sector-driven economy with agriculture, for example, amounting to just 1 per cent of GDP. The perception is very much that manufacturing in this country is dead. I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, for introducing this crucial debate at a crucial time. The reality is, as we have heard, that manufacturing remains at the heart of Britain’s economy, accounting for 13 per cent of GDP and over £150 billion—again, I would be interested to see what the exact figure is, according to the Government. It is 50 per cent of exports, 10 per cent of total employment and 75 per cent of all research and development.
We are not only the sixth largest economy in the world but the sixth largest manufacturer by output. Of course, manufacturing directly and indirectly creates jobs in the service, financial and education sectors. However, how much of a priority is manufacturing to the Government? The sad realities are that in 1977 manufacturing was 26 per cent of GDP, double the proportion that it is today, and that the share of people in the economy working in manufacturing has gone from 30 per cent 30 years ago to 10 per cent today.
We all know that we cannot just cut our way out of the deficit and debt problem that we are in today. As an economy, we have to grow. But what has happened to the Government’s proposed growth White Paper? It has supposedly been postponed—why? Because,
“the government did not have enough serious content to warrant”,
one. In my two remaining minutes, I will try to give some serious content; in the one hour that we have together, I am sure that we can all come up with some. Is that some sort of a joke? Right on our doorstep Germany, a major manufacturer, is roaring ahead. China is roaring ahead. Even in India—from where I have just returned this morning—as president of the UK India Business Council, supported by UKTI, I see manufacturing in India roaring ahead. It is over 25 per cent of GDP over there.
In Britain, we are so lucky. We are fortunate to have the cutting-edge, world-class manufacturing that the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharya, spoke about in every sector, producing products that are global. I see them everywhere on the road in India, for example: Smith’s security equipment at every airport and JCBs at every roadside. Jaguar Land Rover is now owned by an Indian company, Tata. Yet while we have spent hundreds of billions supporting our banks over the previous years, when the Tatas approached the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, for help he lent them not one penny. It was so determined that it raised the money itself and now, from everything that I have heard, including from the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, Jaguar Land Rover is flying again—a shining example of cutting-edge, world-class and world-beating British manufacturing, design and innovation.
In my own industry, as the founder and chairman of Cobra Beer, it gives me great pride to visit Burton on Trent, where Molson Coors, our joint venture partners, own the largest brewery in Britain and one of the three largest breweries in Europe. Whenever I go there, I see British manufacturing at its best.
When it comes to education and skills, we have the finest available in this country. I remember with pride showcasing Cambridge University’s manufacturing and science capability to the top team of Tata, who were seriously impressed. I attended the business growth programme at the Cranfield School of Management. I maintain that if every SME in this country had the opportunity to attend that sort of programme, the GDP of this country would go up substantially. Why do the Government not think of having a competition and sponsoring 1,000 places for SMEs every year on courses such as that? It would encourage lifelong learning and management and leadership skills.
One area where we fall down badly in Britain is that we have very few large manufacturers compared with our competitors. For example, firms employing more than 500 people account for 0.6 per cent of our manufacturing firms in the UK. In the United States, the figure is 2.9 per cent, which is five times the number that we have. We need growth and we need scale in manufacturing. Of course, there is too much red tape and our taxes are too high; there is a madcap immigration cap and of course we have the problem of a lack of bank finance. However, unless the Government consciously and visibly make manufacturing a priority, we will be left behind. Like the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, I despair that our companies do not go out and sell more, participating more in growing markets such as those in India, where there is so much opportunity for our manufacturers. As I have said before, we export more to Ireland than we do to the BRICS countries combined.
In conclusion, most importantly we as a nation need to have pride in our manufacturing sector—pride that when a product is stamped “Made in Britain” it means that it is made with world-beating, world-class quality, excellence in design and non-stop innovation. Who says that British manufacturing is dead? It is a beacon of our economy, but the Government must help to keep that beacon shining.
Lord Wade of Chorlton
My Lords, I also thank the noble Viscount for introducing this debate and for drawing our attention to the manufacturing industry, which is possibly the most important thing in this country. I come from the north-west of England and shall draw your Lordships’ attention to some of the issues relating to the manufacturing industry in that part of the country. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the north-west drove the manufacturing industry of the world, not just the UK. I should like to see a return to those times when the innovation, ideas and enthusiasm of individuals could flourish.
Most of the information that I shall give comes from the North West Manufacturing Institute, which represents, or shows the interests of, the north-west manufacturing industry. We have some 18,200 production- driven manufacturing companies in the north-west of England and they make a major contribution to our economy. Output grew by 4.8 per cent from September 2009 to September 2010. In the mechanical and equipment manufacturing industries, it increased by 21 per cent. Therefore, there has been an enormous increase in activity and growth in our manufacturing industries in the north-west. The food and drink industries in the north-west have seen an increase of 6.6 per cent. The noble Lord referred to the importance of the food and drink industry. It is an industry in which I was involved for most of my life. I refer not to the drink side—I shall leave that to the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria—but the food side. It has been a very important part of the north-west’s economy for a long time and it is still growing at a considerable rate. Some of our most innovative companies are in the food industry. They have contributed to a considerable increase in exports and development in other countries, and I am very proud of some of our major food industry companies in the north-west of England.
I am patron of the Society of Dairy Technology and should declare an interest in that regard. We are trying to improve innovation, particularly in the dairy industry. Our membership covers the whole of Europe and is part of a European structure that enables many companies now to be driven by new investments and new developments. I shall make the point now while I have the opportunity that I favour the large dairy units that are now being considered in this country. I would encourage the whole of Europe to accept new technologies in farming, agriculture and growth. They will be essential if we are going to compete with the rest of the world. We must stop burying our heads in the sand and thinking that we can continue to farm and grow and manufacture food in the way that we did in the previous century.
One of the issues in the north-west to which I would like to draw the Committee’s attention is that, as I understand it from the information I receive from the institute, we will need to replace 550,000 employees over the next five to six years in the north-west alone. That gives some indication of how the manufacturing industry is going to provide extra employment in the coming years. The Government’s policy of encouraging that and of moving people from the state sector into manufacturing industry will be one way of generating much more wealth. In the engineering sub-sector alone, it is hard to fill vacancies. We will require around 18,000 jobs per year, and the estimated lost GVA through lack of recruitment comes to approximately £823 million per annum. That is an important aspect that we have to be aware of.
I draw the Minister’s attention to some of the issues that concern people most. One is the shortage of skills. There is a north-west factory that is trying to recruit 800 specialist engineers and finds it impossible to do so. Another company has had a 170 per cent increase in its exports to China and is looking for 100 new managers and quality people, but it cannot find them. A company that I chair, Rocktron Limited, is a specialist engineering company and is finding it extremely difficult to get the right quality of electrical and processing engineers and craftsmen—welders and the like. There is an enormous shortage, which is handicapping the growth of these industries.
Finally, if I ask businessmen what they want, they say that they want government to leave them alone, to say yes when they want to do something and to encourage officials, particularly at local government level, to stop making hold-up decisions rather than saying “Get on with it and do it”. There is a great hold-up between what the Government at the top are saying about what they want to encourage local officials to do and what is happening at ground level. There is an awful lot of inertia in the system at the moment that needs stirring from the top. I look to the Minister to be the one who might carry out that action and stir people up. When business wants something, it is not money, but someone to say, “Yes, get that built, get that planning passed, get that decision made, get that done”. If that is done by government, business and manufacturing industry will always respond.
Lord Haskel
My Lords, I add to what the noble Lord, Lord Wade, said about the north-west that it is also a leading area in technical textiles, a business that I was in for 30 years. Noble Lords are right that manufacturing is an important part of our economy and will play an important part in our future, if we are competitive. To secure this future, there is an important political argument that the Minister and her department have to win. It is about debt. Her Government are giving debt a bad name because they say it is an unreasonable burden on our children, but that is a damaging generalisation. We should certainly avoid burdening our children with unproductive debt, but productive debt is not a burden but a blessing. As Martin Woolf pointed out, Professor Helm's paper for the Social Market Foundation is very convincing on this. Now that interest rates are so low, it is the time to build up productive assets. What could be more productive than manufacturing assets and the infrastructure that supports them? I am talking not just about the physical infrastructure but the infrastructure that bridges manufacturing and skills and bridges the gap between research and technology and commercialisation. It is the task of the Technology Strategy Board to provide the infrastructure to bridge that gap. It is the task of our training organisations and colleges to provide the infrastructure to bridge the skills gap. It is the task of the financial services industry to bridge the financial gap. So I hope the Minister and her department will argue that getting into debt to bridge those gaps is productive debt which is a public good and not a burden on future generations.
The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, told us that last week there was a headline in the Financial Times that said, “Growth Master Plan Dropped for Lack of Content. Long Awaited White Paper Abandoned”. That gave the impression that the Minister’s department had little idea on how to get growth back into the economy. I am afraid that the paper published yesterday by her department confirms this headline. Perhaps the noble Lord noticed that directly below that article in the Financial Times was an article about a report from McKinsey entitled From Austerity to Prosperity. I am no particular friend of consultants, but the report identifies seven priorities, priorities which are practical and achievable and many of which have been mentioned by noble Lords in this debate. They are in fact common-sense actions dealing with raising productivity sector by sector instead of the general aspiration to raise productivity that is in the Government’s paper. On how to release new money to invest in the infrastructure, the Government's paper speaks only of existing sources. On concentrating innovation in large clusters to make it more effective, the Government's paper speaks only of being “innovation friendly”. The report refers to how to capitalise on the huge potential for economic growth in education and health, and generally on how to make Britain a better place for business, in ways that the Government’s paper ignores but other noble Lords have mentioned.
The Minister and her department have to start to do better and to start being serious and more radical about our future prosperity, even if some of the ideas come from outside government. Otherwise, there will be a vacuum in government thinking and the manufacturing sector will suffer most.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Viscount for introducing this debate. In the true style of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, this is my first innings in one of these debates. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, that for 13 years the previous Government did not have any manufacturing strategy whatever, so it is a bit rich to say in the first six months of this Government that they have failed to produce one, but I shall return to that later.
We are without doubt successful as a manufacturing nation. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, is absolutely right. To pretend that somehow manufacturing is dead and that it went out when Mrs Thatcher left Downing Street is quite frankly ridiculous. As noble Lords have said, we are the sixth-largest manufacturer in the world; 53 per cent of our exports are accounted for in manufacturing, and 2.3 million jobs. It is very striking, too, that in high-tech areas we outstrip Germany, France and Japan in the amount of high-tech goods we not only produce but export. Those are things that we should celebrate. Manufacturing is not dead.
When the Prime Minister made his rallying call to create, innovate, invest and grow a few weeks ago, he was describing what UK manufacturing was all about. He was recognising that in every major economic recession in the past two centuries, the one sector that leads a drive out of recession is manufacturing. The noble Lord referred to that. The industrial revolution was built on the backs of great engineers and scientists, but it was making things that the UK and the rest of the world wanted that made the industrial revolution successful. Inventions on their own were of little consequence.
It was the same in the 1930s and the 1950s after a second great war, and it will be the same in the second decade of the 21st century. In the past three quarters, manufacturing has averaged 3.5 per cent growth, which is a remarkable record beaten only by construction, and there were particular reasons for that. We produced 124,000 more cars last month than we did a year ago. We should be celebrating that as part of this debate. Real barriers need to be overcome if the UK is to achieve its economic recovery on the back of manufacturing. The first is ambition. We have been content over the years to see manufacturing as a small or medium-sized operation. That is the problem. There is a belief that manufacturing, by definition, has to be somewhere else and it should not be here. That assumption is fundamentally wrong.
I applaud many initiatives that this Government are making to encourage small companies, as did the previous one. I put that on the record. The chief executive of the EEF, Terry Scuoler, said that while the current attention on young business and start-ups was helpful, we must not ignore the wider benefits to the economy that larger companies bring. He is absolutely right, as was the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria. If we are serious about growing our economy on the back of manufacturing, to pretend that we can do it by growing a number of small start-up businesses is absolutely wrong. Of course, they are vital but it is growing live businesses out of SMEs that is so important. Germany has twice as many manufacturing companies with more than 250 employees than the UK. The noble Lord made it clear that in the United States, 2.9 per cent of manufacturing companies have more than 500 employees, compared with 0.6 per cent here in the UK.
The excuse in the past was that America is a big country, but Europe is a huge market for us. Indeed, so are the new emerging markets of China, India, Brazil and Africa, where large numbers of exports can be made. Not only do we have large-scale manufacturing companies, which make significant investments in research and development—pharmaceuticals is a classic example, and aerospace is another—we also have, at the Institute for Manufacturing in Cambridge, the global leader in manufacturing research and Mike Gregory, who I regard as the leading academic in the whole world, at our disposal. We need those people to get on board.
I was hugely disappointed that the new manufacturing framework has been pulled. Will the Minister explain what is coming in its place? We do not want another collection of small initiatives. We want a big initiative that says to the largest manufacturers that we want them here in the United Kingdom because that is where our future lies.
Lord Broers
My Lords, I, too, congratulate and thank the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, on this debate. I agree with all noble Lords. How could I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Willis, about Mike Gregory—and others—who I put into professorship?
The UK remains, according to my numbers, in seventh not sixth place but these numbers seem to be somewhat confused. The important point is that we slipped from fourth in about 20 years. As pointed out by Sir Alan Rudge in an article based on Pink Book data and published by the ERA Foundation recently, present trends suggest that we will fall out of the top 10 within a decade. If that dire prediction is fulfilled, which I hope it is not, it is unlikely that we will ever be able to restore our economy to pre-recession levels.
According to Cambridge economists Coutts and Rowthorn in their recent paper, Prospects for the UK Balance of Payments, our persistent current account deficit could grow from 2 per cent to an unacceptable 5 per cent of GDP by 2020. They point out that, in 2008, our deficit in the trade of finished manufactured goods was £58 billion, far outweighing the surplus of £46 billion generated by the financial and insurance sector, and that it remained at £50 billion in 2009. The most striking point that they make, however, is that an increase of only 10 per cent in manufactured exports, combined with a 10 per cent fall in manufactured imports, would generate a £45 billion improvement in the current account balance, which is equal to total UK net earnings from financial services and insurance and more than one and a half times that contributed by all other services, so manufacturing is hugely important to the UK. It may in fact provide the only way out of our financial difficulties.
Ironically, what manufacturers need is more support from the financial sector, but this is seldom forthcoming, presumably because the timescales for returns from manufacturing are longer than those for the simple trading and exchange of finance. The gains in many cases are smaller. In the long run, however, as the excesses of the financial sector are reined in, the gains in the financial sector will probably fall way below those of the manufacturing sector. To help resolve this difficulty, the coalition should once and for all abandon the strategy of leaving manufacturing industry to fend for itself while it does everything possible to prop up the financial and knowledge-based services in the false belief that they alone can provide all that is needed. Instead, it should do everything it can to support manufacturing.
One key area where manufacturing needs assistance is in breaking down the barrier that persists between product design, at which we are strong, and scientific and technological advances—we endlessly talk about the excellence of our science and engineering base—and their implementation in profitable products. This difficulty has been discussed ad nauseam, but today we have the opportunity to do something about it. We can implement the recommendations of the Hauser review, to establish centres in which industry and universities work together in a focused manner to bring advances in product design and technological capability closer to the market. Such centres are used successfully in many of our competitor nations, most notably perhaps in the Fraunhofer centres in Germany, but they exist in this country in many places, one sparkling example being the centre linked with the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya. Industry should be encouraged to concentrate its R&D resources into these centres and play a leading role in overcoming the barrier between university research and its effective application. It is crucial that we concentrate our efforts and not, as we have in the past, spread them thinly and ineffectively across a large number of small and uncompetitive centres.
Incentives to get the financial sector to invest in manufacturing and to concentrate our research and development efforts in large, critical-mass R&D centres would greatly benefit our economy.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, on initiating this debate on an issue as vital as the value of manufacturing. We have had some illustrious contributions; I worry about trying to follow their quality.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, have said that manufacturing is not dead. My noble friend Lord Bhattacharrya made the same point in putting the state of our manufacturing in an international context. If the numbers have declined over here, so have they in other countries. That context is important, otherwise we make the task seem almost impossible.
Our concern is about manufacturing succeeding in the context of growth. We are concerned that the Government have the wrong policy on deficit reduction—it is too rapid and too deep and risks a fragile recovery. We would characterise it as an almost ideological stance on cuts to the public sector which they say will be obviated by growth in the private sector. I hope that they are right in that prediction, but that fails to acknowledge that many private sector manufacturing firms rely on contracts from the public sector. It fails to distinguish between investing for growth and infrastructure and general investment. My noble friend Lord Haskel got it right on the question of debt. There is debt which arises from investing in infrastructure and areas such as the Sheffield Forgemaster's loan. We thought it was an appalling decision by the Government not to carry on with that investment, which we believe would have proved to be not only a necessary but a profitable investment. There is still time for them to reconsider that.
We need a favourable climate. I turn to the question of skills and the skills deficit. I note that the Government's policies, which are now in a number of documents, whether the strategy for sustainable growth or the more recent document, The Path to Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth. I noticed that the Government stated in the latter that they are abandoning the targets set by Leitch. That is unfortunate. How will we measure progress on reducing the skills deficit?
I notice that we are not totally abandoning targets, because the Government have set themselves a target of 75,000 more adult apprenticeships. I am puzzled at that, because it is not just adult apprenticeships that we need; we need apprenticeships for the 16 to 18s. I have always described them as little beacons of hope to every young person. If we want to encourage young people into manufacturing, we need those apprenticeships, not just adult apprenticeships. I am puzzled that that is where the Government see the growth in apprenticeships.
The noble Lord, Lord Cotter, referred to the perception of manufacturing. We need a couple of programmes, “Strictly Manufacturing” and an “X-Factor” for manufacturing, to enhance the view that manufacturing is a great career choice for young people. We need to mean that and get the careers advice right. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, on that, as well: schools still do not seem to understand the value and importance of apprenticeships. Recently, I went to a school for a prize-giving. I asked people about apprenticeships and they said, “Oh yes, well there might be one or two”, but they are seen as an add-on. It is unfortunate that in our correct drive to increase the number of young people wanting to go to university, a vocational career was seen as a second-class option. It is certainly not. I looked at the latest figures on apprenticeships. We have a remarkable 270,000 starts on apprenticeships by the end of 2009-10. If the Government can match the progress that we made from 1997 until then from 65,000 to 270,000, I promise that I will applaud their success.
We are in a short time trying to cover a very complex subject. Another question was the decision to abolish the regional development agencies—something which attracted quite a bit of criticism by business. The Government have taken that decision and decided that local employment partnerships will be a success in future in encouraging manufacture. My question for the Minister is: there seem to be areas of the country that are not covered by local employment partnerships; what are you going to do about that? Secondly, the papers that the Government have produced to date define a number of key activities that they expect the LEPs to undertake. If that is serious, what about the funding for those organisations?
I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Willis, that he is wrong when he said that we had no manufacturing strategy. We did have a number of manufacturing strategies; the last one was “New industry, new jobs”, when we tried to look at the emerging jobs that would come from a new, greener economy. He himself talked about the manufacturing framework. I would not say that we had everything right—I do not think that any Government have got everything right on manufacturing —but to say that we did not have any manufacturing strategies is a bit of hyperbole.
I conclude by endorsing many of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Broers, made when he talked about the importance of manufacturing. He got the value bit right when he talked about the effect of a 10 per cent increase in exports, if we could achieve that. That is the target of this Government to build on some of the things that we did in trying to ensure that we had the skills base that manufacturing needs and the strategies for us to ensure that in this key period of our recovery, manufacturing can make the contribution that it needs to make.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, for securing this debate on the value of manufacturing to the United Kingdom. As he said, he set the scene; as far as we are concerned, it could not have been more timely given some of the announcements that we have made. The noble Lord, Lord Willis of Knaresborough, is to be thanked for giving up his birthday to be here and for his thundering good speech, on which we will reflect carefully. Of course, we welcome his celebration of UK manufacturing, which was very heartening to hear. Contrary to something that he said about the manufacturing framework, it has not been pulled; we are planning to announce it shortly and it will be set up with the necessary conditions.
The principal aim of the coalition Government is to return the United Kingdom economy to growth, but it needs to be a different sort of growth from what we have seen in the past, as the Chancellor and the Business Secretary reiterated yesterday. We must achieve growth that is more evenly balanced across the country, in the north as well as in the south, and growth across the range of business sectors, because we can no longer rely on just a handful of industries. We need growth that is sustainable and not so heavily based upon household consumption that is driven by personal debt or ever-increasing government spending. The alternative is an economy founded on greater levels of business investment, more export sales and a strong manufacturing base. Indeed, manufacturing already accounts for more than 50 per cent of United Kingdom exports, and contributes £140 billion annually to our economy. To respond to the question from the noble Viscount, yes, £140 billion is directly generated by manufacturing, but it also generates a lot of additional revenue. For every factory producing goods, there are accountants, designers and other service providers employed as well. Manufacturing accounts for 75 per cent of all industrial research and development investment and, with about 2.5 million jobs, accounts for roughly 8 per cent of total UK employment.
In the spending review, we took a number of tough decisions in order to tackle the deficit bequeathed to us by the previous Government, but we have also announced the areas in which we intend to invest what are, inevitably, limited financial resources at the moment, all with a view to growth. That investment will be in such things as in transport links and digital infrastructure, as well as £250 million in an additional 75,000 adult apprenticeship places, along with the apprenticeships that we already look to.
I have a question here about apprenticeships from the former Minister himself: are we ignoring the 16 to 18 apprenticeships? No, we are not. We are just trying to expand it and allow people the opportunity to retrain in adult life, and we are looking at the sort of apprenticeships that girls take up; they take up 50 per cent of the apprenticeships in this country but they tend to be in the caring, hairdressing or beauty professions, and we would like to see our girls encouraged at school with, as the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, mentioned, much better careers advice than we have seen so far—careers advice that goes right through from schools to further and higher education, so that that advice can be at all ages, at all times in life, to get those changes through.
We are creating a green investment bank with an initial budget of £1 billion so that the UK gains a technical and competitive edge in clean technologies and, perhaps more directly relevant to this debate, we are investing about £200 million to support the small and medium-sized enterprises in manufacturing. However, I take on board what the noble Lord, Lord Willis, said; we will reflect on the fact that we must remember that our big industries are very important.
All these measures, however, will benefit the manufacturing base, as will our reforms aimed at simplifying the tax system. Three or four of your Lordships talked about the tax system and simplification. We are well aware of trying to pull the Government off people who are trying to get their businesses going and instead simplify the tax system so that people know exactly where they are. We are reducing the main rate of corporation tax from 28 per cent to 24 per cent over the four years from April 2011, and the small-profits rate from 21 per cent to 20 per cent. The same goes for our assault on unnecessary red tape. New regulations are permitted now only a “one in, one out” basis.
Yesterday’s growth review announcement is the next stage in the process. Each government department must now identify and remove further barriers to economic growth. The review will also include a detailed look at advanced manufacturing, for which we will publish an action plan to coincide with next year’s Budget.
I know that we are time-limited, so I will briefly address some of the points that were made. The noble Lord, Lord Wade, made a blizzard of a speech on behalf of the north-west that picked up on so many things: inertia, lack of urgency, the fact that business wants “Yes” so let’s get it done, and so on. I hope that pulling the Government back off and some of the other things that I have talked about so far will help with that. He talked about local government not really getting to grips with the task.
We have also talked about LEPs, and we are certainly going to be moving on that. We have invited 25 local enterprise partnerships to form the local boards. The department has already held a workshop with the first 24 successful LEPs to discuss a wide range of policy issues, and that dialogue will continue. To answer the noble Lord, obviously we know that there are a lot more of these LEPs to come, but some of the contributions that they put forward were not going to work in the form in which they were submitted the first time around, so we are working with them right across the country to get the LEPs through. We have used them to replace a system that was using an enormous amount of money, the sort of money that we do not have left any more, and was not bringing the north and south together at all.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
Before the Minister sits down, the question that I would like answered, perhaps in writing if she cannot answer it today, is on funding for LEPs.
Baroness Wilcox
Unless I get this terribly wrong and they make me sit down—no, I had best not answer. Shall we write? It would be easier. We shall make a minute now, and I shall get through my brief. I will come back to the noble Lord, although I think that we have explained this fairly well.
Where is the growth White Paper? Our priority is to secure the economic recovery. Our growth paper and review, launched yesterday, set out how we will create the conditions for private sector growth. The decisions of business leaders, entrepreneurs and individual workers will build our future economy, which is why we are launching a growth review where the Government are inviting business to take part in a review of how each part of Government can address the barriers that are facing industry. It will include a detailed look at advanced manufacturing, producing an action plan at Budget 2011.
The noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, is one of the great gurus of this country and it is always a great delight to listen to him speak. It does not matter to me which side of the political spectrum he stands on to speak; it is wonderful to hear him. On foreign direct investment, the UK has the third-largest stock of inward foreign direct investment in manufacturing in the OECD, for what that is worth. About one-third of the 1,600 new inward foreign direct investment projects in 2009 were in the areas of advanced manufacturing, life sciences, ICT and environmental technology. However, I will reflect on the noble Lord’s words today. I can always learn something whenever he speaks.
The noble Lords, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville and Lord Cotter, talked, rightly, about the shortage of engineers. We recognise that it is still a problem for us. We welcome the comment by the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, and we support the move towards vocational training. He spoke in particular about apprenticeships. I think that is about all I can manage at the moment. Two minutes left—okay.
There is no question that manufacturing has a central role to play in the growth agenda. The UK has strengths in a diverse range of sectors from well established industries, such as aerospace and chemicals, to fledgling ones such as plastic electronics and composite technologies. We also know that major opportunities exist in new materials and new markets, especially in low carbon. Britain is the largest single market for offshore wind in the world and is already an attractive place for inward investment. Gamesa, a Spanish wind turbine manufacturer, is just the latest company to announce its intention to move here. It intends to invest £130 million by 2014 and expects to create more than 1,000 jobs, stimulating about 800 more jobs in the supply chain. There are further signs that manufacturing is beginning to move in the right direction after weathering what was, we hope, the worst of the global recession. For example, in 2009-10, inward investment in manufacturing generated 94,000 jobs, which was a 20 per cent rise on the previous year. Last week, a survey of 300 companies conducted by the Engineering Employers Federation found that UK manufacturing is growing at its fastest rate since 1994.
Let me see how quickly I can go. Both government and industry want to see UK manufacturing grow further. We cannot leave this to chance. We will shortly be launching a new manufacturing framework setting out the necessary conditions for a resurgence in UK manufacturing. The opportunities are there in overseas markets characterised by rising incomes and burgeoning demand, in the availability of new technologies and materials from our own science base and in the new business models that combine manufacturing and services to maximise revenue. Indeed, the framework will lay the foundations for a more co-ordinated approach that will complement the review of advanced manufacturing that I referred to previously.
Although it is the conviction of this Government that growth will best be achieved through a combination of private investment and a propitious business environment, we are under no illusions that the latter is yet within reach. Indeed, the former is heavily predicated upon the latter, and investors expect much more than warm words. Nevertheless, we are confident that our approach is the right one, and we will pursue it with vigour in order that Britain once again becomes synonymous with manufacturing. It only remains for me to thank the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, for raising this issue of such national importance today.
The Deputy Speaker
My Lords, that completes the business before the Grand Committee. The Committee stands adjourned.
House of Lords
UN: Death Penalty
(14 years ago)
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Baroness Stern
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they have taken to garner support from other member states for the resolution on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, to be considered at the 65th session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Baroness Stern
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. I declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Abolition of the Death Penalty.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, the United Kingdom welcomes the adoption of the UN resolution on the moratorium on the use of the death penalty and was pleased to co-sponsor this important initiative. The increase in support on the 2008 resolution to 107 votes in favour reinforces the international trend towards abolition of the death penalty. In October and November, the United Kingdom discussed the aims and content of the resolution with several key states, particularly those which we considered might adopt a new position or where we were keen to confirm support.
Baroness Stern
My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on the Government’s efforts at the United Nations and on the success of the resolution. The Minister will be aware that Singapore was one of the states strongly opposed to the resolution. In relation to Singapore, is the Minister aware of the book by the British author Alan Shadrake, which highlights flaws in the way in which the courts in Singapore deal with capital cases? Is he further aware that Mr Shadrake has been given a prison sentence of six weeks for insulting the Singapore judiciary as a consequence of his book? Therefore, have the Government made representations to Singapore about the treatment of Mr Shadrake and about the use of the death penalty there?
Lord Howell of Guildford
I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for her kind words. She is of course second to none in campaigning on this central and very important issue. Yes, I am aware of Mr Shadrake’s book and can confirm that he has been sentenced to six weeks in jail for contempt of court. My colleague, the Minister of State, Jeremy Browne MP, issued a statement on 16 November expressing dismay that Mr Shadrake had been charged, convicted and sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment in Singapore for expressing his personal views on the legal system.
Senior United Kingdom officials have discussed the death penalty with Singapore, most recently in July. The Singaporean authorities are aware that we certainly do not share their views on certain aspects of human rights, but we and the European Union continue to engage with them to encourage them to ratify and implement international human rights agreements and conventions.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, is my noble friend aware of the support that 22 Commonwealth countries still have for the death penalty? I note that the Foreign Office strategy document on the abolition of the death penalty makes an issue of the fact that the Government have to work with those countries. Will my noble friend tell us what he is doing to get the Commonwealth countries on board to abolish the death penalty?
Lord Howell of Guildford
This issue is particularly important to me personally, as of course it is to the Government as a whole. As we have outlined in HMG Strategy for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, we are looking to expand that work with the Commonwealth, given the number of Commonwealth countries that retain the death penalty, as my noble friend rightly pointed out. We have funded projects in a number of countries and there has been some success. We successfully challenged the mandatory death penalty in Barbados in 2009 and in Kenya in 2010. Indeed, the Kenya challenge led to the commutation of the sentences of the entire population of 4,000 prisoners being held on death row in 2009. There is some progress, but my noble friend is right to say that this is a very worrying area.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn
My Lords, does the Minister realise that the English Bar has a very good relationship with the Singapore Bar? Could we not use the English Bar to press on its colleagues in Singapore the necessity of being more generous towards people?
Lord Howell of Guildford
I think that that is a very good idea, and one that is often overlooked in thinking about and analysing the Commonwealth. The legal and judicial links between the 54 countries of the Commonwealth provide one of the most powerful opportunities to improve and upgrade human rights, and indeed the administration of justice generally. The noble Lord is absolutely right.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, in 2010 Sudan raised the age of criminal responsibility to 18 and introduced the Child Act 2010, which prohibits the execution of children. However, in October, 10 people, of whom four are believed to be children, were sentenced to death by hanging. What representations have the Government made to Sudan on this issue?
Lord Howell of Guildford
The noble Lord is right to use the word “However” because, although Sudan has raised the age of criminal responsibility to 18 and has indeed introduced an Act of Parliament that inhibits the execution of children—I should think so too—nevertheless, in October, 10 people were sentenced to death by hanging and four of them are believed to be children. We regularly raise human rights issues with the Government of Sudan, including that of the death penalty. We are aware of the incidents in question and continue to monitor the situation closely. I cannot tell the noble Lord more than that at the moment, but he is absolutely right to point out the contrast between what Sudan has passed as law and what it appears to be intending to do. I hope that we can take effective action.
Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that the only country in the Council of Europe to retain the death penalty is Belarus, which has held two executions this year. That is on a par with its disgraceful treatment of the Roma people. What efforts have the Government made to persuade Belarus to abandon the death penalty?
Lord Howell of Guildford
The noble Baroness is right to say that Belarus is the last country in Europe to retain the death penalty. Indeed, for that reason, it is not in the Council of Europe. We continue to lobby the authorities to establish a moratorium on the death penalty as a first step towards its abolition. Our embassy in Minsk has been working to support non-governmental organisations campaigning on death penalty issues, and my colleague the Minister of State, Jeremy Browne, whom I have already mentioned, has lent his support to a petition against the death penalty initiated by Belarusian NGOs. There is activity—indeed, I have a lot more briefing on the issue—but, in the interests of brevity, I shall say that we are doing quite a lot on this front.
Baroness O'Loan
My Lords, what recent representations have been made to the Government of Iran concerning their use of the death penalty, and in particular on the execution of juveniles and the use of stoning as a method of execution?
Lord Howell of Guildford
The Iran issue is of considerable concern because the human rights record of that regime is almost non-existent and certainly repulsive. We continue to make representations of a very vigorous kind. Iran executes more people than any other country in the world except for China. We know of at least 388 executions in 2009. While restating the UK’s view that capital punishment has no place in the modern world, we also regularly remind Iran of its commitments to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that the death penalty may be used only in rare cases for the most extreme crimes. Whether that reminder has any effect at this stage, I rather doubt, but we keep pressing on a very serious and dangerous situation.
Minimum Wage
Lord Lea of Crondall
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the growth in the number of unpaid interns, particularly in the London area; and how this relates to the minimum wage.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox)
My Lords, the Low Pay Commission undertakes research and provides advice to the Government on issues related to the national minimum wage. The commission assessed developments in internships in its 2010 report and reported evidence that a growing number of people were undertaking unpaid internships. It did not report on the London area separately and it did not report any effect of the minimum wage on the number of unpaid internships.
Lord Lea of Crondall
I thank the Minister for her reply, but it does not really address the anxieties of hundreds of thousands of young people for whom unpaid internship is their only option, despite their debts. First, will she commit HMG to producing some data, whether by random sample or otherwise, so that illegal practices can be identified and exposed? Otherwise her department will confirm its reputation as having no serious interest in enforcing the national minimum wage. Secondly, guidance on what is possible at the moment under the national minimum wage is really about what employers do not need to do, so will she look at the guidance and bring a Statement to the House before Christmas as to how it needs to be strengthened?
Baroness Wilcox
The Government of course recognise concerns about the increase in unpaid internships and the risk of exploitation and we are working to improve guidance on the status of interns and to raise awareness. We will ensure that enforcement of the national minimum wage continues to be effective and that resources are focused on where they will have the maximum impact. We want to make as many internships and work experience opportunities as possible available to our talented young people, from all backgrounds, because these opportunities may lead them into work in the future. Of course we wish to make sure that the guidance is clear and of course we wish to avoid people being abused—children particularly—in this way. At the same time, we want to be careful that we leave these opportunities for youngsters to gain good experience and possibly lead themselves into work in the future.
Lord Razzall
My Lords, I support the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Lea, particularly with regard to the expectation of the Government producing data on this. However, does the noble Baroness recognise that, for many people leaving college or university at the moment, at this stage of the economic cycle, their future path to employment often lies in starting with unpaid internship, which then leads to permanent employment? Does she recognise that getting the balance right between that and exploitation of youth is something that the coalition Government need to look at?
Baroness Wilcox
My noble friend is exactly right and I agree with him on everything that he has said. As we are a coalition, it makes life so much easier that we can discuss these things sensibly. Thank you.
Lord Myners
My Lords, I declare an interest as a former chairman of the Low Pay Commission. May I ask the Minister two simple questions? First, will she confirm that there will be no encroachment on the independence of the Low Pay Commission? Secondly, will she confirm that there will be no diminution in the funds available to survey and enforce compliance with the national minimum wage?
Baroness Wilcox
On the first question, I do not have any answer at the moment. I think that everything seems to be as it is. In the remit of the 2011 report, the Low Pay Commission was asked to review the labour market position of young people, including apprenticeships and internships. The commission will continue to do its work and report to the Government by the end of February next year, when I will return with that finding.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough
Does my noble friend accept that a significant number of unpaid interns work in the Houses of Parliament and that we should be setting standards rather than exploiting these young people? Furthermore, many young people, particularly from the north of England and with limited income, cannot possibly come to intern here. Will the Minister discuss with her colleagues in DWP the possibility of making JSA available to interns coming to work in Parliament and other places in London so that there is at least a minimum recognition of the expenses that they have to fulfil?
Baroness Wilcox
We are unlikely to look at this. However, in BIS we pay interns a wage and things seem to be going very well.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
Does the Minister agree that the problem with unpaid internships is that they discriminate against graduates from poorer households? Can she confirm that the Government will build on programmes introduced by the previous Government, such as the graduate talent pool and the scheme with the Federation of Small Businesses to encourage its members to create a number of opportunities?
Baroness Wilcox
In 2009, the Department for Work and Pensions announced a series of temporary measures, which the previous Government of course took forward. We have been using those measures and will do so until the end of this financial year. As we emerge from the recession, we will introduce more effective support for young people and the unemployed. A new work programme is coming out in the new year and we will be happy to bring that forward.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, does the Minister accept that many of us are interested in the question asked by noble friend Lord Myners, which she is unable to answer at the moment? We would like a written answer, with a copy in the Library, on whether the Low Pay Commission is going to remain independent of government.
Baroness Wilcox
Yes, it is. I am happy to answer that. I am sorry that I did not answer it before, but there will be no encroachment.
Wedgwood Museum
The Earl of Clancarty
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will take steps to ensure that the Wedgwood Museum and its collection will be protected for future generations.
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, over the past 12 months the Government have provided expertise, advice and funding to support the Wedgwood museum through a challenging time. The Charity Commission has now given consent to allow court proceedings to determine whether the Wedgwood collection should be available to an administrator. The Government will await the court’s decision before considering further steps.
The Earl of Clancarty
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Does she agree that it is entirely wrong, and not a little crazy, that the future of the magnificent and historic Wedgwood collection—a true national treasure—is threatened by the possibility of a massive debt not to a private company but to a non-departmental government body, the Pension Protection Fund? Have the Government plans to safeguard the collection so that it can remain in its award-winning museum in the heart of the Potteries? Will the Government take steps to ensure that, whatever the outcome of next year’s court case, no other collection can be so threatened?
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, who has tirelessly campaigned on this issue. We hope that museums will learn from this case and make certain that collections held in trust have legal protection to safeguard their objects. The court will determine whether the collection is available to an administrator and is put up for sale. DCMS will attempt to secure the collection for the nation. As the noble Earl said, clearly this is an extraordinary case. DCMS has helped all along, but it cannot provide further funding.
The Lord Bishop of Winchester
I declare an interest as a previous Bishop of Stafford with responsibility for the city of Stoke-on-Trent. Does the Minister recognise that the museum is not only one of the finest ceramic collections in the world—begun by the great, farsighted and humane Josiah himself—but a repository and a monument to the craftsmanship and the labour of Potteries people over two-and-a-half centuries and vital for the self-respect of people in those parts? Can she give an assurance that, if by any chance the court’s judgment in January goes against the trustees and in favour of the PPF, her department will do everything possible to ensure a stay of execution, so that there is no rapid dismemberment and selling off, in order that a means can be found to hold the collection as a single entity in north Staffordshire?
Baroness Rawlings
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester is absolutely right that the collection is outstanding. DCMS has been in conversations and has provided money—and is continuing to do so—because the collection is for the whole of the area of Stoke-on-Trent and the Potteries. We realise that this is an extraordinary situation that has unfortunately come about—under the new Act of, I think, 2008—because of the pension fund.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Would it not be grotesque if the Wedgwood archive, which is so extraordinarily important for our country’s industrial heritage, were broken up, destroyed and sold to raise no more than a small fraction of the deficit in the Waterford Wedgwood pension scheme? While we hope that the court will rule in this case that the collection is inviolate and thus enable the collection to remain as and where it is in the Potteries, will the Minister please say what the Government will do to put in place a regime that will ensure that there is reliable protection in the future for nationally designated museum collections?
Baroness Rawlings
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has been involved with this for a long time. We have discussed this and he is absolutely right that the Government cannot influence what the court will take into account. The administrator is currently in control of the museum’s operations and will present the case to the court with evidence from the trustees. We hope that the trustees will be able to put their view to the court as part of the evidence. Timings are difficult, but the noble Lord is right that the museum trust is currently liable under the new pension law for the pension debts of around £60,000. That is tiny compared to the liability of £134 million.
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury
On a slightly wider point, can my noble friend the Minister confirm that the £1.3 million of funding that is going directly to the British Museum to run the portable antiquities scheme will be ring-fenced?
Baroness Rawlings
I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter. It will be ring-fenced. The £1.3 million given to the British Museum is very important. I thank her for that question.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, does the Minister acknowledge the overarching responsibility of the department to preserve for the nation not only the important collection at the Wedgwood museum but those of a number of other specialist and iconic museums, such as the Geffrye museum, the Horniman museum and the Design Museum, which are currently under threat from cuts in her department?
Baroness Rawlings
I am aware of these other museums and the issue is being looked into at the moment.
Health: Passive Smoking
(14 years ago)
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Lord Faulkner of Worcester
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that passive smoking annually kills 600,000 people worldwide, and to the recommendation that the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control be immediately enforced.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, the report from the World Health Organisation sets out the significant harms to health from exposure to second-hand smoke. The United Kingdom is a strong supporter of the FCTC and has worked hard to implement it since ratification of the treaty in 2004. Today, we exceed our treaty obligations in this area through the effective and popular smoke-free legislation. Tackling tobacco will be a key element in the Government’s new public health White Paper.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that very positive and welcome reply, which is particularly interesting in view of the interview given by the Secretary of State, Mr Andrew Lansley, on the “Today” programme this morning, in which he had some interesting things to say about packaging. Would the Minister comment on that? Does he agree with Mr Lansley’s assertion that “the visibility of cigarettes … constantly tends to reinforce smoking, but it also leads to initiation of smoking amongst young people”? Can he confirm that it is necessary for the United Kingdom, in order to comply with Article 13 of the framework convention, to proceed with restrictions on tobacco display and the banning of vending machines?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the noble Lord is correct that plain packaging is an idea that we are considering, which would require tobacco products to have standardised plain packaging so that only basic information and health and picture warnings were visible. The Government are going to look at whether the plain packaging of tobacco products could be an effective way to reduce the number of young people who take up smoking and to help those who are trying to quit, but the decision will depend on the strength of the evidence, which we are going to have to look at.
On tobacco displays, the Government are currently considering options around the display of tobacco in shops. We recognise the need to take action both to reduce tobacco consumption and to reduce burdens on businesses. No decisions have yet been made on that.
The noble Lord will know that the issue of vending machines is currently subject to a legal challenge. We await the judgment from the court before making any further announcements.
Lord Glentoran
My Lords, the noble Lord will know that there is a considerable—
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, we can speak only one at a time. I suggest that my noble friend Lord Alderdice speaks first and then my noble friend Lord Glentoran.
Lord Strathclyde
Let us hear from a Cross-Bencher first and then from my noble friend Lord Glentoran.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, on Her Majesty’s Government’s commitment after ratification in 2004 to produce a five-year implementation report, I note that the WHO website gives no indication that the report due on 16 March this year was in fact forwarded to the WHO. Will my noble friend confirm whether the report has been forwarded?
In addition, given the enormous amount of smuggled tobacco—accounting for some half of hand-rolled tobacco and 10 per cent of cigarette tobacco in the United Kingdom—what has happened to our commitment under Article 15 to deal with illicit tobacco and, indeed, to the protocol mentioned in the commitment in the Uruguay meeting of earlier this month to ensure that, by 2012, others will also fulfil their responsibilities?
Earl Howe
In answer to my noble friend’s first question, yes, the report has been forwarded to the WHO.
On illicit trade, HMRC leads on tackling the availability of illicit tobacco and has carried out—as I am sure my noble friend knows—a great deal of activity to tackle that market through its overseas network of fiscal crime liaison officers, as well as through activity at the border and inland detection work. HMRC also works closely with local authority trading standards officers. Those efforts have led to a decline in the market share of illicit cigarettes from 21 per cent in 2000 to 11 per cent, according to the latest available figures. However, he is right that hand-rolling tobacco in particular remains a problem.
Lord Patel
Does the Minister agree that the current packaging of cigarettes is used as a form of marketing by the tobacco industry?
Earl Howe
My Lords, that is the very question that we want to look at. Of course, tobacco companies regard their brands as a form of marketing and they attach value to the intellectual property that they consider to be in those brands. However, the issue from a public health perspective is whether the design of a pack actually entices non-smokers to take up smoking or indeed deters smokers from giving up. That is the question that we will examine.
Lord Naseby
Is my noble friend aware that the oldest member of Surrey County Cricket Club last year claimed that his longevity was due to a combination of smoking fags and good sex?
Lord Naseby
Well, that was not his view.
Furthermore, in relation to intellectual property, which is what we are taking about with packaging, is it not a very brave Government—even a coalition Government—that interfere with international laws that are already on the statute book to protect intellectual property, which is basically what packaging is?
Earl Howe
My Lords, of course my noble friend is right that there are legal issues inherent in this whole question, which we will look into very closely.
On his first point, it is always a pleasure to hear of someone who has lived a long time in good health despite smoking. However, I say to my noble friend that the Royal College of Physicians estimates that more than 300,000 primary care consultations are recorded each year across the UK for conditions in children due to exposure to second-hand smoke.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
Given the risk to children that has just been highlighted of exposure to passive smoking, what action do the Government intend to take against smoking in cars—which is a very restricted space, particularly when the windows are closed—and also in schools or among young people generally, so that young people have the courage to challenge when somebody lights up in close vicinity?
Earl Howe
My Lords, we have no plans to legislate further for banning smoking in cars. As she will know, when a car is used as a workplace smoking is illegal, but when a car is being used privately that is a different matter. We do not intend to legislate.
On messages in schools, we know that youngsters are concerned about parental smoking. In fact, the younger the child, the more concerned the child tends to be. Schools are encouraged to include advice on smoking in the PSHE curriculum.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, following the successful implementation of the smoking ban in all workplaces and public places in July 2007, which was opposed by many in the party opposite, will the Minister undertake—
Baroness Thornton
I except the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, from that.
Will the Minister undertake to ensure that, under the proposals for GP commissioning, NHS smoking cessation services will continue to be effectively commissioned and funded and that nicotine products will continue to be prescribed?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, is wrong. The Conservative Party did not oppose the second-hand smoke provisions. We did not oppose them in principle; we supported the Government. We opposed some of the detail, but that is a different thing.
On smoking cessation, there is no doubt that local stop-smoking services are effective and are available free of charge in communities across the country. Evidence shows that the most effective way of stopping smoking is with local stop-smoking services because smokers get behavioural support as well as effective medicines and treatments on the NHS.
Arrangement of Business
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, at a convenient point after 3.30 pm, my noble friend Earl Howe will repeat a Statement on the public health White Paper.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
(14 years ago)
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Baroness McDonagh
That it be an instruction to the Committee of the Whole House to which the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill has been committed that they divide the Bill in two so as to separate the provisions relating to the parliamentary voting system from those relating to constituencies.
Baroness McDonagh
My Lords, I declare an interest as a former General Secretary of the Labour Party and also, like many people of all political persuasions in this House and none, I have been a lifelong grass-roots community campaigner, passionate about how democracy works in our communities. That is why I was interested in this Bill and looked forward to examining it. I was slightly worried because, on the face of it, it appeared this was two Bills not one. I then read the Bill and indeed it read like it was two Bills and not one. Who was I to question it as a mere Back-Bencher? I was sure it would all become clear to me when we came to debate it. I entered the debate and, yes, it debated like it was two Bills, not one. It was a car crash. It was impossible to scrutinise and the Minister was unable to answer the points and the questions that were raised.
This reads, looks and debates like two Bills because it is two Bills. It is what we in south London call a cut and shut. I do not know how many noble Lords are familiar with the term but I will explain it. A cut and shut happens when rogue traders buy cars that have crashed. They have either hit something from the front or been hit from behind. The cars are split and the two pieces are welded together. To the unsuspecting buyer it looks like a fantastic car, but woe betide the person who gets into it: it is a dangerous vehicle. That is what the Government are creating with this cut and shut—a dangerous vehicle for our democracy.
To be fair to the Government, no one has tried to say that this is anything other than politically expedient. No one has pretended that it is other than two Bills. I appreciate it when everyone tells me that this is very clearly set out in David Laws’s book but they did not need to do that. On this side we are all a little bored by political biography and we would not have got around to reading it. However, I understand how it happened. When you go on a date, you are not that sure of the other party so you enter into a pre-nup. Both parties wanted two separate Bills and each was unsure that the other party would vote for theirs, so they were put together. Now that you are in a secure marriage—it certainly looks like that to me—you can rely on each other to vote for each other’s Bill.
So that we can properly scrutinise this legislation, I—again, as a Back-Bencher—attempted to table amendments. I thought to myself, “This can’t be the right way to go about this”. I took advice from our fantastic Clerks, who explained that the Bill could indeed be split. It has been done twice in the past—once successfully, albeit in the originating House. That Bill was split four times. The second time, the vote was lost. I read the rules—this has been a great Bill for my learning experience, so I thank you for that—and could find nothing that would prohibit splitting the Bill. It seemed a sensible way to proceed, particularly as there is a time constraint on the referendum. It is an important debate for the public to have.
However, subsequently, I now understand that there may be problems if the Government were not to support the Motion. It is not my intention to do anything that would stop us getting this legislation through properly and efficiently. Therefore, I call on the Government to support the Motion. That will allow us to treat the Bill in a timely, efficient and properly scrutinised way. I beg to move.
Lord Pannick
I remind noble Lords that your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, of which I am a member, reported to the House earlier this month that it understood the need for urgency in relation to Part 1 of the Bill, which concerns the proposed referendum. However, it suggested that the case for proceeding rapidly with Part 2—relating to constituencies—was far less strong. We expressed regret that the Bill was not the subject of any pre-legislative scrutiny or any prior public consultation. We further advised the House that, because of the lack of prior consultation and consideration of the important issues raised by Part 2, several vital constitutional concerns had not been properly addressed by the Government—for example, the impact that the proposed changes might have on the relationship between the Executive and Parliament. It is very important to ensure that there is sufficient time to give Part 2 the closest scrutiny. I, too, am concerned—speaking entirely for myself and not the committee—that the Government’s understandable wish to proceed speedily with Part 1 may adversely impact on scrutiny of Part 2. It would be no answer to the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, if the Minister says that there will be adequate time for debate on the whole Bill. Time is required not just for debate but for reflection by all noble Lords and the Government and for cross-party discussions before changes of this constitutional significance are made.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, with some trepidation because he always speaks with great authority, as those who have often appeared in court appear to do in your Lordships’ House. There is a wider issue here that your Lordships’ House needs to address. I am absolutely certain that the noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, has the best of intentions but, as we all know from our early youth, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The effect of delaying Part 2 by separating out that part of the Bill into a separate Bill would be, inevitably, that it would be delayed dramatically. In a way, it reflects the point that the noble Lord has just made, but it should be taken in a different direction. On these Benches—and on all sides of the House—we want to make sure that the boundary revision is fair, workable and sensitive to local conditions. It will take time in your Lordships’ House to decide how to do that.
I recognise that there are differing views about different parts of the Bill on all sides of the House. The problem is that, if we simply discard Part 2, separate it out and take it later, it cannot be implemented with proper consideration of all the local conditions in time for the next general election. There is wide concern on that point. It really would be ridiculous at the early part of this Parliament to delay this process so dramatically that it could not be implemented in time for the next general election. I hope, therefore, that you Lordships will very carefully consider what has happened in the other House on these issues.
Lord Clinton-Davis
Why does the noble Lord aver that this Bill, if properly considered, could not be implemented in time for the next election? It is absurd.
Lord Tyler
My Lord, my point is that, if it is held together as one Bill, it can. So the noble Lord is supporting my position. However, if it is separated into two Bills, then, by definition, and, indeed, because of the way in which this has been presented, it is clear that that would be a delaying tactic. That may not be the intention of the noble Baroness but, no doubt, we will hear from noble Lords on the opposition Front Bench. I will be very interested to hear what exactly their position is on this because, for all those who profess to want to make this a careful consideration of important legislation—of very considerable importance to the other place—there seem to be others in this place who think that it is a very good opportunity to delay, divert and derail the acknowledged agreement between the two coalition parties that we want to make progress on both counts. Both are trying to give more power to the individual voter so that in each constituency there is a better chance of having equal value.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, has made it clear in this House, at Second Reading and since—privately and publicly—that his position is to try to delay, divert and derail this Bill. What fun it would have been if he had adopted the role of courtroom jester when he was Lord Chancellor. This is an important Bill. Your Lordships’ House could do great damage to its own reputation—and possibly even to its future role in our constitution—if it simply seeks to play games with this Bill. It is a Bill, after all, which almost uniquely deals with the other place. Of course we have to try to improve it but, if we are seen to be simply standing in the way of the other place—where this Bill has been passed as one Bill—then we will be doing great damage.
I am sure that I do not need to remind the House that the previous Administration, in which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, played a very distinguished part, committed themselves to a referendum on electoral reform way back in 1997. There is no question that that part of the Bill has not been discussed ad nauseam over the past 13 years so we are not rushing into that part of the Bill.
As to more recent commitments, it was of course a last-minute death-bed repentance on this issue, within the context of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, that in the past 12 months permitted and committed the previous Government to having a referendum, and there the commitment was again in the Labour Party’s manifesto just a few short months ago. In those circumstances, if we sought to delay this legislation in a way that is out of character with your Lordships’ House, we would stoke up further irritation that Peers always seem to be devious and seeking to delay and dilute reform when they should be proceeding in a sensible and businesslike way.
If we want to guarantee the fate of most Cross-Benchers, when Peers are seen to be delaying important changes to our House of Commons, passing this Motion is the best way to do it. The political and public pressure for a fully elected senate will increase if your Lordships are seen to be playing games.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I know and fully acknowledge that this is not the other place, but I am slightly alarmed by the sort of threats being made by the noble Lord opposite. When this House comes to deliberate on House of Lords reform, it will do so in due course and with the wisdom and knowledge held by every Member of this House. No Member should be under any threat in terms of the legislation which is about to be debated by this House.
Lord Tyler
I understand precisely what the noble Baroness is saying and I understand that that will be the role of your Lordships’ House. All that I am saying is that we have to be extraordinarily careful with this measure which, after all, deals entirely with the other place. It is not relevant to how your Lordships’ House is composed. If it is seen by the public outside that this is simply an attempt to delay and dilute important legislation, and to prevent it reaching the statute book in good time and in good order, we will not be doing anything to improve the reputation of your Lordships’ House.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I think it would be helpful if I set out the Front Bench’s position. Our position is that it would be a good thing to split the Bill. At the end of last week, I believed that the Motion would have the effect of splitting the Bill. Further constructive discussions with the Clerks yesterday revealed that if the Bill were split, it would nevertheless have to come back together again before it went to the Commons. In those circumstances there is no purpose in a split unless the Government agree to a split which allows the two Bills in the hypothetical split to go at separate paces. It seems obvious that the Bills should go at separate paces, because one has the drop-dead deadline of 5 May whereas the other, which is much bigger, will take longer.
The Front Bench’s position is that we support the principle of a split but recognise that this Motion cannot achieve it. We will therefore not support it in any vote. I understand from my noble friend Lady McDonagh that she will not press it to a vote. We support her in asking the Government to think about that. I have just one further point. Should anyone in this House wish there to be any delay, I suggest that they urge the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, to make more speeches.
Lord Hunt of Wirral
My Lords, I rise just to respond to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton—it is a brief point. Life is always difficult in opposition, particularly when one has been in government for so long. I underwent 13 years of opposition and recall that I could have resorted to procedural devices on many occasions.
It is no use the noble and learned Lord shouting from a sedentary position.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Let me make clear our position: we are not supporting the Motion. So perhaps this avuncular chat could be postponed to another occasion.
Lord Hunt of Wirral
I want to know who is the uncle.
All I will say is that we have suddenly begun to embark on a number of procedural debates. That is all well and good, and it is part of the tradition of the House that we should do so. However, I question whether we need to explore the uncertain waters of hybridity, and whether we should ignore 99 years of tradition by questioning a money Bill. Now when we need to proceed to our normal function of revising and improving a Bill, I simply say to the Opposition that they should take time to think.
When I was opposing the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, of Foy, on the Postal Services Bill, I was made aware that there were two or three procedural devices that I could have resorted to had I wanted to delay the Bill. I reached the conclusion that I should do my best from the Front Bench to enable this House to do what it always does well, which is to revise and improve. I would just say that reputations take generations to build, but they can be lost overnight by an irresponsible Opposition.
I know that my uncle, the noble and learned Lord, responds to Shakespeare. Perhaps I may just quote again:
“O! I have lost my reputation. I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial”.
They should think again.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon
My Lords, I cannot understand why the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, criticises the Opposition when in fact the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, got up to say that he does not support the Motion and that—if it were put to vote, which it is not going to be—he would not vote for it. I really cannot understand why the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, started to put it about regarding the noble and learned Lord.
The problem arises—do not make any mistake about it—not because of this Motion but because the Government decided to put two separate matters together in a single Bill. That is the real problem. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, may laugh, but he knows perfectly well that if he had been sitting on those Benches he would have been doing exactly the same thing. He would be opposing the bringing together of two completely separate issues.
To make it even worse, the Bill presumes to hold a referendum on a very important constitutional issue—the method of voting—on the same day as the local elections and the Assembly elections. That has already been discussed at Second Reading but, nevertheless, it is a bad thing to do. The issue of AV voting is so constitutionally important that it should have been dealt with on a separate date, after proper examination and proper information to the people of this country.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I take issue with the assumption of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that the House of Lords is not, as part of its responsibility, a guardian for the proprieties of passing legislation. It will not do for him to suggest that when we seek to establish whether a Bill is hybrid or whether it is proceeding properly or requires other forms, we are time-wasting, dithering or trying to delay. It is part of the task of the House to establish propriety. When I was a Minister, time and again Members opposite wished on Report to move back to Committee. I could have alleged, with the same force as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, did today, that this was time-wasting and impeding of the Government, and that the party opposite was trying to use process to delay important legislation. I would not have dreamt of it, because it was proper and right that, if there was a concern about the propriety of how we were handling legislation, those views should be listened to and, even if it took extra weeks to get the legislation through, we should take that time—and we did. I take it very ill indeed, when the Opposition are rightly reminding the Government of their responsibility to observe the proprieties of legislation, to be accused of time-wasting and hindering the pace of the Government to succeed.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
I am surprised that neither the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, nor the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, referred to the big change that will be made in the process and procedure for determining constituencies. I do not declare an interest because at the moment I do not have a vote in elections to the House of Commons. However, I know from years of experience in politics that the public are very interested in and concerned about the process of how parliamentary boundaries are determined. I believe that we have a duty and resent anyone telling me that I am party to time-wasting. In my imagination, I could hear the howls of rage that both noble Lords I named would have uttered had the previous Government attempted to do away with the right of people in our communities to express a view.
Ultimately, I would like to be out of this place and have my vote back, because, as noble Lords know, I have a personal commitment to reform of your Lordships' House. However, while I am a Member, I bitterly resent anybody implying that my motives are unworthy. In my experience, the Conservatives’ partners have in the past used to the full their right to locally-based inquiries into where boundaries should be. On this issue, we are defending the rights of communities to speak for themselves. We are the only ones who can do it, and if we do not, the rights will be abolished.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, effectively accuses this side of the House of procedural malpractice, he might care to consider that the coalition is introducing radical proposals for constitutional reform without any authority to do so from the electors. He might also care to consider that the Bill comes to us from the other place with very important parts of it entirely unexamined, both in Committee and on Report. Against that background, perhaps he would accept that it is the duty of the Opposition to scrutinise this legislation exhaustively.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
My Lords, we are in danger of having a rerun of Second Reading: let us not to do that. I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, for what he said. I completely agree with much, although not all, of it. He spotted that the Motion before us is defective and would not do what the noble Baroness intends. I am glad that he confirmed that, if there is a vote, he will not be able to support the Motion. I thank my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral, who spoke extremely well, and my noble friend Lord Tyler, who made some important points about the Bill, some of which I will return to.
Most Peers came here to attend the Committee on the Bill. Instead, we have had yet another procedural device. I am not questioning the motives of the noble Baroness. I am sure that she believes that it should be two Bills rather than one. However, to put that Motion now gives the impression that noble Lords opposite do not want to engage in the proper debate in Committee that I hope we will have in a moment.
Noble Lords opposite do huff and puff rather too much. Only a few months ago, earlier this year, we had the previous Government’s Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill. Noble Lords opposite will remember that legislation joyously. It included provisions on no fewer than 13 different subjects ranging from a referendum on the alternative vote to freedom of information, the removal of hereditary peers and the ratification of treaties. Not one Peer opposite—including the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis—jumped up with great outrage about how wrong it was to do that. It was not wrong then, and it is not wrong now.
Lord Strathclyde
No, please—I did not want to tempt the noble Baroness to her feet for more outrage.
Noble Lords opposite also sought to progress that legislation with unseemly haste. Was that politically expedient? I cannot possibly guess their original motive. So it is somewhat surprising to hear it suggested today that a referendum on the alternative vote merits a stand-alone Bill. If our Bill is a car crash, their Bill was a multiple pile-up.
My noble friend Lord McNally and I made it clear during the Second Reading that there are compelling reasons why the Bill before the House takes the form that it does—as the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, I am sure knows. The two parts of the Bill are fundamentally related: both concern how MPs are elected to another place. Together, they concern arrangements for the next general election in 2015, and as such merit consideration in the round, as a package. It would not make sense to prioritise reform of the voting system while leaving the fundamental unfairness in constituencies untouched. Nor would it make sense to tackle unfair boundaries but deny the public the opportunity to vote in a referendum on the voting system—something that noble Lords opposite promised in their own manifesto.
It is simply not the case that the referendum can be separated from the boundary reviews, which can then be scrutinised at leisure. Current boundaries in England are 10 years out of date, and it is not unreasonable that they should not be 15 years out of date at the next election. The Boundary Commission must be allowed to get on with its reviews so that there is time for proper consultation on boundary recommendations and all concerned are given an adequate period to prepare for a general election on the new constituency boundaries.
The measures in the Bill were foreshadowed in our coalition agreement. They form the key plank in our commitment to reform this country’s political system, having been endorsed in another place.
Baroness Corston
My Lords, does the Leader of the House accept that he is wrong in one of the assertions he makes? Many parliamentary constituency boundaries were changed in 2005—my previous one in particular.
Lord Strathclyde
All of them may not be out of date, but many are. We are going to put that fundamental unfairness right. Surely the noble Lords opposite are not supporting the continuation of unfairness.
A couple of weeks ago this House gave the Bill a Second Reading. I believe that, in doing so, the House accepted its general principles and indeed its overall architecture. The House accepted it as one Bill. We are due to go into Committee on the Bill, in its entirety, this afternoon. Some noble Lords have put down amendments to the Bill. That is the normal way that we go about scrutinising legislation in this House. The instruction tabled by the noble Baroness would pre-empt that scrutiny process. I very much hope that the noble Baroness, having heard this short debate, and having made her point, will now withdraw the Motion.
Baroness McDonagh
I thank all noble Lords who have spoken, and I would like to refer to a couple of the points. I say to noble Lords opposite that the Motion would not discard Part 2 of the Bill and that every bit of work done up to now would remain. It would simply allow us the opportunity to have proper scrutiny.
I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde: please do not tell us that we do not wish to debate the Bill. When we were debating it, there was not one Conservative Member on the Benches opposite. The Motion is a genuine and constructive attempt to make both Bills work, and I am sorry that the Government have not seen it as such. I think that it would make it much easier to pass the legislation, but I will not be pressing it to a vote. However, I make it clear that, like many other Back-Benchers, I will not take criticism or be harried for fully discharging our responsibility to scrutinise the legislation properly. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Public Health
(14 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health.
“With permission Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on public health. Today, the Government publish a public health White Paper with two clear aims: first, to protect and improve the health of the nation; and, secondly, to reduce health inequalities by improving the health of the poorest, fastest.
The need for this White Paper is beyond question. Britain currently has among the highest rates of obesity and sexually transmitted infections in Europe. Smoking still claims 80,000 lives a year. Alcohol-related admissions to hospital are unacceptably high and, in recent years, inequalities in health have widened, rather than narrowed. As Professor Sir Michael Marmot’s review to my department put it,
‘dramatic health inequalities are still a dominant feature of health … across all regions’.
There is a seven-year gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest neighbourhoods, but a gap of nearly 17 years for disability-free life expectancy. About a third of all cases of circulatory disease, half of all cases of vascular dementia and many cancers could be avoided by reducing smoking, improving diet and increasing physical activity.
We need to do better, and we will not make progress if public health continues to be seen just in terms of NHS provision and of state interventions. Two-thirds of our potential impact on life expectancy depends on issues outside healthcare. Factors like employment, education, environment and equality all are determinants of health. They are, as Michael Marmot put it,
‘the causes of the causes’,
the underlying factors leading to poorer health. Unhealthy behaviours, like drinking too much, smoking or taking drugs are part of a complex chain of individual circumstances and social causes, typically rooted in poor aspiration, adverse peer pressure and low self-esteem.
The human cost of poor health is obvious. So, too, is the financial one. Alcohol abuse costs us an estimated £2.7 billion and obesity costs an extra £4.2 billion each year to the NHS alone. And, while there are things we can do to help, we cannot resolve all the difficult issues from Whitehall. Hence, this White Paper has one clear message above all others: that it is time for politicians to stop telling people to make healthy choices, and time to start actually helping them to do it.
There will be a profound shift in tone, attitude and outlook. Rather than nannying people, we will nudge them by working with industry to make healthy lifestyles easier. Rather than lecturing people about their habits, we will give them the support they need to make their own choices and, rather than dictating policies from the centre, we will support leadership from communities by giving local authorities more power to develop the right approaches for their communities.
This White Paper is a genuine cross-government strategy. Through the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Public Health, we will put good health and well-being at the heart of all our policies. To do so, we will recognise that we need to provide support at key times in people’s lives. We will not only measure general well-being, we will seek to achieve it.
For instance, because we know a mother’s health is key to a child’s health and development, we are investing in Sure Start children’s centres and 4,200 more health visitors to give families the support they need. Because we know that those who are unemployed for long periods are more likely to be admitted to hospital and more likely to die prematurely, we are transforming the welfare system, ending the benefits trap, and making sure that work always pays through a single universal credit. Because we know more people would cycle to work or school more often if there were safer routes for them to use, the Government are investing £560 million in sustainable transport.
Subject to parliamentary approval, there will be a new dedicated public health service—Public Health England—which will provide the resources, the ideas, the evidence and the funding to support local strategies. Public Health England will bring together, within the Department of Health, expertise from a range of public health bodies, including the Health Protection Agency, the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse and the Chief Medical Officer’s department. It will work with industry and other government departments to shape the wider environment as it affects our health. It will also develop health protection plans”.
The Countess of Mar
I am awfully sorry to disturb the noble Earl and I am sorry to have to ask two very venerable noble Lords if they would mind having their conversation outside the Chamber as suggested in the Companion to the Standing Orders. I cannot concentrate on what the Minister is saying.
Earl Howe
The Statement continues:
“It will also develop health protection plans and screening programmes to protect people from health risks. Because we also know that the foundations of good health are rooted in the community, often at a neighbourhood level, we must strengthen and renew local leadership to ensure that these efforts reach deeply into communities and match their unique circumstances.
Under this White Paper, the lead responsibility for improving health will pass to local government for the first time in 40 years. We intend to give local authorities new powers to plan, co-ordinate and deliver local strategies with the NHS and other partners and to embed the foundations of good health in ways that fit local circumstances. Directors of public health will provide strong and consistent leadership within local councils.
We also intend to establish the new local statutory health and well-being boards as a way of bringing together the NHS and local government. Whereas before, public health budgets were constantly raided by other parts of the NHS, we will prioritise public health spending through a new ring-fenced budget. We will look to the highest standards of evidence and evaluation to ensure that this money is spent wisely. The new outcomes framework for public health, on which we will consult shortly, will provide consistent measures to judge progress on key elements across all parts of the system—nationally and locally. The framework will emphasise the need to reduce health inequalities and will be supported by a new health premium incentivising councils which demonstrate progress in improving outcomes.
We have learnt over the last decade that state interventions alone cannot achieve success. We need a new sense of collective endeavour—a partnership between communities, businesses and individuals, which transforms not only the way we deliver public health, but also the way we think about it.
Through the public health responsibility deal, the Government will work with industry to help people make informed decisions about their diet and lifestyle, to improve the environment for health, and to make healthy choices easier. Through greater use of voluntary and community organisations, we will reach out to families and individuals and develop new ways to target the foundations of good health. Reflecting the framework in the ladder of interventions developed by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, we will adopt voluntary and less intrusive approaches so that we can make more progress, more quickly and resort to regulation only where we cannot make progress in partnership.
This is a time when the NHS and social care are under intense pressure from an ageing population and higher costs. It is a time when we must therefore put as much emphasis on preventing illness as we do on treating it. In the past, public health has been a fragmented and forgotten branch of the health service. This White Paper will make it a central part of everything we do, and we will bring forward legislation in the new year to enact these changes.
By empowering local authorities, by strengthening our knowledge of what works and by establishing the right incentives to drive better outcomes, the White Paper will deliver the strategy and support needed to reduce health inequalities and to improve the nation’s health. I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, which as we know was well trailed on the “Andrew Marr Show” on Sunday and on the “Today” programme this morning. There are some things that we would like to welcome and support in the Statement, and there are some that we think are a cause for concern. My overall impression is slight disappointment at the insubstantial nature of this Statement. Much of it is common sense and much of it picks up where the previous Government left off, but the Government have had quite some time to think about and to decide on the direction for public health. I believe that this White Paper is short on strategy. Therefore, I look forward to more substance as we move forward.
I think that we would agree that local authorities have an important role to play in the delivery of the public health agenda. Presumably, the new public health service will take on some of the responsibilities of the Health Protection Agency. I have to say to the noble Earl that I wonder why it was necessary to announce the abolition of the HPA, except to make a political point, which is disappointing, when a new agency is being created. The appointment of the new directors of public health will be very important in this programme of delivering a public health agenda. For them to be effective, they will need to be independent. How do the Government intend to ensure that directors of public health in local authorities have the necessary independence and power to deliver an agenda, which sometimes a local authority may not want to hear and may find expensive to deliver?
I am disappointed at the cheap gibes in the Statement, which I can only assume were the idea of the Minister’s bosses—that the nanny state ruled during the Labour years and that Mr Lansley’s “nudge-nudge” public health strategy will be more effective. We need to get past that sort of name calling. The evidence shows that by taking a lead, as Labour did, in the diagnosis of public health issues based on evidence and in taking some of the big decisions on, for example, smoking, exercise and diet—the noble Earl has not ruled out that this Government might need to do that too—we provided a good framework for people to take responsibility for their health and to start to change their habits. I hope that this Government will continue to support families where it is needed.
I do not think that nudging would have got us the ban on smoking in the workplace. “Nudge” will not replace the brilliantly successful schools sports programme. I am not sure that nudge will deliver the national screening programme mentioned in the Statement. I am certainly sure that nudge will not deliver healthy meals in schools or fruit for schoolchildren. So I am sceptical about the nudge part of this Statement.
However, we can all agree that factors such as unemployment, education, environment and equality are important determinants of health. The Statement is correct in saying:
“Unhealthy behaviours, like drinking too much, smoking … are … rooted in poor aspiration, adverse peer pressure and low self-esteem”.
As Marmot puts it, and as the noble Earl has said, they are the “causes of the causes”. That is absolutely correct.
I disagree with this Statement where it puts forward a cross-government initiative; that is, joined-up government. The noble Earl needs to explain how throwing somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 people on the dole will help their self-esteem and their family’s prospects. He would need to explain the joined-up bit of the Government that led his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education to get rid of the successful school sports scheme that got our nation’s children playing sport. Ditto housing benefit cuts, which may put some families’ homes at risk or move them away from where they can earn a living. That is not going to provide the right environment. Finally, we have the abolition of the education maintenance allowance, which has allowed thousands of children from low-income families to stay on at school after 16. If, as Marmot says, life chances and opportunities are an important part of people’s well-being and health, how can the Minister explain the contribution of this initiative to public health?
I want to turn to the regulation of tobacco. This House has debated this issue at length and over quite some time, and by several large majorities it supported the introduction of point-of-sale tobacco regulation and the banning of tobacco products in vending machines. Just this morning, on the “Today” programme, the Secretary of State confirmed that he accepted the evidence that the visibility of cigarettes is a factor that leads to the initiation of smoking. He also mentioned the issue of plain packaging and the Government’s intention to consult on this. We all know that such a consultation will take years and that any action to put tobacco into plain packaging, following on from such a consultation, will take years to come into force. This cannot and should not be seen as an alternative to the legislation to ban tobacco displays. The display legislation is on the statute book. It will protect this generation of children from brightly coloured displays in shops. I should like to ask the Minister this: will cigarettes no longer be on display in supermarkets from October next year? Further, if the Government intend to consult on plain packaging, how long will the consultation take, who will run it and how much will it cost?
I have two or three more questions for the Minister. I warmly welcome the Government’s intention to invest in Sure Start children’s centres and in more health visitors. I also support the development of health protection plans and screening programmes, but I have to ask the Minister: is this nudge or is this target? How are the Government going to decide whether enough people are being screened, because that aim needs a target rather than a nudge? The ring-fencing of public health budgets is going to be a challenge. How will the Government decide what is going to be included in those budgets and what will be excluded? Moreover, how are they going to stop hard-pressed local authorities from raiding them? That will indeed be a challenge. We support the Government in doing this, but we will need to address how it will be possible to deliver that ring-fencing.
Finally, I certainly welcome the greater use of voluntary and community organisations. We worked with many organisations in different health fields, and that is exactly right. However, the funding and support for these organisations needs to be maintained.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the welcome she has given to at least certain elements of the White Paper, and I join her in expressing the hope that this is an area where we can work across the parties. That is because, as the White Paper says, this is very much a matter for all citizens and all elements in society, including industry and employers as well as parliamentarians. However, she asked a number of questions and made several criticisms, so I shall endeavour to reply to as many as I can.
The noble Baroness started by saying that she feels that the White Paper is a little short on strategy. I do not share that view. It makes it clear that we are making a conscious shift of power to local government to draw together public health with the factors that are so influential in achieving good health outcomes. Examples of those factors are housing, transport and education. It is about simplifying, strengthening and unifying national arrangements to reduce red tape and duplication, and to have a clear focus and high priority on public health within central government as well. I believe that the strategy is clear and I hope that, when she has had time to read the White Paper at leisure, she will modify her view.
She referred to the Health Protection Agency and she was right to say that the functions of the agency are, if Parliament agrees, going to be subsumed into Public Health England. The new body will bring together key professionals involved in public health from the national to the local level. It will have a mission to protect and help improve the nation’s health and well-being.
She asked about directors of public health in the new system. With the abolition of primary care trusts, directors of public health, employed by local authorities but jointly appointed with Public Health England, will be responsible for commissioning health improvement and some health protection services using the ring-fenced budget to which I referred. We envisage that, through local partnership working, including through the local health and well-being board, directors of public health will be able to influence the wider determinants of health and well-being and improve outcomes for their local population.
The noble Baroness was sceptical about the concept of “nudge”. The Government’s approach to health improvement is not based solely on nudging people. We accept that the evidence base for applying insights from behavioural science and health contexts is relatively undeveloped. That means that we need to develop the evidence base for that approach, clearly, and that we need to use a wide variety of methods to encourage people to adopt healthier behaviours, not just based on nudges but by continuing to use other effective approaches, such as customer insight and segmentation. As the Statement mentioned, there will always be a role for regulation. However, the Nuffield ladder, which the noble Baroness will see in the White Paper, gives a very good illustration of the menu of options available to us in this context.
The noble Baroness referred to schools, and I note her concerns. At the same time, we have plans for developing the use of school nurses. I see that as a very important part of the vision to ensure that we can have a workforce that is alive to public health issues in the school context. A great deal of work is going on, and I would be happy to brief the noble Baroness on that.
She referred to tobacco, an issue to which we regularly return. I have little, I fear, to add to what I told the House during the Question earlier this afternoon. However, we are considering plain packaging, as I mentioned earlier. The current intention is to ask retailers to cover up their displays of cigarettes so that children are not attracted by the packaging. This is widely accepted as the last form of marketing available to tobacco companies to recruit new smokers. We also want to look at how plain packaging could further protect children from taking up smoking in the first place, and help support people who are trying to quit. It is early days. We cannot say more than that at the moment, but it is something to which I am sure that we can return. On tobacco displays, I cannot add to what I told the House earlier this afternoon. This is still under consideration.
I am glad that the noble Baroness welcomed the concept of the ring-fenced budget. Local authorities will be accountable for the use of the budget. We expect that directors of public health will take the lead in local authorities on the use of the budget. We will be clear about the outcomes that we are seeking, but we will not be prescriptive about how those outcomes are achieved. I think that there will be transparency about the use of the budget through the normal, local, democratic means. More details on the accountability arrangements will be set out in the public health funding and commissioning consultation document, which will be published very shortly.
Finally, the noble Baroness asked me to clarify how we viewed the system as being joined up. We do, I think, view this as potentially a joined-up system. Successful delivery of public health services will require strong links not only from Public Health England at the centre with local authorities, but also between local authorities and the NHS. Joint working will be essential in supporting the collection and provision of the information needed to inform future commissioning, and to enable specific public health services to be commissioned through and delivered by the NHS. That will require a sharing of expertise and knowledge across the two services.
I look forward, as I hope the noble Baroness does, to a new public health effort. We will doubtless return to this topic when, in due course, the health and social care Bill reaches this House as there are important measures in it on which this service will depend.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, no one who has listened to and observed noble Lords on the Front and other Benches opposite would think other than that they are passionately committed to the health service and to the health of the nation. However, as they look back over the past 13 years, they would also observe that at the end of that time issues such as obesity, smoking, sexually transmitted diseases, mental health and the increasing disparity in morbidity between people who live in poor areas and better-off areas were uncompleted in terms of what they wanted to see. It therefore does not seem unreasonable to ask whether that was partly because the approach had reached the limits of its validity.
That is why, in welcoming the Statement, I ask my noble friend to address two brief questions. First, as we move towards more local responsibility for provision of public health, and the undertaking of that responsibility by local directors of health and local health and well-being committees, is there a recognition that that transition cannot happen without real input and help from Public Health England and from those experienced in delivering public health? It cannot be adopted at the drop of a hat. Secondly, when it is adopted—and different approaches will be taken in different areas, quite properly and, in many ways, more effectively—is there a recognition that Public Health England will also have a role in liaising with and providing a network among the directors of public health and health and well-being committees so that they can promote health in the way that we all want?
Baroness Northover
I remind noble Lords that we have a very short amount of time and that they should be extremely brief, either with a question or with a comment. They can do either but they should be as brief as possible. I shall try to be as fair as possible in getting around the House.
Earl Howe
My Lords, my noble friend asked a series of important questions. He has put his finger on how, in many senses, the system will be joined up. He is right to say that Public Health England will be instrumental in supporting local directors of public health in their task. We envisage that Public Health England will create a common sense of purpose and values among a widely dispersed group of workforces. We will develop a workforce strategy with representative organisations and publish that next year. That, I hope, will help to support a smooth transition. At the same time, we do not want to cramp the style of local directors of public health. Much will be down to local decision-making and, in particular, the individuals now employed in PCTs will be looking to transfer across to local authorities as the size and shape of public health teams materialises over the months ahead. We are not going to prescribe from above in determining how public health teams should be configured in local authorities, but there will be considerable support in the advice and expertise available from the centre.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
There is much that is welcome within the report but I have some reservations. When the directors of public health are employed by local authorities, will the local authorities also be responsible for their appraisal? Who will be responsible for their revalidation? Will there be audits of the impact of any interventions? Will there be co-ordination of those audits to see which interventions are the most effective? Will there be research in public health to find the most effective ways of guiding people’s behaviour so that they contemplate change? The word “nudge” has been used in the Statement. This goes back to Julian Tudor Hart’s work, many years ago, highlighting the inverse care law. It will be really important that directors of public health do not become isolated in a local authority where they find it difficult to bring about change.
Earl Howe
My Lords, the noble Baroness will see when she has a chance to read the relevant section of the White Paper that local directors of public health will be jointly appointed by Public Health England at the centre and by local authorities. We see that as important because they will be fulfilling multiple roles. For example, the health protection role fulfilled by Public Health England will have to be delivered at a local level and, to that extent, it is important that directors of public health are accountable upwards to the centre. At the same time, in much of their work, particularly on health improvement, local directors will be accountable to their local authority and their local population. There is a dual accountability working here.
On appraisal mechanisms, I think it is too soon to say, as we have not worked out the detail of that, but clearly, that will have to reflect the dual accountability I mentioned.
On the audit question, we are issuing a paper about the outcomes framework. The way in which outcomes are assessed and audited will be key to ensuring that the interventions and initiatives that are put in place are evidence-based, that they are relevant and that they have an effect. I hope that the noble Baroness, for one, will feed into that consultation.
Finally, the noble Baroness asked about research. There will be two main engines for public health research. One is the NIHR school for public health research, which will consist of leading academic centres of excellence focusing on evaluation and what works practically and can be applied across the whole country. The other will be the policy research unit on behaviour and health, located in the department, the opening programme of which will initially focus on four behaviours; namely, diet, physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption. It is very important that we get closer to what motivates people to change behaviour.
Lord Cunningham of Felling
There is much to welcome in the noble Earl’s Statement and I agree with my noble friend Lady Thornton that there are some things to be concerned about. We should be careful that nudge does not become fudge in respect of the implementation of these policies. My question relates to the very substantial reductions in teaching grants to our universities. Has anyone in Government yet done any work on or given any thought to the implications of the reductions in those grants for the training of doctors, dentists and other paramedics in our higher education institutes and other colleges? If they have not, they should do so quickly, because the implications of those cuts could have a very substantial bearing on the number of doctors, dentists and others coming out of our universities in the future.
Earl Howe
My Lords, the training of the workforce will be key—I would not disagree with the noble Lord on that question. This is a matter on which we are focusing very closely. I will need to write to the noble Lord on the specifics of his first question because the figures are not in my brief, but we are clear that, without the necessary workforce to deliver the public health programme on the ground at local authority level, we will not be able to see the improvements that we need. That will be a major focus for my department.
Baroness Browning
Does my noble friend recall in “Dr Finlay’s Casebook” the role of Dr Snoddie, the very independent but suitably qualified director of public health, for want of a more modern phrase? When my noble friend comes to look at the qualifications for directors of public health, will he ensure that they have the appropriate qualifications, so that we do not repeat what has happened elsewhere in the health service, with a generation of administrators who override the clinical judgments of those who are more medically qualified to take decisions?
Earl Howe
My noble friend takes me back to happy days watching “Dr Finlay’s Casebook”. I seem to remember that Dr Snoddie always had an encounter with Mistress Niven, who came down with all manner of complaints and ailments that the redoubtable duo usually diagnosed and dealt with.
My noble friend is correct. We have to ensure that we have the right people trained at the right level to deliver this service and that we do not get bogged down in managerial bureaucracy. Health and well-being boards will be a vehicle for public health, social care, the GP consortia, when they are formed, and the patient organisations, such as HealthWatch, to come around the same table, so to speak—maybe literally—in order to look at the broader health needs of an area and decide on priorities. I see that as powerfully playing into the public health agenda. This will be far from being a process that is bogged down in bureaucracy.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton
My Lords, I welcome this document as well as the concept of cross-party working on public health services. I particularly welcome, as the Minister might expect me to say, the references in the document to improving sexual health.
I have a number of questions. On the directors of public health, the Minister talked about them being at the right level. What level is that expected to be within the framework of local government? Unless they have a high status within local government then, unfortunately, they might not be able to influence some of the things that they might want to influence. I have another question regarding the directors. In working with GP consortia, what if there is a difference of view that needs to be resolved? Who takes the final decision? Who has the final say in respect of that?
How is it going to be determined whether an area qualifies for the new health premiums? With regard to ring-fenced budgeting, the aid support grant lost its ring-fencing. Does that mean that it will be in the public health ring-fenced budget or not?
When the independent advisory group on sexual health, of which I was chair, was abolished, we were told that a new sexual health organisation would be established. What will be the process for that and when is it likely to happen?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the noble Baroness asked me a number of questions there. I may not be able to answer all of them now, but I will certainly write on those that I cannot.
As I mentioned earlier, it is important to recognise that in part the status of directors of public health will be confirmed by virtue of not simply being appointed locally, but also by being appointed from the centre by Public Health England. That will confer an added status to them. With the dual accountability that I referred to, primary accountability would be to their employer, the local authority, but the Secretary of State would have a backstop power to dismiss directors of public health on the basis of a failure to discharge local authority responsibilities in the area of health protection. Again, while one does not want to dwell on that power, it signifies that this is a person who will be there very much as the representative of the Secretary of State.
The noble Baroness asked what happens if there is a difference of view. Differences of view will arise but the important point to emphasise here is that we want to see them sorted out at a local level wherever possible. That will not always be possible but it should be the aim that health and well-being boards and consortia should decide, in the light of the joint strategic needs assessment and other factors, what the priorities are locally and how the budget is to be spent. It has to be that way: second-guessing from the centre is bound to lead to perverse consequences. However, there will be mechanisms available to ensure that the NHS commissioning board will have a role in trying to resolve these issues and the noble Baroness will see, when we publish the health and social care Bill, that the Secretary of State will have a backstop power in extremis.
She asked about the health premium. We will be publishing a document for discussion on this. We want to hear the views of everybody as to how this should work. Clearly, if a health premium is paid it has to reflect a measure of genuine progress in reducing health inequalities, while recognising that some areas start off with the handicap of having particularly deprived communities to work with and that the task is thereby more difficult. It is important that the department receives the views of interested parties to see how this is going to work.
On sexual health, we are looking to see what more can be done to increase the awareness of risks, prevent infection and promote access to screening and treatment. The consultation documents, which will be issued shortly, will set out the proposed funding and commissioning routes for public health services, including how comprehensive sexual health services might best be commissioned. I hope the noble Baroness will feed into that.
The Countess of Mar
My Lords, the noble Earl mentioned looking at the causes of the causes very early on in his Statement. I think it is now well accepted that a foetus is not protected by either the placenta or the blood-brain barrier from environmental assaults. I am concerned that a lot of the obesity that we see now in young children who run around normally and cannot be described as couch potatoes—although perhaps their diet is deficient—may have originated in the womb from oestrogen-mimicking hormones and by chemicals such as bisphenol A and phthalates. It seems to me that we disregard these factors at our peril and we are blaming people for factors that are beyond their ability to control. Another point is the effect of maternal stress on the foetus. High cortisol levels in the mother affect the child and cause ADHD and educational problems later on in their lives. What is the Minister doing to look at what is happening to babies in the womb and the effects on them in their future life?
Earl Howe
I shall need to write to the noble Countess on exactly what work programmes are in train in that area but she is absolutely right—this is an area that I have taken a close interest in over the years. It is fundamental to understanding both health in childhood and later on in adulthood, and behaviour in children.
We fully recognise that good nutritional status is important at all stages of life. That includes the role of the diet in pre-maternal health, and affects teenagers in particular and the elderly, where there are concerns about malnutrition; I know that is not the focus of the noble Countess’s question. The national diet and nutrition survey will allow us to continue monitoring the status of the diet in the UK population and to target interventions where they are needed. I will write to the noble Countess to give her further particulars.
Lord Ryder of Wensum
My Lords, could my noble friend please explain one tiny inconsistency in government policy? Today he announced that some parts of NHS expenditure would be ring-fenced to deal with the problem of obesity. However, earlier in the week the Education Secretary removed ring-fencing on school sports, which was partly designed to tackle the same problem. Am I right about this being an inconsistency, or can my noble friend explain whether I am making a mistake?
Earl Howe
Far be it from me to say that my noble friend makes mistakes. No, he has not misunderstood the situation. The point of the ring-fence is to ensure that the money we supply to local authorities is genuinely used for public health purposes. That is obvious. However, there will be flexibility for local authorities to decide what falls within the public health definition. As long as they can justify their decision that the expenditure is public health-related, they will be free to spend the money accordingly. There may be uses for public health money that involve schools or sport and so on. This, again, is something that we will need to look at when we define how much money there will be—that is being worked out—and in our dialogues with local authorities, to ensure that the rules are absolutely clear.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
(14 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
17:34 - Division on Amendment 1 - Ayes: 166 / Noes: 242 - Amendment 1 disagreed.
18:50 - Division on Amendment 2 - Ayes: 175 / Noes: 202 - Amendment 2 disagreed.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, in moving Amendment 1, I will speak also to Amendments 3 and 14, which are related or consequential. I have tabled two groups of amendments on this issue in the Bill, both of which deal with problems that follow the Government’s limiting of choice of electoral systems and total failure to consult. Amendments 1, 3 and 14 would provide for the establishment of an inquiry for the purpose of selecting a voting system that, following debate in Parliament and consideration by the Government, would lead to a decision by Parliament on the referendum question. Amendments 25 and 26, which come in a later group, would allow Parliament to decide on an electoral system after a referendum had approved an alternative vote system in principle. Although Amendments 25 and 26 are not in this group, I will seek to degroup them when we reach that debate so that we can consider them at a later stage.
At the heart of Amendments 1, 3 and 14 is my concern over the failure of the Government in specifying the optional preferential AV system, which has been decided on without any consultation whatever. The proposed AV system is mired in controversy and has never been the subject of any inquiry or examination. There has been no independent assessment of its impact, nor was the proposed system the subject of any debate in Parliament prior to the Bill. There was not even a full debate in the Commons on its operation. The proposed system is, and always has been, opposed by the Liberal Democrats, whose leader, the Deputy Prime Minister, described it as a “miserable little compromise”. The proposed system is utterly inconsistent with the historic position taken by the Liberal Democrats and has been opposed by the Conservatives on the basis that it would lead to endless coalition—which, by the way, is untrue. The proposed system has divided the academic world on the basis of its perverse results and it has been heavily criticised by the House of Lords Constitution Committee, whose report stated:
“We regret the fact that this Bill has not been subject to either pre-legislative scrutiny, or to prior public consultation”.
Lord Lipsey
My Lords, I think I noted a moment during my noble friend’s closing remarks when the eyes of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, turned to a closed position. I quite understand when it comes to the detail of voting systems that that is a tempting posture for any man of good sense to take. However, those of us who have devoted many years to the study of these subjects are of course more excited by them.
Lord McNally
My Lords, it has been a long-established practice in this House that Members occasionally close their eyes and lean back to the loudspeaker to concentrate more on the wisdom coming through it. I am shocked that the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, is not aware of that.
Lord Lipsey
We should make sure that the noble Lord’s microphone is finely tuned, so that should some noises which indicated to the contrary emit from him, the whole House would be aware of them. I did not mean to criticise him, because it will be a long hard Bill and we all have to get our naps in when we can.
Turning to the amendment, I, as my noble friend knows, do not agree with him on which is the best of the different majoritarian systems proposed as alternatives to first past the post. I prefer the alternative vote; he prefers SV and the London alternative vote, which we will discuss the origins of in a minute. However, I most strongly agree with his fundamental point that this issue has never been looked at.
Noble Lords will remember that I was on the Jenkins committee which proposed AV as part of its solution. I have to say that we had bigger fish to fry and we never considered the difference between various AV systems. We considered SV, but only fairly cursorily. That was perfectly appropriate for a broad committee of inquiry trying to take us to square one in this reform process. It is not appropriate at a time when Parliament and your Lordships’ House are considering matters which can fundamentally affect—I do not exaggerate by saying that—the constitutional future of this country.
Lord Deben
My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has done your Lordships a great favour by introducing the amendment so early in our consideration of the Bill. He has brought it to our minds that the problem of proportional representation is that people tend to say, “I am in favour of proportional representation”, and only afterwards, when you inquire what kind of proportional representation, does the argument begin.
I suggest, in a non-party-political way, that most of us recognise that AV came into the political discussion because it was hit upon by the previous Government as the form of proportional representation least likely to do them harm and most likely to do them good. I am not criticising them for that: after all, it is the first step that people normally take when they consider an alternative to the first past the post system. They say to themselves, “Which would do me best?”. Then they choose the system—and some have to choose a most complicated and peculiar system in order to land more votes for themselves. What is odd about this proposition is that it was put forward by two coalition parties, neither of whom thinks that it will be best for them. It is a remarkable achievement. They have taken on the proposal that the previous Government made because it would be best for them and proposed it to the House on the basis that it would not be best for either of them. I cannot remember a single occasion on which such a proposition has been true.
I admit that I am opposed to proportional representation of any kind. I am very simple about it: the first past the post system is the right one. I would rather see somebody elected who is favoured by the majority of people than somebody who is the least unfavoured: I have always found this a better thing. I also believe that there is no convincing argument that proportional representation is fairer. One has only to look to Germany to find that the Free Democrats have taken part in more Governments than they ought to have taken part in. A Free Democrat vote is much more valuable than almost any other vote. Therefore, I am against proportional representation; but I am particularly against the way that we have discussed it. This is a very serious matter—the way in which our Government and representatives are elected is vitally important.
I am not in favour of the amendment. I want AV on the ballot paper because I want the least satisfactory form of proportional representation that can be presented so that I can defeat it. I am absolutely straight about that: I do not want any of this fiddling about. However, those of us who have views on the matter should be honest. We should say that it is difficult enough to get people to vote—and difficult enough to get people to vote in a way that indicates their preference—under the present system. Some noble Lords have not been elected. I was elected many times and sat in the other place for more than 30 years. What always amazed me was the number of people who found it extremely difficult to follow the idea that you put a cross—or some obvious mark—against the person you wanted. It was quite hard to get everybody to do that. The idea that people will make a choice between the British National Party and Welsh nationalist candidates at number 14 and 15 on a long list is frankly barmy—they will not.
I am sure that, like me, other noble Lords have been asked to vote in an election for a trustees’ group under such a system. By the time you have voted for the ones you have heard of, you find it very difficult to know how to distinguish between those of whom you have not heard, those you do not think much of and those you do not know whether you think a little less of than you do of others.
This is the most ridiculous proposal that could possibly be put before us. I worry about the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. The more people that take it seriously, the worse the situation will be. If we really are having that kind of argument down at 14 and 15 in the list, I do not know how I would campaign. I do not understand what I am supposed to say. I know what I would do; I would say, “Don’t waste your vote by voting for anybody else—vote for me”. In that sense, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is perfectly right.
The difficulty for the House is to know how best to save the coalition Government from their position. I have a difficulty because I have never voted for a referendum—and I have no intention of voting for a referendum on this occasion. I think referenda are thoroughly unacceptable in all circumstances. I believe in parliamentary democracy and it is a principle one has to uphold; I have upheld it whether I thought we might win the referendum or whether I thought we might lose. I have always thought it wrong. It was a position my father convinced me of when he pointed out that in 1938—I think it was 1938—11 million people signed the peace pledge, and by 1939 you could not find one of them. The problem with the referendum is that nobody is responsible. I have a difficulty with them; but no doubt people will vote in favour of having a referendum, which will help the coalition on that point.
I would like to help the coalition further by keeping AV in this by opposing the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours; if we are to have a referendum, it is one that needs to be lost.
Lord Rooker
My Lords, I support the demands of my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. I want to put this on the record in view of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, this afternoon. It is quite clear that if the Liberals are not going to participate in the debates in this House, then it is on their head; they will have no cause for complaint about it. My noble friend’s amendment accepts the alternative vote; it does not seek to change it. We have amendments later for PR, and I personally guarantee an opportunity for the Lib Dems to vote for STV, whatever time of day it is, as long as I can find another teller. At some time, I will give them the chance to vote for what I know they really want.
The noble Lord, Lord Deben, started off by saying exactly what I have said: those who start the journey from first past the post to something else inevitably stop off at AV. I did it myself. The first time I got more than 50 per cent of the vote was in the fourth election in 1983; I started to wonder. In 1987, again with more than 50 per cent, it felt different. It made me think that there has to be a better system of elections. I was converted to PR by the geographer’s book from Sheffield A Nation Dividing? That is where I am coming from.
The first time I ever saw the noble Lord, Lord Deben, was at the referendum meeting in what was later to become my constituency of Perry Bar—1972, I think—when he was supporting the then Conservative Member of Parliament during the campaign. I am not making a point about referendums, or referendum campaigning or participating in them. Whether he voted for it, I do not know.
We have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that just because we are going to raise issues, it does not mean that we are trying to scupper the Bill, trying to be nasty or trying to be unconstitutional. At any time, he can get up and make his case. If he does not, then it is on his head. Come the referendum—and maybe come the election that follows—questions will be asked. First, as my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours has said, the claim, which has been made by the leader of his own party, that this does away with tactical voting is simply not true. All the tactical voting goes on to the other preferences. I guarantee that if this Bill becomes an Act and we have an election, there will be some Lib Dem candidate somewhere in the country—and we will be watching—who will put out a leaflet saying “only vote one”. It will happen—and it will happen with Labour and Conservatives as well—but it is the Lib Dems making the claim.
The reason the form of AV needs looking at is that the alternative vote has not been used in any public election in the UK, except in the London Assembly elections, where it is a hybrid and quite different. We have never had a public election with AV. We have had public elections with STV—Northern Ireland has used them, while Wales and Scotland are using additional member system. So we have actual experience of these in the UK. No public election in the UK has used this form of the alternative vote.
The second claim, which the leader of the Liberal Democrats made in front of a Select Committee, is that everyone elected will get more than 50 per cent of the vote. Well, it is simply not true. It cannot be true. Fifty per cent of what? Fifty per cent of those who voted in the first part of the election’s first preferences, or 50 per cent of those who arrive at the other end after the other preferences have been knocked out? The figures are different. If people choose not to use a preference, so that their vote comes out of the system before the count is finished, how can you get 50 per cent? It is clearly impossible. Only in the Australian federal system, where there is compulsory voting and a compulsion to use all the preferences, can you come remotely near to the promise and commitment of having more than 50 per cent of the vote.
Lord Rennard
I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, will not be surprised to find that his amendment does not find favour with me. I hope noble Lords will generally appreciate the position of many of us on these Benches. We feel a high degree of frustration about suggestions of inquiries, commissions, consultations, deliberations on electoral systems, and suggestions that there should be a referendum for people to decide at some unspecified future date. We have a long history of observing these things, and these electoral systems have been examined by many people over many decades. Many forms of electoral system now operate in this country, including, for example, the alternative vote system. In particular, Scotland operates STV when all its council elections are due but the alternative vote when it has a council by-election. The problems in Australia to which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, referred do not appear to happen in Scotland when Scottish voters are using the alternative vote to elect a single councillor. So I would pray in aid what is happening in Scotland and in Northern Ireland as being perhaps a little more relevant than suggestions about problems somewhere in Australia.
It seems to me that the academic evidence generally suggests—and it is the consensus of those who take the closest interest in these issues—that there really are no advantages in the so-called supplementary vote system compared with the alternative vote system and that there are a significant number of disadvantages to it. Principally—and the reason why it is not used by any of the parties using alternative vote in their internal mechanisms—the supplementary vote system has the same problem as first past the post in that you have to try to guess who is near the top of the pile and use your vote tactically. That does not necessarily work, particularly when you have a more than two-party system, and we should recognise that these days we have a more than two-party system—indeed, at least a four-party system—in Scotland and in Wales. For voters to be expected to try to guess which two are in the lead and to use one of their Xs only for one of the two parties deemed to be the biggest is not fair. It is not fair to Green voters and perhaps to other voters in England, and it is not fair in the four-party systems that operate in Scotland and in Wales.
It was not without reason and not without considerable debate that the last Labour Government introduced a proposal for AV in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act in the last Parliament. It was not without considerable debate and discussion and proper examination, I have no doubt, that the proposal for AV and a referendum was included in the last Labour Party manifesto in the general election just six months ago. I am sure that the party has its deliberative mechanisms for forming its manifesto.
In response to this general debate about modes of AV, SV or other systems, and comments that AV does not work, we should bear in mind how widely it is used. It is used by the Conservative Party in electing its party leader and its candidates; it is used by the Labour Party in electing its leader and its candidates; and it is used by the Liberal Democrats in electing our leader and our candidates. It is widely used in many other organisations, including the Church of England and many of the charities.
Voters in this country are used to using 1, 2, 3; it is a very simple and easily understood system. I fundamentally believe that the issue of whether we go to AV now or we stick with first past the post is primarily a question for the voters in this country, which they should have in a referendum very soon and on the most appropriate day.
In my view, too much of this discussion and debate is about which system is supposed to favour which party. That is totally the wrong argument and issue. We should let the voters decide on this issue, and the system should be decided according to which system gives most power to the voter. AV gives more power to the voter than first past the post.
Lord Grocott
The noble Lord stressed heavily the importance of consulting the electorate before a change is made. Is he, with his long experience of Lib Dem organisation, able to confirm to this Committee whether in the course of the coalition negotiations the Lib Dem party was trying to persuade both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party to push ahead with a Bill for AV without a referendum? Can he throw some light on that? It is crucial to this debate.
Lord Rennard
My Lords, I can throw no more light than the books currently in circulation describing the coalition talks; I was not privy to them in detail. However, I understand that the Labour Party proposed that it would proceed with AV, as in its manifesto; and it was conceded by the Conservative Party that it would proceed with AV in a referendum to be held at some point in the future, and subsequently it was agreed that it would be held on 5 May. I do not think that that is terribly relevant. The important thing is which system gives most power to the voters. AV gives more power to the voters than first past the post and we should let the voters choose on that basis.
Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke
My Lords, I will not delay the Committee long because I very much agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has said. I would ask noble Lords to be aware of some of the laws of unintended consequences that come as a result of the different models of AV that exist. I should declare an interest in that until last year I was the British High Commissioner to Australia. I have watched the system in Queensland and the federal system with a great deal of interest. My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours set it out very effectively.
One of the unintended consequences of AV is the nature of the deals done by political parties and by individuals. My noble friend talked about tactical voting, but it goes beyond that. Parties—at the national level, the state level and the constituency level—do deals. It is easy to see that a party of the Right and a party of the Left would not necessarily do deals with one another, so they might look for a third party to do a deal with in terms of their preferences. Sometimes that third party is an independent. At Second Reading, I pointed out that in the federal administration the No Pokies party held the balance of power in the Australian Senate. The No Pokies party is a one-man party opposed to one-armed bandits.
There is another way in which these laws of unintended consequences can kick in. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, thinks that we should not be thinking or looking at these issues, but we know that we have parties in this country which operate on the extremes. There is a real danger, which has been seen in Australia with Mrs Pauline Hansen and her party, that the system of preferences can be used to help parties that come from an extreme position.
Lord Rennard
Does the noble Baroness accept that, sadly, under the first past the post system we have had a significant number of BNP councillors elected in this country? With an alternative vote system, all the supporters of parties opposed to the BNP could effectively use their votes to keep out extreme members of the British National Party. That would be a much fairer and more democratic solution.
Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke
I would refer the noble Lord to what my noble friend Lord Rooker has just said about the gradations of voting and the worth of each vote in relation to voting for extreme parties. My point is that we did not have pre-legislative scrutiny of this legislation. We did not have a consultation process. Yes, politics comes into it, but I believe that on both sides of the Committee there is a genuine desire to see a more effective way of ensuring that our country is adequately represented in the Parliaments of this land. That is why I believe that my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours has done this Committee a great favour by introducing these amendments. The laws of unintended consequences could radically alter the nature of the political process in this country.
We must not rush into it blindly. There is still the opportunity for the coalition Government to achieve their dream of getting a referendum on the same day as the Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections. We will come to that later. But, please, let us not get into a situation where we take decisions that we will regret for a very long time.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has done the Committee a service by bringing forward this amendment. It demonstrates that there are many views throughout your Lordships’ House about the way in which elections should be conducted and that we need to have a moderated and thoughtful debate before rushing pell-mell into any kind of change to our electoral system.
When I first entered your Lordships’ House, one of the first issues I raised was when the then new Labour Government supported the party list system for European elections. Even though, man and boy, I supported changes to the electoral system, I opposed that change because I was always passionately opposed to the list system, not least for some of the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, has just advanced. It militates in favour of extreme groups. We have seen how they have penetrated through the European elections—the British National Party into the European Parliament—as a consequence of the list system.
I have another reason why I am opposed to it. It is an over-centralised system that places power in the hands of party elites and caucuses who, in smoke-filled rooms, often choose a list of people. My right as a voter—like the rest of your Lordships, this is one election in which we can participate—is then simply to mark my ballot paper not for an individual, but for a party. I believe that that breaches a very important constitutional safeguard. As a former constituency Member of Parliament—and here I share the thought of the noble Lord, Lord Deben—I cherished the relationship between oneself and one’s voters, and the fact that you represented a geographically defined area, somewhere where you could have a relationship with your voters because they lived in a certain area. The representatives would not be simply people from a list that had been determined by a centralised party bureaucracy, and not a system that would militate in favour of extreme groups.
We had that system for European elections. Others have pointed out that we have different systems in different jurisdictions within the United Kingdom, at the local government, devolved and Westminster levels. Surely all this points to the need for a thorough review of the systems already working throughout the UK. Here I am with the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. I believe that there should have been pre-legislative scrutiny. I said that in the course of the Second Reading debate and in the course of a Question for Short Debate held prior to the general election. I said that we should not be stampeded into any change purely for reasons of electoral calculation. So I would say to my erstwhile friends on the Liberal Democrat Benches that they will come to regret resiling from their long-standing and proper commitment to the single transferable vote system.
I support that system rather than the supplementary vote because it gives the voter the chance to choose between candidates of parties. Inevitably it means that more women and people from ethnic minorities will be elected, and it gives the voter a choice while maintaining a relationship with a defined geographical area. We have used it to great effect in Northern Ireland and Scottish elections. But I do not necessarily expect to convince noble Lords of those arguments today, although if the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, does decide that he needs a second Teller, I would be only too pleased to join him. I say that because if, in the context of talking about multi-choice—an argument that has been advanced throughout these debates—we are going to define in the referendum question a “take it or leave it” issue, either AV or first past the post, we are denying people who have argued for the single transferable vote the opportunity of expressing their belief in that form of proportional representation.
In any event, I do not think that these issues are best decided in a referendum. It would have been far better if there had been legislative scrutiny, and if over the next 12 months we had gone through the due processes. We have been told that we are going to have a fixed-term Parliament of five years, so what is the rush? Surely your Lordships would agree that, in the end, if there is any doubt about the credibility of our voting system, if there is no consensus, and if—after an argument through all the stages of this Bill—it looks as though there is fundamental political disagreement both inside the coalition and between the coalition and the Opposition, how will that place credibility on our voting system, and how will the electorate view that? If people think that this has purely been some piece of cynical political calculation, we will all live to regret it.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, we have had a good and very important debate for precisely the reasons set out by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. Everyone agrees that there has been no pre-legislative scrutiny, no White Paper and no public consultation. What my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours is saying is this: yes, let us have a referendum on an alternative vote system—no doubt he would say that we should have it within a specified period—but, before it, let us work out what the best alternative vote system is. He identifies three systems, or perhaps four. The first is the one used in Queensland, Australia. You do not have to use all your votes; you can use just one. He pointed to the fact that sometimes three-quarters of those who vote do not use anything other than their first vote. He then pointed to the federal system in Australia, where you have to use all your votes. The noble Lord, Lord Deben—I am sorry, the artist formerly know as John Selwyn Gummer—pointed to the fact that that gives rise to difficulties. The third system my noble friend cited is that used in the London mayoral elections, where you identify the top two, and then all the second preferences are distributed between number one and number two.
All of those are alternative vote systems. Which is best? I have no idea. The one that the Government have adopted—I know not why; they have not said—is the one used in Queensland. Is it right that we put before the British people a scheme that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, describes as the worst? He says it is the worst, for reasons I do not properly understand, and he hopes that that will lead to the rejection of the alternative vote system.
If we are going to change the constitution, we need a plausible process, for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, gave. There needs to be some thought given to what is the best alternative vote system if there is to be a referendum. The idea that the nation has to accept what was agreed over those five days as the only one is—with the greatest respect to the coalition—arrogant. I understand politics, but people can say no to politics as the reason for something happening.
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has thrown a sharp light on the consequences of trying to carry out a constitutional change as a piece of politics, like this. The right thing to do is to have a process by which there would be proper consideration of which of the AV systems is the best. As I understand what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, suggests, a commission of inquiry should be set up. It would report to Parliament and, in the light of the report, Parliament would then, by a resolution, decide which of the alternative vote systems to put to the public in a referendum. In this way it would capture what the coalition wants to do, but it would do it in a plausible and sensible way, and we would not be steam-rollered into doing it in a way for which we have no explanation.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
The noble and learned Lord is accusing the Government of not having careful thought and of being outrageous, yet only a few months ago he supported the Labour Party manifesto, which had at its core support for AV.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
We lost. In those circumstances, I do not think that relying on what we did justifies you doing the wrong thing.
Lord Rennard
Will the noble and learned Lord tell us which alternative vote system was contained in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, which he supported not many months ago, and why his Government chose that particular alternative vote system?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I never voted in relation to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill. I assume the system was the one that is now being put forward.
If we do not have a proper, independent debate—which I believe will carry much more weight with the public—then we have to have the debate here as to which is the right system. It is a distressing aspect of this debate, but inevitably when we raise such issues, instead of the other side engaging with the issues, we get the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, appearing to say to the Cross Benches—I have not read Hansard yet, which I will check—“If you vote in favour of procedural manoeuvre, it’ll be 100 per cent elected”. What conclusion are we supposed to draw from that? Then the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, appeared to say, “We have debated this long enough. Let us get on with it”. Let us either debate the issues, or let us have a commission of inquiry to look into what is the right AV system in the context of a timetable, so that the AV vote will take place, but it will be on the basis of proper information. The Front Bench will support the amendment if the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, puts it to a vote.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, perhaps there should be a word from this side. My noble friend Lord Deben said that we should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for introducing the amendment; I agree with him. I thank him for his support because he said that he did not agree with it and, as he is not in favour of referendums at all, that is a bold step. I also thank my noble friend Lord Rennard for his support. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said that it was sheer folly to go down this route without an inquiry. In moving his amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said that there should be an inquiry, that there are deficiencies in AV, and that other systems should be examined. All this may be true. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said that later in Committee he would invite the House to vote on other systems. I do not want to encourage him to do so, but that must be the right way of dealing with these issues.
The amendment seeks an inquiry but we believe that on an issue as fundamental as voting reform the public need to be given a clear choice which will produce an equally clear result. For all the arguments that may take place about how AV works, the attraction of the approach that we have taken is that the Bill sets it out in Clause 9 and Schedule 10. Any questions about how AV works or what form of AV is proposed can be resolved by looking at the Bill. That would not be the case with these amendments and the result would therefore be a lack of clarity, voter confusion and scope for misrepresentation about the merits of the various systems during the campaign.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
As I understand the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours—and we should be clear about this—the effect of the resolutions he proposes is that the Bill will then contain one system of AV upon which the public would vote. The noble Lord’s points about clarity do not bite.
Lord Strathclyde
I stand by what I say unless the noble Lord can produce further amendments reflecting how he believes the various systems of AV should be explained in the Bill. We have done so. We have done the work and we have explained in Clause 9 and Schedule 10 exactly how it works.
Lord Campbell-Savours
It is not necessary to have the AV system in the Bill: that is a matter for the inquiry to deal with.
Lord Strathclyde
The noble Lord’s amendments seek to determine that crucial matters relating to the referendum should be set out in an order made by the Secretary of State instead of in the Bill. How often have we heard that such issues should be debated during the course of the Bill rather than by using secondary legislation—yet here the noble Lord is arguing for secondary legislation?
The order could be made only after an inquiry had been conducted by the committee of inquiry established specifically for that purpose and would then need to be approved by affirmative resolution. This would inevitably lead to delay. It would certainly delay the 5 May referendum, possibly by a considerable period. If the amendment was carried the Bill would state that there is going to be a referendum on a matter of considerable constitutional significance but it would give no date; nor would it provide any mechanism for settling the date. Having made a firm commitment to hold the referendum next year, we would therefore be in limbo. I cannot imagine that the public would be prepared to accept that.
Quite how the process would work is unclear from the amendments. No timescale is proposed within which the committee of inquiry should report and there is no indication of who should sit on the committee. It is not clear what the extent of its powers would be nor whether its recommendations would be binding on the Government. Not only would these amendments delay a decision being made on the voting system, but they would do so unnecessarily.
The Bill’s passage through Parliament would mean that Parliament had already decided on all aspects of the Bill. Parliament is deciding on whether or not there should be a referendum on the alternative voting system and, if it passes the Bill, it should be content to let the public decide which voting system they want. The Bill offers clarity and I urge the Committee to accept it. I also urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I greatly appreciate the contributions of noble Lords across the Committee on my amendment. I do not want to delay the Committee, but I do want to say a few words on the comments made by noble Lords. The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, was very welcome because, of course, it was he, who, on 1 February 2000, in debate on the Local Government Bill, described my system as,
“a perfectly respectable system. It has a number of strong features to commend it … It is nice and simple. Academic research has found that people like using it”.—[Official Report, 1/2/00; col. 172.]
That really is at the heart of this whole question. The system I was proposing and which I want to be on the table during the course of the inquiry that should take place is simple and easily understood by the public.
I welcome the support of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and his understanding of the unlikelihood of voters using additional preferences. I obviously dissent from his conclusions. My noble friend Lord Rooker commented on the question of the 50 per cent. That has got to be sorted out because even the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for whom we have immense respect, said during the course of his Radio 4 “Today” programme interview the other day—I took it down word for word—that he believed it took 50 per cent to elect a Member of Parliament under the AV system. That is simply not true.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said that the Liberal Democrats have not political advantage in mind when promoting AV. That is simply untrue. I have talked to huge numbers of Liberal Democrats over the years who have said, where they support AV, which is not their preferred system, that at least it gives them more seats in Parliament. I cannot see how he can possibly dissent from the view expressed by so many of his colleagues.
Lord Rennard
With the greatest respect, I did not actually argue that case. I simply argued that it should be for the voters to decide what is more important to them rather than for any party. The contrary argument to that just made by the noble Lord is that first-past-the-post simply favours the Labour Party or the Conservative Party. My argument today is a very simple one; that it should be for the voters to decide which system gives most power to the voters, irrespective of party interests.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I think that when the wider public read the noble Lord’s comments, they will agree with my interpretation of his views. My noble friend Lady Liddell of Coatdyke brought to the debate her very valued experience of how the law of unintended consequences applies in the case of AV in Australia. It was her contribution at Second Reading which took me down the Thrasher and Rallings route, because I suddenly realised the implications of perverse systems and how they apply in Australia.
I welcome the supportive comments of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and his expression of concern over the failure of the Government to consider options. I hope that he will join some of his noble friends on the Cross Benches in the Lobby.
I am very grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton for very clearly setting out what this amendment means in language everyone can understand and, I hope, support.
Finally, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that he completely misreads my amendment. He read his comments from a brief, so I presume that civil servants wrote those comments. It seems to me that civil servants do not understand what my amendment is all about. As for the question of delay, I accept there will be delay, but we can agree a timetable on an inquiry and I feel quite sure that that can be agreed between the Benches. It would mean that any referendum would probably be in 2012, when at least the question on the ballot paper would be one which had been properly considered by those who have a responsibility to consider these matters.
In the light of the debate, I wish to test the opinion of the Committee.
Lord Rooker
Lord Rooker
My Lords, unlike the debate we have just had, this is a very narrow, targeted debate. My basic submission is that a binding referendum on virtually any issue, let alone an issue without consultation, is not the British way of doing things. We do not do it. I was told that there has been one case of a binding referendum. An indicative or consultative referendum is the normal way we operate in the UK and frankly it fits the bill in this case. There are many people who would take that view. It will preserve parliamentary sovereignty in a formal way, whereas the way the Bill is drafted it certainly does not. I think that is important. It allows for some thought on the result and the turnout. In my view, it would obviate the need for thresholds. I have not looked at the complete list of amendments. I do not know whether there are amendments about turnout or majority thresholds. With an indicative referendum you would not need to put into the Bill anything to do with thresholds because it would allow time for reflection afterwards and Parliament would decide, having listened to and taken the views of the people. I think the processes and consequences are important.
There has been an example—it is important to give examples—of where the processes have been used. When New Zealand changed its voting system from first past the post in 1992 it had a consultative referendum. That resulted a year later in a binding referendum so everyone was absolutely clear. However, initially Parliament was able to take a view about what the public had actually decided.
As the Bill stands—I stand to be corrected by the Ministers who know more about the detail—it does not matter what the turnout is or what the level of a yes majority vote is. The change will happen. That is set out, I think, in Clause 8. So what are we saying? I am not going to give high-falutin’ examples. Let us say that we get a respectable turnout—50 to 60 per cent. I think it would be a very respectable turnout, a general election turnout. That is tens of millions of people voting. Let us say that the majority of the yes votes over the no votes is 1,000. Do we really then proceed with such a major change, without let or hindrance, because that is what the legislation actually says? It could be 10,000 but we are talking of something like 30 million people participating in the vote.
Let us think about what we are doing. We are binding ourselves before we start. Parliament has never done that and we should not do it on this occasion. I do not need to speculate. Frankly, my amendment is a lifeboat for both the coalition and Parliament. It does not alter the rest of the Bill. I would almost settle for this amendment and almost not bother with the rest of them because I think that would be so important in constitutional terms. It would be a lifeboat for Parliament and certainly a lifeboat for the coalition. Without such a lifeboat it is inevitable that we will have debates about thresholds on the turnout and the majority in order to trigger the operation of Clause 8. Why should we do that? It may come as a surprise, but for the vast majority of people in this country, voting is the only political activity they ever do. We are all anoraks. Some of us have been in the other place, but we are all here for a reason. For the vast majority of people their only action is voting. To make a change of such importance and significance we have to have the demonstrable consent of the public to a change of the status quo. That is absolutely clear. First we have to listen to the public and then Parliament can take a decision.
This is not some executive decision such as the level of taxation or the granting of a planning application. This is a major fundamental change in the way we elect our Parliament. It is of supreme voter and constitutional significance and it should be embedded for a goodly amount of time. It will not be if the scenario I have just given as an example comes about. We will end up with chaos unless we are prepared to say that we will listen to the public, fight the referendum and Parliament will then decide the way forward having listened and consulted. By and large, Parliament has taken a view on consultation in the past. It would be a lot easier to decide in principle and practice to have an indicative referendum than try to decide thresholds. It would be a nightmare to get involved in threshold debates. I have thought about it. It would be an absolute nightmare. It is so unpredictable, so personal and subjective. To say we will have an indicative referendum to consult will be pretty important.
I am going to pray in aid only one Member of the House. Earlier today we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. I think we will all read his speech tomorrow. He gave several examples of what had been said before the election as a reason for doing it after the election. I disagreed with my own side on AV and made my position absolutely clear on 24 March, but that is not the issue now. I just want the referendum to be indicative so that Parliament has the final decision. It would be on the same date with the same question, the lot, but it would be consultative. As I said, I made my position clear on 24 March and I am saying the same things on this side of the House as I said on the other side. My challenge is for others to do the same. I quote from Hansard:
“On the other hand, a consultative referendum early in the next Parliament would assist rather than hinder deliberations and would not fall foul of the strictures from the Select Committee that we are producing change without scrutiny”.—[Official Report, 24/3/10; col. 971.]
Those are the words of the noble Lord, Lord McNally. I rest my case.
Lord Tyler
The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, very kindly referred to me in the previous debate and challenged me to contribute to the debate on this amendment. I certainly intend to do so, though I hope very briefly.
Frankly, I am mystified. I totally understand where the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is coming from. What I do not yet understand is whether he is going to be supported from his own Front Bench because of course his party—I know he was a rebel on this and I respect him for it—was absolutely explicit in putting its case to the country just a few months ago. In its manifesto his party said:
“To ensure that every MP is supported by the majority of their constituents voting at each election, we will hold a referendum on introducing the Alternative Vote for elections to the House of Commons”.
There is no mention of ifs and buts about consultative, confirmatory or indicative. It said “we will hold a referendum”. It may be that I misunderstood the Labour manifesto but that seems to be an absolutely clear commitment. Indeed, Mr Jack Straw, who is a very distinguished colleague of those on the other side who take a different view, set out in the debates on the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill just a few weeks before the election precisely where the Labour Party was and gave an opportunity for people in the country to understand where it was. This business that there has been no discussion about it is not true. There has been lots of discussion. Maybe it is only anoraks such as myself and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who were discussing the relative merits of these issues but the fact is that it was out in the open because Mr Straw said in the House of Commons that,
“all of us here must do all that we can to restore trust in politics … part of that process must involve consideration of which electoral system can best serve the people of this country and asking them to make a decision. Our response is to put in place a credible alternative that would go with the grain of what the British people value in our system, and allow them to express their clear view in a referendum”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/2/10; col. 799.]
That was a specific proposal—put before Parliament weeks before the election and as clear as anything ever is from a ministerial statement—to insert into that Bill the specific proposal that we are now debating. It is simply untrue that this has never previously come before Parliament. What is true—I have to say—is that the Labour Party was absolutely explicit that it would not be a consultative, indicative or confirmatory referendum. It would be a decisive referendum. I rest my case.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Is the noble Lord giving that the strength that was given to his people’s undertaking on tuition fees?
Lord Sewel
My Lords, when it comes to major constitutional change, there is some benefit in looking at what has happened in the past when Parliament has confronted the best way of proceeding—a way that enables Parliament clearly to have the decisive say but nevertheless has reference to the directly expressed will of the people.
I hope that the House will forgive my making reference to Scottish devolution. There were two attempts to establish Scottish devolution. The parliamentary processes of those two attempts were markedly different. In 1979 there was a Bill that was amended by Mr George Cunningham—in the Cunningham amendment. This is where we pick up the point made by my noble friend Lord Rooker. Because it was effectively a referendum to implement the Bill, the Cunningham amendment was a threshold amendment. The Secretary of State was required to move an order abandoning the whole project because the threshold was not met.
In 1997 the process was different and, I think, sounder. Then the party went to the electorate with a manifesto commitment. It then produced a White Paper and held an indicative referendum on the White Paper. Parliament then considered the Bill in the light of the referendum. That seemed to be the better way of doing things. It enabled a fully informed debate to take place on the basis of the proposals in the White Paper. There was a national debate on devolution in Scotland and Wales, which people could understand much more clearly and meaningfully from a White Paper than through the technicalities of a Bill. There was the clear expression of the people’s choice through a referendum. Parliament then proceeded in light of that to produce a Bill that satisfied both the manifesto commitment and the referendum outcome.
That is the best way forward. If the Government do not accept the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, they will face the problem of thresholds. Thresholds are difficult; they have an element of subjectivity and politics-playing comes into them. It would be much better, clearly, for this referendum to be indicative, with Parliament then making the final judgment on the basis of its outcome and the degree and strength of the views expressed by the people through it.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, it would be a good deal safer, and therefore wiser, for the referendum to be indicative rather than mandatory. One reason is the hasty and, frankly, slipshod manner in which the proposition in the Bill has been formulated, has been presented to Parliament and will be presented to the people. These are decisions that have been made in haste and without adequate consideration by all parties.
I confess that it was something of a surprise to me when the Labour Party adopted the alternative vote as party policy. I am not aware that there had been intensive internal consideration within the party. Perhaps I was not listening or was looking the wrong way; or perhaps people, rather wisely, decided not to ask my opinion on the matter. At all events, it was a hastily arrived-at policy shift. If it was hastily arrived at by the Labour Party, it was a good deal more hastily arrived at by the Conservative Party and, I dare say, by the Liberal Democrats. As we all know, the Liberal Democrats did not want AV and the Conservatives did not want AV, yet in this curious fashion they found themselves united in proposing that, after all, it would be a good way to reform the voting system of this country.
As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said in the previous debate, you can hardly imagine a more momentous constitutional decision. It is important to think extremely deeply and carefully about how we alter our voting system. Few things could be more important to how we live and how we will be governed, yet self-evidently there has not been any careful pondering of this question. The haste of the timetable that is proposed in the Bill means that, just as Parliament and the political parties will not have thought about it with the care that it warrants, nor will the people have had the opportunity to do so. It is, therefore, all the more important that the referendum should be indicative, in that it would give Parliament the opportunity to think further about what it may be appropriate to do in the light of the advice given by the people.
That is more the case now that the House has not approved the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. It would have been a wise device to enable the merits of alternative versions of alternative voting to be expertly and objectively considered, so that Parliament would have the opportunity to think more carefully than it so far has about which system of alternative voting—if it is to be the alternative vote—should be proposed to the people. If that process is not to go forward, that is another reason why it is important that all concerned should be able to deliberate on these matters for rather longer.
It seems to me also that if we have an indicative rather than mandatory referendum, it will preserve the rightful authority both of the people and of Parliament. I am not an enthusiast for referendums but an exception should be made where the question at issue is major constitutional change and, perhaps most importantly, how the electoral system might be altered. We are trustees of the constitution on behalf of the people who elect their representatives to the other place. In this House we have an important watching brief—a kind of trusteeship of the constitution—to ensure that things are not done recklessly, shoddily, hastily or, in so far as we can influence and determine this, unwisely. Therefore, I am not against a referendum on a major constitutional issue. The people who confer political authority on parliamentarians to act on their behalf should have the right to determine by what system they do so.
Equally, if we subject issues routinely to referendum, we undermine Parliament. I am not an enthusiast for referendums but it is appropriate in this case. If it is indicative rather than mandatory, not only do we give the people the opportunity to have their considered say but we uphold the authority of Parliament finally to determine these matters. For both those reasons I hope very much that the House will approve the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Rooker.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
Like my noble friend Lord Deben, I too have great reservations about referenda because they undermine the sovereignty of Parliament. If the result of this referendum is absolutely overwhelmingly in favour of AV, then there is no way that Parliament could ignore the expressed wishes of the people. I do not quite know why my noble friend Lord Tyler is concerned about it being “indicative” rather than “mandatory”. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is right. If a very narrow vote completely changed our voting system, then Parliament should have the option of being able to think again to explore the issues because Parliament has a right and responsibility at that point to give its advice and to debate the issue rather more widely.
Let us face it—we have not had many opportunities to debate this form of voting and an awful lot of the people in this country do not really understand it at all. If this referendum happens, the turnout may conceivably be boosted if we hold it on the same day as the local elections. If it was held on any other day, the turnout would be very low indeed and it would be quite difficult to say that this was a seriously expressed wish of the people of this country. However, as I say, if there is a clear and overwhelming majority in favour of AV, Parliament could not in any way ignore that and the arrangement would have to go through. To be concerned and worried about the idea of this being “indicative” rather than “mandatory” shows a certain sort of paranoia on behalf of those people who believe in this referendum. I advise my noble friends not to be too concerned about it.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, who was introduced into this House on the very same day as me. One of his introducers was the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, the former Prime Minister. She and I had an interesting conversation that day. I doubt she would be very enthusiastic about what we are doing today and the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton—I was going to call him “Archie”—represents her.
It is bizarre, is it not? This whole thing is bizarre. All these debates are unbelievable. This Clegg project—because that is what it is—is being pushed through. We know that all the Tories—all the Conservatives whom I know—do not believe in the alternative vote. They are nodding. I have yet to come across one who thinks that it is the right way for the people of Britain to vote in a referendum. Yet, they went through the Lobby just a few moments ago and will go through the Lobby again and again—today, next Monday and next Wednesday—pushing through something that they manifestly do not believe in. Then there are the Liberal Democrats. They do not really believe in the alternative vote; they want STV. Some of them, of course, see this as a Trojan horse—as a thin end of the wedge. The next Bill that will come up will be to move towards single transferable vote or something similar. However, no less a person than the Deputy Prime Minister described the alternative vote as “a miserable little compromise”. Imagine campaigning and people listening to the Churchillian tones over the loudspeaker: “Turn out and vote for our miserable little compromise!” That is why my noble friend Lord Rooker is right about the turnout. I cannot see that there will be any great enthusiasm. I will move an amendment later about the date, which is another very worrying issue.
So the Tories do not really support it. The Liberal Democrats are not really in favour of the alternative vote. Apart from my noble friend Lord Lipsey, who made an interesting speech at Second Reading in favour of it, there are not many people on this side who support it. Most of my colleagues are in favour of first past the post. We have heard my noble friend Lord Grocott expand on this eloquently—I was going to say ad infinitum… ad nauseam—on so many occasions. I am right behind him. There are some on this side who, I must admit, favour proportional representation but not alternative vote. We have had that discussion within the party.
Lord Snape
I support my noble friend Lord Rooker and endorse largely what has been said by my noble friend Lord Hamilton. Can you imagine if a Labour Government produced the sort of constitutional changes that we debate this evening with all the other constitutional matters that this Government intend on forcing through this House as they have forced them through the other place? The British press would be outraged if a Labour Government tinkered—that is the wrong word—or smashed the constitution in the way that this Government propose to do. If we had proper parliamentary journalism, either in this House or the other place, you would see the same outrage about the proposal that is before your Lordships today. In reply to this debate, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, smiled at my introductory remarks when I spoke on Second Reading. I think that he accused me of a Max Miller-type performance. I had to ask some of my older noble friends who he was talking about because, of course, I had no idea who Max Miller was. I hope he will accept that I will not indulge in such a performance this evening. I am seriously concerned, as are many of my noble friends, about the proposals before your Lordships tonight.
The House ought to listen to my noble friend Lord Rooker. I have known him for over 40 years. Indeed, I was his Whip in the 1970s, which was no easy task. He has always been a man of independent thought, view and expression. I remember in the 1970s that he and another colleague managed to drive a coach and horses through Denis Healey’s budget, which caused me, as his Whip, a rather painful interview with the Chief Whip at the time. Those on either side of your Lordships' House who have ever worked in the Whips’ Office in either place will know just how painful such an interview could be. The House should listen to what my noble friend said earlier today. Is it really our intention, as my noble friend outlined, that no matter what the majority, or how many people participate, to pass legislation that will fundamentally change the way that Parliament—the House of Commons—is elected in this country? Surely it is incumbent on this House to stop this madness and say that an indicative referendum is the only acceptable option at present. Are we really saying that regardless of turnout, the argument and other matters being discussed by the British people, the result of the referendum will be binding on both Houses? As my noble friends have done, I appeal particularly to the Cross Benchers, who traditionally and understandably regard themselves as the guardians of the traditions of your Lordships’ House and of this country, to think very carefully about how they vote tonight. I appeal to them to support my noble friend and vote for what I believe is the only sensible course of action open to us.
Lord Grocott
I always tremble a little when I follow my noble friend Lord Snape, who was also my Whip during the 1970s. I shall follow the habit of a lifetime and agree with him on this matter. I was delighted that my noble friend Lord Foulkes was able to penetrate the weak thicket of my arguments and deduce that, on balance and weighing all things up, I am totally in favour of first past the post. I am pleased to be on exactly the same side of the argument in respect to this amendment as my noble friend Lord Rooker. That may surprise noble Lords given that, although we agree on most things, over the years we have not agreed on electoral reform. His argument about the need for this to be an indicative referendum was absolutely convincing.
Surely we can all agree that this is a very unusual amendment. I want to deal briefly—I hope this is the last time that I have to do so—with the argument put forward by the Lib Dems that somehow the Labour Party in opposition must be bound by every dot and comma of the manifesto on which it has just lost the election. The concept of a referendum on AV has already been road tested. The Conservatives and the Lib Dems opposed it before the election and are now bringing it in, presumably claiming that they have a mandate to do so. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord McNally, can tell us whether he thinks that there is a mandate to do that. I hate to keep repeating the fact that the one party that would have had a mandate lost the election. I do not like losing elections, even though I have lost an awful lot of them over the years. Therefore, we can put that issue to bed, but if anyone raises it again I give whoever does so, particularly the Lib Dems, a severe warning that I shall look through all their election manifestos covering the elections they have lost, which now covers a period of about 100 years, check on all the commitments that they made and start reading them out. If people are awake at the end of it full marks to them, but can we please put that argument behind us because it does not hold water?
This is, indeed, a very unusual referendum. Whatever we think of the merits of it, I think we can acknowledge that it is unusual. As a lifelong member of the Labour Party, I find myself agreeing in key respects with both the Conservative Prime Minister and the Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister. I agree with the Prime Minister’s opposition to AV, and whenever the referendum takes place—I hope that will not be for a while—I shall be voting the same way as him. However, I must say in passing that it must be the first time ever that a Government have called a referendum which they hope to lose. That is a constitutional first, if nothing else. I agree very strongly with the right honourable Nick Clegg’s description of the measure as a miserable little compromise, as my noble friend said. However, to put it mildly, that is not a strong basis on which to hold a referendum. In addition, the Government are committed to holding it on the same day as local elections, which means that it will be a legislative referendum. That is essentially what it is; it is not an indicative referendum but one which legislates. We know that there are massive differences in turnout in different parts of the country. That is not a good basis for any decision, but is a particularly bad one when we are effectively asking the electorate to legislate. As I have already said, for different reasons the two key members of the Government are not wholeheartedly committed to the referendum, so for that reason, if none other, it should be no more than an indicative referendum.
I conclude by asking the noble Lord, Lord McNally, a question which will need to be asked sooner or later as it is very important to the nature and integrity—if that is not too pompous a word—of the debate that is taking place. I cannot claim that I have read by any means all the various reports on this matter, but there seem to be very strong indications emanating from the Lib Dem negotiating team in the coalition building programme. This is a serious question and I hope that the noble Lord will give it a serious answer. The members of the team were very keen indeed for either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party to bring forward legislation to impose the alternative vote system on the British people—neither party having campaigned for it—and that it should be imposed without a referendum. Either that is a fact or it is not—I do not know as I was not part of either negotiating team and would not have expected to be. However, we need to know the answer to that question before we can proceed any further with this passionate commitment.
Lord McNally
Rather like the previous Government, I think we shall leave to the memoirs what was or was not said during negotiations. However, what is on the record is the coalition agreement, which is the basis of this Bill. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is dragging through this House an enormous red herring.
Lord Grocott
I had expected the noble Lord to tell me that I was a constitutional Conservative, or some other such epithet. I think that on the previous occasion he described me as a Neanderthal; now I am dragging red herrings. I asked a fairly simple question—but I think that the House feels that it is an important one—regarding the integrity of the passionate commitment to a legislative referendum which, as I understand it, his party was opposed to in the coalition agreement.
Lord Lipsey
My Lords, during the past half hour I have felt as if I have strayed to the wrong end of the building as I see a lot of people who I still think of as Members of Parliament in the Commons making the same speeches as I have heard them make so many times in the House of Commons Chamber. They bear repetition and it has been a great pleasure to listen to them, but I doubt whether they will be the most effective at converting the Minister because he and his party are in favour of AV whereas recent speakers have made it very clear that they are not in favour of it, and they are perfectly entitled to hold that view. As a supporter of AV, I want to put the case for this amendment. However, I will not put the constitutional case, which the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has put very well.
The bit of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, that convinced me—I came into this debate with an open mind—was that he saw this measure as an alternative to thresholds. The House will debate thresholds later. However, when I hear first past the posters advocating the enormous benefit of thresholds, when they are in favour of a system whereby it does not matter what the turnout is or however low the share of the vote a Member has—if he gets one vote more than another Member, he is elected—I do not take the case for thresholds from them terribly seriously. However, there is a political danger for those of us who believe in AV that that plausible argument for thresholds will come through and will be passed, even in this House, will go down to the other end and will be backed by the Tories. At the end of the day, we will be fixed with a threshold. I am long enough in the tooth to remember what happened with George Cunningham’s threshold and the devolution legislation of the 1960s.
It seems to me that the better approach to the genuine problems raised by those who seek a threshold—what happens if there is, for example, a 3 per cent turnout—would be better dealt with by this amendment and by making the referendum not absolutely binding. That would put aside the threshold issue and leave us to get on with the referendum on a basis which, I hope, all sides could accept.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, my name and that of my noble friend Lord Bach are also on this amendment. Clause 8 requires the Minister to make an order bringing into effect a new voting system if two conditions are satisfied—if there is a yes vote by a simple majority, with no threshold, in the referendum, and if an order has been introduced bringing in the first effects of a new review under the second part of the Bill. No further questions would be asked, once there is a yes vote and new constituency boundaries are introduced. This is not the way that any referendum has been carried out in this country, save in the 1979 referendums on Welsh and Scottish devolution.
Noble Lords around the House have pointed out that we supported a compulsory referendum last time and that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, supported a consultative referendum. On the basis of that, noble Lords will have to address this issue on its merits. Should the referendum be indicative or compulsory? I submit that there are two reasons why it should be indicative.
First, the point made by the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Hamilton, was that you do not need a threshold, but it is plain that there are certain levels of turnout and certain levels of yes vote that no one would regard as a sufficient mandate for the change. Those levels are best left to political judgment at the time. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, who said that the Liberal Democrats should have no fear if there is a clear majority on a reasonable turnout in favour. However, suppose there is a 51 per cent majority in favour of AV on a 20 per cent turnout. What then would be the view of noble Lords on whether there was a mandate? Let that be judged after the referendum, not before.
The second reason in favour of an indicative, rather than a mandatory, referendum is, as we discussed on the previous amendment, that the Bill contains one particular form of AV, when we know there are three respectable forms of it. Once the public have indicated a preference in a referendum for AV, the right course is for Parliament to debate properly the best system of AV to adopt—perhaps after some public consultation. This does not cost anyone any timetable, but makes it possible for there to be a proper debate on what the right system is.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Does the noble and learned Lord not think that a merely consultative referendum could depress the turnout, because many people would say, “This is just asking us what we think and they will go back and do what they want”?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
No I do not, and what happened in the Scottish and Welsh referendums indicates that that is wrong. It is a question of being clear that the referendum is intended to be a precursor to legislative change, as it was in relation to the 1997 referendums in Scotland and Wales. The noble Lord is wrong.
For the two reasons that I have given—namely, that an indicative referendum avoids the need for thresholds and allows for a proper debate on AV—I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I am grateful to the House for this debate. Observers will see a pattern developing: reform, but not this reform; people did it to decide, but not on this particular date; and we want to help, but only on the basis of delay. I am afraid that most of the comments are based on that approach.
There is, in fact, very little pattern to constitutional reform in this country. The great Reform Bill was passed in the other place by a single vote. The Welsh Assembly referendum was carried by 50.3 per cent to 49.7 per cent. I remember it well. I was just about to go to bed and said to my wife, “I’ll watch this first Welsh result come in, and then I’ll be up to bed”. At about a quarter to six in the morning, the final result that tipped the balance came in. However, I do not see parties campaigning now to reverse that decision.
I remember the Cunningham amendment. The key issue was that George Cunningham was very much against devolution, and his amendment was there to try to prevent devolution and succeeded in delaying it for 20 years.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Does the noble Lord not agree that although it did, as he rightly said, delay devolution, we actually ended up with a much better scheme in the end? Paradoxically, although we all hated George Cunningham at the time, we may have something to be grateful to him for.
Lord McNally
That is another one for the memoirs. If we wanted to continue in this way, the 1911 reform of this House was carried under the threat of creating a large number of Peers. The point is, as I have said before in this House, that constitutional change has come to us in a variety of ways. Perhaps I may say that my affection for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is boundless, as he well knows. We have the occasional joust in this House and I know that his position is sincerely held, but I do not have the faintest idea about the question he asked. I do know what the final agreement was. It was drawn together by the two parties, and adopted by my party in a special conference, as the basis for the coalition. As I have said, that is the basis on which we bring the Bill before the House. Noble Lords asked: where is our mandate? Our mandate will come from the decision of the people in the referendum. Everyone is making points about whether the Conservatives are in favour of this, or whether the Liberal Democrats or the Labour Party are in favour. The whole structure of this is that there will be two campaigns that will take their cases to the people.
Lord Campbell-Savours
On the basis of the historic utterances of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on the whole question of alternative vote systems, does he think that the proposition being put to the House in this form of referendum question and this system is ideal?
Lord McNally
Of course I do, and I would not be at this Dispatch Box advocating them to the House if I did not. After all, for a while, I earned my living dredging up quotes from political opponents, sometimes out of context, for Lord Callaghan to use. I would not accuse the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, of using researchers—I know him too well. He probably did the research himself. Nevertheless, we go back to the central point recurring in this debate. The Opposition put forward various ideas, all of which have within them an element of delay.
Lord Sewel
The central issue in the debate is the recognition by Members of your Lordships’ House that there is a very real danger of introducing major constitutional reform through a referendum with a small majority on a low turnout. Will he answer that?
Lord McNally
I would suggest that you have the threshold debate on Clause 8. The threshold debate that I have just quoted, however, was in fact a device of an opponent of devolution to delay devolution. Let us not pretend that a threshold does not turn every abstention into a no vote. We will have that debate under Clause 8, and an interesting debate it will be. These three amendments seek to turn it into—
Lord Browne of Ladyton
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, and I am sorry if I exasperate him by intervening. Perhaps I may return to the point that my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours put to him. I do so because I have experience of campaigning in referendum campaigns both in Scotland and in Wales and it is helpful to be equipped with the arguments on the doorstep. I have read every single word that has been said in these Houses of Parliament on this issue. I cannot find one explanation of why this form of voting is the best of the alternative forms of voting available. Will the Minister please point me to where I can find that qualitative assessment of this form of voting?
Lord McNally
That is for the voters to judge. If you want this reform to fail, you do all the kind of things that the Opposition are putting forward. The coalition, on the basis of the coalition agreement, has put forward a simple proposition that we believe provides for fairer voting.
I can go on like this: we have all been in the House of Commons and seen the wind-up speeches. The last time there were 23 interventions, but I am okay—we’ve got many a long time. Of course you don’t like it, but the coalition agreement is for a fairer voting system based on fairer constituencies. We are willing to take our case to the country, and we have already had the approval of the House of Commons for that.
Lord Campbell-Savours
What the noble Lord is missing is that those of us who support electoral reform see what is happening now as our only window of opportunity, perhaps for a whole generation, to see through an electoral reform. So the system on offer has to be one that commands the support of the public. I cannot understand the Liberal Democratic view whereby they say it does not really matter what system we put forward as long as we get something through. They bear responsibility in history, in the event that this referendum fails, because they have not done their homework. They should be insisting on a system that is credible. They are not doing it, and nor is the Minister.
Lord McNally
We keep on making these speeches. That is the opinion of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, but it is not the opinion of the Electoral Reform Society, which is just as committed to electoral reform as he is. We are putting our proposal to Parliament and our intention is to let the people decide. It is of course a difference between us, and if the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, wants to press his amendment, we will resist it.
On Saturday I was waiting with bated breath for the Blackpool result to come through. I flicked on my television and there were the final stages of that magnificent film “Waterloo”. It is absolutely marvellous because it is not digitally enhanced or anything—those were real people moving around. It showed you this depiction of the Battle of Waterloo with these two great armies ready to do battle. That is what I am hoping will happen on 5 May. There will be these two great armies ready to do battle and make their case to the people. I do not believe, and here I agree with my noble friend Lord Phillips, that we will get the engagement, the excitement, the involvement if we say to the people—
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I can imagine this wonderful picture of the Battle of Waterloo, just as we see in the Royal Gallery. What the Minister has not made clear is: which side will Napoleon be on in this battle?
Lord McNally
We have already seen the Labour Party retreat on AV. I will leave it at that for today. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has destroyed an absolutely breathtaking peroration. I will leave him to face the resentment of his colleagues, who were warming to my theme, and ask the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Rooker
My Lords, at the beginning of the debate on the Bill—I do not mean this in a personal, patronising way—I have not been impressed with the two responses to the debates that we have had. This is serious work. I want reform, but this reform forces me into the first past the post camp. I led the Labour campaign for electoral reform for five years. I took the issue to the party conference four times to force a referendum on the voting system, which the Labour Party never delivered on. My commitment is there. When I moved from first past the post to PR, I began to engage with all kinds of people whom I had not talked much to before. I engaged at the time with a lot of Liberals and discovered that they did not know much about electoral systems, because they had been born into a party that went for STV and never discussed anything else, such as the minutiae of how you make a system work—because you can make any system do what you want and no one claims that there is a perfect system.
In my opening words, I said that this was a very narrow amendment. It does not destroy the Bill or the system. I almost implied that if the amendment were accepted, I would walk away from my other amendments, because this goes to the heart of what we are trying to do. It will be a lifeboat for the Government and for Parliament to say, “Let us make this consultative”. It will not diminish anything: the argument will still take place. All other referendums have been consultative and we can recognise a victory when we see one. I will never use the example of a low turnout: it undermines my case. I used the example of a 50 to 60 per cent turnout, which is respectable. I then used the example of a 1,000-vote majority for yes. Would anybody say that that was satisfactory for what we are attempting to do? I said that the only political thing that most people do is to vote.
I will make another personal point to the noble Lord, Lord McNally. All my notes and amendments are my own. I have no researcher. Half of my amendments will be opposed by my noble friends. I am doing this because the Bill could be better. I want reform: in that respect I am with the noble Lord. However, it would be better if we said to the people, “We want to hear what you say. We want to have a battle. We want to hear the arguments”. Let those who wish put the case for reform that will end up in the Bill, and let others put the case against, with all the toing and froing in which the media will take an interest. We will listen to what is said, and woe betide Parliament if we do not take cognisance of it. The scenario could be a very tight result. In those circumstances, Parliament should be allowed to look at the result and make dispositions accordingly. There may be nuances and changes, but why bind ourselves into a legal straitjacket when there is no need to do so? We could test the will of the Committee tonight and say that we will come back on Report, but this will not go away. This is a lifeboat. We should all get in it quickly in the Division Lobbies. I wish to test the opinion of the Committee.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, this is a simple and elegant amendment, because the sentence would now read:
“The referendum must not be held on 5 May 2011”.
That would give the Government thousands of options of when to hold it. It is just that it must not be held on the same day as the elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and local government elections in England.
The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde—he used to be a constituent of mine; I looked after him very diligently and looked after his interests around Mauchline very well—will know that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, on his first visit to Scotland after winning the election, spoke of the respect that he and his coalition Government had for the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government. He said there would be a mutual respect. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, a former Acting First Minister as well as Deputy First Minister of the Scottish Executive, will know the importance of that and the way in which it was received in the Scottish Parliament.
That is why Members of the Scottish Parliament of many parties and members of the Scottish Government were deeply concerned when the coalition Government, without any consultation—indeed without any information whatever to either Members of the Scottish Parliament or the members of the Scottish Government—decided to have the referendum on the alternative vote on the same day as the election to the Scottish Parliament.
We had a debate in the Scottish Parliament on 18 November about this very subject; as noble Lords know, I am currently a Member of the Scottish Parliament representing the Lothians. The Minister speaking on behalf of the Scottish Government was Mr Jim Mather, who said in relation to the respect agenda David Cameron had spoken about on his visit to the Scottish Parliament—I quote from the Official Report of the Scottish Parliament for 18 November, column 30647—
“Mr Cameron needs to try harder on that agenda, because he is not delivering so far.
I am sad to say that, to make matters worse, neither Scottish ministers nor this Parliament were advised of the UK plans in advance”.
That is not the way to exhibit or give acknowledgement to this respect agenda. There was no consultation whatsoever—not even advising the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government of the fact that this referendum was to be held on the same day as the election.
It is going to create tremendous problems to have the referendum and the election on the same day. In the debate in the Scottish Parliament on 18 November, the Minister, Jim Mather, also made it clear that it was unwise and inconsistent of the coalition Government to hold the referendum on the same day as the election, because in order to avoid a clash of the general election and the Scottish Parliament elections in 2015, the coalition Government—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, and his colleagues, including Mr Michael Moore—have proposed that the Scottish Parliament elections be moved so as not to coincide with the UK Parliament elections.
These are elections on the same basis. They are not referendums. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, is shaking his head. They do not use the same voting system, but they are both elections and they could be held on the same date; wisely, however, the coalition Government are suggesting that they should be changed and that they should not be held on the same date to avoid confusion. It is to avoid confusion not only in the voting procedure—the two votes being taken together—but also in the campaigning. Campaigning for the general election and campaigning for the Scottish Parliament are two different things; the issues are different, the devolved subjects are different from the reserved subjects, and people might vote for the Scottish Parliament on the basis of what the UK Government were doing instead of what the Scottish Government were doing. There is a contamination—the right word, I think—of one campaign with the other. Indeed, that is exactly the same, as I intend to show in a moment, as what will happen if the election and the referendum are held on the same day.
Jim Mather went on in the debate to say that,
“the next Scottish Parliament election will not be given the space or prominence that it deserves”.
He is right. In order for the election to be treated properly, with the kind of respect that it deserves, it needs its own space and its own prominence. That is why it needs to be held separately from the UK election and separately from the referendum.
That brings me to the points that I made in the debate in the Scottish Parliament on 18 November. I will make them again here. There are two main reasons against having the elections on the same date. They are both concerned with confusion: confusion in campaigning and confusion in voting.
An election campaign is held on a party basis—party workers, working together and fighting other parties. It is tribal, if you like. Clearly, all the Labour people are in one campaign, with all the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, the SNP and Greens running their own campaigns for that election. However, for a referendum, there will be cross-party campaigns. If this goes ahead, I will be campaigning with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. He and I—he has already confessed this—will be against the alternative-vote system. We will go around Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley together, perhaps, and into the streets of Mauchline, saying “Vote no!”. But he will also be saying, “Vote for the Conservative candidate”, and I will be saying, “Vote for the Labour candidate” on the same day. That will confuse the electorate.
Lord Snape
Seriously, now, there would only be one winner in a contest like that.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Yes, I thank my noble friend very much; I did not know that he was a fan of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde.
It is a very difficult campaigning concept. I was speaking earlier about the Liberal Democrats going campaigning and using loudspeakers to say, “Vote for our miserable little compromise”. It will be even more difficult if you have a loudspeaker car saying, “Vote Conservative. Vote No”. Wait a minute—do you want us to vote for you, or do you not? It confuses the electorate. They are two different things.
I am trying not to use my usual humorous manner, because it is a serious matter that will confuse people. I worked with David McLetchie, who was the Conservative leader in the Scottish Parliament, for the “Yes” campaign for the European referendum; I think my noble friend Lord McAvoy was on the other side of the argument on that occasion. The essence of referendum campaigning is cross-party campaigning and building up as strong a campaign as you can. That is very different from the tribalism of the party campaign. It will really confuse people.
The second area of confusion is voting. When the voter goes into the voting booth, there will already be two ballot papers: one for the constituency and one for the regional list. That is enough to comprehend; I am not saying that Scottish or Welsh voters are any less intelligent than English voters or any others. Then you get a third ballot paper for the referendum. That is okay as far as it goes, but the problem with putting a referendum in with a Scottish election is that the two franchises are substantially different. For the referendum it is the parliamentary franchise, and for the Scottish Parliament election it is the local government franchise. The difference is that Peers are currently on the local election franchise but not the parliamentary election franchise. This Bill takes account of that, but does not deal with the other differences. Overseas voters are on the parliamentary franchise but not on the local government franchise. Citizens of European countries living in the United Kingdom are on the local government franchise but not on the parliamentary franchise. Taking Scotland as an example, we will have all the Polish, German and French people—people from all European countries—living and working in Scotland going to the polling booth and being able to vote in the election but not in the referendum. That is confusion.
The Bill is one of the most complicated that I have ever seen, with its formulae and everything else. One of the particular complications is how the presiding officer records who has voted and how. The option is there for the polling officer to have one register or two. If there is one register, he or she must make a note next to the name of every voter of whether they got two or three ballot papers. On the other hand, if they have two registers, they must move from one to the other. That will take twice, maybe three or four times, as long as at present.
Most Members of the Committee will remember that, even during the general election, with one election under the simple system of first past the post, there were queues to vote in Sheffield, no less. Some people lost their vote because of those queues because they could not get into the polling place before 10 o’clock. Imagine how much more difficult it will be when you have three ballots—two for the Scottish Parliament and one for the referendum—and it is then being marked on two registers or one register. All of that complication will ensure that there is confusion at the polling place. Perhaps people will be denied their vote because they cannot get in due to the time that it has taken to carry out this complicated procedure.
Because of a lack of respect, the Scottish Parliament was not consulted. This is what would have happened if it had been consulted: in that debate on 19 November, the Scottish Parliament voted by 90 votes to 30 to petition this Parliament not to have the referendum on the same day as the election. If the coalition presses it through that it should be on the same date, it will be going against the clearly expressed view of the democratically elected Scottish Parliament, passed by a majority of 60, or 3:1. I am sure that the coalition would love to have that kind of overwhelming majority in the Lobbies here tonight or on any other occasion.
I plead with the Government to listen to the Scottish Parliament and its democratically expressed view that these two elections should not be held on the same day. If the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is replying to this debate, I am sure that he will understand the problems involved, and that this will be the first amendment that the coalition understandably accepts.
Lord Rooker
At about 2 pm I was given notice about degrouping part of this group. Amendment 5 is mine. I was advised that Amendments 5, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12, all of which contain specific dates, would be degrouped. They would come after Amendments 4, 6 and 13 which do not contain dates. I was advised to have the debate on that basis. I apologise for not being early enough in the day to give proper notice of that.
Lord Lipsey
I hope my noble friend Lord Foulkes will forgive me because I am going to say something very shocking—I agree with every word of the speech he has just delivered, although from a different perspective on electoral systems.
There is one thing at least that everybody in this House can agree on. The decision that will be made in the referendum—whenever it comes—is extremely important for our country. It is a small change that will make a big difference, for better or for worse. That has very important implications for how that decision is taken. It is extremely important that the British people are thoroughly engaged and take their decision after due consideration of all the facts. This is important not just to those who agree with me that the system should be changed but also to those who do not want the system changed. If you have a mucky referendum result, the issue will not go away—it will come up year after year and the referendum will not have succeeded, as many of us hope it will, in resolving the issue.
Making electoral change in democracies is very hard. According to research from the politics department at the University of Reading, there have been only six major changes in electoral systems in all the established democracies of the world in the past 25 years. The number of countries involved is only four, since the French went one way and back and the Italians went one way and back. It is very rare that a country chooses to change its electoral system. Winning referendums to change electoral systems is not easy either. I am optimistic that the form I favour will win, but I would not be so if I consulted the international form book.
My amendment, which backs up the amendment of my noble friend Lord Foulkes by leaving it to the Government to put in another date to replace the one which he is trying to get removed, would mean that there would be time for a proper debate. It would remove the debate from, let us face it, a rather small inner circle of people who up to now have been interested in the electoral system, and take it to the people for them to make their considered and revered decision. Most of that is probably common ground.
My noble friend Lord Foulkes talks for Scotland; I will talk for Wales, where I live. This is the political prospect facing Wales in the run-up to this election. We have a referendum in March on the legislative powers of the Welsh Assembly, an issue of great importance to many people in Wales. On 6 May, there will be, simultaneously, the elections for the Welsh Assembly—extremely important elections, closely fought, four parties engaged in much of Wales—plus local elections and, at the same time, you will have the campaign about this issue.
I got a feel for what it was like last Saturday because I went to my local Brecon and Radnorshire constituency Labour Party and spoke for AV. I must have been in reasonable form because I felt that I got a pretty sympathetic reaction. There was only one person opposed. The question came, however, of what they were going to do about it. One lady said, “I am not campaigning with the Lib-Dems”. She hated the Lib-Dem council and she was not going on to the streets—however convincing my words—to campaign. Parties form an informative function in our democracies as well as bringing voters out. People learn from those they know and trust locally as well as from their national newspapers, thank God. This lady will not be giving her take—which I hope would have been the take I gave in my speech—because she is not prepared to be knocking on doors at the same time and on the same side as the local Liberal Democrats, who she hates, who are local representatives of the coalition, which she also hates. This is a recipe for a blurred referendum, an uninformed referendum, a referendum where the people’s verdict will not ring as loudly as it could.
I fail to grasp the arguments that are used in favour of this coincidence of dates. The only one I have heard repeated is about cost. The cost of the referendum is £80 million. The additional cost of having them on separate days is said to be £15 million. Perhaps the Minister will confirm those figures. You would not mock £15 million; it is tempting to say that you cannot put a price on democracy, except I am an economist so I can put a price on democracy and anything else you want. Honestly, £15 million will not run the National Health Service for an hour. To take a fundamental decision about a referendum of this importance, of such fundamental impact on our democracy, on the basis of £15 million sounds most peculiar.
I am not naturally a suspicious man, but I suspect that the Lib-Dems have persuaded themselves they are more likely to win a referendum if it takes place on that date. I have done some work on this. I have consulted some of the leading psephologists in the country. There is no evidence of any kind for that proposition; the evidence is rather the other way. There is, for example, the argument that more people will vote in Scotland because it is being held jointly with the Assembly elections, and that they will be more likely to vote for change. YouGov polls have shown that support for AV in a referendum in Scotland is at precisely the same level as that in the rest of the country. There is no evidence for this motivating belief at all. It is not more likely that AV will win in May; my own judgment is that it is somewhat more likely that it will lose.
I am left with a vacuum. Here is a clear case of a democratic abuse which I am sure those on the Cross Benches will be very quick to pick up. Here is an argument from the Government in favour of what they are doing which, even by the standards of the many Governments of all complexions I have known over the years, seems to me extraordinarily thin.
Tonight we have a chance to break this, and we will have other chances in later amendments to the Bill. I hope your Lordships will do so by voting in favour of the amendments in this group.
Lord Palmer
My Lords, I certainly support this amendment as a resident of Scotland. I would love to know if anybody in this House properly understands the AV voting system. Of those of us who are elected hereditary Peers—and we have had several over the past 10 years—none of us seems to understand it. Possibly the Clerk of the Parliaments is the only person who does. I think that what the noble Lords, Lord Lipsey and Lord Foulkes, have said bears very serious consideration, bearing in mind the terrible problem we have in Scotland of voter apathy. This is a very important point, in my view.
Lord Deben
My Lords, that is precisely why I think the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is wrong. Let me take Wales, the area of the country which I know well and where I have strong connections, and think of the argument put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. He says that it is sensible to have a referendum in March, another referendum on this subject and the elections, and that somehow that will be beneficial. It will be the opposite. People are not enthusiastic about voting. They do not say to themselves, “My goodness me, I’d love to have another chance to vote. I want some more opportunities”. That is not the situation.
Lord Lipsey
I must have been much less clear than I normally am. I was arguing precisely the reverse of the case and, indeed, the case that I think he is about to argue—that with all these things, you will not get a better vote.
Lord Deben
I hesitate to disagree with the noble Lord in what he has said, but as I understood it he was lauding the fact that there would be a separate date for the referendum on the Assembly’s powers. He suggested that there should be another date for this referendum and there would of course be the date for the Welsh Assembly elections as well. Those are three dates.
As regards the comment about the unwillingness of people to go out to vote, if you have three opportunities to vote, you are likely to have low turnouts in all of them, which does not seem to be a very good idea. One has to face the fact that although we may be fascinated by this subject, it is not a subject which is the constant conversation at the Dog and Duck. I am afraid that it is not. I wish that it were. The noble Lord opposite suggested that we are in that sense anoraks. We are different because we find this all very interesting.
It hardly befits people who are in favour of AV. People will be asked a series of numbers to put down, As the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said, there will be complicated discussions about where you are on, say, numbers 5 and 6. For one then to say that it is too complicated for people to be able to decide yes or no on a simple ballot paper is really not a sensible argument. If we are talking about complication, it is quite complicated to decide about a regional list and a constituency member. But we seem to think that people can manage that on one occasion. We are merely asking that they may also manage a simple choice as to whether they want AV or not. If we cannot believe that people can do that, there is no case for AV whatever because it is so complicated that no one could possibly manage it at all. We have to be a little less condescending to the electorate. The big difficulty is not complication. It is the willingness to take part and to make people feel that it is worth doing. They are more likely to feel that it is worth doing if there are a good number of things to do on the same occasion and they are not spread out over time.
Some people make the argument that the referendum should be on the date of another election because they think that there are advantages. I do not think that there are any advantages either to my side or the other. I would be totally unable to decide, so I think that I am being entirely independent. But I have to say that if the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, really thinks that £15 million is unimportant at a time when I am trying to justify very small amounts of money that have to be removed from people because of the situation we are in, I would not like to have to try to explain that in my former constituency of Suffolk Coastal or in any Welsh constituency. They would spend that £15 million somewhere else. I beg noble Lords not to accept what seems to be a superficial argument.
As to respect, what could be more respectful than saying to people when they vote for the excellent Scottish Parliament that they also have an opportunity to make a decision about the electoral system of the United Kingdom. That is very respectful. For the Scottish Parliament to believe that it is not respectful to ask two questions on the same day seems to be a definition of respect that has been surpassed in unsuitableness only by a former Member of the House of Commons creating a party after that name, which was also a misunderstanding of the meaning of the word.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
In his comprehensive treatment of electoral systems, my noble friend Lord Foulkes missed out one system. As a consequence of the experience of multiple elections in Scotland, there have been two changes to the electoral system. In 2015, as my noble friend said, the elections for the Scottish Parliament will not take place on the same day as the elections for the UK Parliament. Equally, in May 2011, there should have been local government elections under the single transferable voting system on the same day as we would be having a Scottish Parliament election.
Much as I respect my old friend’s political acumen and his attractiveness to the electorate, the fact that he is a Member of the Scottish Parliament is down to only one thing—namely the low vote that the Labour Party received in the first past the post seats for the Scottish Parliament. One of the reasons why the Labour Party did not do as well in the 2007 elections was that people were being asked to participate in two elections using two different systems. Across the country there were incredible numbers of spoiled papers. In my former constituency, the majority of the successful nationalist candidate was less than the number of spoiled papers, which in our estimation tended to come from the areas which had been the traditional stalwarts of Labour support. That is the kind of confusion that seems to have escaped the attention of the previous speaker.
The confusion that arose may take a slightly different form in this election, but it has already been admitted by the desire to have two elections in different years, and two elections in the same year but at different times. Simply trying to get a bigger turnout seems to be the only argument. It could be that saving money is one of the arguments, but I suspect that that is a pretty feeble one because £15 million is a lot of money in one area, but it does not amount to a great deal across the country. Certainly, if we are to do this election properly, we will have to have more people in the polling stations than we had at the last election. We will require sufficient numbers to get the job done. If £15 million is a figure that would break the bank, I would be very worried about the staffing of the polling stations on election day.
I do not want to prolong my speech too long, but I want to make another point. There will be confusion. I have fought several referenda, and I think that I have won one and lost two. I lost the European one in 1975. I lost the Scottish one in 1979, but then went on to win my seat. My point is that the result of a referendum is often largely dependent on the popularity of the proposers. At present, Tory supporters, although they are wilting a wee bit, by and large are quite happy with what this right-wing Government are doing. But I cannot imagine that the proponents of AV—the pure and unalloyed, or the slightly alloyed, proponents in the Liberal Democrats—will be accorded the respect of the electorate, given the way in which they have failed to stem the right-wing tendencies of this Government.
It would be in the Liberal Democrats’ interests to have a referendum as far away from next May as they can—probably to have it a year and a half before the general election, if they are to have one at all. By that time they might be a wee bit less unpopular than they are at present. The university towns and cities of this country are the kind of areas where young people would be expected to turn out to vote for constitutional or electoral change, but the Liberal Democrats do not have a hope in hell of getting any support from them at present.
This is a confused, ill-constructed, badly thought-out proposition of which the date is only one part. It would be desirable for us to look afresh at the date. My noble friend Lord Rooker wants to give electoral reform legitimacy. If we are going to give the result legitimacy, we should hold the referendum at a time when it is not tainted by or confused with any form of political activity.
A referendum is an awkward political weapon which has to be used carefully. Let us face it, over the years there have been referenda across Europe which have resulted in outcomes that none of us would have liked. I do not think this is the same, but it lends itself to confusion in ways that this country could well do without at this time. That is because there are forces at work that are anti-democratic and who wish to use every opportunity to denigrate the democratic system. Having a referendum on the day suggested, when elections are being held in other parts of the country, and in the format decided upon, is foolhardy. No one will be a winner and democracy will be the loser.
Lord Liddle
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Foulkes. I agree with him on some things, but not on others. First, I agree with the points he and my noble friend Lord O’Neill have made about the practicalities of holding a referendum on the same day as other elections. Secondly, there is a real constitutional point made by the House of Lords Constitution Committee, which is that it is not a good idea to have lots of referenda. I do not agree with having lots of referenda. But if you are going to have them, it is a very bad idea to hold them on the same day as other elections. So if we are going to have a referendum—which, generally speaking, I am not in favour of—it should be held on another day away from the elections.
The third point I want to make is that I speak in favour of delay as a supporter of electoral reform and as a supporter of the alternative vote in a referendum. What we need to do is put party politics aside and have a big debate about the nature of our politics in this country. Whereas first past the post was a perfectly legitimate system in the 1950s when 95 per cent of the electorate voted for the two main parties, it is not a legitimate system when only 65 per cent voted for the two main parties, as was the case at the last general election. Surely that makes the case for at least thinking about change. But if we are to have that great debate, it has to be clear of party politics.
I know that on my own side there are many genuine supporters of reform who believe that the most important task next May will be to fight the coalition by getting the biggest vote for Labour rather than making a principled argument in favour of change. If, therefore, we are to bring about a more pluralist system and create a genuinely progressive alliance for change, we should definitely not hold the referendum on the May date.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, I rise to support the amendments in this group and my noble friends Lord Foulkes and Lord Lipsey in their attempts to improve this legislation. I genuinely believe that and I will explain why. I am glad to adopt the arguments put by my noble friends Lord O’Neill and Lord Liddle, and indeed from the Cross Benches by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. I am also grateful for the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, because he cleared the decks for my contribution. I will not adopt any of those straw man arguments he set up and knocked down. I am speaking on the basis of my experience of campaigning in a number of elections in Scotland using a number of different systems, because that is what we have to do now in Scottish politics, and on the basis of my experience of campaigning in referenda.
I predict that what will happen in Scotland is that holding the Scottish Parliament elections on the same day as the referendum will do further damage to the reputation of politics in Scotland and to the relationship between politicians and the electorate. I say so for this reason. There is an argument for holding elections for different purposes on the same day if there is an analogy between them. That was partly why I and others both in this House and the other place supported attempts in 2007 to do just that. We thought that, despite the complexity of the ballot papers, we would not confuse the people of Scotland about what we were seeking to do. Essentially, we were asking them to vote for political parties that had analogous arguments to put forward in the elections to both the Scottish Parliament and local government seats. There is a clear synergy between what is done by local government in Scotland and what the Scottish Parliament does, so it was easy to do.
We embarked on that course. None of us had any doubt about the intellectual ability of the people we were asking to vote in that election, and we were confident in the infrastructure of the electoral system. All the way along the line we were assured that they could carry it off, just as they are assuring the coalition Government. I have to say, though, that there were some significant volte-faces, particularly in the case of the Electoral Commission, which I shall come back to in a moment. But we were assured that it could be done, and in turn we assured the people that it could be done. So we set out to hold local government elections and Scottish Parliament elections, and by the end of the process we had 147,000 spoiled ballot papers. I repeat: 147,000 spoiled ballot papers. That was not because the people of Scotland were inherently unable to understand what they were being asked to do, but because the infrastructure and the environment—the process—were incapable of delivering a way to guide them through it. The failures happened inside the process, in the polling stations and in how the ballot papers were handled thereafter. We failed.
As a consequence of that failure, as a nation we agreed that we would not do it again. There is now a universal view across the parties that we should not try to do it again because we failed to do it properly last time. Another set of elections in which the electorate is disfranchised, allowing the media to run amok with stories of how the political classes have let the people down, could have a destructive and perhaps terminal effect on the relationship between politics and the people of Scotland. Not only did we decide not to do it again, we also set up an independent inquiry to try to identify what we had done. That inquiry came back saying, “Don’t try to run two separate polls on the same day ever again”. We accepted that advice. All of us in all the parties have conditioned the people of Scotland to the view that it was a bad thing to do.
Not only have we conditioned the people of Scotland to that view, we have also encouraged our media to think that to do it at all is of itself the wrong thing. And now what are we about to do? It would appear that we are about to transgress that collective apologia and reconditioning by trying to do it again. Not only that, we will be trying to do it again using two electoral processes that are not analogous with each other. In fact, as my noble friend described it, they contradict each other. We will be giving the people of Scotland mixed messages. We will be saying, “For the purpose of the referendum, the four of us who represent these parties all agree with each other and are right, so you should support us. But for the purpose of the other thing being done that day, we entirely disagree with each other. This man’s judgment is not to be trusted. This woman’s judgment is not to be trusted. She is not to be trusted with making important decisions in your life—except, of course, for the way in which we decide to elect the House of Commons”.
The confusion does not lie in the electorate, because the electorate will respond to us in the way in which we deserve. The confusion lies in us, in seeking to do this when we still have clear in our memory the history of our ineptitude in doing it before. If we have not learned from that, I can tell you now that the media in Scotland and the people of Scotland will, throughout the whole course of this campaign, remind us every single day. The fact that we are trying to do this will dominate the early part of the elections in Scotland. That is my first point.
The second point is that we are a comparatively small part of the United Kingdom. The debate that will dominate in the United Kingdom in the period up to the election—to the extent that it can, and I will come back to that in a moment—will be about the referendum. We will relegate the issues of Scottish politics in a determination of who governs Scotland, for a substantial part of the things that matter to people, to an also-ran category. Politicians, of course, are above doing that, and we will not do that, but the media will; and the UK media, the London-centric media, dominates our media. Consequently, try as our politicians will, with their meagre resources, to fight against this and get some reasonable debate going about the issues that matter to the people of Scotland and about who should make decisions about health and education and other related issues that have been devolved, they will not be able to do it.
The great debates that will take place—and there will be televised debates about this that will be beamed into all of our houses—will be about the referendum. That is what those of us who argue about respect for the people of Scotland mean. We have no right, in my view, to do this to the people of Scotland, given our own experience of giving them a complicated choice before which we failed to manage properly.
I will make one further point. We will be doing this in an environment where, the fortnight before the date of the election, there will be four public holidays. That is where my experience of campaigning comes in. I know, as does everyone else in this House who has knocked on doors, that you cannot touch these issues over a holiday weekend—and we are going to have two of them. My noble friend says “and a royal wedding”. We will have two of these weekends now because of the royal wedding. Therefore, we are going to deny ourselves the opportunity, in campaigning terms, to find a space to get these issues up for the consideration of the electorate because of the date that has been chosen. We are going to do, in my view, significant and terminal damage to the relationship between the political parties and the people of Scotland, and we have an opportunity in these amendments not to do that. Never mind the arguments for the rest of the United Kingdom. Never mind the arguments about differential turnouts because we do not have concurrent elections in all parts of the United Kingdom. Never mind the fact that, when these issues were debated in the other place, the debate took four hours. There were, in those four hours, one and a half contributions in support of the Government’s position. In the Minister’s response, there was no answer to the comprehensive arguments that were put forward from academic sources, from political sources, from the Electoral Commission and from other sources as to why this was the wrong thing to do.
I warn the Liberal Democrats that, if this happens, and if the consequences that I predict ensue, then other political parties, including the coalition partners, will be very quick to tell the people of Scotland where the blame lies for us.
Lord Rennard
My Lords, I want to say briefly why I oppose this group of amendments suggesting that a date other than 6 May should be the date for the referendum. I will speak also to the next group of amendments suggesting other possible dates. Let me say first that I do so on the basis that, in all these discussions of electoral reform and electoral matters, I have always argued consistently from the position that what we should be considering is what is the maximum benefit for the voters, what gives most power to the voters and what most helps them, and not from the position of the politicians or the parties. It seems to me that 6 May for the referendum is actually the day that is of the greatest benefit to the voters for a number of reasons.
Lord Rennard
I believe it is 6 May. The first argument, which has been made several times, is by no means the strongest. In my mind it is a relatively weak argument. However, I think the arguments made about cost are relevant. I have seen figures suggesting that the cost between holding the referendum on the same day as the elections next May and on another day might be £15 million. I have also seen figures suggesting £30 million. Whether that is a big sum of money to pay for democracy is a relevant argument, but it is used very frequently by the opponents of reform. I regret the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is not in his place at the moment, because almost his main weapon for arguing against any measure of reform, moving our electoral system on from where it was nearly 140 years ago, is that it would cost too much to ask the people to have a vote on this issue. Since it would be used as an argument in the referendum, I believe that holding it on a day when it would be more cost-effective to do so is at least a relevant argument. Above all, I believe 6 May is a good day for the convenience of the voters—I should have said 5 May. I beg your pardon. The voters would be voting in 84 per cent of the country in elections on the same day—in local elections for most of England, and in all of Scotland and Wales. Being expected to turn out on this issue on another day would not, I think, be welcome. The next opportunity in the United Kingdom when there would be so many elections would not be until 2014, when we would be voting in the European Parliament elections. I believe that it would be less satisfactory to hold this referendum in 2014, a year before the general election. The voters should know, and we should know, for a longer period than that what voting system we will have.
As I said at Second Reading, having the referendum on the same day as a lot of other elections will, I think, strengthen the legitimacy of the vote. Legitimacy of the vote is argued by a number of people. I do notice that some noble Lords argue with inconsistency. They say that there needs to be a big turnout for these elections in order for there to be legitimacy but at the same time they argue that there should not be any other elections on the same day. I honestly wonder how many people would go along to the polling station if there were no other elections on the same day.
We have had arguments about confusion. Let us turn again to the Scottish Parliament elections of 2007. One of the most notable things about them was that when people had a complicated ballot paper for choosing their MSP for their constituency and their regional list MSPs they also had the opportunity to vote in a preference voting system—with choices one, two and three—in the local elections. In those local elections in Scotland in 2007, on the same day as the Scottish Parliament elections, virtually none of the local election ballot papers was spoilt. People easily understood one, two and three on a ballot paper on the same day as they were also electing list MSPs and constituency MSPs. Therefore I believe that we are respecting the Scottish voters. I will give way briefly, although the noble Lord has spoken at some length already.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Can he explain to other noble Lords why, if it was as simple as he suggests, his party in the Scottish Parliament argued for and voted for the movement of those local government elections from the same date as the Scottish Parliament elections?
Lord Rennard
My Lords, the beauty of devolution, which this party has long supported more than any other party, is that different parliaments and assemblies in different parts of the country can have their own priorities. I am simply arguing now that we should be respecting Scottish voters and crediting them with intelligence, which they showed in 2007 by voting in the Scottish Parliament elections and in the local elections—and in the local elections, there were very few spoilt ballot papers. I do not believe that the voters in Scotland are any less intelligent than, for example, the voters in London in 2000 when they elected the borough councillors in London and they voted for the London Mayor and the London Assembly. I do not believe that they, or voters in any other part of the United Kingdom, are less intelligent, for example, than voters in the United States who, in many states, elect their senators, their congressmen and their president and vote on numerous initiatives on the same day.
Finally, while some people say that it is contrived for that day in May to induce the right result, I cannot understand how it could be seen that fewer than 4 million Scots and fewer than 2 million people in Wales would outvote more than 38 million people in England. On all these technical issues, the argument I have made since 2000, when we discussed the setting up of the Electoral Commission, is that when there is a dispute between parties as to what is and is not practical we should have an arbiter, independent of government and of any party, who could give guidance to Parliament. The Electoral Commission, in briefing Parliament on these issues, has been clear and specific. It is satisfied that it is possible successfully to deliver these different polls in May at the same time.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
How does the noble Lord reconcile that with the Electoral Commission advising the Scottish Parliament to separate the local government elections from the Scottish Parliament elections, as my noble friend Lord O’Neill pointed out?
Lord Rennard
It is not at all inconsistent to argue that one should be able to hold the local elections and the Scottish Parliament elections at different times if that is the consensus in Scotland. I am simply saying that we should credit the intelligence of the voters in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England with being able to vote in the AV referendum—it is a simple yes or no choice—and to elect other representatives at the same time. That system applies in many other countries with no difficulty. Let us respect the voters.
Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke
My Lords, I am glad to have another opportunity to speak after the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, because, as someone who for most her life has had an intense involvement in Scottish politics, I find his arguments rather difficult to follow. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, and I have a history because in 1979 we were intensely involved in the Scottish Parliament referendum when we were both on the losing side. One of the reasons for that was the complexity of the debate at the time and the fact that there were very few people behind us—in the party that he then supported—who were in favour of what was going on. I suggest that if the noble Lord looks behind him at the moment he will find that the Benches are singularly empty as well.
There is a certain poignancy and irony in the fact that we are having this debate on St Andrew’s Day because the first point I wish to make is that the failure to consult on the date of the referendum did not show the Scottish Government any kind of respect. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, knows me well and knows that I hold no brief for the Scottish National Party Administration in the Scottish Parliament, but they still form that Administration and they should have been consulted.
In the midst of the excellent speech of my noble friend Lord Browne I had a light bulb moment. I think the Liberal Democrats have been comprehensively conned because holding both the referendum and the Scottish Parliament elections on the same day in Scotland will lead to the referendum being defeated. I say this for two reasons. First, I have many friends who are Liberal Democrats and I believe that they are on a hiding to nothing because the argument that will be used in Scotland—and we are hearing it already—is, “Cut out the middleman. If you want a Tory, just vote Tory”. That will have an impact on the Liberal Democrats. Secondly, I do not believe the Scottish people will respond positively to what looks like a fiddle being worked by putting the referendum and the Scottish Parliament elections on the same day.
My noble friend Lord Browne referred to public holidays. The fact that we will have the massive diversion of a royal wedding in the middle of it all will greatly complicate things. I have a background in newspapers as well as in politics and, frankly, referenda do not sell newspapers; royal weddings do. There is likely to be rather more about who is going to make Miss Middleton’s frock than about the nature of the constitutional debate on how this country should choose its leaders in the future.
I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Foulkes. He makes a sensible point. I appeal to the Liberal Democrats to think seriously about the hole they are digging themselves into because, frankly, if this referendum is lost, it will be a generation before the issue of proportional representation can be raised again. I see smiles on the Conservative Benches when I say that. This legislation has been cobbled together and the Leader of the Liberal Democrats has it as his special project. It may turn out to be his epitaph.
Lord McAvoy
I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Foulkes. I wish to spend a couple of minutes on one of my favourite subjects—the behaviour of the Liberal Democrats. I can see one noble Lord covering his face in horror, but the best is yet to come.
In setting the background, I shall begin with the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, my good friend who expressed such affection for me last week. I am beginning to think that I would rather it was an affection that did not speak its name. The gist of the noble Lord’s contribution was, “If you do not let us put this Bill through, we will do this and that to you”, and he portrays our principled opposition to the Bill as being destructive. He portrays it as being aimed at nothing other than destroying the Bill, with nothing positive in it.
That was followed in even worse terms by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, whose contribution was designed to intimidate and bully anyone who opposes the Bill. Those who oppose the Bill would be portrayed as obstructing the House of Lords and ruining its conventions. In my short time here, I have seen more destruction of the conventions of the House coming from the Conservative Government, and yet they accuse us of destroying them. Both the noble Lords, Lord Tyler and Lord Strathclyde, have put forward a deliberate strategy that is designed to convince our colleagues on the Cross Benches that we are entirely negative about this. I see a Conservative Peer nodding in agreement. There has been not a word about principled opposition or the excellent points that have been made by my colleagues. They are far better points than I will make, but they have not been listened to. Their strategy is to portray us as obstructive and to destroy our democratic right to revise the legislation and to ask the Government to think again.
I do not look to defeat the elected House of Commons—I never have; at the end of the day, it must have its way. However, I recall that time and again the Conservatives and Liberals defeated the Labour Government on the basis that they asked them to think again. This House normally performs its traditional, conventional duty of revising legislation, suggesting improvements and asking the Government of the day to think again, but that is not happening here. We are not out to defeat the Government—I certainly am not and I do not think anyone else is—but we are asking them to think again, as we have a democratic right so to do. We should not be portrayed as destroying the conventions of the House.
My final comment concerns the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. He waxed lyrical—or not so lyrical—about how explicit the Labour Party was in promising a referendum on AV. If we are going to have a league table, or an exposé, on those who make explicit pledges and promises and then deny them, I do not think we could have a better example than Mr Clegg and every Liberal MP who was elected on a pledge to vote against tuition fees. We should have a bit less of that attitude.
Throughout the debate on the Bill, the perils of legislation such as this, especially on a constitutional matter, being railroaded through without any pre-legislative scrutiny of any kind, have been clear. It should not happen on constitutional matters, but what we have here is the fanatics of proportional representation selling their soul to the Conservatives for the sake of a referendum on AV. I am not personally any great lover of referendums. I seem to be the only one here tonight, among my noble friends, who regarded the referendum result in 1979 as a victory. I think that that was a victory in 1979, but I seem to stand alone on these Benches—there we are; nothing new in that.
My noble friend Lord Browne of Ladyton indicated the number of votes that were spoiled and quite rightly blamed the systems. I stood at gates throughout the constituency and time after time the staff were not able to do their work. It was a brand-new system to them, they found it confusing, they could not give the right advice or they gave the wrong advice, and people did not know what to do—not all our political activists were au fait with the system and able to give definitive advice and it ended up a mess.
That was compounded in the constituency of Rutherglen and Hamilton West when we had a by-election in the Cambusland East ward, due to the tragic death of the sitting SNP councillor, who had great respect in the ward. We all turned up for the count that night, stood around for two or three hours, things went wrong and we were told to go home and come back the following morning. We came back the following morning, nobody oversaw the count, the political parties did not oversee the count and we were just told by the chief executive of the council what the result was. That is what happens when change is rushed and people do not have any experience of it.
To have this referendum on the same day—and, as was the case with the Scottish Parliament elections, without consultation of any kind—is quite insulting. To go back to the failure that my noble friend Lord Browne of Ladyton, mentioned, I do not see any sign—and I am honestly willing to listen—of any education or training taking place to take account of and to deal with the mistakes and faults in that system come May and referendum day. I have not heard a single thing and if anyone, such as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, can come up with specific details of extra training schemes to take account of those lessons, that would be welcome.
What we have with the Bill is rushed legislation driven by the future National Liberal contingent in this Parliament—because they will be exposed as they were in the 1920s and 1930s and we will end up with National Liberals. Look at the Conservative Benches, by far the bigger part of that coalition team. Where are they? They are not here. The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, is the sole representative. We have a mess here. It is being railroaded through. I am strongly opposed to that and I will continue to oppose it on the basis of revising, improving and asking the Government to think again.
Lord Bach
Well, I am sorry if it has not been an interesting debate for the coalition, but I think it was a debate in the best traditions of this House, where we are discussing a matter of some importance. It may be that a number of noble Lords are offended by the fact that dinner has been delayed, or the fact that some of the speeches got up their noses, but these are important matters and we should make no apology, as Members of this House, for debating them.
We, on this Front Bench, are sympathetic to the two amendments, Amendment 4 which has been moved by my noble friend Lord Foulkes, and Amendment 13, which has been spoken to, in the name of my noble friend Lord Lipsey. I am going to speak to Amendment 6, in my name and that of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer. One of the more remarkable aspects of what is, by any stretch, a remarkable Bill is the insistence, the imperative, that the referendum on the alternative vote system must be held on Thursday 5 May 2011. The obvious question to ask the Leader of the House, who I think is responding, rather like the question of why 600 Members of Parliament—we will come to that, perhaps not later tonight, but some time in the future—is why that date? Why has that date been chosen?
One can think of the political-necessity argument for that date, think of discussions that took place—no doubt, quite rightly, behind closed doors—that led to the coalition agreement, the toing and froing and bargaining that took place, and the Conservative majority saying to themselves, well, we will settle for 5 May and the Liberal Democrats being satisfied with that. I can see that being a good reason for having 5 May. Frankly, we cannot see any other good reason as to why the alternative vote referendum has to be so soon.
This is a constitutional Bill of some importance; not perhaps of the most significance since 1832, as has been alleged, but still pretty important. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, made that point from the Cross Benches earlier today and other noble Lords have made it too. On a change from first past the post to the alternative vote, we in this country are normally fairly cautious about constitutional change and with good reason, because a change, if it is wrong, while it may not be for ever, is for a long, long time. So we need to think pretty carefully about what we are doing. That attitude, of course, will be music to the ears of the noble Lord the Leader of the House because of what he used to tell us when we were in government. Sometimes we may have fallen into sin slightly, but he does not want to fall into the same sins that he accuses us of. As a constitutional conservative, he will want to be careful indeed about constitutional change.
We on this side believe that the proposed referendum on changing the voting system for elections to the House of Commons should not take place on 5 May 2011. The Committee knows that we are not opposed in principle to holding the referendum; it should take place but, we say, not on the same day as another poll—that is patently ridiculous—and, especially, not as early as 5 May.
As the Deputy Prime Minister has reminded us, there are a large number of people who are eligible to vote on 5 May next year, but it is not 100 per cent and not around the country. Perhaps 80 per cent are able to vote. One of the fears about having the vote on that day is that no one will be voting in London, unless there is the odd by-election or two. If the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, is right; the differential in turnout that there may be between the areas where there are elections and London where there is none will be interesting to see, but it will not do much for the legitimacy of the result.
In a recent report on referendums, the cross-party Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House argued that there should be a presumption against holding referendums on the same day as ordinary elections. We on this side agree with that presumption; does the Minister who is speaking for the Government tonight? Until recently, as we have heard, that was the stated position of the Electoral Commission as well. We acknowledge that the commission has changed its mind in favour of judging each case on its merits, but the level of discontent over the timing of this proposed referendum makes this a case where there should not be elections on the same day. I also point out that there has been no consultation on the date and, in particular, no consultation with the devolved Assemblies.
Our Constitution Committee puts it like this at paragraph 20 of its recent report:
“The Scottish Executive have expressed the view that holding the referendum on 5 May 2011 ‘shows a lack of respect for the devolved administrations’, and that it ‘undermines the integrity of elections to the Scottish Parliament’. The Welsh Assembly Government is likewise opposed to holding the referendum on the same day as the Assembly elections”.
What does our respected Constitution Committee conclude? At paragraph 23 it says:
“We note the Government’s arguments in favour of combining the two polls. However, we regard it as regrettable that the Government should have failed to consult appropriately with the devolved institutions on the timing of the referendum”.
Does the noble Lord the Leader of the House agree with the committee’s conclusion?
Today we have heard graphically described by two distinguished ex-Secretaries of State for Scotland the problems that there have been in the past, one in the more distant past and one more recent, by linking elections together in Scotland. Indeed, that seems to have been appreciated to some extent by the Government: I understood that the Deputy Prime Minister had made it clear that the date of the elections to come after the ones in May in Scotland and Wales for their Parliament and Assembly will now not take place on the proposed date of the next general election, but that those elections will be moved forward by a number of months. Why, if it is so perfect to have all these elections on one day, has that decision been taken?
We argue in our amendment, and I will do this as briefly as I can, for a referendum within 18 months of Royal Assent. We believe that that allows adequate time to prepare for the vote but does not unduly delay the holding of the poll. This is not some attempt to ensure that there is no referendum that can be taken into account before the next general election. We think that there should be a referendum so that its results can be taken into account in that way. We think that up to 18 months—that does not necessarily mean a full 18 months—is not too long a period to wait to hold the poll. There is plenty of time for the next election to be held, if that is the wish of the electorate, on AV.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno
Is the Labour manifesto for the last election not explicit that the AV referendum should be before October 2011?
Lord Bach
Indeed, that is what the manifesto said and—to quote my noble friend Lord Grocott—“We lost”. Yes, it was October—the noble Lord is right. It was not May though and it was not 5 May. It was October and we said six months; our amendment says between six months and 18 months, so October might well be the date but we think it is better to give more time because it provides a sensible window for an information campaign to be executed. I remind the Committee that when New Zealand changed its voting system in the early 1990s, there was a year-long information campaign. Surely it would be better to have a proper information campaign about the alternatives—the choices that are to be made—which lasts for some time and actually gets through to people, rather than to rush it through in May.
Consultation by the Electoral Commission on the referendum question revealed the extent of people’s limited knowledge of the two voting systems and how they work. That is not disparaging of the electorate. Of course it is not. As has been said in this debate, most people’s knowledge of politics is voting once a year, or less than that. If the Government are serious in their claim to seek to hand power back to people, surely it is correct that we enable the people to make informed choices. We have also to give officials and interested participants adequate time to provide this information. Our worry is that the timetable proposed by the Bill does not allow for this to happen.
I turn now to a further argument. Whether this referendum on AV is a referendum on a miserable little compromise or whether it is—as the more optimistic noble Lord, Lord McNally, insists—a battle between two great armies that will be lined up at either side of this fundamental debate, what my noble friend Lady Liddell said just now is well worth listening to. There will be public holidays and a royal wedding just on the eve of this referendum. It will be difficult enough to get people involved in the referendum even if there were no public holidays, or no royal wedding. Is it seriously thought that there will be the necessary and proper publicity before the referendum, if it is held on 5 May, with all the media interest and natural excitement about the royal wedding? It seems to us that that is further argument—though not enough on its own—to ask the Government just to think again. If they cannot give an explanation, which they have not up to now, as to why it has to be as soon as 5 May 2011 they should just reconsider. No one would criticise them if they reconsider, perhaps take a more sensible view and say that this referendum should take place after a longer period has elapsed.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, for the way that he moved his amendment. In fact, if he had stopped after about a minute he would have made some very compelling points because he said it was elegant and clear, and his amendment was. We then had a debate for nearly an hour and a half and we lost a lot of that initial clarity. He was my MP. He never bothered to canvass me, perhaps because he realised that I did not have a vote. If he and I, perhaps joined by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, were to walk down Loudoun Street in Mauchline and perhaps slip into Poosie Nansie’s—three lairds together—those who were there would be extremely suspicious and they would smell a rat if they thought that we were all on the same side, although of course we are on many things.
We have had a series of amendments. I totally accept what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said about degrouping his amendments—that is within the rules. He may find that my answers are not dramatically different but we shall come to his amendments in due course.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Could the noble Lord explain how the saving has suddenly doubled? Exactly what does that involve? Why will it save so much more? That is certainly not the figure that was given to the Scottish Government. He just pulled it out of a hat without any explanation. It would be helpful if he could explain.
Lord Strathclyde
I would not dream of pulling that figure out of a hat. The figure that I have been given by the department’s advisers is £30 million across all polls. It is a substantial amount of money.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
It is well recorded that if you hold elections and a referendum on the same day there is the possibility of confusion. If by holding them on the same day there will a saving of £30 million, is the noble Lord prepared to use any of that money to ensure that the polling stations are properly staffed and a proper campaign of information is made available to the electorate, so that the confusion that was experienced in Scotland the last time this happened does not occur again across the whole of the UK?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I will come to the question of confusion in the polling booths in 2007 in a moment. The point is that, in principle, I do not believe that people will be confused by virtue of having to vote on different issues at the same time. On top of that, the referendum question—
Lord Lipsey
The noble Lord is about to move off the point, raised by my noble friend Lord Foulkes, that I want to follow up, so I am grateful to him for giving way. It is all very well to say that he got the figure of £30 million from his officials, but they previously gave a figure of £15 million. Therefore, could the noble Lord kindly put in the Library a full explanation of both figures and what they involve, so that the House can have a factual basis on which to make its judgments?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I am happy to do whatever I can to bring clarity to this debate and I am happy to do what the noble Lord suggests. The saving has doubled because it is across all the polls on 5 May; £30 million is the net figure.
The referendum question is straightforward. It has been fully tested by the Electoral Commission and has been amended to incorporate its recommendations. The question will enable the electorate to understand the choice that they are being asked to make and to express their views clearly. Several noble Lords said that a national referendum will overshadow the devolved and local elections. However, having seen those elections, which noble Lords opposite experienced, I simply cannot imagine that that will be the case. There will be two different campaigns, run at different levels, over the run-up to 5 May. Given the important issues that are to be voted on at devolved and local levels, I do not see why those issues should be swept to one side simply because a national poll on a different issue will be held at the same time. I just do not believe it.
The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, says that there will be confusion but there is no evidence for that. There will be a national campaign and I believe that this will increase the turnout. As far as being confused on the franchise, which the noble Lord raised, the Electoral Commission will make voting eligibility utterly clear in the information that it distributes. Furthermore, polling cards will be sent to every voter saying which polls they can vote in.
Lord Campbell-Savours
On the issue of eligibility, can the noble Lord ensure that, prior to next week’s debate, we will actually have the registration figures for inner-city constituencies, an undertaking that I was given at the meeting that he attended with the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and the Bill team?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, if the figures can be produced, they will be produced for the noble Lord to see.
Furthermore on this question of confusion, the Electoral Commission—as my noble friend Lord Rennard pointed out—has advised that it is possible to successfully deliver these different polls on 5 May. The commission has issued briefing throughout the passage of this Bill in another place. It concluded that the Bill contains the necessary provisions for the combination of the referendum poll with the scheduled election, and says that it is satisfied that the technical issues it has identified with these provisions to date have been addressed by the Government.
The noble Lord, Lord Browne, went on to explain that the system failed in the Scottish elections in 2007. I say, slightly tangentially to this when it comes to confusion, that I now live in the former constituency of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for one election, I live in the former constituency of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for another and I am in a third constituency for the European elections. We get used to this. It may not be ideal but, if there has ever been any confusion about different elections being voted on at different times with different systems, they are entirely decisions made by noble Lords opposite. We are not adding to the confusion.
As the noble Lord knows, there was an inquiry by Ron Gould, who at the time said that the problem in 2007 was that there were two votes on the same ballot paper. That is what confused so many people. That is not going to be the case here. Gould has, furthermore, said:
“I do not believe that the same factors which led to voter confusion and the large number of rejected ballots at the last Scottish … elections would arise if both the Parliamentary Election and the Referendum were held on the same date”.
That is an authoritative statement.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
In the interests of fully reporting Mr Gould’s position, can the Leader of the House confirm that Gould confirmed his position in evidence to the Scottish Affairs Select Committee that he would not recommend the conduct of two ballots on the one date, given his experience in his investigation into what happened in Scotland? He has not changed his position from the recommendation. I accept that the noble Lord has quoted him but he should give the full context of what he said.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I am very glad that the noble Lord has now given that context but, equally, that he does not disagree with the quotations that I have given.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I refer the noble Lord to page 220 of the Bill:
“List of votes marked by presiding officer
32 (1) If the counting officer thinks fit, a single list of votes marked by the presiding officer may be used in respect of—
(a) votes marked on referendum ballot papers,
(b) votes marked on constituency ballot papers, and
(c) votes marked on regional ballot papers.
(2) Where a person’s entry in that list does not relate to all three kinds of ballot paper, the entry must identify each kind to which it relates”.
All of this has to be carried out during the voting process, marking on the list which ballot paper it relates to. That will take a large number of minutes for everyone who comes in, if only one list is used. Has the Leader of the House really considered this? Can he explain precisely how this will work?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, this whole process will involve negotiation, discussion and a debate which is taking place between the Electoral Commission and the various polling authorities right across the country to ensure that people can vote, have time to vote and understand the different elections in which they are voting. We do not believe—we stand by this fact—that there will be any confusion on this at all. Setting the date in legislation gives certainty to those involved in the planning and the campaigning. Moreover, if this amendment were carried, the Bill would say that there is going to be a referendum on a matter of—
Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke
This is a very simple point amid the complex issues that we have been discussing. Given that there is this complexity, why did the Government not consult the Scottish Government before coming to that conclusion?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, a decision was made on a national poll and to announce that to the House of Commons. That is what happened. Therefore, there was no time to have a great consultation with the Scottish Government. Mutual respect is a great idea and is something that we should always carry out, but if there was no reason not to have the referendum on 5 May, it was entirely right for the Government to make that decision and to make that announcement.
Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke
The noble Lord is being extremely generous and I am very grateful for that, but the conclusion to which I come from the answer that he has given is that he does not trust the Scottish Government. Is that the case?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I have no idea where the noble Baroness found that; of course, it is not true. I very much respect the House of Commons and think that it was entirely right and appropriate for that announcement to be made first in the House of Commons.
Other amendments are grouped with this one, including that spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, which proposes that this process should be spread between six and 18 months. However, I have to tell him and noble Lords opposite that holding this referendum is a government priority as it is time to give the people their say on how they should elect their parliamentary representatives. That goes to the heart of the Bill and to the heart of the decision to hold this poll on 5 May. I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, I am in a genuine dilemma about what to do. I know that many noble Lords would like to go to dinner. The Leader of the House and I do not need to go to dinner as, like camels, we can survive for weeks on the resources that we have accumulated over the years. However, this is a serious matter. This is the first time that the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, has said that he agrees with every word that I have said. That in itself must be a powerful argument for pressing this to a vote. Astonishing revelations have been made in the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, is not present; he does need his dinner. Given what he used to feed his daughter, it is probably a rather speedy repast. He said that savings of £15 million would be made. Within an hour, the figure escalated to £30 million. That is the most astonishing escalation, as my noble friend Lord Lipsey pointed out. I wish that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, were still here as I would point out to him that a great deal more could be saved by not having the referendum at all, which is probably what most of us in this House want, and probably most in another place as well.
My noble friend Lord O’Neill put forward a convincing argument. I had forgotten to say in my introduction that the Scottish Parliament cleared the way for the Scottish vote to be a stand-alone election by moving the local government elections to a year later. That is a powerful argument. He also reminded me of the argument of contamination and how people vote in a referendum. As my noble friend said, in 1979 we lost the referendum probably because the Government were unpopular, whereas in 1997 we won probably because the Government were very popular. Tony Blair was the most popular Prime Minister in our lifetime. Contamination takes place, and that contamination will be even worse when this referendum is held.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Will the noble Lord put us out of our misery and tell us whether he is going to call a vote?
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
If the noble Lord had sat through all the debate—I know he was in for some of it—he would understand my dilemma. My noble friend Lord O’Neill argued strongly that I should press this amendment to a vote because we have such an overwhelming argument. My noble friend Lord Liddle mentioned the Yes to Europe referendum that he and I took part in. I see some of the Liberals opposite were on the same side as me in that campaign. I campaigned alongside Roy Jenkins and other great Europeans, and we got a wonderful yes vote, a good turnout and a fantastic result. As my noble friend said, it would be important for the great debate to be clear of party politics.
My noble friend Lord Browne then argued the case I tried to put earlier, far more eloquently and convincingly than me, and said that I should press this to a vote. He made the point that I had not made about four public holidays. During the coming campaign, we will have the Easter holidays, the May Day holiday, and now a separate holiday for the royal wedding. As my noble friend Lady Liddell pointed out, royal weddings hit the headlines rather more than referendums. From the point of view of the Liberal Democrats, it will not be very clever for this referendum, which they have put so much store by, to compete with a royal wedding.
I am keen to push this to a vote because the Liberal Democrats might come along with us, now that they realise the force of the argument on the problems of holding the referendum on that day. However the Liberals and the Tories are very strange on this. When my noble friend Lord Bach said that this had been a useful debate, there was cackling, even giggling, from the Liberal Benches. None of them stepped into the breach, with the noble exception of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, who is brave. It reminded me of “Yes Minister”—the Minister was told, when he was going to do something foolish, “Yes, that’s a courageous decision, Minister”. Apart from him, the Liberals sat there listening to everything, like a jury waiting to give the verdict in the Division Lobbies.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
It is not a modern jury. It is a more like a jury out of “Garrow’s Law”. The other astonishing thing about the debate is that, apart from the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, not one Conservative participated. Not one Conservative has got to their feet to defend the policy of this coalition Government. That is astonishing, and that is why I am encouraged to put my amendment to the vote. But—
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
But I am told that I will have another opportunity on Report to make these arguments again—more forcefully, more powerfully, with a better and bigger audience, and more people to convince to come into our Lobby. So I shall wait for that opportunity and not press my amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Arrangement of Business
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, we are in a rather unusual position with regard to the Question for Short Debate. Because it is now last business, different time rules apply. Noble Lords will be aware that Questions for Short Debate are normally for a period of one hour and on that basis the list today had said that the opener would have 10 minutes, the noble Baroness, Lady Northover—the Minister responding— 12 minutes and all other speeches would have been limited to six minutes.
As a result of concluding Committee at this point and the fact that the Government do not intend to return to the Bill in Committee later this evening, the Question for Short Debate therefore goes to 90 minutes. That means that, although the opener speech remains 10 minutes and the Minister remains at 12 minutes, all other speeches may now extend to 10 minutes if those participating so choose.
Provision of Epilepsy Services
Baroness Ford
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they plan to increase the provision of epilepsy services
Baroness Ford
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their attendance this evening. Despite my accent, I promise not to return to the question of an AV referendum.
This Question for Short Debate covers an important topic and I am very grateful for the time to address it. I welcome the Minister and thank her for her courtesies before today's debate. She will know that absolutely no slight is intended when I say that we would have been delighted to see the noble Earl, Lord Howe, in his place—because he has been such a stalwart champion for epilepsy services in his previous role as honorary chairman of NSE—but I am well aware that the noble Baroness understands the condition well, and we know that she will respond very thoughtfully to the points that will be made this evening.
I thank the Government for their decision not to proceed with mandatory substitution of generic drugs. The prospect of this change was met with absolute dread by many people with epilepsy. In lots of long-term conditions, but especially epilepsy, continuity and stability of drug treatment is absolutely essential, and even very small changes can have profoundly damaging effects. The Government did absolutely the right thing and we are grateful for it.
As the honorary president of Epilepsy Action, I declare my interest; as a parent of children with epilepsy, I declare my continuing frustration. Our story is like many other families—original misdiagnosis, years of trial and error in drug use, absolutely no continuity at the crossover from paediatric to adult care—in effect, experiencing all the highs and lows of treatment. Families who live with epilepsy understand all this and much, much more. This is a condition that affects many individuals and families in our country. Almost half a million people are affected by epilepsy. 990 people in England die every year of epilepsy-related causes, and tragically about 400 of these are considered potentially avoidable. Almost 70,000 more people with epilepsy could have their seizures controlled by good treatment, and almost 75,000—75,000—are taking aggressive drugs unnecessarily due to misdiagnosis.
This is an important point and one which I hope the Minister might reflect upon. There is a current misdiagnosis rate for epilepsy of between 20 and 30 per cent. We should ponder for one moment on what this might mean in other conditions and diseases. If this statistic was true for cancer, people would be told that they had the disease and treated aggressively for it, only to find some time later that this was not the case. Can we imagine the distress and scandal that that would cause? It is unthinkable. Of course, we do not have that rate for misdiagnosis of cancer, principally because every suspected cancer is referred to a specialist—and rightly so. People would not accept for a moment that they would be seen by a general physician with no specialist knowledge of cancer. Yet this is the situation with epilepsy. The NICE guidelines state that all people with suspected epilepsy should be seen by an epilepsy specialist. But half of all acute trusts in England do not employ a specialist, and anyone familiar with the condition knows the difference between seeing an epilepsy specialist and a general neurologist—it is the difference between night and day. Yet more than half of our trusts still have no specialist provision at all. It is appalling that in the 21st-century NHS such a high rate of misdiagnosis persists, with awful consequences for individuals and a massive waste of resources for the NHS. What plans are there are for improving this woeful situation?
Last year, Epilepsy Action published Epilepsy in England: Time for Change—a review of services that highlighted the incidence of misdiagnosis and also drew attention to widespread failings in service provision when measured against the NICE guidelines. We found that, despite the guidelines stating that people with suspected epilepsy should be seen urgently—that is, within two weeks—this was being ignored by 90 per cent of trusts. Only 10 per cent of people see a consultant within two weeks, and, as we know, there is no guarantee that that consultant will be an epilepsy specialist. As anyone with epilepsy will testify, the period between when they suspect epilepsy and when they get a confirmed diagnosis can be very frightening. Until treatment begins they are at greater risk of seizures, are understandably anxious and are at risk of suffering a full range of side effects and consequences. Our review found that in some cases, people had to wait 18 to 24 months for referral to a consultant.
The review also found that provision of specialist epilepsy nurses was poor. More than half our acute trusts do not employ a single nurse specialist, and the figure is even higher for primary care trusts. This is despite NICE guidance that specialist nurses should form an integral part of the care team. Everyone who lives with epilepsy will tell you that when they find a good consultant, it marks a turning point in their condition; but most will also say that finding a specialist epilepsy nurse transforms their quality of life. The hope that specialist nurses can give is immense. Specialist epilepsy nurses are also fantastic value for money in comparison to the greater costs that they prevent with their work. Perhaps I may draw the Minister's attention to the study carried out recently by John Moores University, which made it clear not only that there is a strong clinical case for specialist epilepsy nurses, but also that there is a very sound economic one.
A major step forward for the condition would be for the Government to make sure that the NICE guidelines are implemented. We are not asking for the moon; we are simply asking the Government to make sure that NHS workforce planning takes account of the need to train epilepsy specialists with consultants and nurses. We are asking for all people with suspected epilepsy to be able to see a proper specialist within two weeks. We are asking for all acute trusts to have the correct diagnostic equipment, for patients to have an annual review of their condition, and for those who want a comprehensive care plan to have one. These requests are not unreasonable. Why, uniquely, should people with epilepsy accept a second-rate service?
One further important issue is the potential legal case surrounding the distressing question of foetal valproate syndrome—a condition recognised since the 1980s and found in the offspring of mothers who took sodium valproate in pregnancy. Sodium valproate is a reasonably common anti-epilepsy drug. In this legal case, the families of children born with the syndrome are seeking reparations from the drug company for their children's problems. They claim that the company did not do enough to warn them of the risk of taking the drug in pregnancy. Unfortunately, in October the Legal Services Commission withdrew public funding from the 100 claimants. A responsibility on the part of the drug company may or may not be proved in the hearing, but the families of these children, many of whom live with serious and debilitating illnesses, deserve to have their point of view tested. In response to another question yesterday, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said that any changes to the legal aid system would “protect the most vulnerable”—I think that that was the phrase. I cannot think of a better and more deserving group of people than these 100 claimants.
Sodium valproate is still being used by many women who may have no knowledge of the potential side-effects. Each year about 5,000 women who have epilepsy become pregnant, and we know from a survey in 2007 that only 21 per cent receive pre-conception counselling. We also know that about 20 per cent of pregnant women take sodium valproate during their pregnancy.
In 2004 a review was undertaken on behalf of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. The review agreed that several key principles should be included on sodium valproate product information but, critically, stopped short of advising whether the drug should be avoided in pregnancy. In contrast, the Food and Drug Administration agency in the United States issued a letter in 2009 to healthcare professionals across the US cautioning that women of childbearing age should be treated with valproic acid only where it was absolutely essential.
So I would like to ask the noble Baroness if the Government would consider asking the MHRA to review its guidance on anti-epileptic drug use in women of childbearing age and, in so doing, take into consideration any new evidence that links anti-epileptic drugs to major congenital malformation, neuro-developmental problems and poorer health outcomes in offspring.
I am grateful to all noble Lords for participating in this debate tonight. We all understand how devastating this condition can be for the many thousands of people who suffer, for their families and their carers. Proper basic service provision would also alter, and immeasurably improve, the lives of many people who frankly have enough to deal with without the NHS letting them down. This is an important issue and for too long we have been failing people with epilepsy by allowing and tolerating standards of care that simply would not be acceptable in most other conditions. It really is time for change.
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on securing the debate this evening and on speaking to us powerfully and movingly from her personal experience. I also congratulate her on her fortitude and patience—perhaps I should extend those congratulations to everybody who is going to speak—for waiting until this late hour to start the debate. In my short input—and it will remain short, in spite of the extra time given to us—I want to focus on a problem associated with epilepsy to which the noble Baroness has referred: the difficulties faced by those who are involved with caring for sufferers. I hope the Minister will be able to respond by assuring the House that carers will be included in any plan for improving support provided to sufferers of epilepsy.
The House is familiar with the problems faced by family carers who provide the bulk of health and social care in our country. The statistic of saving £87 billion for the whole of our society is one that many members have heard me quote—I dare to say ad nauseam. If you have a loved one with epilepsy your duties may include keeping them safe during a seizure; giving first aid or emergency medication; helping with the taking and monitoring of drugs; providing descriptions of seizures for medics where necessary; acting as an advocate or representative; providing transport; and perhaps helping to organise home adaptations. And, of course, as we have heard, those with epilepsy may have a whole range of other conditions that require assistance from their carers.
While much of what these carers do is the same as many of the 6 million carers in the United Kingdom, there are some special difficulties to which I want to draw the attention of your Lordships. The first concerns the onset of caring, which, because of the nature of this illness, is likely to be sudden and quite unexpected; there is no time to prepare or to get information which could help you as a carer. Many of these carers are therefore very often at a loss; they are finding things out by accident, sometimes—very often, actually—not even recognising themselves as a carer. You see yourself as a wife, a mother, a husband, yet identifying yourself as a carer is absolutely key to accessing the right kind of information.
Secondly, as we have often heard, this illness is by its nature spasmodic and changes over time. Therefore there is no simple analysis of the help that is needed. Moreover, since sufferers are, or at least seem, perfectly all right in between episodes and the seizures themselves are often unwitnessed, it can be difficult for the carer to convince anyone that help is needed. This may be particularly so in the case of the psychological effects of this illness: the stress, depression, mood changes and frustration which are so often a feature. Many local authorities, for example, providing social services and social care, do not recognise epilepsy as a condition which has particular care needs. And so the carer’s assessment, which is the right of every carer, hard-fought for by Carers UK, myself and others, is therefore denied them. Without an assessment, there is no access to local authority care packages. Local authorities need guidance, and it would be good if the Minister could assure the House that some of these issues of hidden conditions will be addressed in the refreshment of the national strategy for carers.
One more concern I have is the attitude of some professionals to the carer in this situation. No one is more committed than I to the rights of the user, the patient; I hope my record shows this. However, the fact is that in many cases the carer is more of an expert in the progress of the disease, the nature of the seizures, the signs leading to them and the effects of drugs than the user him or herself, and certainly more of an expert than many of the professionals with whom they come into contact. The carers should therefore be consulted and their opinions taken into account, of course with sensitivity to matters of confidentiality and with the permission of the cared-for person. Very often the carer’s view is completely overlooked—often, I acknowledge, with the best of motives. The doctor or nurse is concerned to help and relieve the carer, but this is not a good use of the expertise the carer has developed. Their views must be sought and taken into account. A lack of specialist knowledge has been highlighted by my noble friend Lady Ford. Yet carers themselves often have specialised knowledge—only of one particular case, but it is very specialised and should not be ignored.
Your Lordships will be aware that much progress has been made for carers in recent years, but there are serious concerns about how the reforms to welfare and the social care system will affect them. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me and the House about the coalition Government’s commitment to carers. By way of an aside, I say to the Minister that I will not be in my place when she sums up but I will be in the House, on the Woolsack.
Baroness Hussein-Ece
My Lords, I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, on securing a debate on this important issue affecting some 500,000 people in the UK. The vast majority of epilepsy starts in childhood. Around one-third of those children will not be helped by anti-epileptic medication and will often struggle with increasing disability, learning difficulties and behavioural problems.
Epilepsy has touched my own family quite dramatically. Six years ago, a close member of my family developed epilepsy as a small child, after contracting a severe bout of chicken pox which led to the onset of difficult-to-control epilepsy and a whole host of related challenges. In our experience, it took a long time to get the correct diagnosis, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, with long waits for hospital appointments, tests and screening. It also took a long time to get him on the correct treatment after he did not respond to conventional medication, which consisted of aggressive and increasing levels of medication with distressing side effects. It was only after his parents continued to push for a treatment that they felt would control his seizures and give him a better quality of life that they were finally able to use the ketogenic diet. This diet has helped thousands of people over many decades. It was popular until the 1920s, but had fallen out of favour as new anti-epileptic drugs were developed.
I am grateful to the charity, Matthew’s Friends, for the briefing it sent me. Matthew’s Friends was started by Emma, the mother of 15 year-old Matthew, who developed severe epilepsy when he was just nine months old. After several years of trying innumerable medications, which did not control his epilepsy and led to serious side effects, Emma asked if her son could try the ketogenic diet, only to be told the diet did not work.
Six years later, Professor Helen Cross, who now chairs the medical board of Matthew’s Friends, began a research trial of the ketogenic diet at Great Ormond Street. Matthew was one of the cohort of children with severe epilepsy who was enrolled on to this trial. Within two weeks of starting the diet, Matthew’s seizures had reduced by 90 per cent and within eight months he was off all medication, but sadly not before suffering serious brain damage after years of seizures.
We have had a similar experience with the child in my family, whom I mentioned. His seizures have decreased dramatically, and although he still has severe learning difficulties and needs a lot of care, with the diet he has made enormous progress. It was quite transforming to see him actually making eye contact, learning to speak again and engaging instead of sitting spaced out and drooling in a corner. Where medication failed, the diet worked.
Sadly, this is not available to everybody who may need it at the moment and there are not enough trained specialist dieticians to allow for more people to have this option. Can the Minister say what is being done to ensure that people with epilepsy have access to as wide a range of suitable treatments, including this diet, as possible?
I turn to the need also for better co-ordination and training for those who have to provide an emergency response for somebody who is having a prolonged epileptic seizure. This could mean schools, hospitals and, importantly, the emergency ambulance services.
During my time as a local councillor in Islington, I chaired a scrutiny review into the tragic case of 15 year- old Kayleigh Macilwraith-Christie, who died after delays in an ambulance getting to her, and the inability of the technicians who attended to administer suitable anti-convulsant emergency medication for prolonged epileptic episode.
The London Ambulance Service conducted its own investigation into this case and gave evidence at the scrutiny review that I chaired. In its response it said:
“We have since reviewed our response protocols for patients reported to be suffering a prolonged epileptic seizure or series of seizures, and have put in place procedures to ensure that control room staff will always look to send a paramedic to the relatively small number of calls we receive to these patients every year. We are also continuing to discuss with various bodies the possibility of emergency medical technicians being able to administer anti-convulsant drugs in the future”.
Is the Minister confident that we are now able to provide a more suitable response to these emergencies and that in particular the emergency medical technicians who may attend such an emergency are able to administer anti-convulsant drugs, which three years ago was not the case? I would be very grateful if there is any further information about whether lives could be saved in these emergency situations.
Lord Patel
My Lords, it is a privilege to take part in this debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, for initiating it even though the time is now late. Epilepsy is defined as a tendency to have recurrent seizures, commonly known as fits, caused by a sudden burst of excess electrical activity in the brain causing a temporary disruption to the normal messages passing between brain cells. As has already been mentioned, it affects about one person in 130 in the United Kingdom. If the quality of the services provided to people with epilepsy were measured on the basis of outcomes—that is, measured by appropriate diagnosis, appropriate and timely treatment, the education of the patient and carers, and avoidable deaths—the services currently provided would be regarded as a total failure. The cost of this poor care is estimated at £190 million per year. Health outcomes for people with epilepsy are poor.
I shall confine my comments to the care of children and young people with epilepsy and the care of mothers with epilepsy during pregnancy. As an obstetrician I have looked after many women whose pregnancies were complicated by epilepsy. Epilepsy is the most common neurological condition among children and young people, affecting around one in every 200 in the population; that is, approximately 60,000 young people in total in the UK. On average, there is one child with epilepsy in every primary school and five in every secondary school. Although the national numbers can be calculated, local and regional numbers are not. For example, a recent Epilepsy Action survey found that only 18 per cent of primary care trusts could even estimate how many children and young people in their area had the condition, making it very difficult for them to plan appropriate services for this important group.
As has already been mentioned, formal clinical guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence exist, but they are not implemented in many areas. This means that children who have had seizures are typically referred to general paediatricians rather than paediatricians with training and expertise in epilepsy. From the very beginning, that makes the outcome for these children poorer. Misdiagnosis is an issue. Up to 40 per cent of children referred to a specialist clinic do not have epilepsy when fully assessed. As the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, has said, this compares with 20 per cent to 30 per cent misdiagnosis in adults.
Children and young people with epilepsy have a poorer quality of life than children with other long-term conditions, such as asthma and diabetes. There are 365 avoidable deaths per year of children and young people with epilepsy. Sixty per cent of children and young people with epilepsy have complications. Too few children are offered, or referred early enough for, the surgery which could cure their epilepsy or reduce their seizures.
A campaign conducted by the National Centre for Young People with Epilepsy suggests 10 “levers” which would improve services for children with epilepsy. NHS commissioners should know: the number of children and young people with epilepsy in their area; the level of resources they have in place to support these children and young people; the waiting times faced by children and young people with epilepsy for initial appointments, diagnosis, treatment and tertiary assessment; and the current perceptions of children, young people and their parents of the epilepsy services. NHS commissioners must adopt: one or more care pathways for children and young people with epilepsy, ensuring that they are seen by paediatricians with training and expertise in epilepsy; and an easy to use and efficient process for referring children and young people to specialist epilepsy services. NHS commissioners must ensure: that every child or young person with epilepsy is offered a care plan, and that there is a high adoption rate; and that every child or young person with epilepsy has their case reviewed at least once a year by a health professional with expertise and training in the epilepsies. There is very good evidence that, if diseases and chronic conditions in children are managed well, followed up regularly and assessed for outcomes regularly, their outcome is optimal. Children and young people should have easy access to high-quality, multidisciplinary services, such as speech and language therapy, and psychology.
As has already been mentioned, a survey of trust services provided showed that more than 90 per cent of trusts were failing to meet the two-week deadline for a specialist appointment. Most trusts do not employ a neurologist with a specialist interest in epilepsy. More than 50 per cent of trusts do not employ a single epilepsy specialist nurse, who, as has been said, can make a lot of difference in the care of these children.
I turn to the care of women with epilepsy, which the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, summarised extremely well. The risk of a mother with epilepsy dying in pregnancy is nine to 10 times higher than in those mothers who do not have epilepsy. As the noble Baroness mentioned, nearly 5,000 women with epilepsy become pregnant each year, but a survey found that only 20 per cent receive optimum care. That includes care from an obstetrician and pre-pregnancy counselling. Such counselling is extremely important for these women because it makes the difference in housing an uncomplicated pregnancy and delivering a baby with less risk of complications developing. It is important that their drugs are changed to those that pose less risk to the foetus. These women are often on risky drugs, one of which, as has already been mentioned, is sodium valproate.
Care from an obstetrician with a specialist interest in looking after women with epilepsy working together with a physician with an interest in epilepsy in pregnancy is extremely important. However, this is currently not available to 80 per cent of women with epilepsy in pregnancy. It is not surprising therefore that their risk of maternal death and complications such as spina bifida in the foetus is so high. Failure to provide appropriate care in terms of the right drugs administered at the right dosages, as well as close monitoring of drug levels, adjuvant therapy with folic acid and other treatments increases the risk of maternal complications and death, foetal abnormalities and so on.
My questions for the Minister are simple. Why are trusts not adopting the NICE guidelines and why are so few performing to the standard of the guidelines when they are assessed? What will the Government do to make trusts adhere to these guidelines?
Lord Smith of Leigh
My Lords, I signed up to a dinner break debate. It is now somewhat beyond my normal dinner time, so I shall try to be as brief as possible. I start by declaring my interests. I, too, am a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Epilepsy, and through that became a vice-president of Epilepsy Action. I am also the leader of Wigan Council, and the reason for mentioning that will come later. The all-party group, although it was not much to do with me, has made some significant contributions to the understanding of epilepsy and has had some distinguished members—not only the noble Earl, Lord Howe, but also David Cameron, for obvious reasons.
At this point in a debate a lot has been said. My noble friend Lady Ford introduced the debate with a speech that showed her comprehensive understanding of the problem. She came from a personal angle, and we thank her for that as well as for securing the debate. It is not her fault that it is being held late. I want to pick up on two areas that have not been talked about very much. The first is the role of Epilepsy Action in the light of government policy, and the second is the impact of changing government policy on the possible treatment of epilepsy.
For 60 years Epilepsy Action has been making a real difference not only to sufferers of epilepsy and their families, but also by contributing to a wider understanding of the condition. It seeks to improve the treatments available and to engage with partners in education, health and social care. I was impressed by the description in the annual report of its website, which has received almost half a million hits, and I recommend that noble Lords visit it. In the past year, the organisation provided materials for 170,000 individuals and has helped in 16,000 personal cases. That is a lot of help for families who turn to Epilepsy Action when there is not much more on offer. I want also to refer to the work of the local groups, which is very important. I have become engaged with the group in my area. It provides mutual support for families by ensuring that, if necessary, there is a shoulder to cry on.
The Government may think that Epilepsy Action is a blueprint for the big society, but the organisation has been fulfilling its role for 60 years. However, we need to understand that it does not replace what is going on in the public agencies; rather it provides support and help for families. Together they can do well, but Epilepsy Action cannot be used as a replacement.
The two areas of policy I want to briefly mention are the health White Paper and the consequences of the CSR. Noble Lords have referred to the weaknesses in the current commissioning processes within the health service. In the health White Paper we are proposing to take commissioning from a number of professional organisations, such as the PCTs, and put it into some newly created organisations—the GP commissioners. What worries me is whether we will get a consistent pattern in terms of the size of those areas. Will they be geographically sensible? Noble Lords have mentioned the importance of the specialist epilepsy nurse. Will the new organisations be of a size where it would be practical to employ such a person? In this complex and new system, will epilepsy have priority? I think that is what the Government need to ask as we come to understand that. How will epilepsy make itself heard as a condition and get the reforms that it needs that noble Lords have mentioned?
Finally, I want to turn to the CSR and to my own specialist area of local government. I remind noble Lords that local government was one of the biggest losers in the comprehensive spending review, with a headline figure of 28 per cent—but do not be fooled by that; for many areas it will be much higher. Of course, it is not a consistent 7 per cent over four years because the biggest hit is in year 1. Now most local authorities are planning significant reductions in their spending for the next 12 months. Of course we will all try to do what we can for efficiency, but there will be significant reductions in services. These include services that families with epilepsy have relied on in the past and would like to think they can continue to rely on, whether in social care or in education support. Unfortunately, all these services cannot be left untouched by the scale of those cuts. In the forthcoming months, announcements will be made, and I am sure that families will find that the services they value will be reduced and they may be charged for. All these things will have to be considered by local authorities. I am just praying in aid that we do not simply ask the families to blame those who are making the cuts but to think where the responsibility lies.
There have been some strong cases made by noble Lords speaking before me of the need to improve the services to epilepsy sufferers and their families. What I am concerned about is not whether we get improvement, but that we do not get deterioration because of other impacts.
Lord Stevenson of Coddenham
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness on introducing the debate and on the comprehensive but succinct words she used. They have saved me a problem and I have absolutely no intention of using either the time I was allowed or the longer time. I think we must have had the same briefing notes and, if I ally them to a number of things that other speakers have said, most notably the noble Lord, Lord Patel, I have virtually nothing to say.
However, I would like to put a thought in the Minister’s mind for when she goes back to the department. I believe that this is an area of medicine where there have been dramatic improvements over the past five to 10 years and where the infrastructure and the system have failed to catch up with the improvements and their potential effects. To put it at its crudest, in street language, the system—the NHS—and people who want to take credit for it are missing some very easy wins and low-hanging fruit.
I declare two interests: first, I am a vice-president of the National Society for Epilepsy. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, is our patron, whom we honoured recently by creating a lecture in his name—that is almost unheard of. I would like to send back the message that he has been a fantastic patron. Secondly, one of my four children has epilepsy.
I have been brought up to speed on this subject and there is very good news. If I may bore your Lordships by talking about my child—I hope that my epileptic son does not read Hansard—yes, he has a cocktail of drugs every day; yes, he cannot drive and there are various other things he cannot do; and yes, he lives with a certain insecurity, as do we all. However, he leads a very normal life. He has just finished an MBA INSEAD; he is starting his own business; he has a very good social life; and he neither sees nor hears any stigma. He is basically normal. This would not have been possible 20, probably 10, years ago; there have been dramatic changes.
The only thing I will say that has not been mentioned by others, probably because they would take it for granted, is that there have been dramatic changes in genetics and brain screening. The people at Queen Square, Professor John Duncan, Professor Sanjay and various people working in the area who are world leaders in the field—I imagine most people read the article in the Guardian today on the same subject—have a fantastic job because they are improving people’s lives almost every week of the year.
So that is all good news. The problem is—which is why I mentioned him—my child is one of the lucky minority and there are, of course, people with epilepsy with intransigent problems. However—horrible as it is—modern techniques of surgery are improving so dramatically as a result of MRI scanning that even they are getting help. The point I wish to make is that this illness is much more widespread than was thought in the stigmatised age. The figures show that it is ridiculous how many misdiagnoses are made; that it is ridiculous how much money is being spent because epileptics are classified as disabled when they are not and need not be; and it is ridiculous how many people who have got what my son has got—reasonably bad but not terrible epilepsy—are not being given the cocktail of drugs that he is given.
I am quite pleased that I am well under the first time limit. I am not a scientist; I have lived with this issue for 15 years and I have got heavily involved with it. I believe that decent, highly motivated people in the Minister’s department and other places have failed to grasp the factual implications of the changes in science. I come from business and I believe that for relatively little money a self-financing programme over 18 months could be established. I shall not give all the figures but with the between £20 million and £30 million lost in misdiagnosis and £240 million lost on people classified as disabled, a large number of whom do not need to be, you could train many epilepsy nurses and bring in and finance more specialists. I would love the Minister to go back and ask the department whether this is an area where people have not caught up with some easy wins for our collective health.
Baroness Wheeler
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Ford for initiating the debate and, like others, pay tribute to the tireless work she has undertaken on behalf of people with epilepsy, particularly as president of Epilepsy Action. We are fortunate to have present and speaking in the debate noble Lords who have made significant contributions to highlighting this issue and to campaigning to address the serious problems in health and education provision for people with epilepsy.
Previous speakers have clearly set out the context of our debate: the shocking numbers of deaths that could be avoided with improved diagnosis and care; the devastating scale and impact of misdiagnosis and mistreatment; and the huge extra care and drugs costs to the NHS that this brings—£189 million estimated by the Joint Epilepsy Council. Sixty-nine thousand more people with epilepsy could have their seizures controlled with good treatment.
The 10-Minute Rule Bill that my honourable friend Valerie Vaz, the MP for Walsall South, introduced last week called for action plans for the provision of health and education services for children and adults with epilepsy and related conditions. Her “big on action, low on cost” approach draws on the research by epilepsy charities which shows clearly how lives could be saved and care substantially improved at the same time as making short and longer-term NHS savings.
So often in healthcare we face the dilemma of affordability in making the shift from funding on crisis and acute care to prevention, but in this case the evidence for moderate investment now to effect changes which would begin to impact on the care and quality of life for people with epilepsy or those wrongly diagnosed or mistreated is overwhelming. Fifty per cent of people with epilepsy in the UK make a full contribution to society because their condition is controlled and an estimated further 20 per cent could join them with good treatment.
I endorse the timely reminder from my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley of the everyday reality facing the carers of people with epilepsy. Through my links with Elmbridge Carer Support in Surrey, I recently spoke to a carer whose wife has had epilepsy for 30 years. In terms of diagnosis, it is the familiar story we have heard during this debate: eight years of initial misdiagnosis with dramatic improvement in treatment and quality of life after referral to an epilepsy consultant specialist. She now has good-quality support from the local GP and the carer told me that he could not have helped his wife have the quality of life she has without that support.
Her condition never stabilises. Sometimes she is seizure-free for two weeks and then she can have minor or major seizures on a daily basis. This fear of when the next seizure will happen is one that many people with epilepsy live with. Her husband has been a full-time carer since 1992, when the firm he was working for closed and he no longer had a sympathetic boss to help him stay him in work and undertake his caring commitments. This is another familiar story for carers.
The carer is 64, his wife is 70; they are entirely dependent on welfare and disability benefits and, like thousands of others, they live in daily fear of the letter dropping on the mat that says their already inadequate income will be reviewed. He wants to care for his wife, but he needs support to do the best job he can.
I note that the Department of Health’s recent press release on social care personal budgets gives the example of a woman with epilepsy who uses her personal budget to pay for a seizure alert dog. I hope that, as the number of people with personal budgets increases, there will be flexibility to provide real support to people living with long-term health conditions and their carers.
We have heard that good care treatment means the development of more centres of special excellence and the employment of more epilepsy specialist neurologists, key posts under the NICE guidelines, so that assessments can be made and the type of epilepsy can be diagnosed at the earliest stage. It also means ongoing access to an adult, paediatric or learning disability epilepsy specialist nurse. The 2009 research report from Epilepsy Action on ESNs clearly demonstrates the necessity of this role. This specialist care needs to be available locally in acute services and in the community if the high rate of misdiagnosis is to be addressed, symptoms managed and controlled and appropriate advice provided. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the questions from my noble friend Lady Ford about what plans she has to increase the number of epilepsy specialist nurses.
As we have heard in so many of the debates in this House on specialist areas of care—motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s, diabetes—the great concern from health organisations, charities and patients’ groups is how these key services will be commissioned in the future, under the Government’s proposals for GP commissioning. How will these huge and expensive structural changes improve the treatment of their conditions? How will 500 GP consortia obtain the specialist knowledge, skills and awareness to commission these and other key specialities when the average GP will have had experience of only a small number of people with these conditions? One recent estimate I have seen, on the basis of current statistics, was that most GPs will have seen, on average, around 10 people suffering from epilepsy.
How will the Minister ensure that GP consortia commissioners will have the necessary expertise and specialist support to commission epilepsy services? How will the NHS commissioning board ensure consistency across consortia and how will its own expertise be developed? Will epilepsy services be one of the regional commissioning roles it takes over? How are future standards of care and service to be measured? Will the NHS outcomes framework include outcomes for epilepsy?
In summary, I thank again my noble friend Lady Ford for initiating this timely debate and I look forward to the Minister’s responses to the issues and questions that have been raised.
Baroness Northover
I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, for initiating this very important debate. I know that she has a strong and long-standing interest in this area, as, clearly, do other noble Lords. My noble friend Lord Howe has a very strong interest in this area and it was a conflict of interest which led to him asking me to take this debate rather than taking it himself. He retains his extremely strong interest in provision of services for epilepsy.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, gently alluded to, I have my own experience in this area through two close relatives. One of them developed epilepsy in his late 50s and faced the trauma of potentially losing his career and his life’s work. He needed to take mind-altering drugs in order to prevent that loss. The other is blissfully unaware that she has developed epilepsy as an offshoot of corticobasal degeneration. It is therefore down to me and her carers to ensure that, vulnerable as she is, all possible care is taken of her.
Noble Lords have painted a compelling picture of why we must do better for the 450,000 people living with epilepsy in this country. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord, Lord Patel, that it is not a straightforward, simple disease with one name and one set of manifestations and causes, but that there are a variety of these. However, as the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Stevenson, and others have said, there is a great deal of understanding of epilepsy, so theoretically things should be going well. Given the good understanding of how to improve services and support for neurological conditions, then, why is that not happening?
There have been dramatic changes, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, says, with regard to the understanding of the disease. My relative who could potentially have lost his career had extraordinarily good treatment at Queen Square and is now living, in the same way as the noble Lord’s son, a normal life. Given all of that, why are things not working as they should? The national service framework for long-term neurological conditions and the NICE clinical guidance on epilepsy both offer a blueprint on how to deliver high-quality service to people with epilepsy, yet, as we have heard, this does not necessarily translate into good practice. We can see that in the epilepsy action paper and the all-party group report on the issue.
It seems to us that it becomes even more important that the reforms proposed in the NHS White Paper help to deliver the desperately needed improvements in services. How might that be achieved? First, we seek to bring decision-making much closer to patients and clinicians. It is not, pace the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, simply down to the Department of Health deciding what has to happen with regard to a specific disease. It is important that the patients, the carers and the clinicians who know what is happening are better able to commission the kind of care that they need. That needs information—it is important that far better information is available within the health service—and it needs pathways to be spelt out to GPs so that they can commission appropriately.
The aim of reorganising the health service so that it brings this process closer to the patients and clinicians is that the commissioning should be more effective. That will be the test of it, and we will need patients and patient groups involved in it to ensure that it is taken forward and monitored and that the possibilities are fully exploited. Under the proposed new system, people should also have much more information about services, more choice about their treatments and more influence over how healthcare is shaped in their community. Local HealthWatch organisations will ensure that views and feedback from patients and carers feed into future decisions about shaping local health and social care.
We have to ensure that GP commissioners have the skills and awareness that they need to make these decisions. There has been a lot of discussion, to take up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Smith, on the size of the consortia and what makes sense. Obviously, those commissioning may have limited experience—in the case of, say, neurological diseases. It is extremely important, therefore, that there are guidelines on what they should look at and how to access the best support. Again, it does not make sense simply to lay down in each particular disease that someone should do this, that and the other.
The noble Lord, Lord Darzi, developed NHS Evidence, which is self-evidently necessary. It is an online resource with information on treatment, on pathways in different diseases, drug treatments, and so on. This was extremely welcome—why it was not there in the first place, I do not know. It should have been developed years earlier, in my view. It is a reflection on the health service that has been up to now been driven by the Department of Health.
In addition to that kind of support, the NHS Commissioning Board works with a range of expert organisations to make sure that the GP leaders get the right support. It sets commissioning guidelines, commissions quality standards from NICE and encourages approaches that promote joint working between health and social care. This is extremely important here. It also makes sure that there are ongoing resources so people can tap into the latest information and the latest research. All those things are extremely important for the consortia’s commissioning.
It is obviously very important to see how this works in practice and that is why we have recently announced the Pathfinder programmes. In effect, these are pilots of GP consortia which are keen to make faster progress under existing arrangements and want to take on additional responsibility for commissioning services. The scheme will enable GPs working with other healthcare professionals to test the different designs on how this is best done. It is extremely important that we all learn from that. Expert groups, such as the ones that have been represented here, should monitor what is happening, see how it is working out in practice and inform us so that we can put into place for the country as a whole something which works as well as possible.
As I have mentioned, it is extremely important to have information. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, referred to it not being known how many cases there are in particular areas. That surely should be a thing of the past. I hope very much that the promotion of information within this system should help to counter that. For example, last week the NHS Atlas of Variation in Healthcare was published. It is very controversial—some areas seem to be doing very well and others are embarrassed that they are on the “Today” programme defending their terrible record. Actually, that becomes a lever for trying to improve things, by asking what is being done differently somewhere else and what can be learnt from that, because we do not want to find ourselves publicly in that position again. It is a very useful way of trying to address the health inequalities noble Lords have talked about.
The long-term conditions delivery support team is already working to develop skills and awareness. It has been developing a new commissioning resource pack in this area, bringing together information on good epilepsy services, so there are sources of information that will help the GP consortia.
On specialists, this again is an ongoing concern that has run through many different diseases, at many different times, right through the history of the NHS and prior to that. It is extremely important that cases get referred to the right specialists and that the specialists are there to take them forward. That may mean that a paediatrician, for example, recognises that they need to refer the patient to somebody who is an epilepsy specialist as well.
I see that I am running out of time, despite all the extra time that we were given. I am very sympathetic to the idea of support for specialist nurses. My own contact with them in relation to my mother shows how very useful they are.
I was asked about the epilepsy drug sodium valproate. We are acutely aware of the situation of the families. The authorised product information on this drug for prescribers contains advice about its safety. Taking up the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, I will definitely take the idea of reviewing this back to the department. We obviously have to make sure that women are guided by very good advice on pregnancy.
My noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece asked a series of questions. She was concerned about what had happened in relation to the emergency services in one case. We understand that if an epileptic fit is confirmed in a 999 call, there should be an appropriately trained medic in the ambulance. If it is not flagged up, there may be a problem. Some of the staff who go out in ambulances would have the ability to cope with such a case; others would not. However, all staff are trained to deal with epileptic cases, so the dreadful case that the noble Baroness mentioned should not, one hopes, recur. However, we always need to learn and move on.
The diet that the noble Baroness mentioned is available on a limited scale. It suits some children but not others. The most important thing, here and everywhere else, is that there should be good research. Areas like this should be evaluated very carefully to make sure that best practice can be extended and that, where something is not seen as being appropriate, it is properly evaluated.
On carers, I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, is well aware of the coalition’s commitment to linking social care and health, and to supporting carers. There will be additional resources for GP training to increase GPs’ awareness and understanding of carers’ need for support.
I am running out of time but, in conclusion, I stress that the Government do not and never will have all the answers. We have a vibrant and active charitable and voluntary sector. We depend a great deal on the advice that is fed in and the way that areas are flagged up. Paul Burstow, my colleague in the other place, will meet the epilepsy charities soon to discuss the opportunities that the new agenda poses for them. We are keen to involve people, and keen that the reforms of the NHS and social care should make sure that patients and clinicians are better able to seek the kind of assistance and care that they need. We hope that will help to bring standards up to those that we know exist for many, but far from all, who are being treated for epilepsy.